Down and Dead in Dallas, page 2
Between the video and letter, you’ll know what to do.
Thanks for everything, Nell. You’ve been a wonderful friend.
C. Branch
* * *
Caroline protecting Nell? Now, that scared her to death. Hiding out had never been Nell’s style. She was a well-heeled, successful African-American woman. A respected psychologist specializing in PTSD and domestic abuse. Little happened in anyone’s life she hadn’t run across at some point in her practice. Caroline knew all that, and yet she still felt compelled to protect Nell? That was downright terrifying.
As terrifying as looking at the CD and having no idea what was on it.
Did she dare to wait until April 1st to view it?
Nell vacillated between watching and reading, and not watching or reading. She shouldn’t do it; Caroline trusted her. But, in Nell’s experience, knowing what was coming could make all the difference in surviving what came. Forewarned is forearmed. Bearing Caroline’s precarious position in mind…
Nell pulled open the CD case and popped the disc into her computer.
Chapter 3
The video loaded.
An image of Caroline appeared on Nell’s computer screen. No longer was her hair short and red. The video background was blacked out, giving no clue to her whereabouts at the time of filming. Just the woman seated in an armless chair, her long blonde hair pulled back at her nape, resting below the shoulders of her blood-red blouse. A haunted expression Nell hadn’t seen on her in months marred her beautiful, oval face.
Anxiety tumbled into worry. Nell’s mouth went dry. She adjusted the volume and braced, instinctively knowing whatever had forced Caroline out of hiding and into making the video had to be significant. The question was how bad it was, and how many would pay the price. The costs would be heavy. No skirting that truth.
She pushed play to start the video.
On the screen, Caroline drew in a deep breath, then began to speak…
* * *
Today is March tenth, but for you to understand what I’m about to tell you, I need to give you a little history and start at the beginning. Well, at the beginning of the trouble.
This whole mess started just over seven months ago. My sister, Caroline, and I were on the telephone—her, in her penthouse in New York, and me, on my ranchette in Dallas.
You see, we had to keep our conversations secret because her husband, Martin Easton, would give birth to a live cow if he knew we were talking at all. He’s forbidden Caro—I’ve always called Caroline, Caro—from talking to me for years. Actually, since early on in their marriage, he’s forbidden her to have any contact with anyone other than him.
The truth is, Martin Easton is an abusive control freak of the worst kind. Physically and emotionally. Caro once tried to leave him, but he forced her to return. How? I don’t know. But she says she had no choice. Since she’s all the family I have left in the world—our parents died in a train derailment the year we turned sixteen—and since I’m grateful we’re talking again these past two years, I don’t ask her questions. I’m afraid to rock the boat. The last thing I want is for her to clam up and disappear from my life again.
I know she didn’t go back to the jerk because of money. We both inherited enough from our parents to live well forever. It’s…something else. Honestly, I have no idea what he’s holding over her head, but whatever it is, it’s strong and powerful and evil.
Caro is meek, the timid one. Me, I’m bold and blunt. I’m not sure why we’re so different, but we are and we always have been.
Anyway, out of the blue one morning last August, she phones me and says she’s arriving in Dallas that day on a late-afternoon flight. She’s done with Martin. I asked if he’d hit her—he has before, I suspect, many times—and she told me she’d asked herself the question and answered it.
I knew what question she meant. It was one I’d put to her. How long are you going to live like this? That she was coming to Dallas confirmed she’d answered it. When I asked for her specific response, she said, “I’d rather be dead than live like this one more day.”
Hearing that shattered my heart, but it also frayed every nerve in my body. What Martin the Miserable had done to make her finally fear staying more than leaving him, I can’t tell you, but with his record, it had to be wicked. Frankly, I didn’t think about the reason much then. Instead, I rushed to plan for Caro’s arrival.
I hired a crew of bodyguards to protect her around the clock and the best abuse counselor in the state, Dr. Nell Richmond. You can’t be a long-suffering victim of something like Martin put Caro through and not need help working through it. Whether or not Caro would agree to talk to Nell, well, that was another matter, but Nell was there waiting for her, and we both hoped Caro would accept her help.
And so Caro came to Dallas. As soon as I saw the bruises she’d tried to hide—her makeup was so thick it looked like she’d applied it with a trowel—I knew what had happened, if not why, and, when I looked in her eyes, I knew she meant what she’d said—she was finished with Martin the Miserable Easton. There would be no going back to him this time. Not ever again.
I have to tell you, I’m not normally the violent type, but that day, knowing Caro had finally broken his hold on her and had left him for good was the only thing that kept me from finding and killing that man for what he’d done to her. How bad was it? Ask Nell. She took pictures in case Caro needed them for, um, legal reasons.
Back when we first started talking again, I had a courier deliver Caro a few necessities while she was in the grocery store shopping. A phone, credit card, and a duplicate copy of my driver’s license. I’d specifically sent them so I knew she had the means to escape from Martin. Grocery shopping was one of the few things Martin permitted her to do on her own. Having the delivery made to her there might seem like overkill paranoia, but it wasn’t. Her doorman was a snitch. If I’d sent the courier to her there, he would have reported the delivery to Martin immediately.
