Stranger in Town

by Cheryl Bradshaw

I didn’t want to say it before he did, just in case I was wrong.

  “My dad’s sick,” he said.

  He glanced over at me, studying my face for a reaction, which I wish he hadn’t done. I’d never been good at hiding anything—especially on my face.

  “You know,” he said, “don’t you?”

  I nodded. “Did your dad tell you?”

  “My mom did,” he said. “I think my dad’s been tryin’ to tell me, but he hasn’t been able to. My mom thought I needed to know just in case somethin’ happens before it’s supposed to.”

  “Are you going to talk to your dad about it—tell him you know?”

  Cade shook his head.

  “I figure my dad will say somethin’ in his own time. There’s no reason it has to be right now. Not with everything else that’s goin’ on.”

  “How’s your mother doing?”

  “Better now that I’m here,” he said. “She’s a tough woman, but my dad means everything to her. I’m not sure how strong she’ll be once he’s gone.”

  “What about your daughter—does she know?”

  “Not much. She can tell he’s sick. She’s asked me about it a couple times, but we’ve never really had a discussion. Guess I need to talk to her about it.”

  “I wish there was something that could be done for him.”

  “Yeah,” Cade said, glancing out the window. “Me too.”

  “Are you glad you moved back? I mean—do you like it here?”

  He extended one of his hands and said, “What’s not to like? The air is clean, people are simple and uncomplicated. I’ve been to big cities. They’re all crowded. Too many people. Too much traffic. Out here things feel like they move at a slower pace. I have time to enjoy life.”

  I laughed.

  “You’re so passionate; you’ve almost convinced me to move here.”

  “What about you? Do you like Park City?” he said.

  “I do, but I wasn’t raised there. I grew up in a small town in California.”

  He raised a brow. “So, why Park City?”

  “My grandfather lived there. I wanted to be close to him while he was still alive. After I moved, I fell in love, and I’ve lived there ever since.”

  Cade looked out the window. “We’re here. I can’t guarantee we’re going to find the place, but we can sure try.”

  We drove up one street and down another, trying to match the house up with the surroundings in the photograph. Thirty minutes in, our quest hadn’t yielded any positive results, but we kept looking anyway. Alpine wasn’t a very big town, but there was one thing it had a plenty of: trees. The rich, vibrant shades of green blanketed most of the valley. It was breathtaking.

  “How many people live here—in Alpine?” I said.

  “Less than a thousand, I’d imagine.” Cade pulled over to the side of the road and pointed. “This is where the three rivers meet—the Snake River, Salt River, and Greys River. They all come together and run into Palisades Reservoir.”

  We sat there for a moment, taking it all in.

  “I caught a good-sized mac here over the summer,” Cade said.

  “A what?”

  “C’mon, you serious? A mackinaw.”

  “I still don’t follow.”

  “It’s a lake trout,” he said. “Haven’t you done any fishin’ before?”

  “Not really.”

  He smiled.

  “Greys River has some of the best fishin’ around,” he said. “I’ll have to take you sometime.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. Cade pulled back onto the road, and we were on our way again.

  “I don’t mean to disappoint you, but we’ve driven around just about every street there is here.”

  “What about that one?” I said, pointing to a shiny piece of metal reflecting off the upper side of one of the mountains.

  Cade leaned forward, squinting. “I don’t see anything.”

  “It’s right there,” I said. But when I looked again, it was gone. “I saw something about halfway up that mountain. I swear. It’s hidden by all those trees.”

  He tugged on the inside of his pocket, pulling out his phone. “Let me try that agent one more time.” It went to voicemail. “I wasn’t aware there were any roads up there, but let’s head that way and see if we can find one. If not, we’d better head back.”

  We drove a couple miles before the road forked. The flash of light I’d seen had been to the right, so Cade turned. I kept looking, hoping to catch a glimpse of what I saw before, but I didn’t. It was like the sun had shifted, and the light was no longer hitting it just right. We drove up a steep hill. It didn’t seem propitious at first, but when we reached the top, there it was: the house. I glanced at it, and then down at the picture, verifying they were one and the same. They were.

  The home was modest, no more than a couple thousand square feet, which was all on one level. No cars were parked out front, but a closed, oversized garage offered a bit of encouragement. We drove up the paved driveway, parked, and got out.

  “All this because we matched a fingerprint,” I said.

  No one came to the door when we knocked. Cade jiggled the handle. It was unlocked. We went in.

  I cupped my hand over my mouth and shouted, “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  “Is anyone here?” Cade said.

  Still nothing.

  The entryway opened to a living room that split off into two hallways. I took one side, Cade took the other. The first room I came to was a closet of some kind. It was filled with oversized metal cans of food storage, fishing poles, and neatly stacked plastic bins. Typed labels were on the front of each bin, revealing the contents of the container. Most were labeled with the names of different holidays, the majority of them being Christmas.

