A Deadly Influence (Abby Mullen Thrillers #1)(55)

“Well, when I joined the community, I mostly worked in the apple orchard.”

“I meant, what did you do before you joined the community?”

“Oh.” Karl seemed startled. He paused for a moment as if trying to remember. “I was a writer.”

The shift in Karl’s expression was subtle, almost impossible to notice if you didn’t look for it. But Abby had been waiting for it. Cult members were often indoctrinated to leave their past lives behind. But you couldn’t really erase the past. It just got suppressed. Ask a cult member about their life before they joined the cult, and the memories came flooding back. For a short time, before the cult dominance in their mind reasserted itself, you could glimpse the person as they used to be.

“Really?” Abby asked. “What did you write?”

“Short stories. Sci-fi and fantasy mostly. I got a story published in Extraordinary Dimensions.”

“Extraordinary Dimensions?”

“It was a very popular online magazine. They paid me three hundred dollars for it.”

“Fantastic. So did you publish additional stories for them?”

He frowned. “No. They didn’t want the next one I sent. And after that I didn’t have time to write. Because I had a lot to do in the community.”

She waited for a moment, letting the long silence punctuate his sentence, give it significance. Finally she asked, “How did you join the community?”

“Well, my uncle suggested it.”

“Your uncle?”

“Yeah. Otis.”

Karl Adkins was Otis Tillman’s nephew. How had they missed that up until now? Now that he said it, there were tiny similarities between the two men’s chins and noses. She nodded agreeably. “Right! Otis approached you?”

“Yeah. I was between jobs, and he suggested I come work on his farm.”

“I’m impressed.” Abby grinned at him. “You were, what, back then? Eighteen? And you were happy to drop everything and go work at the apple orchard?”

Karl let out a short laugh. “I didn’t want to at first. But . . .” He paused. She could see him trying to recall that moment. How had his uncle eventually convinced him? And then his eyes seemed to glaze, and she knew she’d lost Karl the writer. Karl the cult member was back. “He suggested I come over for a few days. To talk to some people. They were doing this amazing work. I wanted to be a part of it.”

“Wasn’t it difficult? Giving up all the things you were used to doing? There was your writing, of course. And TV, right? I mean, I can’t go a week without bingeing a TV series. David Huff told us you aren’t allowed to have TVs there. Or cell phones, for that matter.”

The atmosphere in the room seemed to tense up.

“We do important work,” Karl said. “It’s not that we aren’t allowed TVs or phones. We just don’t need them.”

“Of course,” Abby said. “I forgot. You still have a phone, right? You even have an Instagram account.”

Karl said nothing.

“You opened the account, uh . . .” Abby pretended to check her folder. “Three years ago. Four years after you joined. So you got along fine without social media for four years. And then what happened?”

Karl’s eyes shut, and his lips moved as he prayed silently.

“Whose idea was it to open that Instagram account?” Abby asked. “You didn’t need it, like you said. So why open one? An account that essentially follows only one person—Gabrielle Fletcher.”

“My client is not answering any more questions,” Styles interjected.

“Did you ever meet David Huff’s wife, Karl? Her daughter? Or her son?”

Karl kept praying. Carver’s phone rang, and he stepped out of the room. Abby asked a few more questions about Nathan, about Gabrielle, about his presence nearby Gabrielle’s house. But like Carver had said, all she got were prayers and the lawyer’s adamant statements that they were done answering questions.

Finally she said, “I’ll go get you both that cup of water,” and stepped out of the room.

Carver stood outside, talking on the phone, his expression grim. He motioned for her to wait.

“We’re on our way,” he said on the phone and hung up.

“What was that all about?” Abby asked.

“A civilian noticed a smear of blood on the door of a Toyota Corolla parked in a parking lot in Staten Island,” Carver said. “He called the police. The patrol officer on scene popped the trunk and found an unidentified dead body stuffed inside.”

“So why did they call you?” Abby asked. “That’s not even in your precinct.”

“Forensic team found a muddy shoe under the front passenger seat,” Carver said. “It matches the description of the shoes Nathan Fletcher wore when he was kidnapped.”





CHAPTER 36


Abby rode with Carver, and the only one speaking in the car was the navigation app. She stared out the window, exhaustion and worry clouding her mind. Details about the crime scene had been sparse. They’d said the body was male. But was it an adult male? Dispatch wasn’t sure. They were checking. Time went by with no response.

It was also possible that the kid’s shoe they’d found wasn’t really Nathan’s. After all, it wasn’t like Eden had bought Nathan’s shoes in a boutique. She’d probably bought them at Walmart or Target. There were thousands of kids walking around New York with the same shoes.