Red Web

by Ninie Hammon

  "Let's go finish that cup of coffee."

  She'd left her cellphone on the kitchen counter and it rang as she walked back into the room. Caller ID identified Dobbs.

  "Houston, we have liftoff," he said.

  "What?"

  "Just got a text from Zankoski. He found out what happened to Caitlyn Whitfield."

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Brice pulled up in front of the Ferrigliano house and Agent Trimboli, who'd been assigned to detain the boy for questioning, walked out to meet him as he came up the sidewalk.

  "He's not home yet," she said, her voice as tired as the circles under her eyes indicated she was. Fatigue had dulled the sharp edges of her personality, sapped the energy it took to emasculate anyone near her unfortunate enough to possess a Y chromosome. "The parents went next door to the Campbells’."

  As he stepped up onto the Campbells' porch, he could hear the sound of raised voices inside. He didn't bother to knock. Ashok Arya, seated at the dining room table with headphones tethering him to the recording equipment on the Campbells' phone line, nodded toward the kitchen where an argument was raging.

  "Natives are getting restless," he said.

  Brice stepped into the kitchen doorway and stopped there.

  "I want to know what your Lucas was doing with my baby," cried Jeanette Campbell, her voice high and reedy-shrill.

  "Now, Jeanette, you're jumping to—" Norm Campbell was obviously trying, and clearly failing, to be the voice of reason. Tony Ferrigliano was obviously trying, and apparently succeeding, to stay out of the fray. It was the women who were going after each other.

  "Why would you accuse Lucas of something so … horrible?" said Francine Ferrigliano."You've known him his whole life."

  "And he's known Riley his whole life, too," Jeanette Campbell said. "So what does he know that he's not telling?"

  "He doesn't know anything."

  "He knows something, or the FBI wouldn't want to talk to him."

  "That's right — Talk. To. Him. That doesn't make him a suspect. You're blowing this all out of—"

  Then Francine spotted Brice.

  "You tell her, Sheriff. Tell her my son didn't—"

  "Do you think Lucas had something to do with Riley's disappearance?" Jeanette Campbell was hanging onto control by a thread. "Do you?"

  "Everybody needs to calm down," Brice said.

  "My little boy is missing. He's gone. And if Lucas knows what hap—"

  "He doesn't know anything about Riley's kidnap—"

  "Then why does the FBI—?"

  "I said, calm down!" Brice's voice was sharp enough to cause internal bleeding. "We want to talk to Lucas because he might have information we need." He held up his hands as all four of the parents chimed in at once, the Campbells with accusations, the Ferriglianos with denials. "We have some things we want to discuss with him." He turned to Francine. "I thought you said he'd be home by now."

  "He'll be here any minute. He usually gets off at noon but he went out on a final delivery." She stepped up to Brice and looked pleadingly into his face. "Tell us what's going on, Sheriff McGreggor. Please. Why do you want to talk to Lucas about Riley? What could he possibly know that would be helpful?"

  "We won't know that until we talk to him."

  All four of the parents exploded with questions, accusations and denials at once. It was time to separate them before they came to blows.

  "Would you please come with me?" he said to the Ferriglianos. "I'd like to speak to you privately."

  "What do you want to ask them that you can't say in front of us?" Jeanette demanded. She turned to Francine, glaring. "We were best friends, had no secrets from each other, lived in each other's pockets. And all that time Lucas was … was …"

  "Was doing absolutely nothing!" Tony Ferrigliano finally leapt off the fence, roaring into Papa Bear mode. "My boy is not a … he could not have hurt Riley. Don't you dare suggest—"

  "I'm not suggesting. The FBI is suggesting—"

  "That's enough!" Brice's voice reverberated like a Howitzer. In the stunned silence that followed, he took Francine's elbow and shoved her toward the door, cocked his chin in that direction and told Tony, "Now!"

  The Campbells fell silent and the Ferriglianos preceded Brice out the door and across the yard to their home. Agent Trimboli stood in the doorway of the living room. It was fashionably rustic — a high-beamed ceiling with hunting and fishing trophies on the walls, each with a plaque providing the weight/length of the fish, or the distance from which the buck, elk, caribou or — that was a buffalo! — had been shot, and who'd pulled the trigger.

