Hold Back the Dark (14 page)

Taylor clutched Sammy the dog tightly in her left hand, but moved her right hand to rest on the box of chalk.

Aimee could see that Marian had noticed, too. She put her hand on Marian’s arm and gave a small shake of her head. When Marian’s brows drew down in confusion, Aimee touched her finger to her lips. Marian nodded. She started to chat about real estate prices while both women pretended not to watch Taylor.

Taylor flipped open the box of pastels and ran her fingers over the chalks. She still didn’t appear to be looking at Aimee or Marian, but Aimee was certain she was aware of their movements, and kept hers slow and still. Taylor barely seemed to be looking at the box of pastels, either. She kept her head down and continued to rock steadily and to keep the stuffed dog clutched in her lap.

Then Taylor took a piece of chalk from the box and tentatively started to draw. From the corner of her eye, Aimee could see the marks she made were barely visible. She could also tell that it was getting harder and harder for Marian to pretend not to be looking. Over the next few minutes, Taylor began to make more definite marks. Her arm moved with more energy and she would stop rocking for a few seconds now and then.

Aimee and Marian were no longer pretending to talk, but they kept their distance. This was a huge breakthrough for Taylor, establishing a connection with the outside world. She had to be allowed to express herself without pressure, without judgment, without questions.

She filled one page, ripped it off the tablet, and started on the next one. She drew faster, and her gestures were larger. Aimee held her breath. She desperately wanted to grab the sheet that Taylor had turned upside down on the table and flip it over to see what secrets it might reveal, but she couldn’t. Not without risking that Taylor would stop drawing completely.

Taylor filled a second sheet and ripped that one off the tablet, casting it on the floor. It landed face up.

Taylor had drawn the same set of symbols she’d drawn on the walls of the living room.

O
nce Josh had rejoined Elise, their next stop was to see the president of the company that had created the custom wine bottle Taylor had used to gouge herself. They’d called ahead to let Garrett Cohen, president and CEO of Sac City Data, know that they were coming, but they hadn’t told him why. It was often as informative to find out why people thought the police were asking them questions as to get the answers to the questions themselves. Josh often got some pieces of information by letting people talk on their own.

Sac City Data was housed in a square two-story glass and steel box in Roseville. They took up the eastern half of the first floor. The offices were nice, but not too nice. The guy at the front desk had black spiky hair and a Bluetooth earpiece and wore jeans and an untucked dress shirt that screamed “trendy.” It wasn’t easy being a hipster in Roseville, and Josh almost felt sorry for the kid. “Can I help you?” the young man asked as they walked in.

Josh flashed his badge. “We’re here to see Garrett Cohen. He’s expecting us.”

Spiky Hair’s eyes opened a fraction wider. “I’ll buzz him right now.”

A few minutes later, a heavyset man with pale red hair and freckles across his doughy face trundled out of the back rooms. “Detective Wolf? Detective Jacobs?” he said tentatively and stuck out his hand.

Cohen was younger than Josh expected, but it seemed like everybody was, these days. How somebody who looked barely old enough to get into a bar could own and operate a company that employed thirty people was a mystery to him.

Cohen led them through the maze of cubicles to his corner office. The inside of Sac City Data didn’t look all that different from the inside of the police department. The cubicles were a little bigger. The carpet was a little cushier and significantly less stained. The cube walls came up a little bit higher and looked a little sturdier. Basically, though, there wasn’t much difference.

Cohen settled his bulk behind his desk. The blinds were pulled against the glare of the sunlight and possibly against the view of the parking lot. He took a swig from the Rockstar energy drink on his desk.

“Thanks for taking the time to see us,” Josh said, sitting down across from Cohen.

“It’s no problem at all. Can I get you guys some coffee? Maybe a soda?” There was some sort of inherent reflex in people that made them want to treat a visit from the police like a social call. Cohen licked his lips as if he was thirsty, or perhaps nervous. It wasn’t an uncommon reaction to having the police show up on your doorstep, either. Even people without so much as a parking ticket got tense when a detective asked for a few minutes of their time.

“We’re fine, thanks.” Elise sat next to Josh and got right down to business. “Did your company have a wine custom bottled and labeled recently, Mr. Cohen?”

Cohen looked startled. “Yes, we did. We had a Merlot put in custom bottles to celebrate our launch about a month ago. We opened the virtual doors on this puppy and we wanted to do something special for everybody who worked on it, and for our first customers, too.”

Elise plunked one of the bottles they’d found in the Dawkins’ wine rack down on Cohen’s desk. “Is this the wine you had bottled?”

Cohen picked up the bottle. “Yes, this is it. Was there something wrong with the wine?” He snapped his fingers. “Oh, my God! Was this one of those counterfeit wines I’ve been reading about?”