  The holiday bins had a second row of plastic containers behind them. I assumed they’d reveal even more of the same kind of thing, but I decided to look just in case. I pulled one from the first row off the shelf. Behind it was a bin labeled: Grace. I took it down and opened it. Inside I found stacks of folded clothes, most of them in a size five. I put the lid back on and slid the next one off the shelf. The bin behind it was labeled: Makayla. Makayla’s box contained clothes in a larger size, but there was something else.

  At the bottom of the box was a broken picture frame. I instantly recognized one of the girls in the picture. But it wasn’t one of the Kents daughters; it was Savannah Tate.

  Savannah appeared to be alive and well in the photograph standing next to who I assumed was Olivia Hathaway. The labels on the boxes told me their names had been changed, but that wasn’t all. Both girls had dark, brown hair before they were taken, and now they were blondes. But it didn’t matter what the Kents did to change the girls’ appearances, there was no mistaking Savannah’s angelic face. She looked just like she did in the photo her mother had been holding.

  If the Kents had moved the girls to this hideaway in the woods, where were they?

  I walked out of the storage room, planning to find Cade, but stopped when I noticed a closed door at the end of the hall. I was curious, so I walked to it, turning the knob when I got there. I slowly pushed the door open. The door creaked like the hinge plates needed to be oiled. I turned on the light, illuminating the master bedroom, and then gasped, throwing my hand over my nose to mask the indescribable odor. The scene before me was horrific. On the bed, Bradley and Regina Kent lay next to one another. Their eyes were closed. But they weren’t sleeping: they were dead.

  CHAPTER 34

  I sprinted down the hall, darting around the room in search of Cade. My eyes were blurred, and I couldn’t see much of anything out of them. I thought about yelling, but that would have required me to get actual words out, and I could hardly breathe, let alone form sentences.

  In a matter of moments my elation over finding the photo of both missing girls had turned from hope to heartache. Someone had found the one place the Kents had chosen to hide the girls
from everyone else. Were the girls dead too?

  I paused, leaning over the kitchen counter to gain control over my staggered breathing, but resting did nothing to quell the anxiety growing inside me. A sound echoed from the opposite end of the house. I followed it to Cade, who was bent over looking inside bedroom drawers.

  “Where are they?” I shouted when I entered the room.

  “Who?”

  “The girls! Their bodies! Have you found them yet?”

  Cade gripped the sides of my arms, shaking me. “Sloane, look at me. What are you talking about—what’s happened?”

  I breathed in and out; slow and steady, closing my eyes for several seconds and then opening them back up again. I looked around. The room was decorated in a variety of colors, but one stood out far more than the rest: green. Olivia’s room. The bed was disheveled, the comforter piled up at the bottom, and I couldn’t see a flat sheet, only a fitted one. There was no sign of Olivia.

  I dashed out of the room, throwing the door open to the second bedroom across the hall. I paid attention to nothing but another unmade bed in front of me. Again, empty.

  Cade ran up behind me. “What’s gotten into you? Sloane, talk to me!”

  “Have you searched the rest of the house?” I said.

  “What does that have to do with—”

  “Have you searched it?!”

  He nodded.

  “Why?”

  I was mumbling to myself now. “Good, then there is still hope…maybe they’re alive. I need to check both of their rooms for clues. We need to find out who—”

  “Sloane—what’ going on?” Cade’s voice was agitated.

  “The girls—they’ve been taken.”

  “What girls?” he said.

  “Olivia and Savannah.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I found a picture of them in a storage room. They were together—they are together. The Kents took them and—the Kents!”

  I grabbed Cade’s shirt sleeve, pulling him down the hall behind me. “I need to show you something.”

  I led him to the master bedroom, allowing him to enter before me. His reaction upon seeing the bodies was similar to mine, except I’d hesitated to get too close. Cade walked right up to them, staring down at their lifeless bodies. He leaned over, looking first at Regina, and then crossing to the other side of the bed to inspect Bradley.

  “Well, I know how they died,” he pointed to Bradley Kent’s head. “A single gunshot wound to the head.”

  “It smells in here,” I said. “I’d like to get a closer look at the bodies, but I don’t know if I can take it.”

  Cade unbuttoned the top snap of his shirt, holding it up to his nose. He inhaled and exhaled out of it. “I might need to get some air myself,” he said. “And then I need to call this in.”

  “Now?”

  “Soon,” he said. “Let’s make sure we have everything we need first. What all have you touched?”

  “Some bins in the storage room and a couple doorknobs.”

  “Wipe everything down,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “With the feds in town, you shouldn’t be here,” he said. “They’ll be all over you for this, and I don’t want you involved.”

  “But, you said we would work—”

  “All I’m saying is it would look better if I found this place on my own,” he said. “I’m trying to protect you. We are in this together. Although, how I’ll explain me ending up here, I have no idea. Time is everything right now, so we’re out of here in fifteen minutes tops. I need to get the coroner here as soon as possible.”

  I searched the bathroom for a washcloth and found one in the third drawer. I also found a box of latex gloves under some bottles of blond hair dye. I gave the gloves to Cade so if he wanted a closer inspection of the bodies, he could touch them. Then I retraced my steps, making sure to wipe down only the surfaces I had touched. Now all investigators would find were the smudged oil spots that had been left by the pads of my fingers, nothing they’d be able to analyze.

