by Karen Harper
But when Gabe got back in the cruiser, he saw she was shaking. Her hands were gripped so hard in her lap that her fingers had gone white. And tears were coursing down her cheeks.
“You remember something bad about him?” Gabe asked. “You carried on like that so he wouldn’t know?”
She shook her head hard and sniffed twice sharply. “It’s just that I thought he might be the one, so I tried to jolt something loose in my brain. Maybe he or Marva loves kids and so they take them, I don’t know. He gave me the creeps, but I can’t recall one bad thing about him. Sorry, Gabe,” she said, wiping her wet nose with the back of her hand, “but I don’t think I’m going to be any help at all, when I want to so bad. But maybe the cornfield trip will work.”
He reached over to squeeze her shoulder. Then she got a tissue out of her purse and blew her nose. Tess’s handling of Dane impressed him. Here he’d thought she was timid and broken, but the way she’d just dealt with a potential suspect—what a gutsy girl! He’d joked about making her a deputy, but he needed her, now in more ways than one.
8
After he dropped Tess off, Gabe drove to the crime scene. He parked on the street because he’d put up police tape in the alley. He’d finally contacted Sam Jeffers, who was bringing his dog, Boo, to track Sandy’s scent—he glanced at his watch—in around ten minutes.
Going in the front door, he had to wade through a crowd of about a dozen people, two with news cameras on their shoulders, others thrusting cell phone recorders at him. He’d assigned Jace to do follow-ups on various vans that used the alley, food delivery for the Kwik Shop, the garbage collection truck, even the security vehicle that picked up money from the bank. Not that he thought they’d taken the girl, but what had they seen? A particular vehicle? Someone who didn’t belong?
As the small crowd started to pepper him with questions, he held up both hands. “We’re working on finding evidence and a suspect to lead us to the kidnapped girl. That’s my only statement right now. There will be a press conference tomorrow.”
“Anything different this time, since you’ve made no progress on finding the others? Is Teresa Lockwood back to help with your investigation?” a woman with horn-rimmed glasses, crimson lipstick and a pen stuck behind her ear demanded as she thrust her cell phone in his face.
Deciding not to give them a sound bite to broadcast, he said, “I promise a press statement at the conference tomorrow morning. Excuse me please.”
The questions didn’t stop. Gabe scanned the faces. It was common cop wisdom that some criminals loved to hang around the scene, fed off it, got high on it, but he didn’t see any locals. No, there was one woman, a good-looking redhead who held up a large poster that read Hug Your Kids More! She kept trying to move behind Gabe to get on camera. Her name was Erika something. She was the social director at the Lake Azure Community Lodge, who did a lot of activities for children there and was a friend of Marian Bell. He recalled that Erika drove in from Chillicothe every day.
“I know you don’t have any kids of your own, Sheriff,” she called to him. “So do you really think you can feel what the parents of the kidnapped girls are going through? Thanks to no progress on this string of abductions, people are starting to think Cold Creek is not a good place to raise children. The mayor’s concerned it will bring real estate prices down lower than they already are. Little Amanda Bell and now this child are both—”
“Both getting a lot of attention to locate them. Local law enforcement is working with the cooperation of the state Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, so, as I said, if you’ll excuse me, we’ll get back to that.”
“Any new suspects this time—” a man’s voice pursued Gabe as he ducked under his police tape, went inside, closed and locked the shop door. Ducking the flying witches, he saw Vic was sitting at the sales counter going through receipts.
Without looking up, Vic called to Gabe, “I’m not above doing grunt work. Been going over the civilian tips coming into your office, including from some psychics, and those are usually off-the-wall, but got to weed them out. Right now I’m checking credit card names of recent shoppers who could have seen Sandy, going back a couple of weeks. Glad you got through running the gauntlet out there. Man, you’d think a rural place like this wouldn’t attract so many media vultures, but we’ll have the national big boys in here if we don’t turn something up fast. Get anything from Tess Lockwood?”