  Brice studied the trophies for a moment, ignoring the parents as they bombarded him with questions. Then he turned to them. Stood silent until their babble ran out of steam.

  "Sit down and listen to me," he told them.

  They sat.

  "Nobody's accusing your son of wrongdoing. Nobody's saying he had something to do with the disappearance of Riley Campbell."

  "Tell that to Jeanette Campbell," Francine muttered.

  "I would like your permission to search Lucas's room."

  Tony went off like a bottle rocket.

  "You just said you didn't think he'd done anything wrong, so why do you want to search his room?"

  "It's my job to turn over every stone, look under every rock. You have the right to refuse to allow me to search the property, in which case I will secure the area, no one in or out, and I'll get a court-ordered search warrant. That will eat up time I could spend looking for three missing kids, but it won't change the outcome."

  "Oh, go ahead," Tony said. "He didn't do anything, so what could he possibly have to hide?"

  Brice turned to go upstairs and both parents started to accompany him.

  "You two stay down here with me," said Agent Trimboli, with no less steel in her voice than there'd been in Brice's.

  Francine started to protest but Tony touched her arm and shook his head. Then they both sat down heavily on the couch.

  "It's the first room on the right," Francine said.

  Brice stepped into Lucas's room and the sweat-sock, tennis-shoe, pile-of-dirty-laundry stink, the universal aroma of teenage-boy-dom, assaulted his senses. Clearly, the boy had gone "nose blind."

  West Virginia University pennants competed for wall space with posters of a sensuously thin blonde movie star. Brice supposed she was a movie star, but maybe she was a rock singer. She looked vaguely familiar but he couldn't place her face. He searched the contents of the drawers in the bedside nightstands and the dresser. No drugs, nothing out of the ordinary. Boy stuff.

  Under the mattress on the unmade bed he found a "true crime" magazine missing a cover that contained staged shots of women being tortured, lots of blood and gore, out there on the edge of appropriate for a teenage boy. Obviously, Lucas knew his parents would not approve.

  The laptop on the desk was turned off. He examined the contents of the desk drawers and turned up nothing. The clothes in the closet were fashionably "shabby chic," ragged shirts and jeans with holes in the knees along with stinky sneakers and a pair of muddy boots. Feeling around on the top shelf, he found sweaters, out-of-season hoodies and … his fingers brushed something in the back corner.

  Tall as he was, he didn't need to climb on a chair to move the clothing that obscured what he'd touched — a shoebox. Not one that'd held the teenager's own size-eleven shoes. This was much smaller, must have been his little sister's. Brice took out gloves and put them on before lifting the box off the shelf and setting it on the desk. Inside were several pieces of jewelry — shiny bling, gold chains and two rings. Brice was no expert, but he thought they were just knockoffs. If they were authentic, though, real gold and the ring stones not zirconium, the boy had some source of income in addition to working as a delivery driver. In the bottom of the box were photographs.

  Pictures of Riley Campbell.

  Brice picked them up and examined them, one by one. The first was a school pictu
re, this year's. Beneath it was the kindergarten picture, where his front teeth were obviously missing. Other pictures were snapshots, many of them with other members of both families. Campfire pictures. Lake pictures. Picnic pictures. Holiday pictures. But all of them were centered on Riley. Riley roasting a marshmallow on a blazing campfire. Riley sitting on the shore studying the cork floating on the water at the end of his fishing line. Riley mugging for the camera in his Halloween costume. The Spiderman costume all built out, stuffed so it looked like the wearer was as buff as Ben Affleck, put Brice in mind of the superhero dolls he had found in Riley Campbell's secret treasure.

  None of the pictures were in any way lurid or inappropriate. Oh, there were shots of the boy in swimming trunks, one of him coming out of the water with a towel wrapped around his waist, as if something had happened to his trunks in the lake. The photos showed nothing of a prurient nature. But the sheer number of them made a statement, said … something, but Brice didn't know what.

