by Stacy Green
For some reason, my throat closed up. Todd answered for me. “A 2013 black Audi A4. Sticks out.”
Frost raised her eyebrows. “Nice car for a paramedic.” At least she was astute enough to question that.
“His aunt and uncle have money. They set up a trust fund,” I said lamely, feeling the need to defend Chris’s more extravagant choices. “His uncle is Charles Hale, assistant district attorney for Pennsylvania. Charles is also primed to be the next district attorney when the incumbent retires this fall.”
To her credit, Frost didn’t call me on the power play. She zipped her jacket and pulled on a knit cap. “We’ve only got a couple of hours of daylight left. Let’s get out there and find him.”
5
Todd and I followed Chief Deputy Frost’s cruiser to the western edge of town, where the blacktop road cut through acres of timber. Still covered with snow, the trees stood like white giants, their gnarled limbs stretching overhead and blocking out the already gray sky. I folded my arms over my chest, digging my fingers into my heavy winter coat. Beneath the wool, my skin heated and prickled. An army marched through my stomach and into my legs until my knees bounced high enough to smack the dash.
Frost’s comment about self-preservation had my head ringing, but I tried to focus on Chris. “We’re not going to find him.”
“We might.” Todd’s flat voice held little hope.
“More than likely, we’re going to find a crime scene,” I said. “Hours after the crime occurred. Without a sign of Chris.”
“That’s if he’s alive.” Todd kept his gaze forward as he spoke. “If you were anyone else, I’d try to be gentle. But I think we’re past that.”
His act of kindness by speaking the truth made my throat swell. All I managed was a jerk of my head.
“Maybe you’re right and she took him.” He spoke quietly but without the same gentleness he’d use on a less experienced person. As though I were an equal. “She’s sadistic enough I won’t be entirely surprised. But she’s also on the run and desperate. It’s very likely that she–or an accomplice–shot Chris and left him to die.”
“You said yourself, he’s a paramedic.”
“I did,” Todd said. “But he’s not God. And it’s damned cold. Being exposed to the elements might slow the bleeding, but he’s also facing hypothermia. I want you to be prepared.”
“I know you do, and I appreciate that.” I struggled to speak over the heavy band of affection wrapping itself around my throat. “But if all she planned to do was kill him, why even respond to the email? He wasn’t a threat. He couldn’t find her. Even the FBI couldn’t find her.”
“I don’t know,” Todd said. “Maybe she didn’t want to take any chances. I’ve no doubt she resents Chris for her recent predicament. After all, if she planned to buy you from Jake, is it that much of a stretch she’d sucker Chris into meeting her?”
It wasn’t. Todd’s reasoning made more sense than mine, and yet I clung to the brewing instinct that Chris had been carted off by Mother Mary. Because if I were her, I’d want to torture him first. I’d want him to know how much he’d screwed up my plans and my life. He would know real, pants-filling fear before I finished with him.
If I were Mary.
But you’re not. Are you?
I’m going crazy.
“Is that why you went silent?”
His question caught me off guard and yanked me back from whatever insane edge I’d ventured over to. After a second of confusion, I managed to ask, “What?”
“After everything that happened with Jake and Riley, you find out Mary Weston is after you too. Is that what dragged you down?” Todd glanced at me, evidently sensing the crack in my mental capacity. I needed to sew it up before he permanently cut me out of the case.
The easiest answer was yes, so I nodded. “Part of it. But what I had to do in the garage has been on a loop in my head. I couldn’t face anything else.”
Todd didn’t answer right away. He watched the road, his index finger tapping the wheel. “I’d have thought that part came easier to you.”
I leaned my head against the window, watching the trees become bigger and denser. “That’s your mistake.”
He didn’t challenge me, and I didn’t have time to worry about whether or not he really believed I’d killed other people. The deputy turned right onto a trodden path covered with snow, and we followed. She drove until she came to a red, metal gate. Although it was padlocked and ‘no trespassing’ signs were clearly posted, anyone could have scaled the gate and ventured into the woods. She waved us around, and we parked beside her. All the nervous energy that had been brewing once again numbed. Like a robot, I pulled on my gloves and hat, wrapped my scarf tightly around my face to protect my sensitive skin from the cold wind, and exited the car.
