Hide and Seek

by Burton, Mary

  “Mom.”

  Brooke sat on the end of his bed and rubbed her son’s back. “You should be asleep, baby.”

  “I’m not a baby, Mom.” Matt rolled over and sat up, pushing his thick dark hair out of his eyes.

  “You’ll always be my baby.” Which was one of the reasons she’d brought him the computer today. It felt good to be needed.

  “Mom. Stop.”

  “Got it.”

  “Are you coming or going?”

  “Passing through. I need a quick shower, maybe a little sleep, and a change of clothes before I head back to work.” She traced her hand over the star shapes on the coverlet. “Did the front office give you your computer and the lunch money?”

  “Yeah. Thanks for bringing it. Where was Grandma?”

  “With a patient.”

  Matt was silent, but she knew the wheels were turning in his head. “Any word how the girl found in the Wyatt barn died?”

  “Not yet.” Her heart wanted to ache for the man’s loss, but she knew grief would only cloud her thoughts and inhibit her from truly helping Turner.

  “Are Tyler and the football players having bonfires out there?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “I don’t know, Mom. I just know they’re obsessed with the place now.”

  “It’s a crime scene.”

  “I know.” He took her hand in his, just like he had when he was little. “It’s okay, Mom. I’m not going out there.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  She smiled and kissed her son on his forehead. “You need sleep.”

  Matt yawned. “So do you.”

  “I will.”

  “Did you know the dead girl?” Matt asked.

  Brooke was quiet as she smoothed her hand over the light-gray coverlet. “I remember her from school. I remember when she vanished. It was a scary time.”

  The truth was she barely remembered those weeks. She had been consumed by morning sickness and preoccupied with hiding her pregnancy from her mother.

  “You’ll solve the case,” Matt said. “You’re a badass cop.”

  She squeezed his hand. “I hope so, for the sake of that girl.”

  “I saw Hank Greene on television today.”

  “What was he talking about?” Greene wasn’t the type to keep his mouth shut.

  “He hinted that he’s going to challenge Sheriff Nevada during the next election and win his seat back.”

  “Well, then he’s in for a real fight, isn’t he? Nevada is no pushover.”

  Matt drew in a breath. “Whoever killed that girl could still be in town. You need to be careful, Mom.”

  “I’ll be fine. You just make sure you stay away from those bonfires.”

  “Jeez, Mom. I got it.”

  Brooke brushed a strand of hair from her son’s eyes. If only she could make him understand that monsters were real and they could steal his life if given the chance.

  Through most of the late evening, Nevada asked around a few of the bars, but it took him an hour before he tracked down Paul Decker at a trailer located in a mobile home park twenty miles west of town. When he pulled up, a light glowed from inside the small residence. Out of the car, he kept his jacket unbuttoned and his weapon accessible. Rock music pulsed out of the trailer, accompanied by the heavy scent of cigarette smoke.

  The steady beat of a bass guitar riff stretched on as Nevada waited and listened. He pounded his fist against the trailer’s thin metal door before he stepped to the side. “Decker. Sheriff Nevada.”

  The music stopped, and fleeting silence broke with the steady thud of footsteps approaching the door. Mustard-yellow curtains flickered, and the door opened to Paul Decker. He’d been the wide receiver on the Dream Team, but the lean frame that had earned him the name Lightning now carried an extra twenty pounds of weight, while hunched shoulders, a scraggly beard, and thinning black hair added a decade to his appearance.

  Nevada rested his hand on the grip of his weapon. “Decker, I’d like to ask you a few questions. Would you step outside, please?”

  Paul raised a cigarette to his lips. “What kind of questions?”

  “Step outside. I won’t ask again.” He smiled, but Nevada knew his smiles tended to look more feral than friendly.

  Smoke trailed around Paul’s head before he flicked the cigarette to the ground and stepped outside. “Sure.”

  Nevada looked beyond Paul into the trailer. “Anyone else in the trailer?”

