by Karen Harper
“No, he was never caught,” he said, tipping even farther forward in his chair with his elbows on his knees. “It’s the great regret of my father’s life. He started having heart trouble about then. But the failure to find you and then Jill—and the kidnapper—now may be my fault as well as my father’s.”
“I said before I don’t blame you.”
He nodded. “I want you to know, I told Marian Bell to steer clear of you. If she so much as glares your way, let me know. And I admit it would help if you could recall anything, anything at all.”
“About back then, nothing but being dragged off through the cornfield—and yes, maybe that something stuck me in the neck. Maybe drugged, right away.” She rubbed her arms through her sweater as if she could feel other needle marks there. She did remember tiny train tracks on her arms, that’s what she used to call them, but Mom never explained, even when she could have taken the truth.
In a sudden surge of need to help this man and the lost girl, Tess said, “I can tell you at least that Marva Thompson Green was home shortly after the abduction today, and Dane wasn’t. He was out in his van making Lake Azure house calls, according to her.”
Gabe sat up straight. His rocking chair jerked.
“How do you know that? Did you phone or see her? Did you see him or his van in town?”
“No, I stopped to talk to Marva at their place before I drove the back roads. I told her I was just returning her earlier visit and gave her some donuts since she’d brought me some baked goods.”
“Right when you came back Marva came to visit? To kind of feel out what you remembered?”
“Maybe. At least my mother did tell me where I was found wandering around the day I was recovered—and I’ve never really recovered,” she said. She stood so fast her chair rocked and bumped the back of her legs. “But I went there today.”
“Look,” Gabe said, rising too and stopping her with a strong grip on her elbow, “I don’t want you on deserted roads or around Dane’s place or letting him or Marva in here. You do know he was the prime suspect for a long time, don’t you?”
“Yes, at least someone saw fit to tell me that.”
“Tess, about the fact that you were drugged. It’s common police procedure to hold back some vital evidence, some piece of insider information that will be valuable when questioning a person of interest or preparing a trial after an indictment.”
“Don’t you—didn’t my mother—realize it would have helped me to know? If I was drugged, maybe that’s why I can’t remember, can’t help Marian Bell, the Stillwells and Sandy’s mother!”
“I didn’t—and don’t—want you to use that as an excuse. There can still be things you can recall, anything at all.”
“So you’re saying your offer to help and protect me was just a cover so you could hang close and see what you could shake out of me? Even before this poor girl was taken today?”
“I didn’t say that. No, that’s not true.”
“Well, see, Sheriff McCord, here’s my problem, one at least. I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t about my nightmares. I have them, sometimes at night, but flashes of things when I’m awake too.”
“What’s in the nightmares and flashes?”
“Feeling lost. A horrible feeling of dread. Like I have to flee something, but I don’t know what. Some kind of big machine, sometimes maybe a dinosaur, I think, and what sense does that make? Nothing I can clearly recall, and that’s worse than if there was some bogeyman I could face and try to fight or conquer!”
To her amazement, though she wanted to strike out at him, hit him, instead she threw herself into his arms. Breathing hard, he held her close for a moment. Her belly pressed against his gun belt, her thighs against his. He felt strong and steady, but he must be using her. She pushed back so hard against his rock-solid chest that she almost fell.
“Tess, honestly,” he said, grabbing for her arm again, though she shook him off. “Besides getting rid of the media mavens outside, I just stopped by to tell you that, even though I’m going to be working this new case day and night, you are not forgotten. Anyone bothers you, you let me know. Or if you recall anything in a bad dream or broad daylight. If you can’t get right through to me, call Ann or Peggy on the desk. If you call 911, you’ll get them too, and they’ll get me. Got that? Promise?”
Tess nodded jerkily, kept nodding. She blinked back burning, unshed tears. The weight of having experienced things that could save others, things just out of reach, pressed hard on her heart. For one moment, she thought she heard a roaring noise, felt something awful flapping in her face, but then it was gone.
After a quick squeeze of her shoulder, Gabe hurried toward the back door.
“Lock up behind me!” he called back to her.
Without another word, she followed and did as he said. But could she really lock him out of her life anymore? The man meant a lot to her, much more than the boy ever had. She wanted to help him, but he stirred strange feelings in her that she feared almost as much as her buried memories. Need. Even desire. Instead of locking him out in any way, she longed to let him inside her defenses.
6
The first thing Tess thought when she woke from a fitful sleep was that it was the twentieth anniversary of the day she was taken. Most anniversaries were happy, but this one—now that another girl was missing—felt doubly cursed.
As soon as it was daylight and she’d eaten breakfast, she turned on the basement light, took a flashlight too and went downstairs. The basement stairs creaked as she went down. It smelled a bit dank down here. She thought she should buy an air freshener in case anyone came to look at the house. Should she accompany potential buyers down here, or could that be dangerous? Since her kidnapper might still be in the area, he could try to test her to learn if seeing his face again would trigger a memory. Or would he think she should be silenced?
She knew she had to be wary today, stay strong. But even if horrible memories came flooding back, it would be worth it if she recalled something to help the poor child who’d gone missing and the girls who had been taken before.