Josh ignored the other man’s question. “Is there a reason that a man named Orrin Dawkin would have had a bottle of the wine?”

Cohen paled behind his freckles. “This is about Orrin Dawkin? I should have realized that when you called. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it on TV. I couldn’t imagine who would do something like that to him and to his wife, too. Do you guys think the daughter did it?” Cohen leaned forward.

Elise barely blinked, but Josh saw her jaw clench. “The wine bottle, Mr. Cohen? Why would Orrin Dawkin and his family have had a bottle of the wine you had specially bottled for your company?”

Cohen focused on the bottle in front of him. “Oh, yeah. Orrin’s company did most of the programming behind our launch. Without Carl’s programming, we would never have gotten off the ground. I sent a bunch of bottles to Carl and Orrin and to their office.”

“Sent? As in through the mail?” Elise asked.

Cohen shook his head. “No. I gave them to Carl Walter and his son, Sean. They came to the launch party. Orrin couldn’t make it, so I sent bottles for him and for their office with them.” He blushed a little. “I’d had a little to drink by that time. I think I sent them out of here with a case or two. I was feeling pretty magnanimous.”

“So you did business with Walter-Dawkin Consulting?” Elise asked.

“Quite a bit,” Cohen said. “Like I said, they were responsible for pretty much all the programming behind the scenes of our Web launch. Well, them and some of their subcontractors. Although that seemed to be a sore point.”

“Sore point with whom?” Josh leaned forward, and Cohen leaned back. The dude might be president and CEO, but he was no alpha dog. Carl Walter probably had him cowering in a corner and peeing on himself.

Cohen’s forehead creased. “Nothing, I guess. It was just something weird at the launch party. I’d gotten the bill from Orrin for the last bit of programming, and he had two subcontractors on it. It’s cool. Everybody subcontracts. I mean, I was subcontracting my software engineering needs out to them, right? It was just that Carl had blown a bunch of smoke up my ass about how he oversaw all the work the company did, and was responsible for the quality assurance on it. I felt a little ripped off when I found out they were using subcontractors. I mean, how’s he supposed to do quality control when the stuff is all done in India or something?”

“Good point. So what seemed to tick Walter off about the subcontractor thing?” Josh asked.

“It was weird,” Cohen said. “I ribbed Carl about it at the party a bit and he didn’t seem to think it was funny. I got the impression that the fact that they were using subcontractors was news to him. He wanted to know their names and which invoice they were on, and a bunch of stuff that I would have thought he could look up easier in his own files. I made some smart-ass remark about it. Like I said, I’d had a little to drink and was probably a little looser than I should have been. Anyway, Carl got pretty huffy, and so did his kid. Although it’s hard to read that one. He gives me the heebie-jeebies.” Cohen gave a little shiver.

“You mean Sean Walter?” Elise asked, her head cocked to one side. She often homed in on things a witness would say that another investigator would blow past, and those offhand remarks often seemed to be the very point the case turned on.

“Yeah. Sean’s kind of…twitchy. It’s weird. Carl is so smooth and so assured and so…charismatic. People are drawn to him. You should see it when he walks through here. Half the women drop whatever they’re doing and stare, and I’m not just talking about the young ones. The kid is practically a carbon copy of him, lookswise. Same build, all tall and broad-shouldered. Same dark blond hair cut the same way. Same clothing style, even. Personality, though? It’s a totally different deal. At the party, he sat in a corner looking miserable while his father held court by the shrimp cocktail.”

“Did he seem to know anything about the subcontractors?” Josh asked.

Cohen shook his head. “No. He seemed as surprised about it as his father, but he told his dad he’d look into it for him.”

“Do you think you could get us the names of those subcontractors you mentioned?” Josh asked.

Cohen said he could have them in a couple of minutes, and excused himself to go talk to his accounts payable department. He was back in less than five with the names jotted down. Josh and Elise thanked Cohen again for his time and headed out.

Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. What had the shrink heard him say? Sean pounded his fist on the steering wheel. He couldn’t even remember what he had been saying when she’d walked in. He’d been so startled, he’d lost track of everything but the need to act normal in front of her.

Crap. How the hell did you act normal in front of a shrink? They didn’t think anyone was normal. They saw neuroses behind every tree and psychoses under every rock.

Maybe she’d only seen him talking quietly to Taylor. That would be good. And really, it was all he had done. He’d just wanted to talk to her. He’d been trying to talk to her alone since he came back to California six months ago, but she dodged him all the time.

Then, with her dyed hair and pierced eyebrows and weird clothes, she seemed unapproachable. She clearly didn’t want to talk to him. Maybe it was best to leave it all alone.

