Chapter 7 - JASON’S FIRST WIFE
I thought I knew the basic outline of Jason’s life before Sarah.
He had been married once in his twenties.
The marriage ended quickly.
He rarely spoke about it.
Sarah once told me the woman had moved west and cut contact with almost everyone she knew.
That version suddenly sounded like another story Jason had written for other people.
“What was her name?”
Baines kept both hands on the table.
“Rachel.”
“Rachel Cole?”
“Rachel Baines before she married him.”
“Where is she now?”
His expression changed.
“We don’t know.”
A cold feeling spread through me.
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“She disappeared eight years ago.”
I stared at him.
“Was she reported missing?”
“Yes.”
“By you?”
“By me and my mother.”
“What did Jason say?”
“That she left him.”
My mind went immediately to Sarah’s typed note.
I cannot do this anymore.
Please do not look for me.
“What proof did he have?”
“Emails.”
“A withdrawal from their joint account.”
“Her clothes were gone.”
“Her phone was found near a bus station three weeks later.”
I felt sick.
“The same pattern.”
Baines nodded.
“That is what Sarah realized.”
“How did she know about Rachel?”
“She found an old photograph in Jason’s father’s records.”
“My name was written on the back.”
“She searched me.”
“Then she contacted me privately.”
“At a motel.”
“She did not trust phones.”
“Why didn’t she go to the police?”
“She did.”
Baines looked away.
“She came to me because I was police.”
“And because I was Rachel’s brother.”
“What did you do?”
“Not enough.”
The words came out flat.
“Sarah told me Jason was controlling money, monitoring her phone, and threatening custody.”
“She had no bruises that day.”
“She had no recording of a crime.”
“She refused to make a formal domestic violence report because she was afraid he would know immediately.”
“So you told her to come back when she had evidence?”
Baines’s jaw tightened.
“I told her I would look quietly.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Then why is your wife’s phone number on Jason’s surveillance phone?”
He flinched.
That reaction told me the question mattered.
“My wife cleaned one of Jason’s buildings.”
“I know.”
“She has nothing to do with this.”
“Then why was her number saved?”
“Because Jason called her after I started asking about old Morrow accounts.”
“Why?”
“To find out what I knew.”
“How would your wife know?”
Baines looked down.
“Because I made the mistake of telling her I thought Rachel’s disappearance might be connected to financial records.”
I stared at him.
“Jason questioned your wife?”
“He offered her more cleaning work.”
“Then he started asking casual questions about me.”
“She told me after the second call.”
“Did you report it?”
“No.”
I laughed without humor.
“So Ortiz was right not to trust you.”
“I was trying to protect my wife.”
“By hiding contact with the suspect in a missing-person case?”
“I was not assigned to Jason then.”
“You were assigned after Sarah disappeared.”
Baines closed his eyes for a moment.
“Yes.”
“And you did not disclose your sister was his missing first wife.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I knew they would remove me.”
“That would have been the point.”
His face hardened.
“I spent eight years wondering whether my sister was alive.”
“Then another woman came to me and described the same man using the same language, the same money pressure, and the same threats.”
“When Sarah vanished, I thought I finally had a chance to prove what he did.”
“So you stayed close.”
“Yes.”
“And the sewing box?”
His eyes moved toward me.
“I did not take it.”
“Who did?”
“I don’t know.”
“Convenient.”
“I know how it sounds.”
“You also entered the house three times.”
“Because I was looking for Rachel’s name.”
“Without telling Ortiz.”
“Yes.”
“That is not helping you.”
“No.”
He reached into his jacket slowly.
I tensed.
Baines placed a folded paper on the table.
It was a photocopy of an old vehicle registration.
The name on it was Rachel Cole.
The listed address belonged to the North Creek property.
“She owned that property?”
“Half of it.”
“Jason’s father transferred part ownership to Rachel and Jason as a wedding gift.”
“After Rachel vanished, Jason filed documents claiming she had abandoned the property.”
“Eventually it went into his father’s company.”
“Why does this matter?”
“Because two weeks before Sarah disappeared, someone paid the overdue property taxes on an adjacent parcel.”
“Who?”
“A company called Harrow Land Services.”
I waited.
Baines slid another page across the table.
The company’s mailing address was a post office box in Millhaven.
“Who owns it?”
“Rebecca Sloan.”
My pulse quickened.
“What is on the adjacent parcel?”
“An old farmhouse.”
“Have police searched it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because the warrant covered Morrow Veterinary Holdings.”
“The farmhouse has a separate parcel number and a different owner of record.”
“And you think Sarah is there.”
“I think it should be searched.”
I looked toward the diner window.
Somewhere outside, Ortiz was listening.
“Why didn’t you tell her?”
“I tried this afternoon.”
“She told me to speak through internal affairs.”
“So you called me instead.”
“Yes.”
“That was stupid.”
“I know.”
“Why?”
“Because I thought she was going to lose hours.”
I understood the impulse too well.
That did not make it right.
Baines leaned closer.
“There is something else.”
“What?”
“Sarah gave me a copy of a recording in May.”
“What recording?”
“Jason talking about Rachel.”
My breathing slowed.
“What did he say?”
“Not enough to confess.”
“Enough to scare Sarah.”
“Do you still have it?”
“No.”
I stared at him.
“My apartment was broken into three days after Sarah vanished.”
“Only one drawer was disturbed.”
“The flash drive was gone.”
