Breakfast had been awkward, the first awkwardness she’d felt between herself and Seth. She didn’t want to hang around until things got worse than awkward.
She hadn’t seen Seth since they’d arrived at the office that morning. Once again it had been Deputy Broadwick who had brought her some lunch and had sat with her and visited for a few minutes before he’d disappeared back to his duties.
As she thought of the night before her cheeks burned with a touch of embarrassment. She’d practically begged Seth to make love to her and she couldn’t even be upset with him for refusing. He’d been right. This wasn’t real life and she had to stop clinging to him, wanting him, pretending that somehow this life with him in Linda’s house in Amber Lake could be real.
Definitely time to go, and hopefully the man who had taken her wouldn’t follow her home. She hoped something would break that would allow Seth and the sheriff and his men to make an arrest within the next couple of days.
Besides, she knew the killer was a local and she had a feeling if she put some miles between him and herself she’d be safe. Unfortunately, that meant he’d turn his attention to another woman.
It was just after five when Seth came into the lounge and it was obvious by the slump of his shoulders, the terse set of his mouth, that nothing positive had happened again today.
He looked bone-weary and she could only imagine the pressure on him and all the others to solve the crime, to put the bad man behind bars.
“How about we stop by the café for some dinner before heading home,” he suggested as they got into his truck.
“Sounds fine to me.” Maybe it would be easier to tell him what she’d decided about leaving in the morning over a meal in a public place. At least then she hopefully wouldn’t have to worry about embarrassing herself by crying or accidentally confessing that she was madly in love with him.
It took them only a few minutes to get to the café and be seated at a table in the back where he ordered the special of chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes and she decided to have the roast beef with vegetables.
As they waited for their meals, they chatted a bit about nothing, the awkwardness that had been between them that morning lingering on.
Again and again her attention was drawn to the sign advertising the caramel pie, her thoughts returned to those moments in the rest area and her brain worked to find any hidden details she could offer Seth as a parting gift. But there was nothing.
“I’m leaving in the morning,” she said, breaking the uncomfortable veil of silence.
He looked at her in stunned surprise. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m renting a car and heading back home. I can’t do anything more here.”
“But there are still things we don’t know. If what you remembered about the rest area is true, then you were abducted around seven or eight at night and yet you weren’t discovered until the next afternoon. We need to find out about those missing hours now more than ever.”
Tamara picked up her glass of iced tea and took a sip and then set the glass back on the table. “I’ve done all I can, Seth.” She didn’t look at him, but rather kept her gaze on the wooden table. “Maybe I’m never supposed to remember that time, maybe my brain will always protect me from whatever happened during those hours. All I know is that it’s time for me to get home. It’s time for Linda and Samantha to have their house back and for me to get on with the rest of my life.”
“Are you sure you’re ready to go back?”
She looked up at him and wanted to fall into the soft gray of his eyes. He cared about her. She knew that without question. She’d never forget that moment when she’d come to consciousness in the sand and her first sight had been those kind, calm eyes of his. It might have been that single second of connection that had made her fall in love with him.
“Ready or not, it’s time,” she replied. “I have clients ready for me to get back to work. If I remember anything else I can always call you. But it’s foolish for me to just hang around here and put off the inevitable.”
“But how will you get home? We haven’t even found your car.”
“That’s what rental cars are for. I’m sure there’s a place here in town or nearby where I can rent a car to get back to Amarillo. Once there I’ll talk to my car insurance company and see what they can work out. As far as I’m concerned, my car is officially a stolen vehicle. I’ll manage.”
He looked as if he wanted to change her mind, but he leaned back in his chair and released a sigh of obvious resignation. “Of course you’ll manage. You’re one of the strongest women I’ve ever met.”
As she thought of leaving him, she didn’t feel strong. She felt as weak as a baby, ready to weep with a kind of despair she’d never felt before about a man. She didn’t even remember feeling this way after her divorce from Jason.