  “No, it’s just me. What’s this about?”

  After he’d dropped Macy off, Nevada had pulled Paul’s arrest record. Though he knew Paul’s DNA did not match the man he was hunting, the former football player might have information about the other members of the Dream Team, as well as about the bonfires Tobi might have attended.

  “You were arrested for sexual assault ten years ago,” Nevada said.

  Paul shook his head. “And I did my time, and now I’m out on parole. I’ve stayed out of trouble since I came back to Deep Run.”

  Nevada had reviewed Paul’s case file and seen some of the pictures taken of the woman who’d filed the charges against him. Her left eye had been black and blue and swollen. And her right wrist had also been badly sprained. “You hurt her pretty bad.”

  Paul sniffed as he kicked the dirt with the tip of his booted foot. “My jail time is old news. Why are you here?”

  Of all the members of the Dream Team, Paul had shown the most promise and would have had a lot to lose if he were tangled up in the rapes or disappearances of 2004. “Do you remember Tobi Turner?”

  “Tobi. Shit. She’s the one that went missing.”

  “She’s not missing anymore. Her body was found about a week ago.”

  “Really? I don’t watch the news.” He fished a fresh cigarette from his pocket and lit it. Smoke curled around his head.

  “When’s the last time you saw Tobi?” Nevada asked.

  “Dude, it was fifteen years ago. I barely remember yesterday.”

  “What’s your last memory of her?”

  “Some geeky kid who liked to hang around and watch football practice. She was cute in a sad kind of way.”

  “Did she hang around with anyone? Talk to anyone?”

  “She was a band girl. Not my style.”

  “Did Tobi ever come to the bonfires?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  Nevada traced the underside of his college class ring with his thumb. “You had a reputation for being even faster with your head than with your feet on the football field.”

  Pride winked in his pale-gray eyes. “When it came to football, I was the complete package.”

  “I need you to reboot your brain and give me something about Tobi.”

  “Man, I told you I don’t remember much.”

  “Tell me about the days before she vanished. You two were seen talking at her locker.”

  “Really? I don’t recall.” He took another deep drag on the cigarette.

  “I want to be nice,” Nevada said. “But you’re on parole, and right now, I got no problem calling your probation officer and raining shit down on your dumb ass.”

  “Shit. Why would you do that? I’ve been clean since I got out. Working hard, not missing a shift, and staying clear of the bars.”

  “It’s not enough, Paul. I want details about Tobi. What did you two talk about that day?”

  Paul’s hands trembled slightly as he raised the cigarette and drew in another lungful of air. “I was chatting her up. I saw her looking at me, and I thought I’d have a little fun. She wasn’t all that hot, but I was seventeen and would have screwed anything.”

  “Did you?”

  “Screw her? No. That virgin vault was locked up tight.”

  “A seventeen-year-old would see that as a challenge.”

  “I didn’t. I had plenty of girls then.”

  “How did Tobi get to the bonfire?”

 
; “I don’t know dick about the Turner girl. Last I saw her, Cindy Shaw was making nice with her and acting like they were friends.”

  “Cindy Shaw?” It wasn’t lost on him that Macy had brought the girl’s name up multiple times today.

  “Yeah.”

  “Were they friends?”

  “Shit, no. Cindy had to be angling for something. My guess is it was money or test answers. Cindy was never nice unless there was a good reason for it.”

  “Where did you see Cindy talking to Tobi?”

  “Next to the new field house, I guess. It was after one of the games. Only reason I remember was because Cindy saw me, smiled, and tugged at her top.”

  “What do you think happened to Cindy?”

  “I heard she was living in Arizona. Someone said she had married a rich guy.”

  California, Colorado, and now Arizona. No one really knew where Cindy had landed when she’d left Deep Run. “You believe that was true?”

  “Shit, who knows? Probably. She was hot and she liked the finer things.” Another inhale. “Why do you care about Cindy?”

