Stranger in Town

by Cheryl Bradshaw

  As soon as she saw it, she jerked back. I folded the picture and put it away. “Was that the car you saw?”

  She nodded.

  The watch would be harder for her to identify, and I questioned its significance. I hadn’t brought any photos, but I wore one to see if it triggered anything.

  “Do you have a watch?” I said.

  She didn’t budge.

  “Lily has one,” I said. “She was wearing it the last time I saw her. It’s pink and has a princess head on it. She pushes a button and it flips open. Mine’s not fun like Lily’s. But it’s special. My grandpa gave it to me.”

  Sierra hopped off the sofa and dashed down the hall. I looked at her mother. “Is she okay? I hope I haven’t said anything to upset her.”

  Ms. Johnson said, “I don’t know. Let me go see if I can—”

  Before she could finish her sentence, Sierra returned, holding her balled hand out in front of me. She unrolled her fingers and revealed a red and pink watch. It had hearts all over it. In the center of the dial it said ‘Sierra.’

  “My grandpa gave me one, too,” Sierra said. “He said it has lots of hearts ‘cuz that’s how much he loves me.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “Your grandpa must love you very much.”

  She smiled. “He does. He tells me every day.” She looked at the watch I was wearing. “Why do you wear your watch right there?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean. How should I wear it?”

  Sierra put her hand on my upper arm. “Grownups are supposed to wear them ‘right here.’”

  I wondered if she was tired of talking and was playing some kind of game with me. I played along to see. “Who would wear a watch way up there?”

  “The bad man,” she said.

  Ms. Johnson looked at me, confused. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what she’s talking about. I think she’s done for today.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “I don’t think she’s joking. Sierra, what did it look like?”

  She made a face like she was trying to remember. “He didn’t know what time it was.”

  “Why?”

  “It was broken, silly.”

  It clicked, and I finally understood what she was trying to say. “Was it a tattoo?”

  Sierra looked at her mother. “What’s a tact-too?”

  “Did it look like my watch or did it look like a picture?” I said.

  “He needed to color it.”

  “Ms. Johnson, do you have a piece of paper and a pen?” I said.

  Although startled, she got the items for me.

  “I’m not very good at drawing,” I said, “but you tell me if this is what you saw?”

  I drew a watch that had numbers but no hands pointing to the time. “Did it look like this?”

  She nodded and jumped up and down. “Yay! Will you find Savannah now?”

  I looked down at her hopeful face, trying to remember what it felt like to be an innocent child, free from the harsh realities of life.

  I patted her on the shoulder. “I will do my best.”

  Sierra looked at her mother. “Mommy, can I go play now?”

  Ms. Johnson looked at me, hoping I was finished. I nodded.

  Once Sierra was out of earshot, her mother said, “What Sierra told you, is it a big deal?”

  “It could be. I’m not sure yet.”

  We walked to the door and I thanked her again. I was just about to get in my car when Sierra came running up behind me yelling, “Wait, give her this!”

  She thrust a stuffed teddy bear into my hands. “This is Mr. Fluffy. He’ll keep her safe.”

  “You are a good friend, Sierra,” I said. “I’m sure Savannah misses you very much.”

  I waved goodbye and drove away. Without even knowing it, a five-year-old girl had just changed everything.

  CHAPTER 29

  I tried Cade on his cell phone, but he didn’t answer. Since I knew he was staying with his father until he made other living arrangements, I tried Detective McCoy’s house first. A teenage girl answered the door with a greeting of, “Yeah?”

  “Is Cade here?” I said.

  “Who are you?”

  “Someone he works with.”

  “Name?”

  “Sloane,” I said.

  She clenched each side of the door jamb with her hands, blocking the entrance to the house. The oversized t-shirt she was wearing barely covered her bottom. She didn’t seem to care. And with a body like hers, I could see why.

  “What do you want?” she snapped.

  “I’m here to see Cade,” I said, again. “Is he here?”

  She shrugged.

  “Maybe.”

  “Let’s try this another way,” I said. “Are you his daughter?”

  She laughed.

  “Let’s not try this at all. We’re not ‘friends,’” she said, doing air quotes with her fingers. “What do you want with my dad?”

  “We’re working on a case together,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes.

  “I heard.”

  In many ways, teenagers were scarier to me than the criminals I pursued for a living. I understood criminals, what made them tick, why they did the things they did. But hormone-driven, pimply-faced kids? I didn’t have a clue. The disrespectful ones grated on my nerves. Standing in front of Cade’s daughter, I could see she had been enabled in her life, a bit too much from the looks of it. Others may have put up with her less-than-civil attitude, but she wouldn’t get away with it—not with me.

  “I don’t know what I’ve done to piss you off,” I said, “but I’m not going to stand here and go the rounds with you. Is your dad here, or isn’t he?”

  She scoffed.

  “My dad is not available.”

  “To what—talk to me?” I said.

  “To date you.”

  “We work together. What part of that don’t you understand?”

  “Puh-lease,” she said. “I’m not some little kid you can stand here and lie to, so don’t, okay?”