“Did you report the break-in?”
“Yes.”
“Did Ortiz know?”
“No.”
I nearly slammed my hand on the table.
“You keep hiding things and then wondering why people think you are compromised.”
Baines did not argue.
“Tell me what was on the recording.”
He looked directly at me.
“Sarah asked Jason why Rachel never came back for her clothes.”
“He told her some people leave everything behind when they finally understand what is good for them.”
“That could mean anything.”
“Yes.”
“Then Sarah asked if Rachel was afraid of him.”
“What did he say?”
Baines’s voice dropped.
“He said Rachel learned too late that fear can be useful.”
I felt my skin crawl.
“That is still not a confession.”
“No.”
“But Sarah believed it was a warning.”
“So do I.”
A man entered the diner and walked toward the counter.
Baines noticed him and stiffened.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That was not nothing.”
Baines stood suddenly.
“We need to leave.”
“Why?”
“The man at the counter was outside my house yesterday.”
My heart slammed once.
I looked toward the counter without turning my head fully.
The man wore a baseball cap and brown work jacket.
He appeared to be studying the menu.
Then he looked directly at our booth.
Baines moved first.
He pushed me toward the kitchen exit.
The man reached inside his jacket.
I heard chairs scrape across the floor.
Then three plainclothes officers surged from different tables.
Ortiz appeared from the front entrance with her weapon drawn but pointed down.
“Hands where I can see them.”
The man froze.
He removed his hand slowly.
He was holding a phone.
No weapon.
Internal affairs officers searched him and found a small camera, two prepaid phones, and a key ring.
He identified himself as Mason Pike.
He claimed to be a private investigator hired to document Baines meeting witnesses while suspended.
“Hired by whom?”
He refused to answer without an attorney.
One of the prepaid phones received a message while police held it.
Ortiz looked at the screen.
Her expression changed.
“What does it say?”
She turned the phone toward me.
It contained a single message from a contact saved only as J.
Did Mercer take the bait?
My stomach tightened.
The meeting itself had been expected.
Maybe Baines had been manipulated into contacting me.
Maybe Jason wanted us together.
Maybe he hoped to discredit both of us at once.
Ortiz ordered officers to move quickly on the farmhouse lead.
Baines was taken aside by internal affairs.
Before they led him out, he looked at me.
“If they find Sarah, ask her about Rachel.”
“Why?”
“Because she found something I never did.”
“What?”
He shook his head.
“She never told me.”
Ortiz pulled me aside before officers left the diner.
“Baines may be telling the truth about Rachel and still be wrong about everything else.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I looked at the parking lot where internal affairs officers were questioning him.
“He wanted a chance to fix eight years of failure.”
“That makes people reckless.”
“Yes.”
“It also makes them easy to manipulate.”
I thought about Jason calling Baines’s wife after Baines began asking about Morrow accounts.
Jason may not have needed to corrupt a detective.
He only needed to make the detective hide something.
The secret itself would damage credibility later.
That was how Jason worked with everyone.
He created a small compromise and waited for the person to protect it.
Then he used the protection as a second compromise.
By the time the person understood the pattern, he had a chain around them made entirely of their own choices.
“Did Sarah know Baines had hidden the meeting from you?”
I asked.
“Probably not.”
“Then her line about choosing the wrong person may not mean he betrayed her.”
“It may mean he could not help her the way she needed.”
That distinction mattered.
Sarah had gone looking for a protector and found a grieving brother pretending he could investigate quietly without consequence.
His intentions may have been good.
The result was still dangerous.
The farmhouse warrant came through shortly before midnight.
Ortiz did not let me go.
I returned home to Emily while officers drove toward North Creek.
At 1:46, my phone rang.
I answered before the first ring ended.
“Did you find her?”
Ortiz breathed into the phone.
“No.”
My chest collapsed.
“But the house was used recently.”
“Again?”
“Very recently.”
“How recently?”
“A pot of coffee was still warm.”
I stood.
“What else?”
“Women’s clothing.”
“Medication prescribed to Sarah.”
“A chair with restraints attached to the arms.”
I shut my eyes.
“And on the wall, someone drew a blue bird in chalk.”
I stopped breathing.
“Sarah.”
“We think so.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes.”
Ortiz sounded shaken now.
“Under the bird, she wrote a time.”
“What time?”
“2:10.”
“What does that mean?”
“We don’t know.”
Then Emily appeared in the hallway behind me.
She had heard enough to understand.
“Two ten?”
I covered the phone.
“You should be asleep.”
Emily walked closer.
“Mom used to wake me at two ten when the freight train came past that old place.”
My heartbeat accelerated.
“Why?”
“She said if I ever got lost there, I should follow the train until I saw the church light.”
I repeated every word to Ortiz.
She went silent.
Then I heard her speaking rapidly to someone in the background.
A map rustled.
“There’s another abandoned property two miles down the freight line.”
“What kind?”
“An old fruit packing warehouse.”
“And across from it is a church with a lighted steeple.”
I felt hope rise again.
Ortiz ended the call to redirect officers.
Thirty-seven minutes later, she called back.
This time she did not say hello.
“We found a room with blood on the floor.”
My knees weakened.
“Sarah?”
“We don’t know yet.”
“There’s no one here.”
“What else?”
“A broken phone.”
“A woman’s shoe.”
“And one sentence written on the wall.”
“What does it say?”
Ortiz read it to me.
May you like
He knows Daniel is coming.
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