  “Because you just told me she was with Tobi Turner shortly before they both vanished. Anything that relates to Tobi is important to me.”

  “Cindy was seen with half the school those last couple of weeks. She was all about Bruce and the Dream Team going to the finals. She wanted her big brother to go all the way and take her along with him. Bruce was her ticket out of the trailer park.”

  The Dream Team had been near gods in the weeks leading up to the championship game. A lot of wrongs, including rape kits, could have easily been swept under the carpet so they could keep playing and winning. “Tell me about the bonfires.”

  “They were like a good luck ritual.” He shrugged. “None of us wanted to do anything to break our winning streak that year.”

  “Like a lucky rabbit’s foot?” Nevada asked.

  “Our routine never changed. We liked the big blazes burning in the woods and the shots of Fireball the night before a game. The coach knew about them. He said the bonfires were our chance to incinerate any fears we had. There was no room for doubt on the field.”

  “That would have been Coach Medina.”

  “That’s right. I heard he died a couple of years ago. Heart attack.”

  “Medina and Greene were tight, right?”

  “Yeah. They played ball together back in the day. Greene liked to stop by practice, and they’d shoot the shit.”

  “The boys on the team stuck by each other. Kind of like Band of Brothers.”

  “Yeah, we had each other’s back on and off the field. That’s why we did so well.”

  “Would you have covered for each other to protect the team?”

  Paul ground his cigarette butt into the dirt. “That bond broke a long time ago.”

  “Why’s that?”

  He sniffed. “I called around to some of the guys when I was arrested. None of them stepped up.”

  “That must have stung.”

  “Sure as shit did. So I’m not protecting anyone.”

  Nevada wasn’t sure he believed Paul. “Good to know you have an open mind. Make your parole officer proud, and keep thinking about those last days with Tobi and Cindy. We’ll talk again soon.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Tuesday, November 19, 2:45 a.m.

  Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.

  Macy woke after two hours of sleep. She spent the next thirty minutes rolling around on her back, then to one side and then the next. She punched her pillow. Did deep-breathing exercises. But slumber danced out of reach.

  She stared at the shadows crisscrossing the ceiling. The idea of watching 1980s sitcoms while she waited for the sun reminded her of the long nights recovering in the hospital. It was this side of hell.

  When the clock on the nightstand clicked over to 2:46 a.m., she cursed and rose. She glanced back at the rumpled bedsheets. Would she ever get a decent night’s sleep again? God, how she missed it.

  She padded to the bathroom, flipped on the shower, and stripped. When the steam rose up, she stepped under the spray and let the heat work into her stiff muscles. Finally, she unwrapped the small bar of soap and washed.

  She thought about the evidence boxes from the rapes and the Turner case. It wouldn’t hurt to go through them.

  Macy shut off the water and toweled off. Wiping away the condensation from the mirror, she caught her reflection and groaned. She flexed her bicep. Despite a couple of weeks of moderate CrossFit classes, the muscle tone hadn’t returned. Her stomach was almost concave and her hips too narrow. She plucked at the awkward spikes of blond hair and eyed the jagged red scar along her leg. The blotchy road rash on her hip and side didn’t help either.

  “Jesus, Crow,” she muttered. “You look like the experiment Frankenstein got wrong.” It was either accept her life as it was or cry. And she didn’t have time to cry.

  Determined not to be vain, she set up the coffee maker, and while it gurgled, she dressed in clean clothes. She ran her fingers through her hair, knowing a real cut had to be in her future. She called the sheriff’s office and asked the dispatcher about getting the files, which were housed in a storeroom on site.

  Fifteen minutes later, she stepped out into the cool night air, backpack on shoulder, coffee and keys in one hand, the other free. As she always did, she paused and surveyed the parking lot, searching for any sign that something wasn’t right. When she was certain she was safe, she pressed her key fob. The lights on her vehicle winked, and the door locks clicked open. After tossing in her bag, she got behind the wheel, doors quickly locked, and started the engine. She cranked the heat.

