Southern Storm

by Terri Blackstock

  “She called his phone that morning,” Joe said. “Witnesses are pretty sure she’s the same woman he was with. And the car they got into was a rental car that was checked out at the airport the night before, and returned the next day.”

  Hull reached his car but didn’t get in. “Was she the one who rented it?”

  “Whoever it was apparently used a fake name and ID. We can’t trace it. I’m thinking there might be some revenge involved, Hull. I know you don’t know Cade that well, but he wouldn’t up and disappear like this. I don’t want to do any kind of intense search. I just want to walk through her house, check the bedrooms, the basement, her car. I want to scare her a little in hopes of her spilling her guts.”

  Hull put his hands on the roof of his car and shook his head. “Maybe she did go talk to him, just to look into the eye of the man who killed her husband.”

  “She said she didn’t. Said she’d never been to Cape Refuge.”

  “Maybe she chewed him out and wasn’t proud of it, so she lied. That doesn’t mean she had anything to do with Cade’s disappearance or her husband’s shooting.”

  “All of those things could be true,” Joe said. “But I want to know for sure. If I can get the warrant to search her place, do you want to go along or not?”

  Hull looked across the roof of the car, thinking. Finally, he opened the car door. “I’ve got to go, Joe. I have to see about this missing baby. A woman walks into the mother’s hospital room in a nursing uniform and tells her she needs to take the baby because the doctor is on the floor and needs to examine it. Half an hour passes before the mother inquires about when the baby will be brought back. Turns out the woman who took the baby isn’t employed there. Baby’s gone. Now that’s a crime, Joe. A real-live, bona fide crime. I realize you don’t see many of those on Cape Refuge, so you go looking for crimes where they haven’t happened.”

  Joe just looked at him. “We had a double homicide just a few months ago, Hull. You know that.”

  “Well, you and I both know that’s not what this is. Chief Cade will mosey in in a day or so, claiming to be depressed about running a guy down, with a song and dance about how he needed to get away. Your famous yet amusing city council will be in an uproar, and there will be hearings and meetings for months on whether or not to fire him. You might even get the job.”

  He got into his car, closed the door, and rolled the window down.

  Joe leaned in.

  “When I get the warrant, Hull, do you want to search the house with me or not? I can do it alone, but I thought I’d offer you the chance since it’s your territory.”

  Hull sighed and started his car. “Missing baby, Joe. First things first.”

  Joe stepped back as the car pulled away, and watched the man drive out of sight.

  CHAPTER 13

  Hull had been right about the judge’s reaction to Joe’s request for a warrant. He’d claimed there was no proof of a crime even being committed in Cade’s case. His only option now was to question her and ask permission for a walk-through of her house. If she didn’t grant it, he was out of luck.

  Joe had half hoped that Hull would pass on sharing the questioning with him now that there wasn’t a warrant, but the truth was that he needed another pair of eyes. He could have brought any of the officers from Cape Refuge with him, but none of them were trained detectives. He didn’t have time to give them a cram session on this kind of search.

  Hull had agreed to come a little more easily than Joe had expected, but he had known the Savannah detective wouldn’t want to be left out. Since the FBI had taken over the baby-kidnapping case, he’d had no reason not to come. He would meet Joe at the house at noon, he said.

  Joe pulled up to the front curb of the house at 11:55 in his own unmarked car. The house he’d visited just days ago looked unchanged. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

  Another unmarked car pulled up behind him, and Joe got out and closed his door quietly. Hull was dressed just as he’d been earlier, in a faded navy blue T-shirt under a tweed sport coat that looked like it had seen better days, a pair of khakis with a dirty hem, and deck shoes with no socks.

  “Thanks for coming,” Joe said.

  “Sure you want to do this, Joe?” Hull took the cigarette out of his mouth and dropped it on the sidewalk.

  “I know it’ll be unpleasant,” Joe said, “but it has to be done.”

  Joe led him up the front steps to the door and knocked hard. After a moment they heard footsteps again, then Ann Clark opened the door and peeked out.

  “Mrs. Clark, I’m Detective McCormick from the Cape Refuge Police Department. I was here yesterday?”

  She touched her throat. “Yes?”

  “This is Detective Hull from the Savannah PD.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she said.

  Her eyes looked swollen and red, as if she’d been crying for days. Joe felt an instant pang of guilt. He hoped he wasn’t making a mistake.

  “I’m kind of busy right now,” she said.

  Joe pressed on. “Ma’am, we need to ask you a few questions. Do you mind if we come in?”

  By the look on her face, it was clear that she did mind, but she stepped back from the door. She led them to the same parlor where he had broken the news yesterday. Joe took the same sofa, and she sat across from him.

  Hull remained standing, looking around as if he was already involved in a search of the place.

  Joe looked up at her. “Ma’am, I just had a few questions to ask you.”

  “I read the article in the paper today.” Her voice wavered. “The things they said about me, they weren’t even true. I don’t know your police chief, Detective. I’ve never seen him in my life.”

