Books by Sue Henry

by Henry, Sue

  Emptied, her stomach had settled and she was hungry, starving—as if she hadn’t eaten in days. She wanted badly to go back to bed, curl up where it would be warm, and let sleep cure her ills, but knew that hunger was contributing to the ache in her head and would keep her awake. Finding a box of crackers, she ate five or six and washed them down with milk. It wasn’t enough.

  She tore several slices of bacon from a pound in the ice chest, tossed them into a frying pan on the stove, and heard them start to sizzle as she located three eggs. As soon as the bacon was done, she broke the eggs in as well and scrambled them as they cooked. The smell of the food made her stomach lurch and growl in anticipation, but she forced herself to get out a plate and fork before sitting down at the table to eat what she had cooked, along with some buttered bread she had no patience to toast. Straight from the frying pan, the food was so hot the first bite burned her mouth, but she ignored it and wolfed the meal, sharing one piece of bacon with Tank, who took it politely. He had never left her side and sat watching her closely as she satisfied her hunger.

  As soon as she was finished, she put her .44 back under the bed, turned out the lights, crawled in under the quilt, which she pulled up tight around her. She would figure it all out in the morning. It was too much for the middle of this night.

  She was almost instantly asleep.

  Tank came and lay down by the bed and his sleeping mistress, but, though he rested, muzzle on paws, it was a long time before he slept, and then lightly, aware of all that moved and breathed in the dark of the tent and yard.

  Billy arrived next morning, to find Jessie back at home and engaged in the normal process of feeding and caring for her kennel but doing it more slowly than usual, with an air of distraction.

  “Hi,” he said. Then more hesitantly, “Where’ve you been?”

  “Been?”

  “All day yesterday. Lucky I came by to feed the mutts.”

  Jessie grew very still and turned to look at him questioningly, her face pale, sweat breaking out on her upper lip.

  “What day is it?”

  He told her.

  She didn’t answer, but walked off across the yard to slump down on the bench by the tent door so quickly that it looked as if her knees had given out.

  Billy followed, concerned at her unusual behavior.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  She was gasping for air. Without warning, she leaned over and threw up on the ground by the bench.

  “Are you sick, Jessie? Shall I call somebody?”

  She muttered something he couldn’t hear.

  “What?”

  “Thought I dreamed it,” she repeated and paused before going on, trying to catch her breath. “Thought I was sick in the night. But it was real, wasn’t it?”

  “What was real? Did something bad happen? What can I do?”

  “Call Becker,” she gasped. “Need to call Phil.”

  “You want me to?”

  “No—I will—can you bring me the phone?”

  The color was gradually coming back to her face, but she sat as if she’d been struck—limp and drained. Billy, half afraid to leave her, did as he had been asked, and retrieved the phone from inside the tent.

  Jessie held it for a minute or two, waiting until she was steadier and could speak without panting. She had just begun to dial the trooper’s number when they heard the sound of a vehicle on the drive and she hesitated, waiting to see who was coming, apprehension narrowing her eyes and tightening her mouth.

  The now-familiar Jeep Cherokee pulled up beside the tent and MacDonald stepped out, along with Becker. They walked across to her truck, examined the tires and talked for a moment, then, unsmiling, came toward the bench. Jessie could see from their expressions that, whatever the reason for their visit, it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  “I was just calling you,” she said to Phil Becker, holding up the phone.

  “Where the hell have you been, Jessie?” he asked, frowning. “We were about to put out an APB.”

  “What’s wrong? Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Tell me.”

  “Inside,” MacDonald suggested. “We’ll talk in the tent. You take care of what needs to be done out here, Billy.”

  “Sure.”

  But he stood and waited till the other three had disappeared through the door before he reluctantly went back to where Jessie had been portioning out food to her dogs.

  “What is it?” Jessie asked, the minute they were inside.

  MacDonald swung a folding chair up to the table and waved her into it. She sat on the edge and watched as he crossed the room to her bed, looked under it, and, carefully, with an evidence bag folded back over his hand like a mitten, removed her Smith & Wesson .44, examining it closely before pulling the bag down, sealing it, and holding it out toward her.

  “This gun been used recently?”

  “Not for almost a month.”

  “I’d say it’s been fired in the last day or two.”

  “Not by me.”

  He pulled the other folding chair up to the table and sat opposite her, laying his notebook on the flat surface, along with the gun he had just retrieved.

  “You want to tell us where you’ve been, Jessie?”

  She hesitated, already beginning to see just how the story of her abduction would sound. “I don’t know if I do.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s going to seem…really strange.”

  “Try us.”

  “Will you tell me why you want to know?”

  He shook his head. “Let’s do it my way. Where were you?”

  Jessie stared at him, trying to get some hint of what was going on from the intent, waiting look of the faces of these two men. If she refused to tell them what had happened, they would probably assume the worst, whatever that was. Something serious had clearly brought them here and, for some reason she didn’t understand, they thought she was involved. Another fire? A death? What? Had Anne, or Tatum, done something new and horrible now?