“This is 189 acres of hunting land for sale.” Frost had to raise her voice over the gusting wind. She pointed to the sign, barely visible beneath snow. “I’d assume he stayed on the perimeter. We don’t know how far away he’s parked.” She pointed to the east. “Why don’t you two walk this fence row and search for any sign he’s been here? This road goes a couple miles farther south, and then it forks. There’s a couple of ways he could have gotten here, and there’s a lot better parking there. I’m going to drive down and check.”
“This isn’t the place,” I said.
Both Todd and Frost stared at me, but the deputy spoke first. “How do you know that?”
“Because the Audi would be right here. There’s no way Chris would park it a mile down the road, out of his sight, in a strange place. He loves that car.” I looked at Todd, knowing he’d back me up.
“This isn’t exactly easy territory for a car like that.” Frost shook her head, speaking as if I were no more than a dumb city girl who didn’t know jack about the country. She glanced at Todd. “How’d yours handle coming down the side road?”
“Not great,” Todd said. “Lucy, she has a point.”
I gritted my teeth. “She’s wrong.”
Chief Deputy Foster didn’t rise to my disrespect. She simply ignored me. “Go ahead and walk the fence line. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I waited until her vehicle disappeared behind the tree line. “This is a waste of time.”
Todd had already started following the barbed wire fence. With meticulous steps, his head tucked down against the bristling wind, he walked east. “Go the other way. Look for footsteps. Blood. You know the drill.”
A disgusting feeling of powerless surged through me. This was a waste of time. Why didn’t the deputy want to listen to what I had to say? Was it a female power thing? I hoped not, because I didn’t have the time or the patience for that juvenile crap. My days of playing that game were over. My boots sank through the snow as I plowed down the fence line, looking for things I knew weren’t there. A thicket of brambles snagged on my jeans, a needle piercing the denim and snagging my skin. I cursed and jerked away.
How could Chris do this? I’d been out of touch for the past couple of weeks, but had he felt so abandoned that he’d gone completely stupid? If he’d only waited…
But then what would I have done? The day Jake and Riley kidnapped me, I’d sworn my allegiance to him and to killing his mother. The day I killed Riley and Jake, on the way to the station, with Todd fussing over me, my mind had already jumped ahead thinking about how we’d find Mary and what I planned to do. How dare she think she could buy me and subject me to those horrible things? I even pictured the look on her face as she realized who really had the upper hand.
But the adrenaline-injected fury faded as the hours passed, replaced by Riley’s face and words. I crashed hard. And I had no plans of getting up.
Chris was left on his own.
Again.
I stepped on an icy patch of snow and nearly lost my footing.
You didn’t abandon him. She did. You are not her.
The satisfaction I took from killing Preacher and Jake and even Riley didn’t a
mount to what she’d done.
Did it?
Frost’s dirty patrol car came back into view. Driving faster than she should have been, she skidded to a stop on the sliver of gravel masquerading as the side of the road.
I couldn’t move.
She jumped out of the car, bracing herself on the open door. She glanced at me, almost as if she couldn’t control it and then looked at Todd.
“My deputy found his car off Quail Road.”
6
The sight of the Audi smacked me in the chest like the blow of an errant baseball bat. Dirt covered its shiny, black exterior and dulled the wheels. Chunks of the thick sand used to make snow-covered roads drivable hung behind the tires like mutated coconuts. Straddling the side of the road, it looked small and lost, the dog waiting on the owner who would never return.
I forced myself out of Todd’s car, my body moving on autopilot. Another deputy stood beside the Audi, peering inside. Beneath his hat, the gray hair at his temples made him look older than Chief Deputy Frost. My wicked mind wondered how she’d earned the title as a female at such a young age.
“The car’s locked.” The deputy spoke as Frost approached him. “Appears to be an overnight bag in the backseat. Other than that, it looks clean.”
“I know the keyless entry.” My voice sounded frail against the increasing wind. I cleared my throat. “Anyone have a pair of latex gloves, or are my wool ones all right?”
Frost raised her eyebrow. “Crime shows?”
“Private investigator.” I didn’t even try to keep the snap out of my voice.
Todd gently pushed his way past me, a glove already on. “Give me the code, Lucy.”
It seemed a gross miscarriage of trust. Chris said I was the only person he’d ever given the code to. He’d be furious I’d given it to Todd, of all people.
“Lucy.”
I rattled off the code.
Todd opened the door and then stepped back. “Deputy Frost, this is your jurisdiction. If there’s a crime scene here, let’s do it right.”
She nodded, donning gloves.
My insides soured as she and deputy nameless began to sift through the Audi. Todd circled like a hungry dog.