  “I’m sorry about that article,” he said. “It was irresponsible reporting. But witnesses believe it was you they saw on Cape Refuge, and we know for sure that a call was made from this house to Chief Cade’s house on Tuesday morning.” He leaned his elbows on his knees. “Mrs. Clark, you seemed surprised when we told you your husband had died. Were you?”

  She cleared her throat. “Well, it was a shock, as you can imagine.”

  “But did you know about it already?”

  She fidgeted, got up, walked near Detective Hull as if guarding her things from him. “I had seen it on the news the night before.”

  Joe stared at her. “You saw it on the news? Then why didn’t you call us to let us know who he was?”

  “I wasn’t thinking clearly,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  Now Joe was sure she was involved. Why else would she have lied? He got to his feet, and faced her. “Why did you let us think you were hearing it for the first time, Mrs. Clark? Why the act?”

  Ann Clark came back to the chair she had been sitting in and stood behind it, fingering the cord across the top seam. “I told you, I wasn’t thinking clearly. I heard about it on the news the night before, and I was kind of in denial, hoping you were coming to tell me it was all a mistake, that he was all right. In the hospital maybe, but that he wasn’t dead.” Her voice broke then, and she crumpled over the chair, bringing her elbows close up to her chest and covering her face with her wrists. “Willie is dead. He shot himself to get away from me. What did you want me to do?”

  Hull turned around, and Joe just looked at her. He hated it when women cried. He never knew what to do. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he looked down at his feet. “Mrs. Clark, we’re not certain it was suicide. Do you know of any enemies your husband had?”

  Her face went crimson. “I told you he’d threatened suicide. Even told me how he would do it! He had a gun and said he was going to shoot himself. He was his own worst enemy.”

  Joe shot Hull a look. “Mrs. Clark, why didn’t you call the police when he threatened suicide?”

  She pressed her hand against her forehead. “I told you. I was in denial. I wanted to think it was just another threat. But now that it’s done, I see that I should have called someone to stop him.” She broke off and mu
ffled her mouth.

  Joe decided to switch gears.

  “Ma’am, witnesses saw Chief Cade talking to you that morning, then getting into a car with you, and now Chief Cade is missing. Are you sure you don’t know anything about that?”

  She stiffened again and looked at him, her wet face raging red. “Of course not. I don’t know who they saw your police chief with, but it was not me.”

  “We just thought that since Chief Cade was involved in the accident, you might have had reason to want to see him.”

  Anger tightened her face, and her hand trembled as she touched her throat again. “I’ve already told you, I’ve never been to Cape Refuge in my life.”

  “Ma’am, we have your number on Chief Cade’s caller ID. We know someone from this house called him the morning he disappeared.”

  She seemed to struggle with her answer, then finally, she let out a rough sigh. “I’m sorry, my brain is just so muddled with all this . . . I can’t think . . . I did try to call him. But I didn’t speak to him. There was no answer.”

  Joe was silent for a moment. Her story wasn’t adding up. “Why did you try to call him?”

  “Because I had seen the news report the night before, and I spent all night just a wreck, not knowing what to do. I didn’t sleep at all. I was pacing the floor and praying. And finally, early the next morning, I decided I needed to call him. I don’t know what I was hoping, but it didn’t matter because I let it ring twice and then I hung up.”

  “How did you get his number? It’s unlisted.”

  The woman fidgeted again. “I have a friend who works for the phone company.”

  Joe got out a notepad and pen. “What’s that friend’s name?”

  She seemed cornered. “I don’t want to get her in trouble. What does it matter, anyway? I didn’t reach him.”

  Detective Hull finally spoke. “Ma’am, we were wondering if you’d give us permission to walk through your house.”

  Her face twisted. “Walk through? For what?”

  “As I told you,” Joe said, “Chief Cade is missing and the witnesses thought they saw him with you.”

  “And you think he’s here?”

  For a moment he thought he saw fright cross over her face, and she looked toward the door leading into the dark hall. Something was up, he thought.

  Hull clearly noticed it too. “Ma’am, if you don’t give us permission, we’ll have to get a warrant. In that event, it won’t be a walk-through, but a full search of the premises.”

  She stared up at him, visibly shaken. Joe hoped she didn’t know enough law to realize they didn’t yet have probable cause for a warrant.

  Hull’s bluff worked. “Well, go ahead,” she said. “I have nothing to hide. . . .”

  Hull headed out of the parlor and into the hall. Joe followed. “You take the upstairs,” Hull said in a low voice. “I’ll take this floor and the basement.”

  Joe nodded and went upstairs. He began checking the bedrooms, every bathroom, an extra study that he found near the back of the house. He looked in closets, drawers, trash cans, but the garbage bags all looked freshly changed.

  He came downstairs and saw Ann standing in the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at him with worried eyes. “I told you you wouldn’t find anything there.”

  He saw the open basement door. Hull trudged up the steps and stepped back into the hall.

  “Nothing there,” he said. “Just a lot of dust and mold.”

  “Of course there’s nothing,” she said. “What do you think? That I have some man hidden in my house somewhere?”

  Joe went into the kitchen, noting how clean the place was.

