The place was immaculate. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve thought it was one of those tour apartments that the company dressed up and showed off to lure in new residents. The modern simplicity didn’t reflect Belle Dame’s cluttered sense of style. The walls were painted a cool light gray, the color of the sky before a snowfall. The furniture was slim, angled, and basic. There was no clutter or trash or any evidence at all that someone lived there, other than the pots and pans that hung neatly from a row of hooks on the wall in the kitchen, a loaf of organic whole wheat bread on the counter, and a stack of unopened mail on the desk by the balcony door. A fluffy orange cat that I thought was a throw pillow jumped down from the sofa and wound herself around my legs.
The bedroom was more personalized. The blankets and sheets were unmade and the closet door open. Mac’s bat bag leaned in one corner, her Belle Dame Police Department recreational softball jersey draped over it. A framed poster for a wacky Western television show hung on the wall, autographed by the stars of the series. Two picture frames rested on the bedside table, but neither one of them featured Mac. She was new to Belle Dame as of the last year or so, and I’d never heard her talk about her friends or family so far. Then again, maybe I hadn’t given her the opportunity to do so. I was too focused on Holly.
Mac’s spare uniforms hung in the closet along with the extra equipment that she needed for work. We were roughly the same size, but Mac was a few inches taller than me, so when I ditched the hospital gown and traded it for the coarse polyester pants, I had to roll up the hem of the legs a couple times so they didn’t hang over my feet. I pulled on one of Mac’s black T-shirts next. Mac had given me the rundown of how to get the equipment on without help, but it was still weird to strap the bullet-resistant body armor vest across my chest. I finished off with the stiffly ironed uniform shirt, utility belt, and work boots, and tied my long hair up in a ponytail to keep it from tucking itself into my collar. All the while, Mac’s cat sprawled across the bed, keeping a keen eye on me. When I looked in Mac’s full-length mirror, her last name reflecting off the name tag over my heart, I didn’t recognize myself. That was good. After all, that was the plan.
At the desk by the balcony, I typed Mac’s password into her personal laptop and grinned when I saw that her background was set to a picture of her cat hanging upside down out of a massive scratching post. Then I got to work, searching for the most recent news articles regarding Emmett’s progress. Local and statewide news stations were covering the story. I clicked on the first one that popped up.
Missing Girl Found and Lost Again
Holly Dubois, the seventeen-year-old softball star that went missing from her hometown of Belle Dame several weeks ago, was recently located at a local residence. Police reported that Dubois had been held in the basement of the house against her will by Emmett Marks, a friend of the family. Marks is wanted for kidnapping, stalking, harassment, and a slew of other charges. Unfortunately, emergency services failed to arrive in time to rescue the teenager upon discovery. According to reports from the scene, Marks forced her into his truck and drove away. The Ford F-250 was found on the outskirts of Wolfwater, a small town fifty miles from Belle Dame, but the pair was not inside. If any residents have information regarding Dubois or Marks, including possible sightings, they should contact their local authorities.
Wolfwater. It wasn’t far, not even an hour’s drive. I’d been there before. My high school softball team had played Wolfwater at away games. As far as I knew, the town was even smaller than Belle Dame. It was barely a speck on the map, which was probably why Emmett had chosen to ditch his truck there. There was no telling where he might have taken Holly though. In Wolfwater, there weren’t a whole lot of places to hide.
I set down some dry food for Mac’s cat and left the apartment. In the cruiser, I plugged the address for Wolfwater’s sheriff department into the GPS navigation system, put the car in gear, and drove east out of Belle Dame. As the road stretched out in front of me, I wondered how different my life would have been if both of my parents had survived the car crash. Somewhere in an alternate universe, another version of me had graduated high school, earned an athletic scholarship to some big university, and maybe played for the National Pro Fastpitch league. Eventually, I imagined retiring from softball to pursue a less fickle career. My love of travel would have held firm, so maybe I would’ve majored in something like International Relations or even Modern Languages. In that universe, Holly would be safe at home with my parents rather than being dragged across the surrounding counties by Emmett.
