It had taken less than an hour for the chief to come, but it felt a great deal longer than that.
The chief’s vehicle was followed by the van containing three members of the crime scene investigative team.
Jonah caught a glimpse of Maggie’s face. It didn’t take a genius to guess what was behind the look she was wearing.
“They would have made better time getting here if they had come on horseback,” he told her, knowing that Maggie had to have felt that the chief and his team using vehicles to get here supported her own desire to do the same.
“I guess we’ll never find out,” she replied tersely. “The point is, they’re finally here.”
The next moment, there was no longer time for any sort of a debate on the subject. The chief had gotten out of his Jeep and was heading straight for them. The man looked as if he was loaded for bear. She really wasn’t in any sort of a mood for a lecture.
Looking at the chief, she could have sworn that she almost saw steam coming out of Thompson’s ears. The scowl on the man’s face would have stopped a hardened criminal in his tracks.
“I thought I told you two to keep clear of this investigation.” Thompson all but growled the words at the duo. The chief was as close to being furious as Maggie had ever seen the man. He appeared weary, but his eyes were flashing. “You need to leave this kind of thing to the professionals. Colton, you of all people should understand that. I would have expected this kind of Nancy Drew behavior from Maggie here, but you, you really should have known better,” he told Jonah, vainly trying to keep his voice down.
Maggie didn’t feel right about having someone else take the blame for something that she had instigated. She remained silent for as long as she could, but inevitably, she lost the fight.
Surprising both the chief and Jonah, she stepped in between the two men.
“Don’t go yelling at Jonah, Chief,” she warned sharply. “It wasn’t his fault. I was the one who wanted to come out here again and take a second look around. Jonah just came with me to make sure that I was safe and didn’t get into any trouble.”
“Maggie,” Jonah began, trying to pull her aside before she got carried away.
But Maggie had gotten all wound up. She had no intention of standing by meekly as Thompson gave Jonah a dressing-down for something that she was responsible for getting underway.
Putting her hand up to indicate that she hadn’t finished talking yet, Maggie informed the chief, “And it’s a lucky thing that I did, because if we hadn’t come back up here, then who knows when this body would have been found?” she asked. “The poor thing might have gone another thirty, forty years before she was finally discovered.”
Thompson appeared to be doing a slow boil. “Are you finished?” he asked in his deep, authoritative voice.
Maggie felt a little intimidated, but did her damnedest not to show it.
“Yes, I am. For now,” she added as an afterthought in case anything else occurred to her in the next few minutes.
Both she and Jonah expected the chief to explode, but instead, all he did was nod curtly. “All right then, the forensic team will get on with its work and you two are free to go.” Thompson waved toward the path he assumed they had taken to get here. “As a matter of fact, I think you should,” he snapped.
Thompson turned away from them and returned to the body that had been carefully lifted from its grave, a grave that appeared to have been dug far deeper than the graves of the other women who had been killed.
Maggie regretted having become so combative with Thompson. There was something about the set of his shoulders that suggested to her a man in pain. The image tugged at her heart. She knew that his body language had nothing to do with the fact that she’d yelled at him. But there was something else going on here. Something that was deeply affecting the chief.
“Maggie, let’s go,” Jonah urged as he reached for her arm.
But Maggie drew her arm away before he could take hold of it. Instead, she moved a little closer to the chief, peering at his face.
“You know who that is, don’t you, Chief?” she asked quietly.
“Yes, I do.” The chief’s voice was solemn, heavy. He didn’t look at Maggie. Instead, he continued staring at the mummified remains lying on the ground not too far away. Maggie thought she saw tears gathering in the chief’s eyes. “I wasn’t sure until just now, but yes, I know who that is.”
He picked up his head and looked at the two people who had discovered the body. “That’s my little sister, Emmeline.” His voice tightened as he told them, “See that bracelet on her left wrist?”
Maggie had noticed the bracelet when she and Jonah had cleared debris away from the body. Small, thin and delicate, the bracelet had what looked like tiny roses embossed along the length of it.
“Yes,” she answered, waiting for the chief to continue.
“I gave that to Emmeline for her birthday.” He laughed shortly at the memory. “She was always losing things. She lost the bracelet the very first week after I gave it to her.” He pressed his lips together to regain control over his voice. “She had all her friends looking for it. She was so relieved when it finally turned up.” He blew out a breath, the memory weighing heavily on his chest. “Emmeline was afraid of losing it again so she had the two ends welded together so that it couldn’t come loose again. That way, she said, she’d always have it and it would remind her of me.”
Thompson took in another long breath, as if that somehow helped to clear his mind. “I always knew that Elliott Corgan must have killed her, although he denied it when I questioned him.” The chief’s jaw hardened as he all but spit the words out. “Corgan said he wasn’t the kind of man who would take credit for another man’s work.”
“Maybe he didn’t do it,” Jonah ventured, thinking that maybe the killer had been honest for once in his life.