Thankfully at that moment the waitress arrived with their meals and the conversation turned to the tenderness of the roast, the richness of his gravy and anything else that had nothing to do with the crimes, the killer or her leaving Amber Lake behind.
An early twilight stole over the area as they left the café. Clouds chased across the sky, portending the possibility of a rain sometime overnight.
“Surely you won’t want to take off if it’s raining in the morning,” Seth said once they were back in his truck and headed to Linda’s.
“I can drive in the rain. All I’ll need your help with is getting a rental car. Once I get home and can get my banking situation straightened out, I’ll make it all right with you.”
“I’m not worried about that. Wally down at the gas station on Main is also part of a chain of rental cars. He’s always got one or two cars available. I’m sure we can get you set up without a problem.”
As much as her heart ached, she knew she was making the right decision. It was time to say goodbye to Amber Lake. It was time to say goodbye to Seth.
They hadn’t been inside the house for long, and Tamara had just gotten comfortable on the sofa, when Seth’s cell phone rang. He listened intently, his features suddenly tense...excited. Tamara straightened up, wondering who the caller was and what they were saying to him.
He listened another minute or two longer. “We’ll be there as soon as we can,” he replied, and then clicked off and slid his phone into his pocket.
“That was Atkins. They believe there’s another body at the dunes, but none of them have moved in to the crime scene location yet.”
Tamara’s heart dropped as she realized another woman had been buried. “But maybe she’s still alive. I was.”
“But your face hadn’t been buried. Apparently all they can see of this person is part of a hand. The good news is they caught Sam Clemmons on his ATV riding away from the scene. Atkins is sure he’s our man. This is the kind of proof we’ve needed. He’s the Sandman and he’s in custody.”
“That’s wonderful!” Tamara exclaimed. At least she’d leave here in the morning knowing that the man who had tried to bury her alive was in jail. She just wished he’d been caught before another woman had died.
“Come on, let’s go. They’re waiting for us,” he said as he strapped on his shoulder holster.
“They’re waiting for you. You go and I’ll spend my time here packing up for the morning.”
He frowned and opened his mouth as if to protest, but she stopped whatever he was about to say by holding up a hand. “You said it yourself, the bad guy is in custody. I’ll be fine here and to be honest, I don’t want to see another crime scene like that.”
His frown deepened. “You’ll lock the doors? Don’t let anyone inside?”
“Of course not,” she replied. “But it sounds like the danger has finally passed.”
For the first time since he’d gotten the call a smile curved his lips. “Yeah and Sam makes sense. He’s been at the top of our suspect list since the beginning. We just needed something to tie him to the burials. Tonight we got our break. He was actually seen fleeing f
rom the crime scene. Now, let’s hope before you leave here tomorrow morning I’ll know what the deal is about you being an ostrich.”
She nodded. “Get out of here. They’re waiting for you.” She could feel his excitement, the need in him to move, to get to the scene.
He left and she carefully locked the door behind him. Alone. Time to pack up and face whatever discordant music awaited her in her real life.
She went into the guest room and realized she didn’t even have a suitcase to pack with the things she’d bought since being here. She grabbed a large black plastic garbage bag from the kitchen and carried it with her back to the bedroom. She had just begun to fill it when the doorbell rang.
Her heart thumped a hard rhythm for a moment even though she told herself that Sam Clemmons was the Sandman and he was in custody, caught at the scene of the latest crime.
She hurried to the living room and moved the curtain aside an inch, just enough that she could see the khaki uniform of Steven Bradley, the lovesick puppy man. She relaxed. He was probably here to do a check-in on Samantha and Scooter.
Tamara unlocked the door and eased it open at the same time Steven offered her a bright smile and opened the screen door. “Hey, Tamara, just wanted to stop by and say hi to Samantha and her new furry friend.”
“I’m sorry, Steven, they aren’t here right now. Samantha and Scooter are staying at her dad’s house for a few weeks.”