Oh, Martin tried to make it impossible for Caro to escape, taking the house phones and Caro’s purse and money with him every time he left their apartment. Her home might have been opulent, overlooking Central Park in Manhattan, but that place was her prison. I would have moved heaven and earth to get her out of there. If she hadn’t sworn she wouldn’t come with me, I’d have gone up there and pulled her out. Since she had refused, I provided the means for use when she was ready, and finally—dear God, finally—she had been.
Even today I don’t know the details of that final straw. All I can say is imagining is the stuff of my nightmares.
Once Caro was tucked away at my ranchette in Dallas and protected by the bodyguards and me, she faced a different problem: Surviving. I mean that literally.
Martin had threatened to kill Caro if she ever left him again, and he’d convinced her he meant it. She’d left him anyway, so we both expected trouble. But looking at her in the airport, I saw the shell of the woman I knew as my sister. Battered. Beaten down physically and emotionally…I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone so weary.
It was clear that more than anything, she needed time to heal. Only when she remembered who she was would she be ready to take Martin the Miserable on in court and divorce his sorry backside.
The day after she arrived in Dallas, it became clear he had no intention of giving her time and every intention of giving her trouble. Alex, the head bodyguard I’d hired, reported two private investigators at the gate asking for her. They took to parking on the street and watching the gate. We all knew they were Martin’s thugs, and their presence really unnerved Caro. She was brave but so fragile. Something had to be done, so I did what sisters do. I planned and arranged Operation Switch and Bait.
Caro and I would switch lives and I’d bait Martin’s goons away from Caro while she healed and divorced Martin. It was a simple plan. Effective, I thought, but simple.
Caro opposed it from the start. She was afraid of me drawing Martin’s fire. He was ruthless, she said, and he’d do anything to force her to bend to his will. I assured her I was equally determined she would not. She would assert her own will. Martin Easton, I vowed, would not break me. I hoped I wouldn’t have to kill him to keep that promise but, after what he’d done to Caro, truth be told, I’d sleep nights fine either way.
Finally, Caro agreed to the plan, and so, with the help of my trusted hairdresser, Dawn, we pulled off the switch and bait. Going into the salon, I was myself, the redheaded Christine Branch, a single and successful software developer. Coming out, my sister was me and I was the blonde Caroline Branch Easton, estranged battered wife of Martin Easton.
Our careful planning worked. Martin and his hired thugs believed I was his Caroline and they followed me. Caro, as me, went home to my Dallas ranchette.
The new Christine was motivated to reclaim herself, and Nell stood by her every step of the way. That helped me to do what I had to do in ways I can’t even express, which included staying away from my sister and the ranchette, though we did talk by phone—untraceable ones we used only to talk to each other—every Saturday morning at ten.
For me, the next six months were, to say the least, interesting. Martin’s thugs threatened me often and kept me hopping, but I eluded, evaded and ran the marathon race, trying to stay a step ahead of them.
I got a fistful of restraining orders across more counties than I care to recall, too, but I learned quickly that words on paper don’t change what’s in a man’s heart—or the determination of thugs getting a paycheck to keep getting a paycheck. Martin the Miserable was spending a fortune on the thugs, and I did my level best to make them earn every single penny—twice.
Four states later, something changed. Martin lost patience with being inconvenienced. He has a thing about that. Caro says it brings out the worst in him, which is saying something. If the man’s got good in him, I’ve never seen it.
Anyway, he fired the old thugs and hired a new crew that began tracking me. They weren’t as ethical, and they sure didn’t toe the line on the law. These jerks loosened the lug nuts on my tires. They tampered with my brakes. And they put a rock the size of a head of cabbage through the front window of my motel room at three in the morning.
Fearing they’d do even worse kept me far, far from Dallas and my sister. She sounded better on the phone, stronger, but something like that rock incident could have had her hiding under the bed or sleeping in the closet for months. I couldn’t risk that.
While I’ve been undercover as Caroline, I’ve done my software developing on the side and worked as a waitress at dives across the South because that’s what Caro did before marrying Martin. Our parents insisted we work from sixteen on, so we appreciated the value of a dollar. I preferred solitude and computers. Caro loved being around people. Waitressing was made for her, and people just seemed drawn to her to share their troubles. She’s a nurturer and empathetic.
The job and she were well suited. I endured it, and looked forward to us spending Christmas together. But a couple weeks before, an event occurred that proved we couldn’t celebrate the holiday together. One of Martin’s new thugs ate at the restaurant I was working in at the time. On his way out, he slipped me a message scrawled on a napkin. “Go home now and he’ll let you live. If you don’t, he’s coming for you.”
That was in Grady, Louisiana. I called the police, but they said not to take the threat literally. Tense people tended to jack up emotionally around the holidays.
I knew the message was a warning, and I’d be crazy not to take it literally. Martin stayed jacked up. In giving me the note, the thug was putting me on notice. He either had a conscience or a heart. Anyway, he didn’t want to kill me, but if Martin issued the order, he would do it. I think the thug was trying to give me a fighting chance.