Lee hadn’t exactly said where he’d seen her father’s dowsing wands. She could picture his collection of green, slender willow tree boughs. She wondered why Lee had kept them, if they were dry. Since Dad had been so skilled at dowsing, maybe Lee thought they had some special power, or that it would be bad luck to trash them. And why hadn’t Mom done that, especially after Dad deserted her?
Over the years Mom, Kate and Char had tried to explain to Tess that Dad’s leaving wasn’t her fault, though Dad had blamed Mom for letting a boy keep an eye on her, even if he was the sheriff’s son. She remembered their terrible arguments. But Kate and Char assured her that Dad was just looking for an excuse to leave, and it was cruel and wrong of him to blame their mother for something no one could predict or prevent. Could Gabe have prevented it?
Tess found a pile of six willow wands behind the furnace. She shone the flashlight on them. Of course, they were not supple and green anymore but dried and dusty. Lee’s father and hers, twin brothers, had possessed the gift to locate underground water by walking with a Y-shaped willow branch held out in front of them until it quivered in their hands. And most of the time, freshwater lay beneath.
She recalled her mother telling her about a sunny day, the Fourth of July the year she was taken, when her family was picnicking at a friend’s house. At age four, she had picked up the willow wand Dad had brought to show people. She had imitated him, walked with it toward their friend’s barn and felt the pull, a magnetism, making it quiver and tremble in her hands. Other times in the weeks of that late summer, Dad had tested whether her finds with the wand matched his, and they always had.
So, was that very willow wand among these? She touched them, stroked the top one. Some people thought dowsing was mere superstition or fakery, j
ust chance finds or playing the odds. But others, especially older folks, believed it could find not only water but buried treasure, even lodes of precious ores. Some said it could point to graves, especially if the corpse had been buried with metal jewelry. If only, like a dowsing wand, she could find the thing that would point toward her buried memories!
She heard the ringtone of her cell phone, which she’d left in the kitchen. Taking the top willow wand with her, she dashed upstairs and grabbed the phone from the table.
“Hello?”
“Tess, it’s Kate. I can’t talk long. I’ve been making great progress on researching the Celts. I’m hopeful I can link their culture to the ancient Adenas of the American Midwest. Next time I’m home, I’m going to take a closer look at the burial mounds in our area because that could be another link to prove the Celts came to the eastern U.S. But I wanted to call you to see how you are. You know, especially today. I’ve been thinking about you. Are you back in Cold Creek to sell the house? How are you doing?”
“I’m here, and it was okay at first. But another girl was taken yesterday, like my coming back was a curse!”
“What? Taken from her backyard? Taken into the corn?”
“Taken from the back room of a gift shop uptown while her mother worked in the next room. It’s a shop on the site of the old police station.”
“That’s terrible. Listen now, you call Char and let her talk you through this. She’s better at that than me. And don’t you go blaming yourself, or fixin’ to hang around there to help.”
Tess bit her lip. Don’t you go blaming yourself...fixin’ to... Her big sister was calling from England. Kate Lockwood, high school valedictorian, full college scholarship recipient, Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude, professor and published author, could travel the world to study and teach ancient anthropology, but when she got upset, she still sounded like a southern Ohioan from Cold Creek. And she wouldn’t like to be reminded of that one bit.
“Tess, are you there? How’d you find the old place after Lee and Grace cleared out?”
“It’s pretty empty, but the ghosts are still here, if you know what I mean. I’ve got posters up all over town to advertise selling it. And I just found Dad’s old willow wands in the basement.”
“Witching wands, you mean?” she said, her voice turning sharp. “He should have taken them when he cleared out of our lives. You know, I looked up a lot about water divining once, even wrote an undergrad paper on it.”
“So what did you find out?” Tess asked, stroking the cracked wood of the old wand. At least that would get Kate off the subject of the house.
“You’re interested in dowsing? Okay, here’s what I recall...”
Here’s what I recall... The words echoed in Tess’s head. Again, she wished desperately she could recall who had taken her and where twenty years ago.
“So, besides dowsing appearing in artwork from ancient China and Egypt,” Kate was saying, obviously in her lecture mode, “some claim that when Moses and Aaron used a rod to locate water in the Bible, that was dowsing. Martin Luther called dowsing ‘the work of the devil.’ In more modern times, Albert Einstein believed in it, and during World War Two General George Patton—well, he believed in the paranormal anyway—had a willow tree flown to Morocco to find water to replace the wells the German army had blown up. And that reminds me, the Brits used dowsing in the Falklands, and in Vietnam the Americans used it to locate weapons and tunnels.”
“Your memory always amazes me, Kate. I’ll have to tell Lee about all that.”
“If he’s still so gung ho for that whacked-out religious cult, he probably couldn’t care less. But one more thing. I read that from time to time, some have used dowsing to track criminals or find missing persons. But don’t go telling the new Sheriff McCord about that, or he’ll think you’ve gone off the deep end. What’s he like all grown up?”
“Very dedicated. Really intense.”
“Intense? Tess, what does he look like?”
