30

“What do I do?” Savanna’s hand shook as she held her phone. She was still standing in Dorothy’s basement, staring at what she’d discovered. But she didn’t know whether she should leave the backpack where it was or take it with her. She was afraid that if she carried it off, it wouldn’t be admissible in court. She wasn’t familiar with the rules of evidence, but she knew, especially after this find, that it was imperative Gordon never go free. They had to do everything right.

Detective Sullivan didn’t respond immediately. She got the impression he was thinking. She’d told him everything, sent him the pictures of the car as well as several shots of the backpack and what she’d found inside.

“Can you think a little faster?” she asked when she felt like she couldn’t wait another second. “My heart’s about to pound out of my chest. I’m breathing in decomposed rat and could be standing on Emma’s grave. If her backpack is here, her body might be, too. I don’t want to discover that.”

“I’m sorry. I’ve been studying the pictures you sent. Because the department paid for you to come to Utah, a defense lawyer would argue that you were working with us when you entered Dorothy’s home.”

“That’s not good, right?”

“Not for our side. It means the evidence would likely be suppressed. There are a few exceptions to the rules for illegally obtained evidence, but given how you got into the house, I doubt any of those would apply.”

Savanna was afraid she might throw up. Closing her eyes, she swallowed hard. “But if I leave the backpack here, will you be able to obtain a search warrant before she gets rid of it?”

“She’s not going to get rid of it.”

“How can you be sure? I’m shocked she hasn’t gotten rid of it before now.”

“Anything she throws away is no longer protected by privacy laws. And as far as she knows, we’ve been watching her closely. Leaving it in the basement means she can retain control of it, make sure it doesn’t fall into anyone else’s hands. It might’ve remained there indefinitely if not for you.”

“It might be even simpler than that. Maybe she doesn’t want to touch it. Maybe she found it there and decided to leave it where it was rather than get involved enough to actually dispose of it. Then she could pretend that what it means is none of her business, that she doesn’t have the responsibility to turn in her own son.”

“Could be true. If she touches it and we can prove she did, she could be implicated in covering up Gordon’s crimes. As things stand now, she could claim she had no idea it was in her basement.”

“But she does know. That’s why she freaked out when I mentioned Emma’s name that night at my place in Silver Springs.” Someone had to have set the rattraps in the basement. While doing that, Dorothy had probably stumbled across Emma’s backpack and then recognized the name when she heard it—not from the news reports, since those had, for the most part, happened a year ago, but from seeing the name on Emma’s schoolwork, just as Savanna had. Perhaps she hadn’t been certain what it signified at first, which was why she’d left it where it was. But then Savanna had told her what’d happened to Emma Ventnor, and she’d realized where that backpack had come from and the role the accident had played in a young girl’s kidnapping. So she’d done what she could to cover the damage on her car—since there’d be no way to prove she’d crashed into Gavin’s truck to destroy evidence. She’d also removed her hide-a-key from outside. She wasn’t concerned with theft, wasn’t careful in general. Why else would she bother?

“But you said you need probable cause to get a search warrant,” she said. “Without this backpack, we don’t have anything we didn’t have before.”

“Yes, we do. Thanks to you, we have the Celica.”

Unable to tolerate the stench any longer, Savanna zipped the backpack and edged away, to where she could stand at her full height. She was reluctant to go any farther, though. She hated to leave what she’d found because of what it meant. Gordon was guilty. He knew where Emma was, whether she was alive. How could she walk away and leave such proof behind?

And yet the detective was telling her she had to do exactly that.

“You think the Celica’s enough?” She needed more reassurance after all she’d done.

“You told me Gavin’s truck is blue, didn’t you?”

“It is...”

“Well, when I magnify the close-up you took of the damage on Dorothy’s car, I think I see a few tiny bits of white.”

“Emma’s car was white.”

“Yes.”

“So...you think you see that or you do?”

“There’s no way to be certain. But the fact that it could be there, and you say the car was damaged about the time Emma went missing, might be enough to make an impact on the judge.”

“Who will, hopefully, sign off on the search warrant.”

“Yes.”

“But I took those pictures in Dorothy’s garage. Wouldn’t they be considered illegally obtained, too?”

“You said the garage door was open. That means anyone could go in there. But just to be sure, we’ll handle it a different way. I know where Dorothy works. I’ll go over there and take pictures of the car myself. With any luck, we could be searching her house tomorrow.”

“That means I can leave.”

“Yes, get out of there while you can,” he said, but just before Savanna disconnected and started for the stairs, she heard movement coming from upstairs.

“Oh, my God. She’s back,” she whispered, and disconnected.

