Buch lesen: «Dark Horse»

Chapter One

Their footfalls echoed among the terrified screams and woeful sobbing as they moved down the long hallway. The nurse’s aide, a young woman named Tess, stopped at a room in the criminally insane section of the hospital and, with trembling fingers, pulled out a key to unlock the door.

“I really shouldn’t be doing this,” Tess said, looking around nervously. As the door swung open, she quickly moved back. Nikki St. James felt a gust of air escape the room like an exhaled breath. The light within the interior was dim, but she could hear the sound of a chair creaking rhythmically.

“I’m going to have to lock the door behind you,” Tess whispered.

“Not yet.” It took a moment for Nikki’s eyes to adjust to the dim light within the room. She fought back the chill that skittered over her skin like spider legs as her gaze finally lit on the occupant.

“This is the wrong one,” Nikki said, and tried to step back into the hallway.

“That’s her,” the nurse’s aide said, keeping her voice down. “That’s Marianne McGraw.”

Nikki stared at the white-haired, slack-faced woman rocking back and forth, back and forth, her gaze blank as if blind. “That woman is too old. Her hair—”

“Her hair turned white overnight after...well, after what happened. She’s been like this ever since.” Tess shuddered and hugged herself as if she felt the same chill Nikki did.

“She hasn’t spoken in all that time?”

“Not a word. Her husband comes every day to visit her. She never responds.”

Nikki was surprised that Travers McGraw would come to visit his former wife at all, given what she was suspected of doing. Maybe, like Nikki, he came hoping for answers. “What about her children?”

“They visit occasionally, the oldest son more than the others, but she doesn’t react as if she knows any of them. That’s all she does, rock like that for hours on end.”

Cull McGraw, the oldest son, Nikki thought. He’d been seven, a few years older than her, at the time of the kidnapping. His brothers Boone and Ledger were probably too young to remember the kidnapping, maybe even too young to really remember their mother.

“If you’re going in, you’d best hurry,” Tess said, still looking around nervously.

Nikki took a step into the room, hating the thought of the nurse’s aide locking the door behind her. As her eyes adjusted more to the lack of light, she saw that the woman had something clutched against her chest. A chill snaked up her spine as she made out two small glassy-eyed faces looking out at her from under matted heads of blond hair.

“What’s that she’s holding?” she whispered hoarsely as she hurriedly turned to Tess before the woman could close and lock the door.

“Her babies.”

“Her babies?”

“They’re just old dolls. They need to be thrown in the trash. We tried to switch them with new ones, but she had a fit. When we bathe or change her, we have to take them away. She screams and tears at her hair until we give them back. It was the doctor’s idea, giving her the dolls. Before that, she was...violent. She had to be sedated or you couldn’t get near her. Like I said, you go in there at your own risk. She’s...unpredictable and if provoked, dangerous since she’s a lot stronger than she looks. If I were you, I’d make it quick.”

Nikki reached for her notebook as the door closed behind her. The tumblers in the lock sounded like a cannon going off as Tess locked the door.

At your own risk. Comforting words, Nikki thought as she took a tentative step deeper into the padded room. She’d read everything she could find on the McGraw kidnapping case. There’d been a lot of media coverage at the time—and a lot of speculation. Every anniversary for years, the same information had been repeated along with the same plea for anything about the two missing twins, Oakley Travers McGraw and Jesse Rose McGraw.

But no one had ever come forward. The ransom money had never been recovered nor the babies found. There’d been nothing new to report at the one-year anniversary, then the five, ten, fifteen and twenty year.

Now with the twenty-fifth one coming up, few people other than those around Whitehorse, Montana, would probably even remember the kidnapping.

“There is nothing worse than old news,” her grandfather had told her when she’d dropped by his office at the large newspaper where he was publisher. Wendell St. James had been sitting behind his huge desk, his head of thick gray hair as wild as his eyebrows, his wire-rimmed glasses perched precariously on his patrician nose. “You’re wasting your time with this one.”

Actually he thought she was wasting her time writing true crime books. He’d hoped that she would follow him into the newspaper business instead. It didn’t matter that out of the nine books she’d written, she’d solved seven of the crimes.

“Someone knows what happened that night,” she’d argued.

“Well, if they do, it’s a pretty safe bet they aren’t going to suddenly talk after twenty-five years.”

“Maybe they’re getting old and they can’t live with what they’ve done,” she’d said. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

He’d snorted and settled his steely gaze on her. “I wasn’t for the other stories you chased, but this one...” He shook his head. “Don’t you think I know what you’re up to? I suspect this is your mother’s fault. She just couldn’t keep her mouth shut, could she?”

“She didn’t tell me about my father,” she’d corrected her grandfather. “I discovered it on my own.” For years, she’d believed she was the daughter of a stranger her mother had fallen for one night. A mistake. “All these years, the two of you have lied to me, letting me believe I was an accident, a one-night stand and that explained why I had my mother’s maiden name.”

“We protected you, you mean. And now you’ve got some lamebrained idea of clearing your father’s name.” Wendell swore under his breath. “My daughter has proven that she is the worst possible judge of men, given her track record. But I thought you were smarter than this.”

“There was no real proof my father was involved,” Nikki had argued stubbornly. Her biological father had been working at the Sundown Stallion Station the summer of the kidnapping. His name had been linked with Marianne McGraw’s, the mother of the twins. “Mother doesn’t believe he had an affair with Marianne, nor does she believe he had any part in the kidnapping.”

“What do you expect your mother to say?” he’d demanded.

“She knew him better than you.”

Her grandfather mugged a disbelieving face. “What else did she tell you about the kidnapping?”

