by Karen Harper
But the missing cell phone and satchel meant there had been someone else in the cemetery. It was looking like murder, not suicide, and that would complicate his investigation into the missing girls.
“They’re finally done with the body,” Gabe said when he saw movement. He and Vic got out to stand by their vehicle as the body bag was loaded, the doors slammed shut on a man’s life. The E.R. vehicle pulled past them and drove out.
“Even if his death stops future abductions, we still don’t have Sandy or the others back,” Gabe stated the obvious as they got back in the car. They pulled out, following the E.R. vehicle at a distance.
“Yeah.” Vic sounded as tired and discouraged as he felt. “Gut instinct—you think it was him who took the girls? Maybe in cahoots with someone else, like his sister?”
“You know that old saying, ‘Two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.’ Someone would have let something slip over these years. I heard Marva always wanted children, but that’s proof of nothing.”
“Yeah. And in this case, I don’t buy the copycat thing. I’m sorry I told Tess about your mother and her father. Honest, I thought she knew.”
“She should have. I should have told her, since they didn’t. I just have a thing—an instinct to protect her like I didn’t do when she was taken.”
“So I noticed. You definitely have a thing for her.”
“I get what you’re saying, but I’d stake everything that she was telling us the truth. She was furious with me, she runs over to see if Dane’s house and graveyard come back to her and is just there at the wrong time.”
“No coincidences in police work, remember? You’re getting emotionally involved with her, Gabe, and—”
“And that’s another reason I’m going to solve this. Hell, Vic, I’m emotionally tied to each of the kidnapped girls, even the ones I never met! You know, when I was assigned to defusing bombs, I had to have someone dress me in state-of-the-art armor every time. Eighty-pound Kevlar bomb suit, helmet with a shield over my face. But I’m feeling vulnerable on this case, terrified the bomb’s going to blow in my face—that another girl will go missing or we’ll find a body.... And Tess. I care deeply for the woman, and that traumatized, scared little girl still inside her—I’ve got to get back in her good graces so she can remember more, help herself and help me.”
“Look,” Vic said, gripping his shoulder hard, “it’s gonna be dark soon. Drive me to the station. I’ll get my car, go back to Dane’s house, work with Mike on the forensics and look for more possible evidence inside. You eat something solid, get a couple of hours’ rack time. I know you’re gonna see if Tess is all right. Swear to me you’ll take care of yourself, or you’re gonna lose it—lose objectivity and control.”
“Yeah, I hear you, about keeping my head on straight about Tess too. I promise,” Gabe said, grateful for the support. So why didn’t he believe he’d keep that promise to Vic?
22
After Jace Miller dropped her off at home, Tess refused to just collapse. In a way that was what she’d been doing for years, either falling apart or hiding. So what if she was upset by Gabe and Vic’s interrogation and by Marva’s accusation? It was nothing next to what Sandy Kenton, Jill Stillwell, even Amanda Bell, might be going through.
If the kidnapper had been Dane, maybe Marva had helped him. Dane could have given the Greens money to keep them going over the years before Marva’s husband died. Maybe money to keep their mouths shut or to house a kidnapped girl. Had Marva been faking her friendliness from the first just to keep an eye on Tess and what she remembered? Tess had been shocked at how quickly the woman had turned on her. But that seemed somehow familiar in the dark depths of her mind—someone who coddled her, then struck out at her.
Tess certainly wasn’t leaving the area, as she’d promised Gabe and Vic, but she was going to pursue any memories that could help find the lost girls. One of the library books talked about cascading flashbacks. Once they start to emerge from the buried past, they supposedly couldn’t be stopped, like a waterfall.
Since everyone was investigating at Dane’s place she decided she was going to look at Marva’s old place. If she saw the house, maybe she’d remember it. In case Gabe stopped by, she’d leave him a note explaining where she’d gone. She had agreed to give him an extra key when her locks were all changed, so she put the note on the kitchen counter, where he’d see it right away.
