I stared at the airport image until the shapes stopped looking like pixels and became people again.
Dererick stood beneath the arrivals sign with the black bag hanging from his right hand. Jennifer Collins was beside him, thin enough that the dark coat seemed oversized on her frame.
She was not restrained.
She was not struggling.
She was walking with him.
“That’s her,” I said.
Detective Shaw kept the phone angled toward me. “You’re certain?”
“Yes.”
“You saw enough photographs to recognize her?”
“Dozens.”
Clare leaned closer, studying the image.
“She looks sick.”
I had thought the same thing.
The earliest photographs on Dererick’s laptop showed Jennifer with a rounder face and healthy color. The woman in the airport image had sharper cheekbones, narrow shoulders and the wary posture of someone expecting the floor beneath her to move.
But she was alive.
For eighteen months, somewhere, she had been alive.
“What happens now?” I asked.
Shaw was already typing.
“Airport security is tracking their route through camera footage.”
“Why didn’t anyone stop them?”
“This image is from earlier this morning. We’re working backward.”
“How much earlier?”
“About forty minutes.”
Forty minutes.
Dererick had been standing in a public airport with a woman whose disappearance had generated an active police investigation, and nobody around them had known.
“Where did they go?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“Jennifer could tell us everything.”
“If we find her.”
“You know what she looks like.”
“So do several officers now.”
Shaw’s phone rang again.
She answered, listened, and walked toward the far end of the hospital waiting room.
Clare kept looking at the frozen airport image.
“Why would she meet him?”
“I don’t know.”
“If he did to her what he did to you…”
“I know.”
“She should be terrified of him.”
“Maybe she is.”
Jennifer’s position in the photograph bothered me.
She was walking beside Dererick, but there was space between them.
Her hands were visible.
No handcuffs.
No obvious physical coercion.
Yet freedom could not be measured by the distance between two people in an airport.
Dererick had spent months making me doubt my own mornings.
What could eighteen months do to someone?
Shaw returned.
“They exited through the east parking structure.”
“Together?”
“Yes.”
“Vehicle?”
“Black SUV.”
“Registered to Dererick?”
“No.”
“Northstar?”
“No.”
“Who?”
“Rental.”
“His name?”
“Elaine Mercer.”
The woman from the licensing photograph.
The woman Mr. Peterson might have seen smoking outside our house.
“Was Elaine driving?”
“We don’t know.”
“Where is the SUV now?”
“Automatic toll records may help.”
“May?”
Shaw gave me a look.
I stopped.
She was moving as fast as she could without pretending certainty.
Price appeared several minutes later with a tablet.
“We have better footage.”
He placed it on a table.
The video began with Dererick entering the arrivals hall.
He carried the black bag and wore the same coat he had left home in.
He checked his phone.
Waited.
Then Jennifer appeared.
My stomach tightened.
She walked toward him from a corridor near baggage claim.
Dererick did not hug her.
He said something.
Jennifer stopped.
Even without audio, I could see the tension in her body.
Her shoulders rose.
She looked behind herself.
Dererick spoke again.
Then he reached into his coat.
Jennifer recoiled.
Clare whispered, “There.”
Dererick withdrew his phone.
He showed Jennifer the screen.
Whatever she saw changed her immediately.
Her shoulders dropped.
She stepped closer.
He spoke.
She nodded.
Then they walked away together.
“He showed her something,” I said.
Price nodded.
“Looks that way.”
“What?”
“No way to know.”
“A threat?”
“Possibly.”
“A photograph?”
“Possibly.”
“Someone she cares about?”
Shaw said, “Anna.”
I stopped.
But the thought had already settled.
Dererick did not need to drag women through airports.
He knew how to create leverage.
Maybe Jennifer was cooperating because she believed refusal would hurt someone else.
The footage changed to another camera.
Dererick and Jennifer entered the parking structure.
A black SUV waited near the elevators.
The driver’s door opened.
A woman stepped out.
Dark shoulder-length hair.
Even through grainy video, I recognized Elaine Mercer’s face from the licensing photo.
She approached Jennifer.
Jennifer froze.
Elaine touched her arm.
Not violently.
Jennifer flinched anyway.
“That’s Elaine,” I said.
Price nodded.
The three entered the SUV.
Elaine drove.
Dererick sat in front.
Jennifer climbed into the rear.
The vehicle disappeared down the ramp.
“Can you track it?” Clare asked.
“We are.”
Price closed the video.
My mind returned to Northstar.
Four procedure beds.
Cameras.
Personal belongings.
Graduation Protocol.
“If Jennifer completed graduation, why is she still with them?”
Shaw leaned against the wall.
“That is one of the questions we need answered.”
“What did graduation actually accomplish?”
“The documents describe conditioning.”
“That word could mean anything.”
“In this context, it appears to mean creating dependence and compliance through cycles of sedation, confusion, isolation and controlled information.”
Clare’s face tightened.
“That’s torture.”
Shaw did not disagree.
I thought about the photographs.
Jennifer’s gradual deterioration.
Perhaps those pictures were not simply documenting drug effects.
They were recording a person being dismantled.
“What happens after?”
“Records suggest some victims were moved to other locations.”
“For customers?”
“We haven’t established that.”
“The messages talked about permanent access.”
“Yes.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re still determining that.”
I looked at her.
“Do you think Dererick was selling women?”
Shaw chose her words carefully.
“I think there is evidence he received money connected to the exploitation and control of incapacitated women. We are investigating what those transactions purchased.”
That was more frightening than a simple yes.