  Behind the living room was a large office. When I walked by, I noticed one of the drawers from the desk was lying on the floor, its contents spilled out all over the room. An office chair was also tipped on its side. I walked over, kneeling down to get a closer look. The drawer had come out of the center console in the desk. The front of the drawer had a busted lock. Someone had been looking for something. Papers were scattered around the drawer. I bent over, trying to see what they were without picking them up. There was a deed to some land, deeds to the Kents vehicles, and a few other things of no consequence.

  Had the thief gotten what he came for?

  I started to stand back up and noticed a piece of fabric hanging off the office chair. At first I thought it had ripped, but upon closer inspection I could see that the upholstery covering the back of the chair velcroed at the bottom. A small piece at the end had folded over just enough to reveal a thin slit. And under the slit, a slight bulge. I pulled the Velcro up and a brown leather book fell out. It was smaller than an index card and thin. As I thumbed through it, most of the pages were empty except for a few handwritten ones at the beginning.

  At the top of each page at the front of the book was a name. The name, which was always female, was followed by information like eye color, hair color, and age. There was no address or phone number, just a general description of each child. There was also a price which ranged from forty thousand dollars to one hundred thousand dollars. A few girls had question marks by their names. Six pages in, I came across Olivia’s name. She didn’t have a question mark. She had a star. A star to indicate she was the chosen one. Next to her name was a price: fifty thousand dollars. I flipped through a few more pages and found Savannah. She also had a star, but her price was one hundred thousand dollars. Younger children, it seemed, went for much more than their older counterparts. The thought of purchasing children at any price sickened me.

  I took the book over to the printer and lifted the flap on the copy machine. One by one, I printed each page until they all had been printed. I removed the book, flipping through it one last time to make sure I hadn’t missed anything before putting it back where I found it. On the last page of the book, in the corner on the bottom was a phone number. There was no name and no other information, just a phone number. I returned to the scanner and printed it out.

  Cade was snapping photos of the Kents with his camera phone from all different angles when I walked back in.

  “Find anything interesting?” I said.

  “They both show signs of livor mortis.”

  “You mean rigor mortis?” I said.

  He shook his head.

  “At the livor mortis stage, the blood collects around the lowest part of the body. See the discoloration here?” He pointed at Bradley Kent’s legs. “This is how I can tell.”

  There were areas of skin on Bradley’s lower body that were reddish in color, like they had been burned, even though they hadn’t. Other areas were white and completely drained of color.

  “It looks like splotchy rosacea,” I said.

  “Splotchy, yes. Rosacea, no.”

  “What does that tell you?”

  “Their bodies are stiff, but not as hard as some others I’ve seen,” he said. “My best guess? They’ve been dead for less than three days, but I’d put their deaths at less than a day.”

  “From the looks of things, someone did it while they were sleeping,” I said.

  Cade nodded in agreement.

  “There’s also nothing to suggest their bodies were moved after they were shot. The killer either didn’t care if they were found, or didn’t have time to clean up the mess.”

  “Someone knows we are looking for Olivia and Savannah,” I said. “And they know we’re close.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Cade and I were on our way back to the hotel so he could drop me off. The shock of what I’d just seen weighed on my mind. What the Kents had done was unforgivable, but
I still felt a sense of sadness over the children they lost and the way their life had come to an end.

  Several new theories crossed my mind. It was my opinion that Regina had sent the coloring pages to both parents over the guilt she felt about stealing another person’s child. She probably didn’t understand the impact of her actions. If she had, I was sure she would not have done it.

  The kidnapper most likely had certain “rules” he expected the Kents to follow. One of those rules would have been having no contact with the former family. When Regina sent the coloring page to the Hathaways and the news of it leaked to the paper, it alerted the kidnapper that their agreement had been broken. Without knowing it, Regina had put a target on their heads.

  I also wondered about the kidnapping itself—whether the Kents were in on it together when Olivia was taken, or if Bradley, distraught with his grieving wife, had contacted the kidnapper the first time himself. But I suppose none of that mattered now.

  As soon as Cade backed out of the Kents driveway, he called the double homicide in, saying he’d received an anonymous call from someone who alleged they knew where the girls were. The chief was suspicious, asking several questions, but Cade stood his ground, and he was convincing enough for the chief to take him seriously.

  After thinking it over, Cade decided it would be best if the feds arrived at the home thinking they were first on scene, having no idea we’d ever been there at all. Cade offered to drive up to the house, but the federal agent in charge got on the line, thanked him, and said, “We’ll take it from here.”

  Of course they would. We intended to do the same.

  Cade and I did our best to leave everything the way we found it, the bodies included. Not much time had passed since we’d arrived there, which I felt good about. Neither of us wanted to do anything to hurt the investigation. Within the hour, agents would be picking apart the place, piece by piece. I was anxious to know whether they’d discover what I had.

  “The fact the girls weren’t there is a good sign,” I said. “Maybe they’re still alive.”

  “Let’s hope so,” Cade replied.