* * *
As she drove past the Hear Ye property heading for Marva’s place, Tess tried to ignore the fact that it was starting to rain and getting dark. This would not take long.
She was amazed she could hear the muted roar of the Falls waterfall when she rolled down her car window near Marva’s. She hadn’t realized the sound would carry this far.
Tess pulled off Blackberry Road. The old Green farmhouse sat on a fairly sharp curve in the road. She drove past once. There was a light on in the place! Or was that the reflection of her own headlights on the turn?
The house was supposed to be deserted. She turned around and drove back but saw no lights this time. Surely that hadn’t been her imagination. She’d have to go closer to be sure. There was no point getting Gabe or Vic out here on a wild-goose chase. They’d have her head for sure. What if it was kids or someone homeless passing through? She’d just peek in a window, then decide.
So she couldn’t be spotted from the road, she parked in a narrow, grassy lane that had been a farmer’s tractor entry to a field that was unplanted now. She knew Miss Etta and her handicapped mother lived a mile or so farther down the road in their historic home, but she couldn’t recall ever being out there. Behind the small woodlot between where she stood and the Green acreage stretched a barren, single field where Marva’s husband had grown vegetables. He’d done odd jobs in the winter, hunted with Sam Jeffers sometimes, but that was about all she knew. That and the fact that the Greens had never quite made ends meet, so their house and outbuildings were in bad shape. They’d gone derelict after Marva left.
Tess muted her cell phone and got out of the car, carefully locking it, then securing her keys in her backpack. Again, she heard the roar of the falls, but, in a way, it was comforting, like white noise blocking out other sounds. She would take a closer peek at the house, then phone Gabe if anything looked suspicious.
She hiked off the road, going through the woodlot. The tree cover stopped the rain but made it darker. Such a place would have terrified her just days ago, but that had all changed now. She was willing to take risks for the stolen girls. And, despite her own denials, Gabe.
Just as she came to the fringe of woods, she saw a distant light move through the trees along the lot line. The light seemed to be dancing since branches were blowing in the wind. She sucked in a breath and pressed her back to a tree trunk. The light she’d seen when she drove by was not her imagination.
She looked carefully. The light itself was not moving, only the trees. Despite the fact that the rain pattered down when she emerged from cover, she crossed the grassy field and stood on the gravel driveway. The light was closer than she thought.
Darting from tree to tree, she approached the derelict house. The outside had been marred with graffiti. She wasn’t sure, but the style looked similar to the graffiti that had defaced the rock wall at the falls. That was only about a mile away. Maybe whoever was inside was putting their handiwork there too or just getting out of the rain.
She stopped by a leafless bush near the front porch. The windows were boarded up. She’d have to go around to the side or the back of the house to try to see in. She looked at the floor of the porch. It would probably creak or cave in if she stepped on it. Even with the steady, muted roar of the falls, she couldn’t risk that.
Her heart beat faster and faster. The run-down house looked like a decrepit face with blank eyes and tattoos. She tried to picture how it must have looked years ago. Did
it seem familiar? She knew Gabe had checked the place more than once and found nothing. But she knew someone was here and now she could hear voices—up this close, she heard at least one man’s and one was high pitched like a girl’s.
Her gut instinct was to back off and phone Gabe. But if someone had Sandy, Jill or Amanda here, she wanted to know for sure.
* * *
It was bad enough that Tess still wasn’t taking his phone calls, Gabe thought as he pulled into her place. He saw there were no lights on in the house, though the outside safety lights were on. Her car was gone and it was getting dark and raining. Could she have driven to see her family at the Hear Ye compound? It seemed unlikely. Maybe she’d gone over to his house. He’d given her a key.
He drove past the cornfield and into his own driveway. The house was dark. There was no car outside. Vic wasn’t even back yet.