Gabe felt he’d gotten a lot from her, some professional, but a lot personal. “In about an hour, we’re going to reenact her abduction on-site, what led up to it, see if we can spring some memory loose. She’s all in to help. Your old friend Dane Thompson flagged down the cruiser and challenged me to lay off before I even went near him. He also insisted on saying hi to Tess, but she handled him great, even though she admitted he shook her up bad.”
Vic finally looked up from his pile of papers. “Shook up because she recalled something about him?”
“Because she didn’t.”
“I swear, I sometimes wonder if Dane and that taxidermist friend of his could be in cahoots—John Hillman. I used to picture them mounting dead girls and hiding their bodies in one of those animal graves.”
Gabe shuddered. “You should see Dane’s house and cemetery now. Lots of money poured in. State-of-the-art.”
“Oh, I will see it.”
Vic was shaking his head as he went back to skimming sales slips. “I remembered that taxidermist’s name because he was my number two like for Tess’s kidnapper. So give me an update on Dane Thompson, your dad’s top pick for the suspect.”
“He’s done really well since the Lake Azure community opened. Lots of pampered pets instead of outside-doghouse and barn cats to tend to, I guess. He’s built a new vet clinic, redone his house inside and out, bought a new van, takes Caribbean cruises in the winter.”
“That right?” Vic said, looking up again.
“About two years ago he asked his younger sister, Marva, to move in with him when she was widowed. She keeps his house, I suppose, but works at the spa uptown, which he might have money in too. She probably thinks she’s died and gone to heaven because she was married to a small-time farmer with an old house and a played-out piece of land, which hasn’t sold yet, by the way.”
“I’d completely forgotten about her. We also checked out her husband’s old barn and their house. I remember now sneaking around there after dark. Don’t know why that slipped my mind since we thought Dane might have stashed Teresa there. We nearly got caught—maybe that’s why I blocked it out.”
“So all of us have memory problems, right?” Gabe challenged.
“Yeah, well, just be careful walking through this crime scene if you’re meeting that tracker and his dog out back. Mike’s been taking prints all over the place. I’ll be out in a bit to take a look at Jeffers. Kids like dogs, trust people with dogs, you know—a real ploy to lure them away, then, zap.”
“You’re thinking Sam Jeffers could be involved?”
“Gabe,” he said, glaring up at him, “I know you’re part of this community, and that’s your strength as well as your weakness here. I think anyone could be involved. Trust no one, okay? You said you couldn’t reach Jeffers even on his phone right after Sandy disappeared, that he was out hunting in the woods somewhere. And he’s a loner, right? Hangs out who knows where?”
“I know where. You want to go, I’ll take you.”
Gabe and his father had known Sam for a long time. Vic must have looked into him years ago, because it sounded as though he knew the man had several camping spots and crude hunting cabins. Over the years, Gabe’s dad, Gabe and friends of his had been out hunting with Sam and he had always seemed like a stand-up guy. Gabe wanted to argue with Vic, but instead he stalked into the back room. He recalled now how Vic really annoyed his father sometimes. Hell, he might as well drag Pastor Snell in fo
r questioning or longtime Mayor Owens, the little old librarian—his deputy or himself!
In the storage area, Mike Morgan was kneeling on the floor taking photos. If not for the strobe flash, Gabe wouldn’t have located him among the piles of boxes and the table, masks and costumes.
“Hey, Gabe,” he said, peering over the top of a carton. “I followed up on your deputy’s Dumpster-diving in the alley, but they’d all just been emptied before she went missing, so not much to see. I called the waste management company that runs the trucks and told them the situation. I also processed and printed the Barbie doll if you want to let the dog sniff that. Hey, you look steamed. Vic lay his latest hunch on you?”
“Yeah, but I think it’s crazy. Anything helpful here yet?”
“Lots of prints, probably mostly hers. I think she’d made a little dollhouse or play spot back here. Oh, yeah, I heard the dog out back a minute ago.”
“Good. Here’s hoping I’m not clutching at straws and his hound will turn something up.”