Her mother had actually known little. While Nikki would have demanded answers, her mother said she was just happy to visit with her husband, since he was locked up until his trial.

“She didn’t ask him anything about the kidnapping because your mother wouldn’t have wanted to hear the truth.”

She’d realized then that her grandfather’s journalistic instincts had clearly skipped a generation. Nikki would have had to know everything about that night, even if it meant finding out that her husband was involved.

“A jury of twelve found him guilty of not only the affair—but the kidnapping,” her grandfather had said.

“On circumstantial evidence.”

“On the testimony of the nanny who said that Marianne McGraw wasn’t just unstable, she feared she might hurt the twins. The nanny also testified that she saw Marianne with your father numerous times in the barn and they seemed...close.”

She’d realized that her grandfather knew more about this case than he’d originally let on. “Yes, the nanny, the woman who is now the new wife of Travers McGraw. That alone is suspicious. I would think you’d encourage me to get the real story of what happened that night. And what does...close mean anyway?”

Her grandfather had put down his pen with an impatient sigh. “The case is dead cold after twenty-five years. Dozens of very good reporters, not to mention FBI agents and local law enforcement, did their best to solve it, so what in hell’s name makes you think that you can find something that they missed?”

She’d shrugged. “I have my grandfather’s stubborn arrogance and the genes of one of the suspects. Why not me?”

He’d wagged his gray head again. “Because you’re too personally involved, which means that whatever story you get won’t be worth printing.”

She’d dug her heels in. “I became a true crime writer because I wanted to know more than what I read in the newspapers.”

“Bite your tongue,” her grandfather said, only half joking. He sobered then, looking worried. “What if you don’t like what you find out about your father, or your mother, for that matter? I know my daughter.”

“What does that mean?”

He gave another shake of his gray head. “Clearly your mind is made up and since I can’t sanction this...” With an air of dismissal, he picked up his pen again. “If that’s all...”

She started toward the door but before she could exit, he called after her, “Watch your back, Punky.” It had been his nickname for her since she was a baby. “Remember what I told you about family secrets.”

People will kill to keep them, she thought now as she looked at Marianne McGraw.

The woman’s rocking didn’t change as Nikki stepped deeper into the room. “Mrs. McGraw?” She glanced behind her. The nurse’s aide stood just outside the door, glancing at her watch.

Nikki knew she didn’t have much time. It hadn’t been easy getting in here. It had cost her fifty bucks after she’d found the nurse’s aide was quitting soon to get married. She would have paid a lot more since so few people had laid eyes on Marianne McGraw in years.

She reached in her large purse for the camera she’d brought. No reporter had gotten in to see Marianne McGraw. Nikki had seen a photograph of Marianne McGraw taken twenty-five years ago, before her infant fraternal twins, a boy and girl, had been kidnapped. She’d been a beauty at thirty-two, a gorgeous dark-haired woman with huge green eyes and a contagious smile.

That woman held no resemblance to the one in the rocking chair. Marianne was a shell of her former self, appearing closer to eighty than fifty-seven.

“Mrs. McGraw, I’m Nikki St. James. I’m a true crime writer. How are you doing today?”

Nikki was close enough now that she could see nothing but blankness in the woman’s green-eyed stare. It was as if Marianne McGraw had gone blind—and deaf, as well. The face beneath the wild mane of white hair was haggard, pale, lifeless. The mouth hung open, the lips cracked and dry.

“I want to ask you about your babies,” Nikki said. “Oakley and Jesse Rose?” Was it her imagination or did the woman clutch the dolls even harder to her thin chest?

“What happened the night they disappeared?” Did Nikki really expect an answer? She could hope, couldn’t she? Mostly, she needed to hear the sound of her voice in this claustrophobic room. The rocking had a hypnotic effect, like being pulled down a rabbit hole.

“Everyone outside this room believes you had something to do with it. You and Nate Corwin.” No response, no reaction to the name. “Was he your lover?”

She moved closer, catching the decaying scent that rose from the rocking chair as if the woman was already dead. “I don’t believe it’s true. But I think you might know who kidnapped your babies,” she whispered.

The speculation at the time was that the kidnapping had been an inside job. Marianne had been suffering from postpartum depression. The nanny had said that Mrs. McGraw was having trouble bonding with the babies and that she’d been afraid to leave Marianne alone with them.

And, of course, there’d been Marianne’s secret lover—the man who everyone believed had helped her kidnap her own children. He’d been implicated because of a shovel found in the stables with his bloody fingerprints on it—along with fresh soil—even though no fresh graves had been found.

“Was Nate Corwin involved, Marianne?” The court had decided that Marianne McGraw couldn’t have acted alone. To get both babies out the second-story window, she would have needed an accomplice.

“Did my father help you?”

There was no sign that the woman even heard her, let alone recognized her alleged lover’s name. And if the woman had answered, Nikki knew she would have jumped out of her skin.

She checked to make sure Tess wasn’t watching as she snapped a photo of the woman in the rocker. The flash lit the room for an instant and made a snap sound. As she started to take another, she thought she heard a low growling sound coming from the rocker.

She hurriedly took another photo, though hesitantly, as the growling sound seemed to grow louder. Her eye on the viewfinder, she was still focused on the woman in the rocker when Marianne McGraw seemed to rock forward as if lurching from her chair.

A shriek escaped her before she could pull down the camera. She had closed her eyes and thrown herself back, slamming into the wall. Pain raced up one shoulder. She stifled a scream as she waited for the feel of the woman’s clawlike fingers on her throat.

But Marianne McGraw hadn’t moved. It had only been a trick of the light. And yet, Nikki noticed something different about the woman.

Marianne was smiling.