What if Tess had decided to head for Michigan? If so, he’d call the State Highway Patrol, have her arrested for disobeying their order to stay in the area. He knew she’d been through a lot, but he’d been impressed at how she’d stood up to Vic’s accusations. Gabe knew Vic had agreed to let her go home mostly because of her sticking to her story—and the fact that they both had soft spots for her. He didn’t really believe she would take off.
He drove right back out of his driveway, turned on his bar light but not the siren and headed toward town. He auto-dialed Tess again and got her voice mail. He swore and pulled into his parking spot at the station. Vic’s car was here; Ann’s too.
Inside, he found both of his 911 dispatchers chatting over fast food at the front desk. Maybe Ann just didn’t want to go home in the rain. With Dane’s death, they’d had a lot to handle, especially with him and Vic out in the field. No doubt, the media mavens had sniffed the news out already.
“Too bad about Dane,” Ann said. “Oh, the mayor called about five times and insisted he talk to you ASAP.” She handed him a call slip. The neat way she’d cut it off across the bottom made him think of Dane’s so-called suicide note. “I guess you left him a message you wanted to see him, but he’s really upset about Dane’s death. A couple of newspapers and TV stations called, so they may be back in town tomorrow. Agent Reingold’s in your office. We’ve got an extra cheeseburger here if you’re hungry.”
“Yeah, thanks. I promised Vic I’d eat and rest. I appreciate both of you working overtime through all this.”
In a way he thought he shouldn’t take the burger from Ann—take anything from her right now—but he suddenly realized he was starving. He’d last eaten at breakfast, hadn’t thought of food when it was all around him at the farmers’ market. Ann handed him the wrapped burger; it was still warm. He started to unwrap it and headed to talk to Vic.
“I told Agent Reingold the person in town to see about that antique pistol is the librarian, and not just because she knows everything,” Ann said. “Just a couple of months ago, she had a small display in the library that had some of Dane’s old pistols and some of hers. Hers, I’ll bet, are ones her family owned—pioneer relics. Sometimes I think she’s a relic. Ebook is a dirty word to her.”
“I remember all that stuff about her pioneer family,” Peggy said. “Sheriff, did you ever take that field trip to her place when you were in elementary school?”
“I must have missed that day.” He took a big bite of the burger.
“Well, I didn’t miss it,” Peggy went on. “She talked about her ancestors knowing Daniel Boone or something like that. You know, ‘Kilt him a bar when he was only three.’”
“You sure that wasn’t Davy Crockett, that Disney show?” Ann said, dipping her French fries in ketchup that reminded him of the crime scene. He quit chewing the burger. Couldn’t they cut the chatter? A man had been killed today.
“Okay, thanks again for the food,” Gabe said. “I’ll talk to Miss Etta about that and get back to the mayor. And before I head home tonight, I’m going to drive out to Blackberry Road to take a look at Marva Green’s old place.”
Vic had evidently heard their voices and walked in from his lair down the hall. “So far, all I have on the gun is that it’s an 1842 lock pistol by Derringer, no less. Made in Philadelphia, curved wooden handle, the whole nine yards—except who owned it and who fired it. Mike’s driven back to BCI to use the lab facilities there instead of the ones in the truck, so I’m waiting until tomorrow to go back to Dane’s house.”
The desk phone rang, and Peggy answered it. Gabe said a silent prayer it was Tess. Peggy handed him the phone.
“Sheriff Gabe McCord here.”
He heard a woman’s excited voice, though not the one he wanted to hear. It was Marian Bell.
“Sheriff, you were right all along! Thank God—and you—I just got a call from the private detective we hired! He’s located Amanda with Peter and the home-wrecker slut he’s been living with in South America! I’m going to get a lawyer, and I’m going to get her back, but she’s alive! She wasn’t kidnapped here like the others!”
“That’s great, Marian! Let’s get our congressman and the state department involved. You’ll need other kinds of help now. Call me if you need assistance from this office.”