Thompson gave him an incredulous look. “Why would you say something like that?” he demanded. “This is Corgan land. Elliott’s younger brother all but drew Maggie a map where she could find Emmeline’s grave. We’ve got Elliott serving life in prison for killing six other women. It’s not exactly a giant leap from there to the conclusion that he killed my sister.”
Jonah wasn’t completely convinced, although it pained him to argue with the chief, a man he both respected and liked. “But didn’t you say that all the other women were buried in shallow graves?” he asked Thompson.
“Yes,” the chief answered impatiently. “It’s a matter of record.”
“But your sister’s grave was dug much deeper and her body was painstakingly well preserved,” Maggie pointed out, picking up the thread of Jonah’s argument. “If the same man who killed all those other women killed your sister, why go through all that extra trouble? Why did he single this particular victim out and give her this special treatment?”
Thompson lost his temper. “How the hell am I supposed to know what went on in that degenerate’s head?” the chief demanded. “There could have been all sorts of reasons why he did things differently when it came to—” his voice faltered before he pushed on “—Emma’s murder. The man’s a deranged, insane serial killer.”
Thompson threw up his hands. “Maybe he just wanted to mix things up. Or maybe he wanted us to waste our time, talking this to death and taking it apart while he has himself a good laugh over it. I don’t know,” the chief stressed angrily, shouting at them. And then, realizing that he had crossed a line, Thompson took a moment to compose himself. “Look, I want you two to leave this alone. Do I make myself clear?” the chief demanded, looking from one to the other.
“Perfectly,” Maggie replied a bit guardedly.
Her heart went out to the man, but at the same time, she felt that he was making a mistake, barring them from looking into this. For one thing, it was clear that her late father-in-law obviously wanted her to get to the bottom of all this
. Why, of course, was a completely different matter.
“Yes, sir,” Jonah was saying. He took hold of Maggie’s arm with the intent of leading her back to where their horses were waiting. “Loud and clear,” he told the other man.
“Uh-huh,” Thompson replied. It was clear by his tone that he was far from convinced that the two of them would take his words to heart this time.
Disappointed by the turn of events, Maggie wasn’t aware that they had to return to town via horseback until she was practically standing right next to her mount. She was far from happy.
“We’re going to be riding back?” she questioned.
“That’s usually how it works,” Jonah told her, amused. “We ride out on horseback. We have to return on horseback. It’s either that, or we have to walk beside the horses. Take your pick,” he teased.
Maggie didn’t seem happy. “I’ll ride. But I have a feeling I’m going to be really sore by tomorrow morning.”
“Only one way around that,” he told her.
Was he going to share some magical rubbing ointment with her?
“Oh?” Maggie said, waiting for him to tell her about some secret cure he’d discovered.
“Just keep riding until it becomes second nature to you,” he said. “You’ll stop hurting then. Practice makes perfect.”
She should have known he’d say something like that, Maggie thought. “Thanks, but if you don’t mind, I’ll just keep on using my car to get around.”
Maggie stood beside her horse, not relishing the idea of getting back into the saddle. She was feeling rather drained by their discovery.
About to swing into his own saddle, Jonah stopped when he noticed the pensive expression on Maggie’s face. “Want a boost?” he guessed.
What she wanted was to be driven back, but the chief and his team were all busy and would be for a couple of hours to come.
“Sure, why not?” she said.
The words were no sooner out of her mouth than Jonah was right there at her back, boosting her up into her saddle. She swallowed her surprised gasp as she felt Jonah’s hands quickly guiding her up.
“All ready to go?” he asked her, swinging up into his own saddle.
Maggie turned back for one last look. The forensic team was scattered, spread out on several sides of the tree and adjacent ground. They were sketching, taking pictures and in general documenting the entire scene where the chief’s sister had been found.
She sighed, turning back again. “Well, since the chief obviously doesn’t want us around, sure, let’s go.”
* * *
“You know,” Maggie said, once they had gotten clear of the chief and his men and were riding toward Whisperwood, “I used to think of Chief Thompson as a nice, friendly man. Now he’s acting as if we were a pair of bungling, annoying civilians who were trying to mess up his crime scene.”
“You’ve got to see that this is personal for Thompson,” Jonah told her.
“That’s why he should welcome all the help he can get,” she insisted.
But Jonah looked at it from the chief’s point of view. “He doesn’t see it as help. He sees it as interfering.”
Maggie grew annoyed. Jonah should be taking her side in this, not the chief’s.
“That’s because he’s being closed-minded,” she insisted. She thought of how they had gotten here in the first place. “Besides, I have a unique perspective on this.”
“What you have,” Jonah told her calmly, “is a note from a dead man who might have had his own reasons for taunting the chief.” He glanced at her, not wanting to set her off, but trying to make her see this logically. “By your own admission, you and Adam Corgan never had a close relationship.”
“We didn’t have much of one at all,” Maggie corrected.