“Oh, okay. Maybe I’ll check in with them there. Or, maybe not.”
Before Tamara sensed any danger to herself, she jumped as the sting of a needle plunged into her arm. “Hey,” she exclaimed and stumbled backward a step.
Almost instantaneously her leg muscles collapsed, sending her to the floor in a heap. Trouble. The word screamed in her head. She was in trouble. She tried to move her arms in an attempt to get back to her feet, but nothing was working. She was paralyzed.
“Don’t even try to fight it,” Steven said as he stepped into the foyer and picked her up in his arms just as he probably did wounded dogs. “It’s a special concoction that took me months to perfect. Your heart will keep beating, but you can’t move.”
He carried her out of the house and with a quick glance around the neighborhood he moved to the trunk of his car where he placed her inside and slammed the lid.
Darkness. She smelled the scent of tire rubber, of oil and of impending doom. She was in trouble and nobody knew it because they thought they had the Sandman in custody. But they were wrong.
The Sandman had her in his custody.
Chapter Thirteen
By the time Seth pulled up to the main entrance of the dunes, the last gasp of sun was attempting to shine through the thickening layer of clouds. Within the next thirty minutes or so it would be dark.
He saw Sam Clemmons handcuffed and locked into the back of Atkins’s patrol car. Sam’s quad runner sat nearby. Atkins approached, his face holding a mixture of the same emotions Seth felt at the moment. It was relief and elation that Sam had been caught, mingled with the dread of discovering another dead woman.
“Since we don’t have the funds for fancy surveillance cameras, I’ve had my deputies doing drive-bys here, especially during the nighttime hours. Deputy Michaels did an evening run by here and saw that.” Atkins pointed in the distance where a hand protruded from the sand. “At the same time he saw Sam riding off hell-bent for leather. He went after Sam and got him in custody, then called me to let me know what was going on.”
Seth looked toward where the hand appeared to glow almost translucently in the last pale glow of sunlight. “He didn’t take much time to hide this one. Anyone coming in this way would see the body part. What’s Sam saying?”
“That he had nothing to do with it, that he was just sneaking in a quick ride. He’s sobbing and snotting his innocence all over the back of my car, but him being here again is the kind of coincidence I just don’t believe in.”
Seth thought about the night he’d caught Sam lurking across the street from the house. Apparently he’d been casing out the house, seeking a new entrance in an attempt to grab Tamara. He’d definitely fooled Seth, who’d believed his story about feeling bad because he hadn’t helped dig her out of the sand.
Atkins clapped Seth on the back. “We’ve got him now. He’s not going to hurt anyone again. Finally my town will be rid of the Sandman.”
Seth nodded. “And now I guess it’s time to do the hard part. Find out who his latest victim is. Let’s get photographs of the scene first, especially ones of Sam’s quad and any of the tracks he made in the sand. We’ve only got a few minutes of daylight left—you might want to get some artificial lighting in place and ready.”
“We’re a small town. We don’t have any special lighting for night work, but I’ll see what I can do.” As Atkins left Seth to take care of the initial business, Seth stared out over the dunes and tried not to think about the fact that tomorrow morning Tamara would be gone.
Maybe it was a blessing that she couldn’t remember what had happened to her after she’d been kidnapped from the rest area. Maybe she’d never have to remember whatever happened in those missing hours. Her brain had obviously kept those memories from her because they were too heinous to remember.
There was nothing more he’d like than to explore a true relationship with her, invite her to Kansas City to share his life. But more than once she’d mentioned some unpleasant, unfinished business awaiting her in Amarillo. He couldn’t ask her for a future until she knew all there was to know about her past. There might be something in Amarillo that would halt her from having any kind of a future with him.
Besides, she might get away from this place, away from him and realize that her feelings for him were formed in that single instant of eye contact when he’d pulled her from the sand, that what she felt for him all along was nothing more than gratitude and a sense of safety she’d needed while she’d been here.