  “Where did you get the idea that we were more than friends?” I said.

  “He talks about you all the time. To my grandpa, to my grandma—it’s disgusting.”

  “Shelby!”

  Cade raced down the stairs. Upon seeing her father, Shelby suddenly learned how to smile while sucking up at the same time.

  “What dad? We were just talking,” she said. “Weren’t we, Sloane?”

  “Your daughter has a wild imagination,” I said.

  He pointed toward some rooms down the hall and said, “Move it, now.”

  She hung her head and slumped down the hall.

  “I hope Shelby—”

  “She didn’t,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  He waved his hand for me to follow him downstairs. I did.

  The lower part of Detective McCoy’s house was decorated in what I could only assume was typical Wyoming man-cave style, though I hadn’t seen enough houses in the state to assess it properly. Taxidermy was everywhere. A grizzly bear stood in the corner of the room with his mouth wide open. His razor-sharp claws angled toward me, ready to attack. On a cut-out shelf in the wall, a wolf held his head high. I waited for the howling sound effects to start, but none did. I looked around. The rest of the room contained various mounted heads, some from animals I never knew existed.

  “Are you okay being down here?” Cade said.

  “It’s a little different. I think I can manage.”

  “No hunters in your family?”

  “Well, I never had a brother, and my dad didn’t have many hobbies. Is your daughter all right?”

  “Shelby’s a teenager,” he said. “I’m not sure she’s ever ‘all right.’”

  “She didn’t seem too thrilled we were working together.”

  He raised a brow.

  “What did she say to you?”

  “Not much—but I did get a ‘keep away’ vibe from her. I’m sure she’s just going through a lot r
ight now.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been talking to my dad,” he said.

  “He mentioned a few things to me.”

  “Him too?”

  “It wasn’t much. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  Cade sat down. “Don’t be sorry. My dad’s got a lot on his mind right now. Besides, it don’t matter to me if he told you. It’s not a secret. My wife left. I’ve moved on.”

  “I’m not sure your daughter has.”

  “She’s unhappy either way—I just do the best I can with her. She might not realize it right now, but being here around my parents is helping her deal with everything. I hope one day she’ll realize it instead of hating me for bringing her here.”

  “She didn’t want to move?”

  “She misses her deadbeat boyfriend, which is one more reason we needed a change in scenery.”

  “Sounds like you’re a great father.”

  He smiled and pointed at my hands. “What have you got there?”

  I unfolded my less-than-stellar drawing. “Have you seen a tattoo like this before?”

  He curled his fingers toward him. I handed the drawing over. “You draw this?”

  “We all have our qualities,” I said. “Drawing isn’t one of mine.”

  He winked.

  “I can tell,” he said.

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “Do you?” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Then you know where guys get these?” he said.

  “Yeah, in prison.”

  “Do you know what it means?”

  “I think so,” I said. “It’s a prison tattoo. A clock with no hands symbolizes the person is serving time, usually a lot of it, and that the time that ticks by is meaningless.”

  “That’s why it doesn’t have any hands,” he said, “because time doesn’t matter when you’re serving a long sentence.”

  “Sierra Johnson told me the man who took Savannah had this tattoo on his upper arm.”

  Cade shook his head and smiled. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

  Cade used his connections to see if he could get a list of released inmates over the past several years that had a tattoo of a clock on their upper arm. He also talked them into sending along corresponding photos. The thought of getting the actual name of the guy made me nervous, but in a good way. It felt great to finally have a solid lead. I just hoped it went somewhere.

  I called Maddie and gave her the news.

  “I was just about to call you,” she said.

  “Did you get anywhere with the envelope?”

  “Lots of places after I dealt with all the prints on the outside of it. Do you have any idea how many people have touched this thing?”

  “I probably don’t want to know.”

  “Trust me,” she said. “You don’t. The outside of it was a mess. Too many prints, all over the place. I’ve got prints on top of prints, smudged prints, partial prints. You get the idea.”

  “So, you didn’t get anything?”

  She popped a bubble into the phone. “I did.”

  Maddie was biding her time, which meant she had good news.

  “I lifted a perfect print from the inside, right under the place a person would lick and stick, except for whoever sealed this thing, didn’t do it very well. It was only sticky in the center, you know, the pointy part on the back. The beauty of it is, the only people to touch the inside were Mr. and Mrs. Tate and the sender of the letter.”

  “Do you have a name?” I said.

  “Not yet. Since I don’t know who this print belongs to, I have to run it through the database. Hopefully we’ll get a hit.”

  “How long will it take?” I said.

  “We’re running it now. How are things on your end?”

  I filled her in on the recent developments thinking she’d have a lot to say, but when I finished, she didn’t say anything. She was quiet. Too quiet. It was almost like she was no longer on the line, but the seconds ticked by on the front of my phone. For whatever reason, she didn’t seem to be listening.

  “Are you still there?” I said.

  “Umm, yeah. Can you hold on a minute? One of my guys is waving me over.”