I almost missed the exit ramp for Wolfwater, as the sign had been toppled by a distracted driver. As I rolled into town, taking in the dusty ground and worn-down exteriors, thunder rumbled in the distance. Ominous clouds gathered overhead, roiling in the atmosphere. A big storm was brewing.
The GPS coordinates turned out to be obsolete. The sheriff’s department was the largest building on the main road through Wolfwater. I parked, straightened the shirt of Mac’s uniform, tucked a wayward strand of hair behind my ear, and headed inside. My fingers trembled as I walked up to the front desk. This was not the type of adrenaline rush I was accustomed to. I would rather jump off a bridge than impersonate a cop, but desperate times and all that.
The deputy behind the front desk was a short, muscled woman with smooth dark skin and tightly curled ringlets. Though I towered over her, her squared shoulders and commanding presence made me feel small and squat in my pilfered uniform and equipment. She was the epitome of the law, sturdy and strong, while I was an irresponsible kid playing dress up. She probably drew the gun on her hip with confidence. I quaked at the thought of drawing Mac’s at all.
“Belle Dame, huh?” she said, eyeing the patches on the sleeves of my shirt. “Bet I know what you’re here for. A little late though, aren’t you? The rest of your department was on the scene hours ago.”
“Yeah, they sent me back,” I replied, offering no other explanation for my presence. I flashed Mac’s badge. “Mackenzie Hart. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions, Officer…?”
“Martin,” she finished with a shake of my hand. “I don’t mind. I got nothing else to do. What do you need to know?”
A crash of thunder rocked the building. I jumped, already on edge. Outside, the sky opened up, and a deluge of rain began to pound against the windows of the sheriff’s department. Officer Martin chuckled.
“Scare easily, do you?” she asked. “That’s not something you see in most cops. You a rookie or something?”
“No,” I replied tersely. “It’s just been a rough couple of days.”
“Fair enough.” Martin unwrapped a piece of bubble gum and popped it in her mouth. “You want some?”
“No, thank you.”
“You sure?” she asked, offering me one of the blue-and-pink morsels. “I got a whole bucket here. I quit smoking a few weeks ago. Keeps the edge off. Might help your anxiety too. I can smell that from here. You look kind of green.”
I felt green. My stomach flipped over, and the knot on my head was starting to ache again. I’d all but forgotten that it had only been hours since I’d been concussed. I took the gum but didn’t chew it. “My superiors sent me to check for updates. Is Emmett Marks’s truck still here?”
Martin gave me a look. “No. The truck was towed back to Belle Dame shortly after it was examined for evidence. Shouldn’t your superiors have updated you on that?”
“My radio’s malfunctioning,” I lied. “Everything comes through pretty garbled. You know how it is.”
“Not really.” Martin replied. “You should probably look into that. It’s not exactly standard operating procedure to go out on patrol without a working radio.”
This was the problem with pretending to be Mac. All my life, I’d been on the wrong side of law enforcement. I knew how to behave like a miscreant, how to give the cops a hard time as they filled out paperwork for vandalism and underage crime. What I didn’t know was how to act like a cop my
self, and Martin was way sharper than I’d bargained for.
“What do you know about the Dubois case?” I asked the deputy. “Did anyone call to report a sighting of Marks or the girl?”
“Loads of locals did.”
I perked up. “Really? And?”
“And nothing.” Martin rifled under the desk and came up with a stack of reports. “This is what always happens when a kid goes missing. Everyone and their brother thinks they’ve seen the perpetrator or the victim.” She licked her finger and started thumbing through the reports. “We checked out the claims. No luck on most of them. This one though—” she extracted a single paper from the stack “—might have some merit to it. Take a look.”
I skimmed through the report. According to the person who had called in, Emmett and Holly had been spotted at an abandoned historical train station on the outskirts of Wolfwater, heading into the woods. “The guy who called this in, is he reliable? Do you know him?”