  So far, she had trusted them—the only people she had felt weren’t lying to her in one way or another. Was that still true? It would seem that she had little choice but to follow her usual inclination to speak the truth, however it might appear to someone else. Deciding she had nothing to lose by giving them the facts, she took a deep breath and looked down at her hands in her lap for a moment before beginning her story. They felt like ice and, even by twisting them together, she couldn’t stop their shaking.

  Slowly, carefully, in a low, level voice that trembled a time or two, she related everything she could remember of the events of the last two nights. She described the dogs waking her, going back to bed, the ineffective struggle with whomever had drugged her, the terror of waking in the dark and her confinement, the dark and the light through the boarded-up window of the cabin, being drugged again, and, finally, waking to find herself back in the tent, cold, sick, and confused.

  “I tried to make myself believe it was nothing but a nightmare, but Billy showed up and wanted to know where I’d been all day yesterday. Then I had to admit it wasn’t my imagination. I was just calling you. Ask him. How did you know something had happened?”

  MacDonald ignored her question and exchanged a long look with Becker, who had stopped pacing during her narrative to listen, and now dragged up an ice chest and sat down. There was a long silence, during which Jessie could hear Billy in the yard, talking to the dogs as he finished feeding and watering them.

  “Here, Smut, you slacker, you. Move over, Bliss. Get your foot out of the water pan.”

  Becker moved restlessly and, finally, with a worried look, joined the conversation.

  “Jessie, do you realize how unbelievable that all sounds? You say someone got in here with the door locked but didn’t break in—caught you off guard, with a yard full of dogs to wake you up—hauled you seventy miles up the Parks Highway when there’re much closer places—held you captive but didn’t hurt you—kept you for part of two
nights for no evident reason—brought you back and left you where they found you with the door locked again from the inside. And you haven’t a clue who or why?”

  “All I can tell you is what happened, Phil. I don’t know why. You think I don’t want to know that? I thought they meant to leave me out there. It still gives me the shakes.”

  She held out her hands so he could see.

  He shrugged, shook his head in frustration, and frowned at her as MacDonald broke in.

  “Look, Jessie. Work with us here. Let’s go over a few things. You—or somebody—must have driven somewhere. Your truck was gone while you were.”

  “I didn’t drive anywhere, Mac.”

  The narrowing of his eyes and the way he glanced at Becker gave away his skepticism. “New tracks were found that seem to match the tread on your tires. We’ll have to let the lab work on that, but I can assure you that they weren’t found anywhere near the Trapper Creek area.”

  “Where then?”

  “In some mud out near the Mulligan trailer that burned.”

  “I told you—I’ve never been there, wherever it is. Is this some more of Tatum’s evidence to set me up?”

  “That’s pretty thin—and cold,” Becker told her, a hard tone in his voice. “We found Tatum there, too—shot in the head.”

  “Oh, God. Who would—”

  “You tell us. We think you just might know who.”

  She stared at him, astonished, pale as the canvas walls of the tent.

  “Phil, you can’t believe that I—”

  “Dammit, Jessie. I trusted you and—”

  “Hey,” MacDonald broke in sharply. “Simmer down, Becker. Let’s take this one thing at a time—questions first, accusations later…maybe. We need some answers, not a fight.”

  Becker leaned back and stared at the canvas wall. Jessie could see that his outburst had been fueled by disappointment. He thought she had let him down, and it had shaken his confidence, not only in her but in his own judgment of her. His disillusionment came out as exasperated anger, laced with more than a little fear.

  “Phil,” she said with earnest sadness, “I didn’t have anything to do with it. What I just told you really happened.”

  He refused to respond, and Jessie sat looking at his unhappy face in discouragement. His lack of confidence upset her more than anything they had told her or the questions they had asked. If friends who knew her well didn’t believe her, who would?

  What else did they have to frame her for Tatum’s death? She knew now why she had been abducted—and she thought she might know who was responsible, though the why eluded her still.

  21

  AS IT TURNED OUT, THEY HAD QUITE A LOT STACKED UP to implicate her, or at least to imply that she could have been somehow involved in Mike Tatum’s murder. Her dislike of him didn’t inspire confidence, for it gave them a motive of sorts. For the next two hours, she and Billy sat on the bench by the door and watched while Becker and MacDonald searched everything Jessie owned.

  Her truck was towed off to impound, but not before MacDonald climbed purposefully into the back and worked out how the secret compartment opened. In it, he found the arson kit Jessie had discovered in the shed and so carefully hidden, and, of course, knew immediately what it was and could mean. He did not ask her to explain its presence, just gave her a long, tired look and went to put it in the trunk of his car. He did not say how he had known where to look, but Billy’s obvious discomfort communicated the truth to Jessie, who duplicated Mac’s disappointed look in his direction.

  “I’m sorry, Jessie,” Billy said, close to tears and swallowing hard. “He made me tell. I thought it would be okay.”

  “Don’t worry. It is okay,” she told him quietly, but it wasn’t—not really, not now—and he knew it.

  Her .44, in its evidence bag, also went into MacDonald’s trunk.

