by Rachel Caine
“You don’t seem like yourself.”
“Really. How does myself usually seem?”
She lifts one shoulder in half a shrug. “Calmer,” she says. “Something happen?”
I don’t want to lie to her, but I also don’t want her to know Melvin Royal still haunts me. I don’t want anyone to know that. “No. Not really.”
She probably doesn’t believe that, but she lets it go. “Thanks for making the trip. I know this is twice in just a few hours. And I ruined a good night’s sleep.”
“Oh, my daughter ruined it before you did.” I explain about Lanny’s late-night club date. She just smiles.
“That sounds like her,” she says. “Hope you’re not going to be too tough on her. She’s growing up fast.”
“Too fast,” I sigh. “Anyway. Did you talk to your chief? Let him know you were going to keep working the case?”
“He’s fine with me working it until the TBI says we can’t. Then I may have to have another conversation.”
“Maybe the TBI will want to work with you on it.”
“I get the feeling they think us rural folk don’t have the skills.”
“Well, that’s a dumb mistake.”
She quirks a smile, barely. “Not necessarily. You met Deputy Dawg this morning; beyond pissing in the accidentally right place, there’s not much he actually did right. Maybe they’ll see past that and look into my record. I don’t think they’ll bother.”
Or they’ll look into her record and worry she might turn out to be all too effective. She might take the shine right off them if she solves it. The TBI is a bureaucracy, like anything bigger than three or four people; there’s a chain of command, there are clearly defined roles, and there are always politics in play. In her present frame of mind, my friend doesn’t care about any of that, and while I’m with her, I wonder if she’s thought through the consequences.
I open my mouth to ask, then shut it without uttering a word. She has. And she’s made her decision regardless.
“What were the autopsy results?” I finally ask her. Her eyes lose focus, and there’s a significant chill that settles through me even before she answers.
“What we expected,” she says. “Death by drowning. Marks on both bodies show they struggled.”
It conjures up a nightmare, which I imagine she’s seeing in terrible detail. I can feel the cool breath of it on the back of my neck, but she’s faced these ghosts directly. I don’t reply. I can’t think of anything comforting to say.
“I went to her house,” she continues after a moment. “Sheryl Lansdowne’s house. It doesn’t look to me like she was planning a trip, and there weren’t any suitcases in the car, just her purse. You ever drive your kids around in the middle of the night?”
“Sure, when they were little,” I say. My mouth has gone dry, and I take a restoring sip of water. “Mostly Connor. There were more than a few nights I couldn’t get him settled, and I didn’t want to wake up . . .” My voice fades out to a thin thread that breaks on the last word. I’m Gina again, frustrated and exhausted, afraid the baby will wake Melvin. I leave my daughter asleep in her bed and I put my son in the baby seat in the back. I drive him around the dark neighborhood, singing nonsense songs, until he finally is limp and peacefully dreaming.
I left my daughter with Melvin.
I haven’t thought of that horribly vulnerable moment until now, and it chills me deep. She was just a little thing, and I’d checked on her when I put my son back in his crib. She’d seemed peaceful and undisturbed, but I hadn’t thought once about the risk to her. I’d had no reason to then. But I hadn’t even thought of it later, when I found out what Melvin was, what he did.
Oh, I’d had generic, unfocused terror over what he could have done, but for some reason this one memory of her lying so defenseless in her bed, face round and innocent, little hands clutching the Care Bears blanket she loved so much . . . it breaks something in me with an audible, ringing snap.
I didn’t protect her then. And in a very real sense, I’m horribly aware that I can’t protect her now. Not from this carnivorous world.
Kez has seen it.
“You’re thinking about being with Melvin, aren’t you?” She’s too perceptive. I swallow and nod. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to dredge all that up again.”
“He’s like a zombie,” I tell her. “Keeps coming back no matter how many times I put him down. It’s okay.” I don’t think the smile I deploy is especially convincing. “Anyway, the answer is yes. I did drive my baby around in the middle of the night sometimes. And I remember how exhausted I was, and how surreal everything seemed. When you’re a new mother, you’re just in a fog of hormones and exhaustion most of the time.”