“Old Willie Roque,” Martin said. “He’s the only one who lives that far outside of town. Kind of a loner, keeps to himself. The local kids are scared of him, but he’s got a good head on his shoulders. If he says he thinks he saw something, I’m inclined to believe him.”
“Do you mind if I go out there?” I asked, intending to do so whether she replied with an affirmative or not. “I’d like to talk to this Willie Roque myself, maybe even search the train station.”
“You’re more than welcome to do so.” She jotted Roque’s address down on a sticky note. “Our deputies already checked out the area. They didn’t find any traces of the girl or the scumbag that took her, but I used to hang out around those old tracks as a teenager. There are a lot of hidey holes around. We could’ve easily missed something.”
I traded her the report for the sticky note. “Thanks. I’ll be back.”
“Hold up there, sport,” Martin said, leaning across the desk to grasp the sleeve of my uniform. “I can’t let you go up there right now.”
“You just said—”
“I know what I said, but take a look outside.”
I turned to the window. A gray sheet of rain obscured the tiny town beyond. Visibility was at a total zero. The town was blanketed in storm clouds, and lightning struck every few seconds.
“The fields up that way flood with rain like this,” Martin explained. “And that lightning’s no joke. No point heading up to the train station now. You won’t be able to see anything anyway.”
“So what the hell am I supposed to do until the storm blows over?” I asked her.
She jerked her head toward another door at the back of the station. “The covered walkway out back leads to the local bar. Perks of a ridiculously small town. I recommend you wait it out, order some food. Tell them Wanda sent you over. They’ll give you a free beer and a discount. Then tell them that Wanda’s hungry, and she’d love a chicken Caesar salad when they get the chance. Capisce?”
“But—”
“No croutons. Thanks, Officer Hart.”
When she returned her attention to the computer, I had no choice but to walk across the bullpen and through the back door, where there was indeed a covered walkway that led to another ramshackle building. The tin roof overhead didn’t do much to shelter me from the rain that blew in sideways with the gusting wind, so I made a run for it, aiming for the neon OPEN sign across the way.
Once inside, I brushed droplets from the uniform, squeezed out the tail end of my ponytail, and looked around. This bar was not like The Pit back in Belle Dame. It was dark and seedy with creaky barstools and crooked tables. The logos on the taps were worn away and the bottles on the top shelves behind the bar gathered layers upon layers of dust. Johnny Cash played over the speakers as the locals’ conversation overlapped. The patrons were mostly old men, nursing bourbon straight. With their scraggly beards and dirty fingernails, it was obvious that they were the type of people who considered booze for lunch a standard.
A single woman sat at the bar. She glanced over her shoulder as my boots tapped against the groaning floorboards. She looked to be about my age, with dark auburn hair and brown eyes. She wore muddy jeans, riding boots, and an oversized fishing T-shirt. There was something familiar about the set of her mouth and the angle of her nose, but I couldn’t place it. For safety, I sat a few stools down from hers, occasionally stealing a look at her sharp profile. The bartender slapped a coaster down in front of me.
“What’ll it be, ma’am?” he asked.
“Just a beer. Whatever’s cheapest.”
“One pint of well water coming up.” He walked off to fill a glass under the tap but kept an eye on me as I examined the weathered walls of the bar. “Belle Dame. That’s not too far, is it?”
“About forty-five minutes,” I replied.
He plunked the pint of light beer down in front of me. “What are you doing in Wolfwater? Just passing through?”
“I’m working a case.” I pointed to the old television screen mounted above the bar. “That case.”
The bartender looked over his shoulder at the screen, where a local newscaster recapped the saga of Holly’s disappearance. Though the sound was muted, the captions rolled by in black and white to fill us in with the details. Then two pictures showed up side-by-side. The first was Holly’s softball picture from that year. It was hard to reconcile the image of the happy and healthy Holly with the version of her that I’d seen in Emmett’s basement. The second picture was of Emmett himself, which appeared to be an employee I.D. photo. Emmett wore a smile to display his dimples, his eyes bright and mischievous. Other than the increase in muscle mass, he looked no different than the passionate troublemaker I’d known in high school.