“Aha, that’s my point exactly,” he told her. He warmed to his subject. “Why reach out from beyond the grave? Why get you involved in this at all?” he asked, examining the details. “You broke your ties to the family when you divorced Adam’s son. Adam had no reason to pull you back in.”
“Which are all very good questions,” Maggie responded. “And I want to find the answers to all of them.” She began talking faster, trying to get him to agree. “My gut instincts tell me that the answers to all those questions can be found if we just continue to conduct our own investigation into this mystery. And since the chief doesn’t want us doing that, we need to be doing this on our own—as a team.”
That caught him off guard. How did they get from just riding out to the old ranch to here? “When did we become a team?” he asked her.
She looked at him in surprise. “You don’t want to be a team?” Maggie asked.
“I didn’t say that,” he told her. She was putting words into his mouth, he thought. “I was just curious when this momentous pairing occurred.”
She thought that was obvious. “I guess that happened the first time you took me along to help you conduct a search and rescue effort.”
He supposed he could see her point. He wasn’t about to argue with it, that was for sure. “If I had known that, I might have marked the occasion with a little speech,” he told her.
Her mouth quirked a little in a grin. “I guess we all dodged a bullet there.”
“So we’re partners?” he asked, wanting to be sure exactly where they stood in this.
She nodded. “Partners. At least when it comes to this,” she qualified. Thinking back to the kiss they’d shared, she felt it necessary to add, “Just don’t get any funny ideas.”
“Well, these are very serious times, thanks to the hurricane—and the murders,” he replied. “I’d say that we have to take our laughter where we find it,” he told her significantly.
Maggie shifted on her horse. She wasn’t comfortable, not on horseback or with the subject matter. Both made her feel vulnerable.
“So, where to now?” she asked when she realized that she wasn’t sure if they really were headed for town or some other destination.
“Still a lot of search and rescue work to be done, not to mention that there’s still a lot of debris to be cleared away.” Jonah realized that he was just taking for granted that she was up for this. “Look, if you’re tired, or just want to recharge, I can drop you off at the cabin and take the horse back to the stable. Your call.”
That was the last thing she wanted. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not be alone with my thoughts right now.”
There was sympathy in his voice when he asked, “Finding that mummified body really got to you, didn’t it?”
She laughed dryly and nodded. “I could have lived my whole life without seeing that.”
That hadn’t been his idea. “You’re the one who wanted to go there and look around,” he reminded her.
“I know, I know,” she was quick to acknowledge. “I can’t help it if I’m curious. It’s a congenital defect,” she told him.
She said it with such a straight face, he wondered if she actually believed what she was saying was true.
“Maybe I’m here to save you from yourself,” Jonah said.
“And maybe I’m here to get you to use your special skill set of finding things to see if we can find just what Adam meant by that message he left and, more importantly, that you use those skills to help find out if the chief’s sister was really killed by the same serial killer who’s currently behind bars.”
“We’ll see,” was all that Jonah was willing to say on the subject for now.
He felt it was safer that way.
Chapter 11
As far as hurricanes went, the lifespan of this particular one had been mercifully short. However the short amount of time did not minimize the damage that Hurricane Brooke did both physically and emotionally to the people of Whisperwood who had found themselves on the receiving end of the hurricane’s sweeping effects. Added t
o that were the people who had not suffered losses, losing neither their homes nor any of the people they loved, but were still affected. Those were the people who were suffering from the acute effects of survivor guilt. Those were the people who were haunted by one question. Why were they spared when those around them were not?
Jonah found himself at a loss when he tried to comfort one of these guilt-ridden survivors to absolutely no avail.
Maggie felt sorry for both Jonah and the woman he’d been vainly trying to comfort. With her heart going out to Jonah, she quietly inserted herself into the scene, much to his obvious surprise and relief.
Taking his place, Maggie looked at the woman who had broken down in uncontrollable sobs when Jonah had asked her how she was doing.
Instead of shrinking back from Kayla, a young woman who she knew by sight but had never gotten close to beyond that, Maggie tried to put herself in the thirty-four-year-old woman’s place.
Mentally she asked herself how she would react in a situation like this. It gave her a great deal of empathy for the anguish that Kayla was suffering.
“Why?” Kayla asked her, her voice cracking. “Why am I still here and not Jacob? He was the better person, not me.”
“Instead of trying to find the response to something that you have no real way of ever knowing the answer to, why don’t you make up your mind that you are going to be the best version of yourself that you can possibly be?” Maggie gently told the woman.
Kayla’s sobs slowly subsided. She raised her red-rimmed eyes and looked into Maggie’s. She struggled a couple of minutes, attempting to catch her breath. “I don’t under—understand,” she cried.
“Try to help the people around you. Comfort them, offer to listen. Right now, people are more vulnerable than they have ever been in their lives. They need to feel that they can make it through this, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel even if they can’t see it yet. Help them to think positive. You’ll wind up helping them as well as yourself,” Maggie told the other woman. “That is why you were spared.”
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