  Nothing seemed out of place, and it smelled of Lysol. Wouldn’t a woman in mourning at least leave a glass out? How many people would scrub with Lysol until the house reeked of it, when going through something like this?

  Not many, unless things just weren’t what they seemed.

  When they had finally left the house, Hull said I-told-you-so, then headed back to his precinct. Joe went back out to his car and sat behind the wheel for a moment. He hated to go back empty-handed or to tell the rest of the force—or Blair and Jonathan, for that matter—that they had not found anything concerning Cade. Where could he be? The fact that he hadn’t found evidence against Ann Clark certainly did not take her off the suspect list. She could have put a bullet through Cade’s head and dragged him off to some remote grave in the middle of the woods, though he didn’t think she looked strong enough to do such a thing. But one never knew.

  A chill went up his spine at the thought that something like that could have happened to Cade. He didn’t know what his next move would be, but somehow, he had to find his friend before it was too late.

  CHAPTER 14

  Scraping, rattling, darkness . . . Cade slid out from under a black quicksand sleep and struggled to orient himself. He could not see a thing in the opaque darkness. His head felt as if it had been cracked through the skull. He reached up to touch it and felt a sticky, painful wound. What in the world had happened?

  The scraping sounded again, and he tried to sit up. A crack opened in the darkness. Dim light shown through as the silhouette of a woman stepped into the doorway.

  He frowned. “Who are you?”

  She turned on the light and it flooded the room, blinding him. He squinted and turned his face away from it, then he forced himself to look back at her. The face was familiar, but he couldn’t place her.

  “Headache?” Her eyes were hard, piercing. “You’re lucky you’re alive.”

  “Who are you?” He tried to sit up again, but the pain in his head pulled him back down.

  “Think. It’ll come back to you.”

  He tried to think. There had been an accident . . . a man killed . . . a phone call at home . . .

  He squinted his eyes at her. Was she the woman he’d met at Cricket’s? She looked different, yet the same. Her hair had changed . . .

  “Mrs. Clark?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer him, and he watched as she brought a two-liter bottle and set it down beside his cot.

  He raised up as much as he could and looked down at himself. Blood had dried all over the front of his shirt. He touched his head again, found the gash that had bled. “Was I in an accident? I don’t remember—”

  “No accident,” she said, moving back to the door. “It was quite deliberate.”

  Confused, he tried to focus. He was in a small room, with nothing but the cot he lay on and a commode. It wasn’t a hospital—the walls were studs and tarpaper, like in a basement. And he couldn’t imagine why he would be here with her.

  She had wanted to talk alone and had suggested that they go for a ride in her car so he could show her where the accident happened. He had obliged, recognizing her grief.

  That was the last thing he remembered.

  “I want to know what he told you,” she said.

  He looked at her. “What who told me?”

  “My husband, before he died. You said in your press conference that he spoke to you. What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing . . . I don’t know . . . I could barely hear him. He was bleeding to death.”

  Her teeth came together, and she spoke through them. “The gunshot. What did he say about the gunshot?”

  Her curiosity implicated her, and he realized he was in danger. He tried to rise up again. “What did you do, knock me in the head with something?”

  “I asked you a question!”

  Her face was harder than he remembered, and her eyes were cold. She’d been wearing sunglasses at Cricket’s.

  “I didn’t even know about the gunshot until after he was dead.” He tried to get up again. What had happened to his head? “I need to use your phone,” he said. “Please . . . I need to call the station . . .”

  She laughed then, a brittle, frigid sound. “You’re not calling anyone, and you’re not going anywhere. You’re staying right here where I put you.”

 
Finally he managed to sit up. “Why? What purpose could that serve?”

  “Many purposes.”

  With great effort, he got up and started toward her.

  She took a pistol out of her pocket and leveled it on him. He froze and recognized it to be his own firearm.

  “Get back on that bed before I blow your head off.”

  He knew she meant it. It was clear in her eyes. “Why? What do you want? Is it revenge?”

  “Shut up and get back on the cot.”

  He backed to the bed and slowly lowered himself down. “What are you keeping me here for?”

  She didn’t answer. She just kept that gun on him as she backed out of the door. He saw that he was in a room inside a basement, and across the room outside his door stood wooden stairs, probably going into her house. She closed the door behind her. He heard it lock and then heard scraping noises as if she pushed furniture against the door. He wondered if anyone was looking for him. Surely people had seen him leaving Cricket’s with her. Surely someone saw him getting into her car.

  But how could she have gotten him here? She wasn’t big enough to carry him. He wondered if she had drugged him at Cricket’s. He did remember feeling very tired as he’d gotten into her car, but he hadn’t slept that well the night before.

  His throat felt blistered and parched, and he wondered how much time had passed. He looked down at the water bottle she had brought him, grabbed it, and drank down the water. It went down smooth, wetting the tissue in his throat, hydrating his mouth.

  He looked at his watch, squinted to focus on the date. It was April 7. He’d been missing for three whole days?

  He felt a lethargy washing over him, making him weak, sleepy, heavy again. He lay back and searched his brain for a plan of escape.