The bartender finished reading the captions on the story. “Yikes. You got the stomach for stuff like that?”
“Not really, but it’s my job.”
“I could never do it,” the bartender said, wiping out a clean glass with a dish towel. “Especially with all these kids that go missing. Most of them end up dead, you know? Can you imagine what the parents are going through?”
“Her parents are dead,” I replied.
“Well, she probably has other family, right?”
I cleared my throat nervously, the heels of my boots slipping off the barstool. “Right. Oh, I’m supposed to tell you that Wanda’s hungry.”
“You met Wanda? Did she scare you?”
“A little.”
The bartender chuckled, finished wiping the glass, and poured himself a drink. “One chicken Caesar salad, no croutons, coming up. I’ll let the kitchen know. By the way, I’m Greg. Any messenger of Wanda’s is a friend of mine. You are?”
“Mackenzie,” I replied, the name of my friend stiff in my mouth. A few seats over, the other woman turned her head slightly toward our conversation. “Hey, have you heard anything about this missing girl?”
Greg keyed in Wanda’s order on the computer behind the bar, but if there was a kitchen attached somewhere, it was entirely out of sight. “Other than on the news? Why would I?”
“I know how bars work,” I told him. “Especially local bars in small towns. All of the gossip filters through here. A bartender can be anything from a therapist to a journalist. You must have heard something.”
“That’s true,” Greg said. “But the problem with that line of logic is that I’ve heard absolutely everything. It all kind of blends together after a while. Don’t know what’s real or fake.”
“What sounded real?”
“If you actually take a sip of that beer, I’ll answer.”
I looked down at the swill in my glass then pushed it away. “On second thought, maybe I don’t have the stomach for this.”
Greg dumped the beer and filled a fresh glass with ice water. I took a long sip, draining half of it as he watched. “I got acid relief tablets in the back. You want one?”
“No, thanks. Just an answer to my question.”
He leaned against the bar and scratched the scruff on his chin.
“What sounded real, was it? I don’t really know. You know how people are. This is the second girl who’s gone missing in the area, so naturally, the conspiracy theorists have started to come out of the woodwork—”
I set the glass down too forcefully against the bar. Water slopped over the sides. “Wait a minute. You said Holly Dubois was the second girl to go missing?”
“Yeah, didn’t you know?” Greg asked with a note of surprise. “A couple weeks before the Dubois girl disappeared, one of our local teenagers vanished too. Melody Harver. Nice kid. Not even eighteen. Pretty too. Her parents are wrecked.”
“What happened to her?” I demanded.
“No idea. They never found her. Yet. They haven’t found her yet.” Greg took another swig of his drink, grimaced, and topped it off with a spray of ginger ale from the hose. “The girls look alike too. A bit like you, actually. Tall, athletic, blonde hair. Some people think it’s just a coincidence, but I’m not so sure. Seems a little shady that they both went missing from the same fifty mile radius just a few weeks apart.”
Suddenly, the woman at the other end of the bar piped up. “I heard the Dubois girl was found by her older sister. Bridget, or something like that. Apparently, the kidnapper has been playing games with her the whole time the younger sister’s been missing.”
I felt the blood drain from my face as my fingers went ice cold around the empty water glass. “Where’d you hear that?”
The woman lifted her broad shoulders. “It’s like you said. You pick up a lot of random conversations in bars. Greg, can I get a refill on these fries?”
Greg eyed her plate. “You haven’t finished them.”
“They’re cold,” she challenged. “Chop, chop.”
Greg rolled his eyes and disappeared through the swinging doors at the end of the bar, through which I caught sight of a steel stovetop. The woman slid her drink across the counter and moved down three barstools to sit next to me.
“I’m Taylor,” she said, holding out her hand for me to shake. Her grip was firm, almost too tight, as she squinted at my nametag. “Who did you say you were again?”
Little Girl Lost: A Riveting Kidnapping Mystery- Book 2 Page 3