He was relieved, happy for her, but he still felt the loss of the others pulling him down. After he hung up, Ann and Peggy cheered. Vic even cracked a smile. But Gabe knew he was the one who needed other kinds of help now. When he was in Iraq, his team had a superstition: if you got a gift when one bomb was a dud, you really had to fear what happened next.
* * *
Tess had to go clear around to the back of the old farmhouse in the rain. The side windows on the first floor were too high to look into without climbing on something.
The tall windows made her feel like a small child again. Was this place getting to her in another way—subconscious memories? Fighting that fear, she decided to move her position so she could hear more than a blur of voices muted by the sound of rain and the waterfall.
Her stomach cramped, but she’d come this far and she was going to look in. One peek, assess the situation, catch something said, more than what she’d overheard from Dane. Then she’d back off and phone Gabe, if there was more to report than kids who had to put their thoughts in black spray paint on places they shouldn’t.
Under a sagging porch ceiling held up by two crooked pillars, the back door was open! Maybe they wanted fresh air or just hadn’t thought to close it. Again, she heard a female voice and maybe more than one man’s. There was a sharp, acrid smell drifting out the back door. Holding her breath, she edged closer and peered inside. She saw a kind of mudroom. The kitchen must be down a short hall beyond where the people were. To the right, she saw back stairs that went upward.
The voices were clear now, though she couldn’t really follow what was being said—until she heard Gabe’s name.
“Far’s I’m concerned, McCord might as well be Barney Fife with one bullet in his gun,” a man said with a kind of hee-haw laugh. “This whole place is like that old TV show Mayberry R.F.D. He’s been lookin’ for us for years, his daddy too, but we keep movin’ the goods.”
“Who’s your daddy?” another male voice said. “If he ain’t the sheriff out chasin’ lost little chicks, he ain’t nothin’ around here.”
Tess’s stomach cramped. Could these voices belong to the kidnappers? Was that what they were mocking Gabe about? But what were they doing here? And why didn’t the girl or woman speak again? Had they gagged her, drugged her? Tess could almost picture that as if it was happening to her.
She edged in the door, sidling toward the staircase in case she had to hide. Then, on the stairs above her, she saw a small circle of light. Maybe there was a window into the kitchen, a vent perhaps.
Holding her breath, she tiptoed up a step, then another. In the kitchen, they were making so much noise they didn’t hear the stairs creak, and she had the wat
erfall and rain to thank for that too. The hole was where a vent must have come out into these narrow back stairs years ago, when there were wood fires in potbellied stoves.
Keeping her face as far back from the opening as she could, she peered into the kitchen. It looked as though they were cooking something on the counter and on a beat-up table. She saw no stove or refrigerator, but of course the appliances had been stripped out years ago. They were using a small generator that was making a low buzzing noise. No doubt the electricity in this place had been turned off when Marva left. These weren’t homeless people making dinner somewhere they could find shelter. They’d said Gabe had looked for them for years, and they knew about the kidnappings.
She glimpsed bottles, a big funnel, Pyrex-type dishes and a blender. She gasped. These people were mixing and cooking up meth. It could blow sky-high if something went wrong. A petite but tough-looking woman moved into view. Tess glimpsed two men; she heard a third.
“We oughta go to the one-pot method,” the girl said. She had dirty-looking hair pulled straight back in a long ponytail. “You know, shake-and-bake, toss the bottle out of the car when we’re done with it.”
“Too damn dangerous. You think this stuff can’t blow? One wrong shake of the bottle, a little air gets in and fireball.” The man clapped his hands together, and Tess jumped.
She had to get out of here. She’d call Gabe, but not about finding kidnappers. She was sure these people didn’t have the finesse, the smarts, to pull that off. But this old house, the sound of the falls, even the back stairs, seemed somehow familiar, and she’d have to tell Gabe that.
Holding her breath, she began to creep down the steps to get out the back door. She froze when a phone rang, but it wasn’t hers. She’d muted her ring, and that phone played “Dixie.” One of the men stepped into the mudroom to take the call, blocking her escape.