“Yeah, already feeling some of that,” she sighs. “So that’s likely what she was doing out there in the middle of nowhere. Getting the kids to sleep?”
“Or she was meeting somebody.”
“I thought about a drug deal, but honestly, nothing about that car or her house screams junkie to me. House needed some outside work but seemed pretty orderly inside.”
“We both know of high-functioning addicts, especially opioid addicts,” I say, and she nods. “But you’re right—that seems an especially lonely place to go for a drug exchange. Pretty strange when truck stops and convenience stores exist.”
“Could have been some kind of romantic rendezvous,” Kezia adds. “Though I can’t imagine that as a make-out spot even on a damn sunny day.”
I have to agree with her. If ever a place had a bad spirit, it’s that one. And now it has claimed two lives . . . or two more. You’d have to be exceptionally high or drunk to have some kind of consensual encounter out there. “So, if not a drug deal gone bad, we’re looking at a straight-up abduction of the mother that he covered up by pushing her car into the pond?”
“That would have to be random, wouldn’t it?” she says. “What are the odds of some predator trolling those back roads and scoring at that hour?”
“Depends on how often she drove those babies around,” I say. “If she had a routine, a route . . .”
“Then it wouldn’t be random at all,” she finishes. “He’d know her habits. Damn.” She sighs. “But we haven’t got shit as far as evidence of any of this. We’re just guessing.”
“Is this the turnoff up ahead?” We’ve already passed the exit to Stillhouse Lake, and I’m weirdly relieved not to be headed that direction . . . and at the same time, a little sorry too. It’s such a strange, mixed feeling for me. Longing and loathing in equal measure.
“Yep, that’s it. Take a right. We’ve got about twenty minutes before we get to the crime scene.”
We arrive there exactly on time and pass the flapping crime scene tape; the TBI’s attention must be elsewhere, because there’s a minimal presence. We drive past without pausing, and Kez says, “Okay, should be about five possibilities. I’m not sure any of them will check out, but it’s worth looking into.”
“How many of them have a view of the pond?”
“None. But they may have a view of the road. Best we can do.”
Driving on this road takes concentration; the flicker of light and shadow seems more disorienting than usual, and the road curves and loops and wanders, with steep drop-offs on either side. Barely big enough for two cars to pass, if they do it carefully. My SUV seems monstrously large in the space, and I don’t know where I’d pull over if someone came from the opposite direction.
It takes the better part of an hour to strike the first two off our list. The third time seems to be the charm. It’s new construction set far back from the road, almost embarrassingly large, with double-paned windows and solar panels on the roof and a tidy garden on one side. A suburban McMansion dropped into the hills, immaculate and deeply out of place. Even though it’s overdone, I still feel a guilty twinge of house envy as we pull to a stop on the evenly paved driveway. “Jesus. They know where they live, right? A double-wide trailer is luxury around here.”
She nods toward the eaves. She’s right—there are two aimed at the driveway and, hence, the road.
“Doorbell cam, too,” I note before we get out. “Let’s hope they don’t greet us with guns.”
“Out here, that’s a solid bet. You go first,” she says, and shoots me a wicked grin.
I do.
The doorbell rings inside with a soft chime, and a woman’s tentative voice through the speaker says, “Yes?” Even the one word sounds guarded. I make sure she can see me clearly on the camera.
“Hi, my name is Gwen Proctor. I’m investigating a crime that happened down the road,” I tell her, which is technically both true and a lie. “I just need to ask you a couple of questions and, if at all possible, look at the camera footage from your security cameras. Would that be possible, ma’am?”
There’s a long silence, and then she says, “Go on. Ask your questions.” She’s not going to come out. Fair enough.
“Did you see any cars pass early this morning? Maybe after midnight, but before dawn?”
“No.” She’s lying. I can feel it.
I try a different tack. “You didn’t hear anything either?”
“No. What kind of crime are we talking about?”