* * *

Gavin was eating in his office. Although he still battled a certain amount of guilt for not getting back with Heather whenever he thought about the baby, he was so much happier after making the decision to pursue a relationship with Savanna. Since he’d started seeing her, he’d been joining his mother and brother in the cafeteria for lunch with the students, as usual, but he was too stressed to interact with anyone else today. He was waiting for Savanna to let him know she’d gotten out of Dorothy’s house and was on her way to the airport, and couldn’t understand why he hadn’t heard from her. Was she still on the phone with Sullivan?

He hesitated to keep calling and texting her, just in case. It’d been thirty minutes; they had to be deeply embroiled. But he needed to hear from her.

A knock sounded at the door, interrupting his vigil.

Setting his phone aside, he got up to answer it.

Aiyana stood there, dressed in a colorful skirt and purple blouse, her black hair hanging straight and long instead of in its characteristic braid. “You’re not having lunch with us?” she asked.

“Not today.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Of course,” he replied, but she gave him that look that let him know she wasn’t buying it, and he sighed.

“I’m concerned about Savanna.”

“Why would you be concerned? You told me she flew to Utah for a couple of days to deal with some business regarding her ex-husband. Don’t tell me he’s abusive or something else that would put her in danger...”

He stretched his neck to ease the tension knotting his muscles. “It’s...complicated.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “What’s going on?”

Gavin knew, considering what his relationship with Savanna had become, that he could tell his family about Gordon. It wasn’t as if Savanna expected that to remain a secret indefinitely. He just hadn’t done it yet. They’d both been too focused on getting through her trip to Utah. “Are you sure you have time for such a long story?”

“I’ll make time,” she replied.

He beckoned her inside. “Then have a seat.”

* * *

Savanna hadn’t closed the door to the basement. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to do that, not with how difficult it’d been to open in the first place. She was afraid she’d get stuck down there, hadn’t wanted to feel as though she was cutting herself off from her only avenue of retreat. But the instant Dorothy saw that door hanging wide at the top of the stairs, she’d know something was up. It’d been closed tighter than a drum when Savanna arrived. Not to mention the light was on.

Savanna covered her mouth as she listened to the footfalls above her. The window in Dorothy’s bedroom could also give her away. It was open wider than it had been before, and the screen was bent back. Good thing she’d taken the time to leave everything else as it had been. Otherwise, she’d have no hope of going undiscovered.

Why wasn’t Dorothy at work? Had she gotten sick? Was she home for the day? Or had she just returned to get something she’d forgotten—or maybe lunch?

Regardless, the entrance to the basement was too centrally located for her to miss that giveaway door. Chances were she would’ve seen it already, except her phone had gone off almost as soon as she arrived at the house. Savanna could hear her talking from what sounded like the living room.

As soon as she came through to the kitchen, it would all be over...

Although her first inclination was to hide, Savanna forced herself to climb the noisy stairs. She could only rely on that phone conversation to keep Dorothy preoccupied. Savanna had to get to that door, had to close it, or who could say what would happen. At a minimum, the backpack evidence would be spoiled. Dorothy would try to get rid of it, and without Emma’s schoolwork, Gordon would very likely go free. Savanna had little confidence in the “bits of white” Sullivan claimed to see in the Celica pictures, since she hadn’t seen any of that herself. She had a feeling he was stretching the truth in order to get a search warrant.

“I told you, I have nothing to say to you...No, you need to leave me alone...That’s ridiculous! You can’t force me to testify against my own son!”

Dorothy was talking to Sullivan, Savanna realized. As soon as they’d hung up, he’d called Dorothy, was purposely hassling her in an attempt to create a diversion.

Savanna quickly weighed the chances of sneaking out the back. Would she make it?

She didn’t see much hope. The house was too small. Dorothy would hear her or see her, especially if she had any trouble with the lock on the back door. And she could tell the conversation wasn’t going to last but a few more seconds. Dorothy was adamant about not talking to the police. All Savanna could do was remain in the basement, pull the door closed, turn off the light and pray Dorothy wasn’t home for the day. Otherwise, Savanna would have quite a wait before she could get out of the house.

The door didn’t want to close all the way, not without a great deal of pressure, and Savanna didn’t dare pull it that hard.

She closed it as well as she could without making a lot of noise and waited.

Sure enough, Dorothy hung up almost immediately. “Bastard,” she muttered as she came into the kitchen.

Since Dorothy was right on the other side of the basement door, Savanna could hear her rummaging around in the drawers and cupboards and possibly the fridge.

“You won’t get anything out of me,” Dorothy added as if she was still talking to Sullivan.

Taking measured breaths to control her fear, Savanna clung to the knob of the basement door, in case Dorothy spotted that irregularity and tried to open it. Holding it wouldn’t keep her from being discovered, but it might save her from being shoved down the stairs. She wasn’t in the best position to protect herself should Dorothy get physical.