“Speaking of straws, there’s a really beat-up scarecrow thrown on the floor back here. Unlike the other decorations and figures, it’s old-looking and dusty as heck. Can you phone Sandy’s mother, ask her if it should be here? Everything else looks...well, better, like it could be for decoration or for sale, but not this.”
“She may have just wanted something authentic-looking. But will do as soon as I see Jeffers work his dog.”
“Sandy’s Barbie doll is on the box by the back door.” As Gabe took it in its plastic bag and went out, he saw Mike had debagged the doorknobs. “Hey, Sam, thanks for coming with Boo,” Gabe greeted the man, and they shook hands.
“Always willing to try again,” Sam said, but Gabe decided not to dwell on the fact that this tactic had not panned out when Tess was taken.
Gabe’s mom had always said Sam looked like how she imagined Johnny Appleseed. And she’d said he was ageless, as old as the hills. Maybe now Gabe would have to check him out, age, background, possible motives, though he thought Vic was really overstepping with that theory. Sam was lanky with a full, graying beard that made him look older than he was. He wore boots, patched jeans and a dirty green-and-white Ohio University baseball cap on backward. His sharp blue eyes assessed Gabe as did the hound’s sad-looking eyes.
“So, how’s the hunting?” Gabe asked.
“Lots of deer. Trapping season too. Hope Boo don’t smell like skunk. Last few days, we got us otters, beavers, coons, even coyotes, but old Boo got him a skunk this morning. Sorry it took me a while to get your message.”
Boo, who did smell slightly of skunk, sniffed the doll Gabe took from the bag and held out to him. The hound was eager to be off from the back door of the shop. Gabe’s hopes rose. The dog was following what must be a clear path, tugging Sam along on the leash. Gabe quickly followed, scanning the ground in case something had been dropped. There’d be no footprints on this blacktop.
After heading down the alley about twenty feet, the dog stopped behind the hardware store. Nose to ground, Boo went in circles, snorting, sniffing, then sat down and barked twice.
“What’s that mean?” Gabe asked.
“Her scent ends here,” Sam said.
Damn, Gabe thought. Just like when his dad used a tracker dog of Sam’s in the cornfield and it lost the trail. “Can you move him out a bit, see if he picks it up again?”
They worked at that for nearly an hour, up, down the alley, near the creek. Nothing. Gabe swore under his breath, but they had learned something. The girl had walked—unless she’d been dragged, but not carried—out the back door and then had evidently climbed or been lifted into a vehicle behind the hardware store. Gabe wished that, like in big cities, there had been roof or pole cameras, but no such luck here. As he scanned the familiar area again, he saw Vic had come out and was watching, leaning against the gift shop door, arms crossed over his chest. How long had he been there?
Gabe thanked Sam and let him and Boo go. Sam ducked under the police tape, which Gabe went over to yank down in frustration.
“The dog’s actions tell us something,” Vic said, coming up behind him.
“Yeah, Sandy either knew the attacker and walked out a ways with him, or was intrigued by something enough to go outside without telling her mother and may have gotten in a vehicle parked out back—with or without help. So now I’ll get Jace to focus on interviewing in more depth the hardware store staff and their customers that day.”
“Good. Hardware stores are a magnet for men. Ordinarily, any hardware store customers park out back here?”
“Sure, especially if they want to load something into a truck or car.”
“So there we go. I’ll look through their sales slips that day too, see if I hit any matches with gift shop customers. Mike says you’re going to ask Lindell Kenton about that scarecrow. Ask her if she’ll come in and help me with matching hardware store names with her customers that day. And you, for now, focus on Tess Lockwood.”
Gabe nodded. He was focusing on Tess Lockwood and not all for official reasons. It annoyed him that he couldn’t get her out of his head.
Gabe and Vic watched Sam put Boo in his old pickup truck and drive away from down the alley where it hadn’t been roped off. Then Vic helped him drag yards of yellow police tape toward the empty Dumpster behind the gift shop.