“We may have a missing woman,” I say. “She’s a mom, two baby girls. We’re just looking for any description of vehicles that passed on the road. That’s all.” I play a hunch. Something in the way she asked what kind of crime makes me think she’s worried that we’re here about . . . something else. Something she definitely knows about. “This isn’t about Belldene business, nothing like that.” She knows the Belldenes. She’d have to, living up here. And having this much cash? She probably knows them real well, either on the business or buyer end of things.
“I—” She hesitates, then says, “There were two cars out last night. One was a regular sedan, kind of old. The other one was a dark SUV. A nice one.” She says it like she knows she shouldn’t be talking. It comes in a rush, and then she takes a deep breath. “That’s all I know.”
“Thank you. That’s very helpful. Would you mind emailing me that footage, then? Just in case we can spot something on it, like a license plate?”
She doesn’t sound happy about it. “Give me your email. Just . . . don’t tell my husband. Okay?”
“We’ll keep it confidential.”
Kez glances my way, and I gather she doesn’t want to give her official contact account, and I know she never gives her personal one. I spell my PI company email out, and make sure the woman repeats it back to me. I thank her again, and there’s nothing left to do but go. As we’re strapping ourselves into our seats, Kez says, “She’s not going to send anything.”
“You’re sure?”
“Ten bucks sure. She’ll be afraid of having her name in the records, testifying, something like that. I’ve never been up here myself, but this address comes back to more than one domestic complaint, and looks like her husband’s deep into the pill business. Bad combination. I’m surprised she said anything at all. Fear runs deep when you’re alone out here.”
She’s right. Women who live this remotely are either under the oppressive control of a partner, or independent as hell. Not a lot of middle ground. And getting out of a bad relationship is tough at the best of times. Out here, in the sticks, with a husband with criminal ties . . . that would be infinitely harder.
“Maybe she’ll call,” I say. “I’m an optimist.”
Kez shakes her head. She knows me better than that.
The last two houses are a bust; one’s a hunting cabin, locked up tight and no sign of inhabitants. The other is a broken-down trailer rusted on the sides, and we raise no response when we knock. Kez sticks her business card in the door, and we head back down the mountain. I have to admit, it feels like relief. I don’t like being up here in Belldene territory. They’ve told me, in no uncertain terms, how unwelcome I am.
“So what did we get out of that?” I ask.
“We got confirmation that there was a second car,” Kez says. “So either our missing woman set it up as her ride away from the crime scene or we have an abductor who might or might not have been stalking her. God, I hope he was. Her little town is just full up on busybodies. Somebody will have seen him. Probably got his damn license number too.”
“So . . . where to now?”
“I should probably join the grid search. Prester’s not up to it right now, tramping around through the woods. I’m taking over from him.”
“You want me to go to her hometown, then? Talk to her neighbors?”
Kez cracks a quick, grim smile. “Better you than me. Doubt I’d get a whole lot of cooperation.” There’s a thread underneath that, one of resentment and resignation. I understand it, at least to a very small extent.
I just say, “Of course, I’m happy to help. Is that going to screw you up with the state boys?”
She shrugs as her whole answer, and I can see she means it. She doesn’t care about the consequences. There’s a sharpness to her expression, the set of her jaw, that makes me think this is one of those cases that will haunt her for the rest of her days. She wants to solve it any way she can. Maybe she wants to do it for the child she’s bearing, the one who will change her life so completely. Maybe she needs to prove something to herself.
I hope that doesn’t put us both in real danger.
8
KEZIA
I have a secret I never tell anybody: I appreciate nature, but I hate the goddamn woods. I like the city, I like the brick and steel and sweat of it, and being out here in the wildest part of the green to me always feels like I’ve been scooped up by aliens and dropped in the middle of a Predator movie. God help me, I spend a damn lot of my time out here too. I pretend I don’t care.
I do. Violently.
Gwen drops me off to get my car, and I hook up with the TBI again, who offer to let me tramp the hills with their grunts; I take the opportunity mainly because I know Detective Prester is already up there, trying to hold up our end. Sure enough, when I pull up, I see Prester coming out of the woods. He’s moving slow. His color—never real good—has an ashy undertone I don’t like. God help me, I love the crusty old bastard; he’s a smart, capable detective, and more than that, he cares about victims, and he’s made me care about them too.