  I held for a minute, and then two, until I considered hanging up and letting her call me back. But then I heard her voice in the background. It was slightly muffled, but it was Maddie’s voice all the same. She was talking to someone.

  She said, “Are you sure?”

  The other person responded, “One hundred percent.”

  “Sloane,” she said, breathing heavily into the phone, “we’ve got a match.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Searching the database for a latent print, even an excellent specimen like the one Maddie found inside the envelope, was tricky. Not everyone had fingerprints that were searchable. Aside from a man or a woman who had committed some type of crime, the database contained prints from people like child-care workers, law enforcement, people who carried concealed weapons, teachers, and security-type workers, among others. And that was just one hurdle. Laws varied by state, making it even harder in some cases to access specific kinds of files.

  Maddie struck fingerprint gold, matching the print she found to a teacher, a female by the name of Regina Kent. This matched my theory that someone sent the letters to both Olivia and Savannah’s parents out of guilt and remorse, making a woman the most likely candidate. Now I just needed to know if I was right about why she’d done it. Did she have Olivia and Savannah? And was the man who took both girls her husband or someone else she was close to?

  It didn’t take long for me to get one of my answers. Cade did some digging and came up with some information on Regina Kent. She was married to Bradley Kent, a retired surgeon twenty years her senior. His age made it less than likely that he was the one who’d kidnapped the two girls. According to our eyewitness, Todd, the man he saw in front of Maybelle’s Market looked like he was in his mid-to-late forties. Even if Todd was off by a decade, Bradley Kent was pushing sixty. Even a teenage boy with a fleeting memory couldn’t have been off by that much.

  Cade learned Regina Kent had been a school teacher until three years earlier. According to the principal of the school, she walked in one day in the middle of the year and quit without any warning. I wondered why, but soon I would have the answer to my question. Cade had an address, and it wasn’t even fifteen miles away.

  I waited outside of the hotel for Cade to pick me up. I couldn’t help but reflect on what a difference a few days made. Four nights earlier, seeing Cade in his Dodge Ram sent a pulsating wave of nerves throughout my body, and now I was anticipating his arrival. Even though he’d said we would work together on this case, I never expected him to keep his word, so I was astounded when he asked me to tag along. The feds were flying in the next morning. If we were going to find something on our own, we had to be quick.

  Cade pulled to a stop next to me and popped the passenger-side door open. He had one hand on the wheel and the other stretched out across the top of the seat. I thought he’d move it when I got in, but he didn’t.

  A thin toothpick hung out of his mouth again. He looked at me and smiled. It was one of those casual smiles a person gives to another person when they’ve become comfortable in the relationship. But I was nowhere near being able to reciprocate.

  “Why are you sitting like that?” he said.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you’re going steady with the door.”

  “Well, your arm is in my way.”

  “I’m not even touching you, woman,” he said. “Relax.”

  He moved his hand, resting it on his thigh.

  “Is that what you call every female you meet?”

  He laughed.

  “What, woman?”

  I nodded. He winked.

  “Only the ones I like.”

  I didn’t dare look over. I wasn’t sure whether he was serious or just messing around. And I didn’t want to know—at least, tha
t’s what I told myself. Cade leaned over and turned the volume up on the radio. Some guy singing what sounded like a mix of country and hard rock blared through the speakers.

  “Who is he—and what is he?” I said.

  “The singer? Brantley Gilbert. You like it?”

  I reached over, turning it back down. “Not really.”

  Cade cranked it back up. “Give it a minute. It will grow on you.”

  Country music rarely did anything for me, but I had to admit, the song was catchy. When it was over, Cade pushed a button and shut the radio off.

  “There’s something I haven’t told you about the Kents,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “They had two children,” he said.

  “Had?”

  “Yep, both dead,” he said.

  “Let me guess, girls?”

  Cade nodded.

  I swallowed—hard.

  “Do you have any water?” I said.

  Cade reached under the seat and handed me a can of soda. “Here, drink this.”

  “No thanks. I don’t drink soda.”

  He gently tossed it into my lap. “Stop complaining, and just drink it.”

  I popped the top on the can and took a few sips. I had to admit, it tasted good.

  “What happened to their children?” I said.

  “I talked to the principal at the school Regina Kent worked at. He told me some years back, Regina decided to visit her parents in Utah over the holidays. Bradley couldn’t go; he had too many patients to see. Regina packed up the car and got the kids ready, but by the time they left, it was almost midnight. They were tired, so she told the kids they could sleep in the car.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “She let them lay down, no seatbelts.”

  He nodded and continued.

  “It started snowing, the roads were slick, and Regina thought about heading back home, but she was more than halfway to Utah already. She woke the girls and told them to put their seatbelts on. In the process, she turned around. They were hit head-on by a semi-truck on the highway. The car rolled several times. By the time the ambulance was on the scene, both girls were dead. Regina was the only survivor.”

  The idea of a child dying right in front of his parents was surreal to me.

  “I think I’d rather not have a child at all than to face one of my kids dying before me. The guilt she felt must have been excruciating.”