“Tall, broad shoulders. Icy blue eyes but dark hair. Black uniform. Strong but gentle...”
“Okay, okay. Intense about solving these crimes, you mean?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean,” Tess said, realizing she was sounding a bit shrill, as if she had to defend Gabe.
“So, is the town as diverse economically and socially as Grace has been telling you?” Kate blessedly changed the subject.
Tess explained the great divide in town and how that had changed things. But she told her how seeing Etta Falls at the old library made her feel as if she was in a time warp.
“She was so encouraging to me about reading and learning,” Kate said. “Especially the months you were—were gone—she tried hard to distract us with books Char and I would love, books for Mom on how to cope with loss, things like that. I remember our first-grade class went on a field trip to her house, because it still had one of the first pioneer cabins way out in the woods on their land. She showed us an old pistol and a family graveyard out back, but the tombstones were so old you couldn’t read a thing on them. And that mother of hers is like a historic relic herself.”
They talked too long, but Kate could probably afford it. Despite the great divide between her and her sisters—in education and ambition—she loved hearing their voices. Whatever her differences with them, she wished so much they were here to help and to hug.
* * *
Gabe recognized the older of the two BCI agents the minute he got out of the plain black car that had pulled in next to the blue-and-white mobile crime lab truck in the police parking lot. Despite it being two decades later, Gabe saw it was Victor Reingold, the agent who had worked with his father on Teresa Lockwood’s abduction, though he hadn’t been back to help with the second abduction nor had Gabe brought him in on Amanda’s case.
Gabe hurried over to meet the agents. Reingold’s shock of unruly hair had gone white, but his brown, hooded eyes looked as sharp as ever. He walked with a slight limp, and almost always dressed in black, like Batman without a cape, Gabe used to think. The man in the lab truck was a lanky blond wearing rimless glasses and a dark blue jacket with BCI emblazoned on the back. He looked as uptight as Reingold looked at ease and in control. Gabe thought the younger guy might as well have Forensics Techie tattooed on his forehead.
“Glad the posse’s here,” Gabe told them, shaking first Reingold’s hand and then the other man’s. “Sheriff Gabe McCord,” he told them, though he guessed that was pretty obvious.
“Mike Morgan,” the younger man said. “I usually do lab forensics, so I’m glad to be out in the field, especially on this one. I have three young daughters, so I’m all in.”
“Remember me, Gabe?” Reingold said as Gabe led them toward the building.
“I sure do, Agent Reingold.”
“You were pretty young on that first case and pretty upset about being so close to it. Tough on you and on your dad as sheriff. He was a very good man, Gabe. My sympathies on his death. Glad to be back on the job with you to get this longtime pervert, but sorry it happened again. I was on special assignment in Washington, D.C., on the second abduction, but I kept up on things. So let’s do this. And call me Vic, okay?”
“Thanks, Vic. Mike, you too,” he said as he opened the door to the station for them. He knew the BCI agents liked to assess local facilities and staff before possibly calling for more help. He introduced them to Ann and Peggy, then, pointing things out, gave them a brief tour of the station.
As he walked them back to his office, he gave them the rundown. “The crime scene’s a cluttered storage room of a gift shop, where we bagged the doorknobs.”
“Good work,” Mike said. “We can even track palm prints now. Ohio was the test case for that. And our databases for fingerprints use the automated APHIS system and are FBI connected.”
“Outside of that storage room,
” Gabe told them, “it’s a long shot, but I’ve got a local guy coming in, a tracker with a good nose dog to sniff the child’s doll and see what that gets us. But I figured you’d want to fine-tooth comb the crime scene first. We did an exterior search with local volunteers beyond the alley that runs behind the stores near the creek, and dragged the water where it’s deep. We found nothing—just like the other two or three takes.”
“Or three?” Vic demanded, scrutinizing the huge map taped on the wall of Gabe’s office. It was a site map he’d inherited from his father and had been updating. “I thought I’d read up on everything—but three previous to this Sandy Kenton?” Vic asked, turning to stare at Gabe.
“I think the possible number three, Amanda Bell, was a child snatched by her father, who left the country. He’s hard to find but we think he’s in South America. I’ve worked on the case, and the family has hired a private detective. The mother will probably be after you as soon as she hears you’re around.”
“Hard to believe it’s been twenty years since that first abduction—my case,” Vic said, turning back to the map and thumping his index finger on the site of the Lockwood house. “But Teresa Lockwood’s surviving was pure chance, so I intend, just like you, to solve this fast.”
“Teresa goes by Tess now and she’s back in town briefly to sell her family homestead, the crime scene.”
“Recall the place well, and her, when we finally got her back,” Vic said, turning to look at him with narrowed eyes again. “Traumatized, drugged, been beaten, a real pretty little girl. Were the others blonde and good-looking too?”
“Not a common factor. I’ve got dossiers and all kinds of stuff on each victim you can look over.”
“Great. You bet I will.”
Gabe saw the man still had an unusual habit he remembered. He chewed wooden toothpicks to a wet pulp, then spit them out. If only these abducted kids had had some sort of habit where they left a trail, other than maybe a scent.