Don’t look this way. Finish what you’re doing and go.

Dorothy’s phone rang again. “You can’t harass me like this,” she told the caller, which made Savanna guess that it was, once again, Sullivan, trying to help.

“No, I won’t meet you for coffee...What? I’ve never shoplifted in my life! I don’t care what you’ve got on video. That has to be someone else.”

There was a long pause while she was, presumably, listening to Sullivan make a case for meeting him.

“I’m telling you that wasn’t me.”

They argued a bit more. Finally, Sullivan must’ve prevailed, because after she hung up, Dorothy swore a blue streak and went out the front.

Savanna listened carefully to see if Dorothy might return. She couldn’t hear any evidence of that, but she forced herself to wait five minutes before charging out of the basement. To close the door tightly behind her, she had to use her shoulder like a battering ram, but as soon as she accomplished that, she let herself out the back, retrieved the duct tape from the garage and fixed the screen on Dorothy’s bedroom window so that the damage could not be seen from inside the house.

Once she finally reached her rental car, she sent a text to Sullivan. Thank you. I’m out.

Savanna couldn’t help chuckling at what he’d written. You told her you had her on video, shoplifting?

* * *

“She’s okay?” Aiyana asked.

Gavin glanced up from the text that had interrupted their conversation. “Yes. Thank God. She’s on her way to the airport.”

“What took her so long to let you know?”

“She hasn’t said.” What happened? he wrote to Savanna.

He drew a deep breath as he set his phone aside. “Sounds like whatever happened was good,” he told his mother.

* * *

It took Sullivan until Friday to get the search warrant. Waiting for that to come through, and waiting for what the search of Dorothy’s house would reveal, made Savanna almost as nervous as when she’d been snooping around that house herself—and nearly been caught. She kept thinking that maybe Dorothy had realized someone had been in her house, that she’d seen the tape on the screen and disposed of Emma’s backpack, so they’d wind up with nothing to tie Gordon to Emma’s disappearance, after all.

But that didn’t turn out to be the case. When Gavin was at work, and Branson and Alia were playing in the kiddie pool they liked so much, Savanna received the call from Sullivan that she’d been waiting for.

She answered on the first ring. “Tell me you found what you needed.”

“We have the backpack,” he said.

“What about... What about any remains?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

That last part wasn’t good news, but Savanna’s relief was still so profound it almost robbed her of strength. She’d been thrown into what felt like an alternate reality ever since Gordon had first become a suspect in those rape cases. It’d been only a few months, but it seemed like years. So much had changed. And now the worst was over. Gordon wouldn’t be able to hurt her or anyone else again. His lawyer, the public defender in whom he placed so little trust, would have a hard time explaining how Emma Ventnor’s backpack wound up in Dorothy Gray’s basement. So even if the backpack didn’t contain any DNA evidence—which, of course, they hoped it did—Gordon would be charged with Emma’s abduction if not her murder. “He won’t be able to get past this,” she said.

“No,” Sullivan confirmed. “Detective March stayed up all night viewing the same video footage she’d been over before, when she was looking for the wrong vehicle. This time, she found two different shots of Dorothy’s car—before it was damaged on the front. Between the backpack, Gordon’s lack of an alibi, proof of an accident and his proximity to where Emma was taken, we’ll have a good case.”

“What about the white paint on the Celica? Will that help?”

“If it’s there. We’ll get everything we can, make sure he goes away for a long, long time. But the backpack is insurmountable. From the beginning, he’s claimed that he’s never seen Emma Ventnor before in his life, never heard of her except on the news. This proves otherwise. And now that we could charge his mother with obstruction of justice for wrecking into Gavin’s truck to cover up the previous damage on her vehicle, and hiding Emma’s backpack in her basement, we might finally get some cooperation from her. Depending on what she knows, it’s even possible we’ll recover Emma’s body.”

“Then you believe Emma’s dead.”

“Don’t you?”

Savanna hated to admit it, but where else could the girl be?

“At least, because of you, Gordon won’t be able to hurt anyone else,” he said.

It was the first time Sullivan had ever attempted to make her feel better about anything. “Whoa! Are you trying to console me?”

There was a brief silence. Then he said, “I owe you an apology, Savanna. You’re not the type of woman I thought you were in the beginning. I didn’t treat you right.”

“I understand why. Cops can get a bit jaded, I guess.”

“Sadly, that’s true. I still feel bad, but...I can’t believe you were ever married to a man like Gordon.”

She backed up so the kids wouldn’t get her wet with all their splashing and running with the hose. “I almost can’t believe it myself. I’m glad that’s no longer the case. I’m much happier now.”

“I hope you stay that way.”

“Thank you,” she said, and disconnected so that she could call and give Gavin the good news.