“I’ll look into Sam too, but I’d vouch for him,” Gabe told Vic. “You’re thinking of him as a possible perp, with Tess’s abduction too, right?”
“I didn’t even consider Jeffers last time. It’s bigger than that.”
“So tell me,” Gabe prodded when Vic seemed to hesitate.
“Don’t like to admit this, but your illustrious mayor irritated me so much years ago when I was here on the Lockwood case I was tempted to slap him with obstruction of justice. Demanding things, ordering me around. Even told me to get out of town because I was ‘bad PR.’ So I ran a check on him. Not back then, but just a couple of days ago when I knew I was coming back here and found out he was still in office. Thought I might turn up a drunk driving charge, whatever. He annoyed your dad, and I’ll bet he does you too.”
“Got to admit he does.”
“I’ll show you the printout. Years ago, when he lived in Chillicothe, in his late teens, he was arrested for lewd acts on a minor child—a five-year-old girl—but the charges were dismissed.”
“What? Man, you are reaching—but...”
“Yeah, but. Thought you might want to go yourself or send Deputy Miller to Reese Owens’s old neighborhood where it happened, see if someone recalls the circumstances, because except for this item I stumbled onto, other references to it seemed just gone. I only found a memo where a court clerk had jotted down notes, including a notation that Owens’s arrest and court records were either lost or sealed. They’re still missing, Gabe. Reese Owens may be mayor of a small town, but he’s got some big political heft and money ties through his marriage. Look, right now I’ll stay here with Mike till he gets done so you can get back to Teresa—Tess. What’s locked inside that pretty head of hers is exactly what we need.”
* * *
Tess sat on the picnic table again, waiting, until she heard a car pull in the driveway. To her surprise Gabe was not in his sheriff uniform but jeans and a red-and-black flannel shirt. That’s right. He’d been wearing something like that when it happened. She remembered that much. She hopped off the table, suddenly afraid, but still wanting to do this.
“You okay?” he asked, and waited until she nodded. “When we go into the field, we don’t have to go clear over toward Dane’s.”
“I didn’t know you meant to go really far.”
“Let’s just do what you think is best—is right—once we get going. Okay, so I was over there where there used to be a swing set, just sitting on a swing, keeping an eye on you and three other kids.
I think it rusted out before Lee and Grace’s kids got to use it. Anyway, you kept running past me, giving me a good shove in the back so I swung when I was trying to sit still. The other kids were playing in the sandbox like I asked, but—”
“But I didn’t and even heaved a handful of sand your way.”
He nodded but a slight grin lifted the corner of his lips. “I’ll bet, even then, you were just trying to get my attention.”
“So then,” she said, wanting to tease him back but wishing even more to get this over with, “I started darting through the corn. I remember hitting the stalks to rock them, bounce them out of my way.”
“I yelled at you about being a tomboy, to get back out here.”
“A crazy tomboy,” she added.
“I yelled so loud that the other kids quit playing and turned around to look at me.”
“I think I went deeper in then, thinking you might come after me.”
“I should have,” he said, moving closer. “How about you go into the field, but I’ll go with you, right behind you?”
She nodded but hesitated. What had crushed the full-of-life girl in her? Whoever had done it made her angry. They had no right to ruin her life, hurt her family, torment Gabe. Had there been a “they” or just one person? And who? Who?
She shouldered her way into the corn, ripe and heavy with ears that bumped her shoulders and hips. It was still taller than her but not sky-high as it had seemed then. Gracie had said the same man, Aaron Kurtz, who lived down the road, still owned and farmed it. He’d been appalled, Tess remembered hearing, that she’d been snatched from his land. He’d sent Christmas gifts to them the year Dad deserted them. Oh, thank you, Lord, she prayed. Detailed memories were coming quicker, surer.
The rows of green leaves, some turning tan and dry, went straight away from the house at first, then curved to fit the contour of the distant, slight hill before leveling out again, reaching toward Dane Thompson’s property. She heard Gabe right behind, his size making rustling noises louder than hers.