He doesn’t want my worry, but he gets it anyway.
I walk up to him, and he—of course—waves me back like I’m a fly bothering him. “I’m okay,” he says, which he isn’t. “It’s the heat is all.” It isn’t that hot, and we both know it, but I let it go. I’ve been nagging him to see his doctor, but he’s having none of it. He’ll just snap at me if I push, and I can’t really say I’d blame him. If I make it to his age, I’d like to be that independent, not have my bossy young partner ordering me around.
“I’ll finish up for you,” I tell him. “Not a problem.”
“You hate the trees,” he says, which is accurate, and I’ve never told him that, but somehow I’m hardly surprised he knows. “Too much imagination, Claremont. You think bears lurk every-damn-where.”
“What, you mean they don’t?” I flash him a grin, and a corner—just a corner—of his mouth quirks in response. “How long you been out there?”
“Few hours,” he says. Which is bad, given how he looks right now. I try not to tell him that. “You been out with Gwen?”
“I’ve been following up leads,” I say, which isn’t an answer, and he doesn’t take it for one either. “Any luck out there yet? Found anything?”
“Oh, found plenty, all of it junk. Old condoms, rusty cans, beer bottles. Nothing about our missing lady. Not a trace.”
“They’ll keep going until it’s dark,” I say. “Go on home. Please?”
He doesn’t like it, but he nods. I stand up and walk away without another word.
I can feel him watching me, but I don’t turn around. I hear his engine start with a loud, rattling roar, and he backs that boat-size sedan out with the ease of a lifetime of driving these narrow roads.
I’m double-checking the laces on my boots when a young woman in the outfit of the sheriff’s office comes over. I silently produce my badge and ID, and she makes a note in her logbook. “Detective.” She nods. “Uh, the boys are all up in the hills right now. You want to wait at base or—”
I want to wait at base, damn right I do, but I put on a heavier jacket, then add a fluorescent vest. Don’t want to get mistaken for a damn bear. Or a black woman. “I’ll take the grid Detective Prester was walking,” I say. I strap on a flashlight; it gets dark under the trees even in full sun, and clues can be easy to miss. And I keep my sidearm handy, because there are indeed damn bears. And predators on two feet, too, who might enjoy a potshot at a cop. Bears don’t shoot back. I will.
I follow the accommodating deputy uphill to her small folding table. She’s got a map spread out that’s weighted down at the corners with rocks, and still rippling a little in the strong, chilly breeze. “Okay,” she says, and points to a spot on the paper. “This is your section. Grid search, north to south, then east to west, no more than three feet apart on each pass—”
“Thank you, Deputy; I know how a grid search works,” I say. “Channel?”
“We’re on seven,” she says, and hands me a walkie-talkie. It’s a brick of a thing, heavy enough to use as a baton in an emergency, and built so sturdy it would probably work if you ran over it with a truck. I turn the dial to the right channel and do a radio check. At her nod, I head uphill into the tree line.
Darkness drops a cloak on my head, and I pause to let my eyes adjust. It’s oddly warmer here, mainly because the breeze isn’t as strong and direct; I take a few breaths and flip on the flashlight to look for the marker Prester would have put in to show where he stopped his search. The fluorescent hit of the neon yellow flag jumps out at me. He didn’t get too far.
I walk to it, alert to the whisper of the woods. There are other cops out here doing their own grids, but I can’t see or hear them; I might as well be alone, as far as it feels. I love Javier, but if he laughs at me one more time about feeling vulnerable out in the wild . . . I shake that off and pull up the marker flag. The deputy’s given me neon orange flags to use if I find any potential evidence; the number of them in the bag is damn optimistic, seems to me. But I’ve noted which way Prester had his flag pointed, and I start slowly walking that grid. I frequently refer to my compass to be sure I’m straight on the path; too easy to get turned around out here.
