And then, of course, there was the kiss we had shared. I guess I didn’t really want to face him after that.
I parked in front of the old home on Howell Branch Road, then walked through the long front yard, up to the porch. Some of the grass and leaves had turned brown due to the lack of rain. It had been an unusually dry winter this year. Yet the yard still looked impeccable.
Bryan opened the door when I knocked. He seemed out of breath, agitated, and he was sweating heavily.
“Can I come in?”
He let me, and I walked inside.
“Did she sleep in here?”
He nodded, and I walked into the bedroom. The bed was made, and it didn’t look like it had been slept in at all. She could have been gone already last night for all we knew. It would be no use to go out searching for her. She could be far gone already.
“I left everything the way I found it this morning as you told me to,” he said.
“This is all?”
“She doesn’t have much stuff. She didn’t bring anything with her when she came back. She threw out the clothes she was wearing. They were completely destroyed. I had never seen anything like it. She was in a terrible state when she came here but assured me she didn’t need to go to the hospital. I did notice some bruises on her wrists and her arms, though, but she wouldn’t tell me how she got them. I bought her some pants and shirts at Walmart that she could wear. She didn’t want to leave the house, she said. She just sat in that chair by the window like she was waiting for someone to come get her. It was really eerie, to be honest. But she wouldn’t tell me who it was, who had hurt her, who she was waiting for. I could just see that she was scared.”
“It’s much like what she did in Viera,” I said while scanning the room, looking for anything that could tell me what had happened to her, if she had left willingly or not. I was mostly looking for signs of a struggle—a tipped-over lamp or trace of blood on the floor.
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing. It’s just that…she was dating Scott when she disappeared. And she said to him a couple of months ago that if she ever went missing, he should go looking for her. It just tells me she knew someone was searching for her. She was afraid of someone. That’s why I would really like to know what—or who—she ran from when leaving Winter Park three years ago.”
I walked around to the other side of the bed, my eyes scanning everything I could see but found nothing—no signs of a struggle. That didn’t mean she hadn’t been taken against her will. A gun to the head or a knife to the throat was enough to make people come along quietly. I glanced toward the chair by the window and tried to picture her sitting there, then remembered seeing her come out to us when we were last there.
Gun clutched in her hand.
“She had a gun,” I said.
“Yes, she was using my gun; it made her feel protected,” Bryan said, then wrinkled his forehead. “How did you know that?”
“I was just guessing,” I lied, not wanting to explain how I knew and get into the discussion of why Sarah would put a gun to Scott’s head if they were dating. It still had me greatly puzzled, and I kept wondering what the heck he did to her. “But where is that gun now?”
Bryan looked confused. “Let me check if she put it back.”
He left and came back a few minutes later. “It’s not in the box under my bed where it usually is.”
“So, technically, she could still have it?” I asked.
“I…I guess so.”
I nodded. “You and I are going to make some coffee, and then we’ll sit down and have a long chat. I need you to tell me everything, and I mean everything about Sarah. When she lived here, who did she hang out with? Where did she work? Where did she live? Who were her coworkers? What school did she attend? Did she have any enemies? Any heart she broke? Any big events in her life? Anything that might have happened back then that could justify her leaving everyone just like that. You must have had an idea back then about what could make her suddenly pick up and leave. I need to know everything. Do you hear me, Bryan? Everything. Don’t leave out a single thing.”
Chapter 61
THEN:
“They’re here again. The detectives are here.”
Lynn stared at her secretary, who bore a nervous smile.
“They’re in the waiting room.”
Lynn nodded. “Give me a minute to get myself ready, then send them in.”
Lynn rushed to her office and put down her briefcase, heart bouncing in her chest. Why were they here? Did they know about her and Jeff? What they had done was dangerous, especially for her. Having sex with a client was a third-degree felony, and she risked losing her license and maybe even jail time. Was that why they were here?
“Can we come in?” Detective Fraser said as he peeked in the door.
Lynn composed herself and straightened her shirt. She tried to smile, even though she knew it would come off as awkward.
“Of course, come on in.”
It was the same two as the last time they had been there—Detective Fraser and Detective Harder. The first one had grown a beard since the last time she saw him. It made him look sloppy. Lynn had never liked men with beards. She preferred them clean-shaven.
Like Jeff.
“What can I do for you today, Detectives?” she asked when they sat down. She felt how shaky her hands were and placed them in her lap so they wouldn’t see.
Detective Fraser cleared his throat. “We’re here about Jeffrey Johnson, your patient. Again.”
She tilted her head. “You know I can’t discuss my patients.”
“Yes, yes, we do know. But the thing is…” Fraser looked at Harder before continuing. “Well, the thing is…that it is now officially a murder case.”
Lynn stopped breathing. “A…a murder case?”
Harder nodded, then took over. “We found Joanna Harry’s body in a lake behind Jeffrey Johnson’s house.”
“We believe your client, Jeff Johnson, had kept her locked up somewhere, then later killed her. She was kept in a place with little to no sunlight and was terribly malnourished before her death, the autopsy showed.”
Lynn stared at them, barely able to breathe.
“Excuse me?”
“We think she might have been kept in a basement or something like it for quite some time. And then he decided to kill her.”
“I…I’m not sure I understand.”
“Her body was bruised, especially on the wrists, telling us she was kept in chains. She was found with blunt force trauma to the back of her head. She suffered several fractures to the skull, and we believe that is the cause of her death.”
“And you think my client…did all this to her?”
Fraser nodded. “Yes. He’s officially our main suspect, and we want to talk to him.”
“But he’s disappeared,” Harder said. “We haven’t been able to locate him. We went to his house with a warrant and didn’t find him or the basement.”
“But that doesn’t mean he didn’t do it,” Fraser said. “He might have had another place he kept her, and we were wondering if he ever spoke of another place, a summer house, a cabin in the mountains up north, or maybe a beach shack? Did he go anywhere to unwind?”