Then a few days before Christmas, Martin showed up at the ranchette and confronted my sister. Thank heaven, he believed she was me. Otherwise that visit would have ended even worse than it did. He told her to get a message to his wife. “Be home by Valentine’s Day or else.”
No further explanation was needed. By then, Caro had divorced Martin, but he refused to accept it. Caro was livid. She told Nell, who happened to be at the ranchette during the confrontation, it was time we both got our lives back. Nell recorded the whole ordeal, should you care to hear it. She assured me Caro was leaving Dallas and the ranchette—destination unknown—in a good place mentally and emotionally and she would soon be in touch.
Nell was right about that. I heard from Caro on Christmas Day. She said a Dallas chef was helping her get away and Operation Switch and Bait was officially over. It was past time she put a stop to Martin threatening me. She also said she’d resumed her true identity and was traveling as herself.
At the time of the call, Caro said she was in Even, Georgia, but within the hour, she would be leaving for Sampson Park. She promised to call me as soon as she settled in there and had a minute.
I haven’t heard a word from her since then and it is now March. Was the chef a chef or a serial killer? Did he work for Martin the Miserable? Had Caro been lured away from Dallas? Kidnapped or murdered? I have no idea.
I don’t think Martin has her. His henchmen haven’t eased up on me. If anything, since Valentine’s Day, they’ve been more aggressive and persistent. Once his “get home” deadline passed without Caro returning to New York… well, let’s just say his thugs have been ruthless and relentless. They’ve also been harder to shake and evade. My guess is he’s offered them a whale of a bonus and put them on a short deadline to get Caro to him and collect it.
Because he hasn’t called them off, I’ve stuck with my Caro identity. Whether or not Martin has her, there being two of her creates a confusion factor and uncertainty. Martin’s doubt about whether she’s his wife or me might be Caro’s only protection.
While I’ve been getting restraining orders and a conceal carry permit and learning to shoot, she’s been doing only heaven knows what to shore up the tools in her self-defense arsenal. Actually, she’s probably been cooking. When she’s stressed, Caro always cooks.
It’s possible, of course, Martin knows exactly where she is and he’s yanking my chain to keep me from going to rescue her. He’d love to torment me for sport. According to Caro, it really needled him that he couldn’t control a woman who looks like his wife.
The bottom line is I don’t know if he has her or not. He could, or he could know she’s running and is hoping to locate her through me. Believe me, I wish I did know. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since she went missing. Martin is sadistic and totally obsessed with getting her back, so the truth could be just about anything.
I do know for fact I’m terrified. Terrified in a way dealing with Martin and his jerk thugs has never terrified me. I always knew, if he could get away with it, he’d kill me. And I knew he’d kill Caro without a second blink. Those were givens. What keeps me in a cold sweat is, I have no idea where Caro is or who she’s with or if she’s even still alive.
Martin could have found and killed her. He could be letting me keep Operation Switch and Bait active to shore up his alibi. Give people enough time and they’ll forget anything.
It makes me sick to say it, but her death could be behind her disappearance. If Caro could have called me, she would have. She’d have kept calling Saturdays at ten on her special phone. If she had an interim emergency, she would have called then. Something has happened to her, and whatever it is, I fear she never saw it coming.
Her not calling at all leaves me between the rock and the hard place. I have no choice but to stop misdirecting the thugs and do all I can to find her. I have to know what’s happened to my sister. Which means, I have to ignore my instinctive inclinations to stay away from her and go to Even, Georgia.
The risks in that should now be abundantly clear to you. If Caro is still there and I’m followed, Martin’s thugs will nail us both. If she’s not there, maybe someone who is can lead me to Sampson Park. So far, I haven’t been able to locate even what state it is in, provided it’s in the States. None of my techie friends have had any luck, either. Sampson Park seems to be a phantom park that doesn’t exist. That’s what has me worried about the chef supposedly helping her and his motives.
Now that’s what’s happened to get us to this point. I’ve asked Nell to hold this video until the end of March. She has no idea what’s in it yet, but if I fail to contact her on or before March 31st, on April 1st, she will view it and hand deliver the video to you with the following note:
To: Hon. Dexter Devlin
Attorney-at-Law
Dallas, Texas
* * *
Mr. Devlin,
I’m enclosing double your usual retainer fee of $1,000,000 and asking you to view the enclosed video. Once you do, it is my hope you will search for my sister and me.
I realize you handpick your clients and you don’t know me from Adam, but you’re reputed to be the best legal mind maybe ever, and my sister and I need all you have and maybe more to survive… or for those guilty of killing us to be held accountable.
If my sister and/or I are dead, look first to Martin Easton. The video will explain. And please start looking for us in Even, Georgia.
* * *
Sincerely,
* * *
Christine Branch
* * *
Nell cringed in her seat, her mind whirling. So Christine—the real Christine—had made the video and delivered it. Not Caroline. Shaking the envelope, a check fluttered out and landed on Nell’s desktop. It was made out to Dexter Devlin for $2 million and signed by Christine Branch. “Oh, my word.”
Nell ejected the CD and put it and the check back into the envelope, then grabbed and dialed her mobile phone with her free hand.
The man whose neck lay as exposed as her own didn’t answer. His voice mail picked up…