  The rest of what worried her most was in what they didn’t find. There wasn’t a scrap of anything to prove that anyone had taken her from her own living space against her will and held her for approximately twenty-four hours.

  In a detailed search of the tent, Becker located a three-cornered cut in the canvas, behind the chair, but Jessie knew that there was nothing to show that she hadn’t sliced it herself.

  There were no footprints outside, for the wooden foundation of the tent had not been laid over bare ground but over grass and weeds that surrounded the dog yard, and anyone could have walked there without leaving a sign. Though they looked for marks in the snow or mud, it was an impossible task, for dozens of firefighters had traipsed back and forth through the yard during the blaze that destroyed her house, and the crowd of visitors had added to the confusion as they came and went the next day, leaving their own tracks. It was the same with tire tracks from a wide assortment of vehicles—even the backhoe shovel of the neighbor who had loaned her the tent and the fire trucks that had pulled into the drive, though it was easy enough to identify the ones that had been made last—those of her truck.

  Jessie sat numbly watching, as they efficiently and professionally went through the little she still owned that hadn’t been burned and all that had been given to her after the fire. It would all be covered with the fingerprints of so many people that there would be no use in trying to identify them, for any such attempt would have to include literally hundreds of people—many who had never been to Knik Road but would have touched the items elsewhere.

  Had her abductors realized this? She wondered, and also questioned where they could be. Would they have gone, now that they had accomplished what they had evidently set out to do—set her up as responsible for Tatum’s death, perhaps for the fires as well, including the one that destroyed her caabin? Or would they, perhaps, still be somewhere close, waiting to see the result? In the midst of her helpless despair over what was happening, a fury was growing, hot and dangerous, that tensed her shoulders, neck, and jaw and clenched her hands into fists.

  When they had finally finished the search, Phil Becker left in the tow truck that removed Jessie’s pickup with its dog box, taking with him the evidence they had collected for the crime lab to test. But MacDonald came to talk to her before leaving. He told Billy that he could go home, but he would need to answer some questions later. The young man left, giving Jessie an apologetic look and a muttered, “Sorry, Jessie. Call you later.”

  Inside the tent, they sat again at the table, Jessie, straight and stiff in her chair, to keep from slumping into a position that would look as dejected as she felt. But that glowing spark of hot anger kept her from self-pity, kept her ready to absorb whatever blow came next, to fight, rather than flee.

  MacDonald appraised her silently before speaking.

  “Stiff upper lip, huh? Relax, Jessie. We need to talk this through. I need your help.”

  “Seems like you’ve done just fine so far, with and without my help,” she told him sharply.

  Another longer pause, as he leaned forward in his chair and considered.

  “I guess I have that coming—from your point of view. But it had to be done, you know, as much to help as to hurt you.”

  “Sure.”

  “Look. I haven’t known you very long. Phil has, and this whole thing has disappointed him pretty badly. He seems to think you just about walk on water. To think you might have wet feet doesn’t sit too well with him.”

  Jessie looked away for a second or two, then back with a lift of her chin and a hint of pride in her voice.

  “I’m sorry about that—but he didn’t bother to really listen or trust me, did he?”

  “Maybe not. But you’re asking an awful lot. He’s been a staunch supporter of yours—defended you to Tatum—called me in to replace him. It’s hard for a homicide investigator to see past his job sometimes, even—maybe especially—for friends. Give him a little slack.”

  She didn’t disagree, just continued to watch him guardedly, wondering what was coming next and how he would approach it.

  “Okay,” he said,
referring to the notes he had taken as he worked. “Let’s talk about that gym bag I found in your truck. You want to tell me where it came from?”

  “And risk your misinterpretation—incriminate myself? I don’t think so, Mac. I think maybe it’s time I called an attorney.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he said. “Then I suppose I should give you a formal Miranda warning—shouldn’t I? Well…” He took a deep breath and leaned back to stare at the ceiling. “Damn. Guess I just—ah—sort of—forgot, didn’t I?”

  Jessie stared at him, startled. “You mean…”

  “Nothing, of course. I just said—nothing. This is a conversation—an informal interview—not an…You understand?”

  Not an…interrogation, she understood and nodded slowly. He meant that he was not going to put any of this on the record but couldn’t say so. For some reason, he was giving her a break.

  “Now, about that bag.”

  She told him how she had found it on the shelf in her shed.

  “Just sitting there, in plain sight, huh?”

  “Yes. And I thought it over a lot. Anyone could have put it there. There’ve been a lot of people around here the last few days. In fact, there’s nothing you found that couldn’t be explained if someone else was responsible.”

  “I know. And doesn’t it seem to you that there’s almost too much circumstantial stuff floating around here? There’s something missing in all this that I can’t quite get hold of. It’s all connected, but I can’t figure out how.”

  Jessie thought about it and agreed.

  “Mac, tell me one thing. Phil thinks I had something to do with Tatum’s murder. Why? It can’t be just because of the fact that I wasn’t here and some tracks that he thinks match my tires.”

  “It’s partly the tire tracks. But it’s not simple. You must understand that I can’t talk about it, Jessie. Especially not to you.”

  “When will you know something for sure?”