  What he did know was that Nakamura would want to have a long talk about them with Lucas Ferrigliano.

  Leaving the box of photos on the boy's desk, Brice closed the bedroom door behind him and went back downstairs where the parents were waiting in the living room. They both jumped to their feet when he entered.

  "Did you find … well, anything?" Tony wanted to know.

  Brice sidestepped the question.

  "I thought you said Lucas would be home any time now. That was fifteen minutes ago."

  "You said the same thing half an hour before that," Trimboli said. "Where is he?"

  "I left him a message that you wanted to talk to him," Francine said.

  "So his phone's off?" Brice asked.

  "No … that's the thing." She cast a look at her husband. "It's not off. It rings. He's just not picking up."

  "The store manager said he was out on a delivery and—" Tony began.

  "No, I didn't talk to the manager," Francine corrected. "He … doesn't like Lucas, threatened to fire him if he took his dog on deliveries again and since she's not here, Lucas must've—"

  "Who did you talk to?" Brice demanded.

  "That little girl who works the drive-in window."

  "The drive-in window where? Where does Lucas work?"

  "Andolino's Pies, the pizza place in the mall."

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  "T.J.'s still here," Bailey told Dobbs. "He'll want to hear. Putting you on speaker."

  Dobbs's deep baritone boomed in mid-sentence out of the little device on the kitchen counter.

  "— a written report along with his bill, which he let me know would be enough to put his kids through Harvard."

  "Okay, Dobbs, we're both here," Bailey said.

  "Like I said, this is just a synopsis. Zankoski has all the details and said he'll email it to me in a little while. But I knew you'd want to know."

  "Stop fiddle-fartin' around and tell us."

  Bailey stood with her arms crossed, felt her fingernails digging into her upper arms as she tensed for the blow.

  "Caitlyn Whitfield wasn't kidnapped and murdered by the same person who kidnapped Riley and Christi."

  Bailey stopped breathing, couldn't speak, but T.J. voiced her thought.

  "And you know that how?"

  "She wasn't kidnapped by anybody. Or murdered by anybody. Caitlyn Whitfield is alive."

  "Alive?" The word burst with a breath out of Bailey's mouth. Then she started sputtering. "But how did she … where did she … why—?"

  "Do you want to ask questions or do you want me to tell you what I know? You get to pick one."

  "Okay, tell us," T.J. grumbled.

  "He found Caitlyn in Kentucky. Remember the Bartleys saying she'd worked at a Starbucks? Well, she got a job at one in Louisville about a week after she vanished from Huntington."

  Alive! Alive! Alive! was reverberating in Bailey's head like she'd climbed inside a kettle drum. But if Caitlyn was alive, why didn't Bailey feel any connection to her?

  Dobbs was saying something, and she had to ask him to repeat it.

  "I said, she met a young man there, whirlwind romance and they got married."

  "Married? But she was only eighteen."

  "Save the commentary," T.J. warned. "He'll drag this out all night if you don't shut up and listen."

  "Lip zipped."

  "So the man she married came from money, as in Kentucky-horse-farm money, which is oooold money."

  Bailey knew what came next — his family was not happy about their son marrying somebody who was not of equal old-money stature. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, wore it out, cut it up and used it for a dust cloth. She wondered if they'd managed to convey to Caitlyn their disdain and disapproval, as Aaron's family had conveyed it to her, without ever saying a word of it out loud.

  "… on a honeymoon to the Caribbean, occupied the honeymoon suites in the most expensive resorts in Antigua, St. Martin, Grand Cayman. They were booked for two weeks of wedded bliss. But it ended after eleven days when her brand new husband died."

  "Died?" T.J. was incredulous.

  "Was killed, actually."

  Bailey sucked in a gasp of horror.

  "Zankoski said there'd be more details in the final report, but in brief it seems the two of them were out alone and got mugged — attacked by a gang, most likely. Caitlyn was just knocked unconscious, but they beat her husband to death and Zankoski said that in the crime-scene pictures he saw the guy was totally unrecognizable. Not just you couldn't tell who he was. You couldn't tell what he was. He was so torn up the body didn't even look human."