He shoved thoughts of Tamara out of his head as Atkins had the deputies park their cars so that their headlights shone directly on the crime scene area.
With feet weighted by dread, Seth and Tom advanced toward the macabre scene where the hand protruded from the sand. Who were they going to find beneath the sand? For sure a brunette. Seth vaguely wondered what brunette had done such damage to Sam that it had turned him into a killer. Did he get a kick out of riding his quad over his own personal cemetery? Were there bodies out here that hadn’t even been discovered yet?
Seth didn’t even want to go there. The idea of this playground for dirt-bike riders and quad runners being a burial pit just beneath the surface made his stomach queasy.
As he waited for everyone to get into place and the photos to be taken, he walked over to Atkins’s car and opened the back door.
“I didn’t do it,” Sam cried. “I was just out here sneaking in a ride before I have to go to work at the bar. It’s been tough since they closed the dunes. I’m, like, addicted to riding.” He bent his head to wipe his nose on his shirt shoulder. “I saw that hand and totally freaked. I was driving away to get to my truck so I could get help when Deputy Michaels came after me. I stopped to tell him, but he threw me down on the ground and cuffed me.”
Sam’s sniffling stopped and his eyes narrowed. “He kicked me in the side a couple of times even though I was down and already cuffed.”
Seth wasn’t surprised and he intended to speak to Atkins before he left Amber Lake about Michaels’s penchant for bullying. But if Sam really was the Sandman Seth could understand Michaels’s added touch of finesse to the arrest. Seth fought his own desire to punch the kid as he thought of Tamara’s face shining up from her sand grave.
“What’s up with the ostrich?” Seth asked.
Sam stared at him in what appeared to be genuine puzzlement. “What ostrich? What are you talking about?”
Sam looked like nothing more than a scared, barely legal-aged kid, and Seth slammed the car door closed, a disturbing uncertainty simmering inside him.
> He wanted to believe that Sam was guilty. It made everything so neat and clean. Bad guy caught, case closed and no more danger of horrendous live burials to the women in Amber Lake, no more danger to Tamara.
Desperately, he wanted it to be Sam, but there was just a sliver of uncertainty in his mind about the kid’s guilt. It was just a gut feeling that he hoped was wrong. But when he’d asked Sam about the ostrich, Sam’s look of total incomprehension had appeared so genuine.
By the time he walked back to Atkins, it was time to get closer and check out who, exactly, was buried in this latest murder. “I was thinking earlier that hopefully there aren’t bodies out here that we don’t know about,” Seth said as they walked.
“Bite your tongue,” Atkins replied and a deep sigh escaped him. “I’ll tell you one thing—if there are bodies out here they aren’t locals. We’ve got no missing persons reported in Amber Lake.”
“Tamara was taken from the rest area,” Seth reminded him.
“I know, and hopefully she’s the anomaly and really was the third victim in the beginning of this nightmare. Sam fits the profile for a serial killer. He’s about the right age when they begin to kill, he comes from a bad background and he’s pretty much a loner.”
Seth flashed Tom a terse grin. “That could describe half the men I work with at the FBI.” His grin fell as they drew closer to the hand sticking up out of the sand.
It looked odd...the fingers fatter than normal female fingers. “Something’s not right,” he murmured more to himself than to Tom. As he reached an area close enough to lean down and look closer, he cursed beneath his breath and grabbed the hand. It came loose easily from the sand.
“Hey!” Tom yelped in protest.
“It’s not real,” Seth said. He stood up and held out the detached forearm. “It’s a damn prosthesis.”
He stood up and stepped aside, indicating that some of the other deputies complete the dig to see if anything else had been buried there. His mind raced with suppositions. This had been a well-executed trick. Every law enforcement person working for the town was here.
Scene of the Crime: Deadman's Bluff Page 15