He doubted the shrink would agree with him. His own shrink back in Minnesota sure hadn’t. He’d wanted to examine every detail, every memory. And what had it gotten Sean? He’d thought it would get him a chance at a regular, normal life, something he hadn’t been sure he would ever be able to have. Instead, Sean felt worse since he’d come back to California than he had in years.

He wondered what went on behind that calm façade Taylor’s shrink projected. He was sure psychologists all went into the mental health profession to heal their own wounded psyches and to pretend to be superior. This one was all smooth dark hair and sweet low voice on the surface, but he bet she did something psycho when she was alone. He could sense those things. He knew who was vulnerable and who wasn’t. He bet she ate entire gallons of ice cream and then made herself barf. Or maybe she had sex with strangers she picked up in bars. She had no right to look at him the way she had. She was every bit as damaged as he was; he’d bet money on it.

What had that look she’d given him meant? What had she heard? Damn it. He didn’t know why he was torturing himself about it. It didn’t matter. He hadn’t really said anything. Taylor would understand what he was trying to tell her. Nobody else would, because nobody else knew what had happened the summer that the Dawkins moved to California. Then his mother had whisked him away to Minnesota that fall, saying she wanted half the country between her and Sean’s dad.

That was another worry—his dad. Sean had thought being back here would be easier. He thought he was ready to handle it, but it was way more difficult than he’d expected. Seeing his dad with a new wife and a new son was torture. Sean felt like needles were being stuck in his skin every time he watched Carl play with Thomas. It didn’t help that Thomas was the quintessential all-American kid, all cowlicks and freckles and puppy dog tails. They might as well call him Opie and send him off to go fish in the crick.

Maybe he should call his therapist back in Minnesota. Seeing his dad with Thomas made the bad feelings start up again with a vengeance. He’d thought he’d had it under control, and wouldn’t have come back if he hadn’t thought he could manage it. God, he wanted a drink. He wanted to dull the pain and the rage and, most of all, the shame. He wanted to crawl under a rock.

As he drove back toward Dawkin-Walter Consulting, he wondered what the shrink was doing now. Was she asking Taylor questions? Would Taylor ever respond?

And if she did, what would she say?

The inside of the store throbbed with music. Josh felt like his chest was vibrating with the pulse of the bass.

Elise shook her head at him. “I can’t believe you knew where this place was.”

He shrugged. “I bought a present for my niece here last Christmas.” Josh went to the front counter, leaned over, and shouted to the girl at the cash register, “I need to speak to the manager.”

She turned. Her hair was razor cut, short in back and longer in front, with tendrils falling over her eyes. Several strands had been dyed bright pink, with a few acid green ones thrown in for contrast. She had on a black fishnet hoodie with her thumbs stuck through the cuffs, layered over a black camisole and a pair of jeans so tight, Josh wondered if the girl had any circulation in her legs. Her face was pasty white. Her eyes were ringed with kohl black liner, and a smudge of pink the same shade as her highlights colored her eyelids. “I am the manager,” she shouted.

He flashed his badge. “Turn down the music so we can talk. Please.”

“It’s store policy,” she shouted back, glowering out from beneath her bangs. “They tell us what to play and how loud to play it. I could get in trouble for turning it down.”

“You could also get into trouble for not turning it down. Turn it down now.” Josh leaned over the counter and glared.

The girl heaved a sigh and went into the back. A second later the music went off, although Josh felt like his breast bone continued to vibrate.

The girl came out and went back behind the counter. “What do you want?”

“You got a kid working here named Flick?” Josh asked.

“Yeah. Why? What’d he do?” She slouched onto the stool by the cash register.

“We’re looking for him,” Elise said, not bothering to answer the girl’s question.

The girl inspected her fingernails. “Yeah, well, he’s not working right now.”

“I can see that,” Elise said, her voice still pleasant, although Josh wondered how long that would last. “We’d like to know his real name and his address and phone number.”

“I’m not supposed to give information like that out. It’s, like, personal, you know,” she said, still looking down.

“It’s okay,” Josh said. “We’re, like, the good guys. You can trust us.”

She rolled her eyes. “So you say.”

“So my badge says,” he replied, relaxing his posture. “Why’d you think Flick did something? Has he been in trouble before?”

She shrugged. “Nothing I know about for sure.”

“Then why did you ask what he’d done?” Elise leaned in now, too. “Has he given you any trouble?”

The girl hesitated for a few seconds. “It just seems like things go missing sometimes after he’s been on shift. Nothing big. Some metal studs, some earrings. Stuff like that.”

“You think he took them?” Josh asked.

“Or maybe looked the other way when someone else did,” the girl said. “I don’t know.”

“And who takes the fall for that kind of thing? Who gets in trouble if there’s too much shoplifting?” Elise asked.