  Bailey was so horrified she couldn't speak. First a poor little girl survives the wreck that killed her parents … and the nightmare after. Goes zombie for almost two years, and when she finally finds happiness … a life! … her husband gets murdered.

  "After that it got a little tricky. She had money — lots of it, apparently — from her husband's estate and from his insurance policies. She used it to pull another vanishing act, only this time she had the funding to do it right. She changed her name, got a whole new identity and sprang back to life again in Pittsburgh, where she enrolled as a freshman at Pitt, graduated in three years and immediately got a job. She worked at the first job for three years, and has been working where she is currently employed for the past two years."

  "I don't know if this sounds like a fairytale or a horror story," Bailey said, her voice airless. "I'm still trying to figure out … if she's alive, then why is there no connection?"

  "Sweetheart, you ain't heard nothing yet."

  "You sayin' there's more weird? Now, that's scary."

  "Are you two sitting down?"

  "What? I'm gonna be so shocked I pass out dead on the floor?"

  "You never know. Okay … Caitlyn Whitfield married Darren Foster, III, of the Lexington, Kentucky, King Farm Fosters. So she became Caitlyn Foster. After his death, she changed her name to … Melody McCallum."

  Bailey lost her breath, literally couldn't seem to draw any air into her lungs. If she hadn't been sitting down, she might actually have collapsed in the floor from shock.

  Melody McCallum!

  She realized Dobbs was still talking and forced herself to attend to what he was saying.

  "… majored in education and minored entomology at Pitt. When she graduated, she took a job teaching second grade at Madison Elementary School here in our very own Shadow Rock, West Virginia, and then became a first-grade teacher at Corruthers Elementary. When she moved here, she had a holding company purchase The Cedars."

  "The Cedars!" T.J. cried. "As in the The Cedars?"

  "The same. It was a rooming house at the time and she just moved in — people thought she was a boarder — and one by one the other roomers moved out until the house was hers. I guess she didn't want to flaunt the fact that a first-grade teacher owned one of the most famous homes in Kavanaugh County."

  "She lives in The Cedars … owns The Cedars …" T.J. was obviously scra
mbling to make it all fit into his head, too.

  As puzzle pieces began to fall into place for Bailey she realized what a fool's errand she'd been on, they'd all been on, from the very beginning.

  "Painting the little girl in the car didn't have a thing to do with Riley Campbell," she said, the full impact of that taking her breath away. "All this chasing around, searching, trying to find … I painted Caitlyn Whitfield because 'Melody McCallum' gave Riley's picture to Brice. He told me so when he handed it to me."

  "Well …" T.J. stopped. Then he continued. "There wasn't no way to know whether or not you could paint somebody — Riley Campbell — just 'cause you'd decided that's what you was going to do. I guess the answer is no, you can't. You painted that little girl 'cause of the … whatever it is, the energy, the vibe, whatever … was left on the boy's picture by the teacher who'd given it to Brice."

  Bailey sat where she was, letting the information sink in slowly, trying to assimilate it.

  "I don't have the whole, detailed report yet. Soon's I get it, I'll bring it over."

  Bailey punched the off button on the phone and looked at T.J. She repeated it again, out loud, trying to make it real.

  "We never were helping to find that little boy."

  "We was lost ducks in high weeds, honking out one explanation or another but we didn't have no real idea where the pond was. Still, don't be so hard on yourself. There wasn't no way to find out the little girl didn't have nothing to do with Riley except to chase it down and find it out."

  "And now we know."

  Some of the pieces didn't fit, though.

  "If that little girl in there," she gestured toward the studio, "is Melody McCallum, why haven't I been connecting to her? Melody … Caitlyn was right here, probably not ten miles away, but I never once sensed her the way I did Macy Cosgrove. Why not?"

  "I can't answer that question. But I 'spect it's what I was sayin' before. That little girl … Caitlyn, or Melody … she wasn't draggin' a full string of fish. Connecting to her mind was like sticking a finger in a light socket."