The organization might not fit one familiar category.
The customers requesting photographs could be different from the people requesting access.
Northstar might be only one stage.
“How many victims?”
“Unknown.”
“The five IDs?”
“Likely relevant.”
“Only five?”
“We don’t know.”
Price’s phone buzzed.
He looked at the screen.
“Vehicle ping.”
Shaw straightened.
“Where?”
“County Route Sixteen. Heading north.”
“Toward Northstar?”
“No.”
“Where does Sixteen lead?”
“Several places.”
Price enlarged a map.
“Industrial park. Reservoir. Two rural communities.”
Then he pointed farther north.
“And an old rehabilitation facility.”
Something about Shaw’s expression changed.
“What facility?”
“Closed six years ago. Private neurological rehab.”
“Owner?”
“Checking.”
My skin prickled.
“Northstar?”
“No.”
“Elaine?”
Price typed.
“Property transferred twice.”
A result appeared.
His eyebrows rose.
“Current owner is Bellweather Recovery Holdings.”
“Who are they?”
“Shell company, looks like.”
Shaw said, “Phone it in.”
Price stepped away.
I watched the map.
A rural road.
An abandoned rehabilitation center.
A missing woman.
Dererick carrying his black bag.
“Is that where graduation victims go?”
Shaw said nothing.
“You’re thinking it too.”
“I’m thinking it is a location worth checking.”
Her phone rang.
This time the call lasted less than thirty seconds.
When she hung up, she looked directly at me.
“Toll camera got the SUV.”
“Where?”
“Same road.”
“To the rehab center?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“But north.”
“Yes.”
“Can police intercept?”
“They’re moving.”
I stood.
Shaw held up a hand.
“No.”
“I wasn’t going anywhere.”
For once, that was true.
I no longer wanted to be near Dererick.
I wanted distance, locked doors and people with radios between us.
Price returned.
“Bellweather has a registered manager.”
“Who?”
He looked at his screen.
“Thomas Vale.”
The second Northstar employee.
Clare whispered, “So it’s theirs.”
“Connected,” Shaw corrected.
Another officer entered and spoke quietly to Price.
The conversation was too low to hear.
Then Price said, “Show me.”
The officer handed him a printed photograph.
Price looked at it.
Then at Shaw.
“We need to talk outside.”
“No,” I said.
Both detectives looked at me.
“If this is about me, say it here.”
Price hesitated.
Shaw held out her hand.
He gave her the photograph.
She studied it for several seconds.
“What is it?” I asked.
Shaw placed the image on the table.
It was a photograph of a room.
White walls.
Hospital bed.
Camera tripod.
A chair bolted to the floor.
On the far wall was a corkboard.
Several photographs had been pinned to it.
Most were too small to identify.
One was not.
My face.
I recognized the picture.
It had been taken at Clare’s apartment the previous Christmas.
I was standing beside her tree holding a glass of wine.
“That isn’t from Dererick’s camera.”
“No,” Clare said.
“I posted that.”
She looked at me.
“That picture was on my Instagram.”
A second photograph on the board showed me leaving a grocery store.
Another showed me walking from my car to my office.
They had been watching me outside the house.
“For how long?” I whispered.
Shaw pointed to the bottom corner of the image.
A handwritten date was visible beneath one photograph.
Almost eleven months earlier.
Before Dererick began drugging me regularly.
Before the tea.
Before the missing mornings.
Before I knew there was anything to fear.
“What room is this?”
“Northstar,” Price said.
I looked at him.
“They were planning me for eleven months?”
“Possibly longer.”
My throat tightened.
Dererick had not slowly become dangerous.
There had been no recent turn in our marriage.
No single decision caused by money or opportunity.
For almost a year, perhaps longer, my husband had gone to bed beside me knowing that strangers were studying my routines.
Then Shaw’s phone rang again.
She listened without speaking.
Her expression became hard.
“Repeat that.”
A pause.
“Any visual?”
Another pause.
“Do not approach until backup.”
She hung up.
“They found the SUV.”
“Where?”
“At the rehabilitation facility.”
“Dererick?”
“Vehicle is empty.”
“Jennifer?”
“No one visible.”
“Elaine?”
“No.”
Shaw reached for her coat.
Price was already moving.
“Wait,” I said.
Shaw stopped.
“What?”
“If Jennifer is with him, don’t treat her like she’s helping him.”
“We won’t assume anything.”
“She may look cooperative.”
“I understand.”
“No. You saw the airport. He showed her something.”
Shaw held my gaze.
“We will treat her first as a potential victim.”
That was enough.
She turned toward the door.
Then Price’s phone sounded.
He checked the message.
“Lena.”
Shaw looked back.
“Motion at the facility.”
“Where?”
“Second floor.”
“Person?”
“Camera team can’t tell.”
Another message appeared.
Price’s expression sharpened.
“They have someone at a window.”
“Description?”
He read.
“Female. Dark coat.”
Jennifer.
I moved toward him.
“Is she alone?”
“No visual on anyone else.”
Then another message.
Price read it aloud.
“She’s holding something against the glass.”
“What?”
He enlarged the attached surveillance photograph.
Jennifer stood behind a dirty second-floor window.
Both hands were raised.
Between them she held a sheet of white paper.
Three words had been written across it in thick black marker.
DON’T COME IN.
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: Jennifer’s Warning Stopped the Police at the Door, Until a Second Message Revealed Who Dererick Had Trapped Inside With Her
The Night I Poured Out My Husband’s Tea and Waited to Learn What He Expected Me Never to See
Part 9 of 24
