it. I also took every precaution. The nursing home facility was fully checked prior to our arrival, physically, for any type of problem as well as cyber-wise, for any signs of monitoring beyond the normal.
Over the last few days and nights, Madeline had confided that her purge or meltdown or whatever title it was given was her first one. As I’d suspected, she’d spent the last seventeen years surviving. She never had the time or opportunity to reflect.
Ivanov knew the circumstances of her acquisition, yet he never asked her for details about her previous captivity other than to promise to not hold food or other staples against her.
What a great guy.
Due to his lack of specific knowledge, I had little concern that Wilma Adkins was monitored on the off chance that one of her former victims would find her whereabouts. I also didn’t take my wife out of lockdown without the knowledge of the others I’d momentarily be seeing on 2.
Allowing the scanner to read my palm print, I waited for the door to open.
“What did you learn?” Reid asked as I entered. “Was it her?”
“Yeah, Madeline’s pretty sure.”
“Pretty sure? Is that enough?”
I came closer and looked up at the screen. “I’m not doing anything to her.”
“You told us about that cell house, the calling of names, and shit. You’re giving that woman a pass?”
“Madeline is. The woman is living in a delusional world, and she’s not getting better.” I met Reid’s stare. “Alzheimer’s.”
His expression changed. “Oh shit.”
“Yeah, she’s no threat. At first, I wasn’t sure how Madeline would handle it, but damn, she keeps surprising me at every turn.”
“What about Lewis Adkins? We can tie him to the place Madeline called the cell house?”
“After what he did, what he orchestrated, he’s going down,” I said confidently, looking up again at the screen. “What am I seeing?” The writing was small and grainy for the size of screen where it was projected.
“Down?”
“Sparrow is right; right now, we need to concentrate on the war.” My grin returned. “When the time comes, Mr. Lewis Adkins will suffer, of that I’m sure.”
“I wondered,” Reid began, “if Elliott confided in Madeline the entire story about the death of his wife and daughter.”
My eyes squinted. “Is that a restraining order?”
“Yes, dated thirty-two years ago and filed by a Mrs. Trisha Elliott against her husband, Marion Elliott.”
“Hmm.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Domestic?”
“Nope,” Reid said, “care to try again?”
“Marion Elliott buries his wife’s and daughter’s death. There’s a restraining order…the daughter?”
Reid nodded. “Filed by the wife, claiming her husband was an endangerment to their fourteen-year-old daughter. There is even a doctor’s statement documenting the abuse. No wonder he didn’t want this out there.”
My skin heated and my gut twisted as the information registered. “He molested his own daughter and thought he could adopt mine? Did Ivanov know?”
“I can’t answer that. This information wasn’t easy to find. If Madeline hadn’t told me about their deaths, I wouldn’t have continued to look. The doctor’s information is damning, but nothing ever came of any of it. The restraining order was dismissed after the plane carrying Mrs. Elliott, the daughter, and a pilot crashed. No survivors.”
“Do you think he killed them? Seriously, this man has more skeletons than we do.”
“Uglier skeletons.”
He was right; the quantity was debatable.
“The crash was ruled accidental by the NTSB,” Reid said. “No further investigation was done.” He changed the screen. Above was a picture of a younger Marion Elliott and on his arm a lovely young brunette with doe-like eyes. “I found this from a movie premiere in Dallas.”
“Is that Trisha Elliott?”
“No again.”
“Not his daughter?”
“No, this was taken five years after Trisha’s and his daughter’s death, and this woman is only listed as a possible love interest. She doesn’t come up anywhere else, but look…” He changed the screen again.
We were now looking at a listing of missing persons from over twenty-six years ago.
“Jennifer O’Brien, last seen in St. Louis, Missouri, sixteen years old at the time of her disappearance.”
“Show me the other picture.” The one with Elliott appeared on one side of the screen. The one of Jennifer’s missing-person poster on the other. “Damn, I don’t know. She looks older with Elliott.”
“I can’t prove anything,” Reid said, “but what if he bought Miss O’Brien at one of the auctions his friend Wendell helped him attend?”
“I’m convinced he’s a creep, and he’s getting nowhere near my daughter or wife, but we need more proof to accuse him of that.”
The door behind me opened