Stella remained on the sofa, and she searched Mattie’s face as she took her seat. “Do you want me to fix you some more tea?”
Mattie shook her head. “I’ll be all right.”
Stella sat in silence, her lips pursed.
“I don’t know whether to believe it. If he molested me, I don’t remember it. But . . .”
Stella raised her brows. “But?”
Mattie took another deep breath. “I get these flashbacks. Just a bit here and there, nothing clear. I don’t know what to believe.”
“What do you remember?”
“Something he said. Not to tell or he’d kill my mother.”
Mattie fixed her eyes on Stella’s as if grasping for a lifeline. Stella didn’t let her down; her gaze remained true and didn’t waver.
“I don’t know whether it’s my imagination or not,” Mattie said. “I don’t know what to believe.”
“You know that some victims of childhood abuse dissociate while it’s happening, right?”
Mattie nodded.
“Could that be the case with you?”
Mattie shrugged, not sure if she wanted to admit to the possibility.
Stella paused, still holding eye contact. Finally, Mattie looked away.
“Mattie, I’m not an expert in these things, but I’ll tell you this. Don’t waste a lot of time denying it. The sooner you accept that it could be true, the sooner you can get some help.”
“I don’t even want to think about it.” Robo had settled on the floor at her feet, and she leaned forward to stroke the fur on his head.
“I understand. But I don’t think it’s healthy to bury it, do you?”
She couldn’t disagree, so she said nothing.
“You should work with someone, Mattie. Someone who can help you.”
Exhaustion pressed down on her; she wanted to curl up on the sofa and go to sleep. “I can’t talk about this anymore tonight. I’ve got to go to bed.”
She stood and turned away, Robo dogging her tracks as she headed for her room.
“Sleep well, Mattie,” Stella called after her. “Things will get better in time.”
Mattie entered her bedroom, closing the door behind her and her dog. She opened her window an inch, climbed into bed fully clothed, and turned out the light. The last thing she heard upon closing her eyes was Robo’s sigh as he settled.
Chapter 25
Tuesday
When Mattie returned from taking Robo on his morning run, Stella had already left, leaving folded blankets and sheets on the sofa. She fed Robo and grabbed an energy bar for herself, grateful that the nausea from yesterday seemed to have let up. The sleep of exhaustion apparently had done some good. She hurried to shower so she wouldn’t arrive at the office too far behind Stella. Dressed in a khaki coverall with a Timber Creek County Sheriff Department emblem on the sleeve, she left the house well before the usual time, Robo cheerfully running ahead, eager to jump into their vehicle.
As she clocked in, Brody approached her. Apparently he’d come in before his shift started, too, not unusual for him. He frequently came in early and stayed late even though he clocked in and out when he was supposed to.
“You’re with the sheriff and detective today,” he said by way of turning over her duty assignment. “They’re already in the briefing room.”
“And you?”
He locked eyes with her. “I’m out.”
So they’d decided to leave him out of the inner circle of the investigation. Probably the right move after the incident with Vasquez. “We’ll touch base later,” she said.
He nodded, giving her another long stare before turning away. What did that mean? She’d had enough experience with Brody sending her angry and resentful looks that she knew this one didn’t fall into those categories. Was he asking for her to pass on information to him?
She walked past Rainbow, exchanging greetings with her.
“There’s coffee and donuts in the briefing room already,” Rainbow said. “I’m supposed to tell you to go in as soon as you can.”
“Thanks.”
When she entered the briefing room, Stella studied her and then nodded, as if she’d passed muster.
“Come have a seat, Deputy,” McCoy said, pouring himself a cup of coffee from an insulated carafe and grabbing a donut. He waved toward the food and drink. “Help yourself.”
“I was going over these phone records with Sheriff McCoy. I showed him the patterns I mentioned to you last night,” Stella said, moving her finger across the top page in a stack. “Here, you can see what I’m talking about. I have the numbers that we’re interested in highlighted in different colors, and this is the key for whom each number belongs to.” She picked up a separate page and set it beside the stack for reference.
Mattie scanned the page, glancing at the reference list for orientation, noting the frequent calling back and forth between Adrienne and Vasquez. She removed the top page to expose the one below. “Did you find phone calls to or from Adrienne’s old boyfriend, Jim Cameron, or her past employer, Scott Stroud?”
“No. Neither one of them had any contact with her by phone or e-mail. I think we can set them aside, at least for now.” Stella tapped a set of three numbers she’d highlighted in yellow on the list of Adrienne’s phone calls. “This number is worth our attention. It started showing up about four weeks ago. I used the cross directory to match the number with a name. It belongs to a landline assigned to a place called Dark Horse Stable. It isn’t on our list of horse clients that we got from Dr. Walker.”
Mattie remembered the name. The nice lady with the sick horse. “He mentioned the place to me yesterday afternoon. Said it’s a new client, not near the trailheads we’re looking at. It’s still in a remote mountain location though. Adrienne didn’t get a referral from him, and he thought the owner wouldn’t have known her.”
Stella nodded, thoughtful. “The only reason I think it’s worth looking at is because she had horsehair on her clothing. These calls are spaced out, like they might have been setting up appointments weekly. And the last one was the Monday before our victim disappeared.”
McCoy nodded. “I agree that it’s worth following up. Do you plan to call them?” he asked Stella.
“I will. As soon as we finish up here.”
Mattie felt the urge to meet this woman, go visit the property in person. “I’d like to go there, interview the owner face to face.”
McCoy looked at Stella, as if deferring to her while Stella seemed to be thinking it over.
She raised an eyebrow. “That’s an awfully long drive.”
Her comment forced Mattie to think it through. She knew her need was more than idle curiosity. “Cole Walker has been going up the past few days to treat a sick horse for the owner, and she has yet to tell him that she’d been working with Adrienne. Surely she would have brought that up. And if she set up an appointment during that phone call last Monday, I think we need to know what day it was for. I feel better about doing this interview while we can read her face and her body language.”
“You’ve got a point,” Stella said. “We’ve got good circumstantial evidence against Vasquez at the moment, but it’s best if we still look at everyone. I’ve got an examiner bringing a polygraph machine over this morning to interview him, and I’ve already drafted the questions I want to use. Can we get back here by eleven?”
“That should be no problem,” Mattie said.