  The drive back to the sheriff’s office took her through the quiet streets slightly glistening after a gentle rain. She parked in front of the sheriff’s office, sipped the last of her coffee, and pushed through the front door seconds later.

  The dispatcher tonight was an African American woman who appeared to be in her midfifties. Slender, she had brushed back her salt-and-pepper hair into a tight bun. Glasses perched on the edge of her nose as she looked up. Unfazed by the sight of Macy, she was clearly accustomed to late-night visitors.

  “Can I help you?” Her voice crackled over the intercom.

  Macy held up her badge. “Special Agent Macy Crow. I’m working with the sheriff.”

  “I heard about you. I suppose you’re here for the evidence files.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m Deputy Morgan.” She pressed the button and the door unlatched.

  Macy pushed through.

  “Glad to have you.” She rose and walked toward the conference room with Macy. “The evidence boxes arrived a few minutes ago. I figured you wouldn’t be back until morning.”

  “I don’t sleep well when I’m on the road.”

  “I like to sleep in my own bed, myself.” She flipped on the conference-room light. “No evidence boxes for Tobi. All that was collected at the barn is with the Roanoke lab.”

  Macy lifted one of the three blue file boxes. It was light. “Can you also see if there was a missing person file for Cindy Shaw?”

  “Cindy Shaw?”

  “She went to school with Tobi and vanished about the same time.”

  Deputy Morgan shook her head. “I don’t remember the name, but I’ll have a look in the system.”

  “Pull anything you have on Cindy Shaw, would you?” Macy asked.

  The phone rang, drawing Deputy Morgan’s attention back to her console. Macy dropped her backpack in a chair and opened Susan Oswald’s box.

  The evidence sticker on the side stated that the materials had been collected on June 15, 2004, by Deputy Marty Shoemaker and collected from Susan Oswald’s room. The chain of custody line stated the evidence had been transported from the scene to the locker but had never been checked out again.

  There were five plastic evidence bags. The first contained the pantyhose, still coiled into a tight circle. The next bag held two single earring
s that did not match. Another held the white fitted sheet from her bed, which had a square cut from the center for DNA collection. There was a bag containing her oversize green Valley High School T-shirt. And finally, a partial plaster mold of a footprint. A paltry collection from an offender who’d left years of pain in his wake.

  Macy removed her yellow legal pad and made notes.

  The shoe impression taken at the scene next to Susan’s window was a right-foot, size-eleven athletic shoe. She listed several shoe companies that could have possibly made it.

  As she worked her way through the box, she scribbled more notes.

  Collects keepsakes. Doesn’t use a condom. Shows remorse?

  He was less interested in the sex than the violence. Most likely he craved the girls’ fear. He choked each to near unconsciousness and grew increasingly violent. The perpetrator was practicing. Experimenting. Building up skills, courage, or endurance for murder.

  Macy picked up the bagged pantyhose and socks in the evidence box. She flipped through her file. According to Greene, “Ms. Oswald says he used the pantyhose to bind her.” And then in very bold letters the words: “VERY UPSET.”

  Ellis Carter’s box also contained the cotton sheet that had been on her bed when she had been attacked, a single woman’s hiking shoe, and a strand of red rope that had been used to bind her hands behind her back.

  Again, Macy searched Greene’s case notes. Rebecca Kennedy had also been bound with a red rope, and she had always assumed her attacker had brought the binding with him.

  The first time the assailant hadn’t been prepared. But in subsequent attacks he came ready with rope. She added red rope to her list.

  Macy spent the next few hours going through each box, reading all of Greene’s comments, and making more notes. He had interviewed the people who’d lived closest to the victims. One had reported seeing a shadowed figure on the road near Ellis Carter’s house, but when the neighbor had gone out to investigate, the person had vanished. He had also interviewed Rebecca’s neighbors.