I turned away and looked at the vast expanse of woods and open pasture. This time, the ‘for sale’ sign could be seen clearly from the road. At least a hundred feet of cold, snowy pasture separated the tree line from the gate I could barely make out near the trees.
Closing my eyes, the north icy wind feeling colder than it had just minutes ago, I pictured Chris standing in this very spot. He wouldn’t have been able to stay in the car. He’d have started out leaning against it, watching. Shifting from foot to foot, kinetic and restless as always. Impatience would have moved him forward and away from the safety of the Audi.
He’d have worn his wool pea coat and probably a hat. If he’d worn boots, they wouldn’t be appropriate for slogging through inches of snow. They would be narrow at the toe, heavy in the sole. My eyes open, my gaze dropped to the ground. Careful to stay in the ditch, I walked down the road. If he’d left footprints, the wind had already blanketed them with snow.
Not wanting to get snow in his too-short boots, he’d have hovered on the side of the road, debating about heading toward the trees.
But why go to the trees?
Because she would have chosen cover, just as I would have.
Chris wouldn’t have been able to wait. His mind would trip and fumble until he couldn’t resist. He’d come too far to not try everything possible. He’d wonder if there wasn’t another way into the woods, if she wasn’t standing just on the other side of that gate, waiting to see what he’d do.
He wouldn’t be able to leave without checking.
“I’m heading back to the car.”
I searched the ditch, looking for some set of footprints in the mounds of ugly snow, but the blowing and drifting had done its job. I’d reached the dirt drive that cut through the pasture and toward the gate at the woods. Were those footprints?
Another gust of wind blew a fresh wave of snow over the very tracks I observed and sent flakes into my eyes. I smeared them off my face and started down the path. I no longer felt the cold or the relentless wind. Even with Todd and the deputies fifty feet away, I felt like the last person on earth, walking to my doom.
No drumming of my heart in my ears. No ominous silence, either. Just the sound of the wind and my boots and the numbness that seemed to accompany me these days. One foot in front of the other, day-by-day, until it ended and I could sleep. That’s what I’d told myself the first few days after the garage. And gradually I took fewer steps and slept more. I’d have preferred to do that today.
Instead I stood near the edge of a forlorn patch of woods, the tree limbs bare and twisted, some of them stark white and others still smattered with snow. The wind whistled in the trees, hitting me in the face as though Mother Nature wanted me to drop to my knees and pray for my sins. But I didn’t move. My stomach clenched and twisted itself into a knot. The sound of the wind roared in my ears, making my brain feel as if it had been scrambled. I blinked, hoping the thing I’d seen would disappear into my imagination, but when I opened my eyes, it remained as brilliant as ever.
A crimson pool in the snow.
7
I called Todd over, my voice sucked away by the harsh wind.
Breathing hard, Todd suddenly appeared next to me, along with Frost and no-name deputy.
“Shit.” She knelt in front of the blood. “It’s dark and drying already and partially covered from the blowing snow. I’d say it’s at least a couple of hours old.”
“It happened at 10:07 A.M.,” I said. “I played you the voicemail.”
Todd’s hand gripped my elbow. “You should go back to the car.”
“Are you serious? You’ve got to care more about me than that.”
He winced but drew his shoulders back out of his usual slouch. “I do. It’s cold, and you’re not yourself. This is police business.”
“And I’m not damaging the scene any more than anyone else,” I said. “I haven’t touched anything.” I didn’t want to be alone in the car with nothing but my own head to keep me company.
“These impressions,” the deputy pointed to the area surrounding the bloody snow, “indicate he might have fallen, but the wind’s blown enough I can’t tell if he lay there or not. But there’s no blood trail. So what happened to him?”
“She bandaged him up – or he did it himself – and she made him leave with her,” I said. “Isn’t it obvious?” I turned to Frost, fear doing what it always did to me: morphing into anger. Anger was easier to weaponize. “You don’t know what you’re dealing with here. Did you look up Mary Weston or Martha Beckett? Have you seen the things she’s done?”
“Why would she take him?” Frost’s rational question made me want to smack her.
“Because she’s a psychopath. And she’s obviously not here.” I spread my arms wide, anxiety shelling my system. I felt unsteady, out of control. Irrational. If I could have hit something–Deputy Frost would do–and gotten away with it, I’d have beaten her until I felt better. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Search,” She said. “Right now, we call in the auxiliary volunteers and the state police. Crime scene techs too. Your friend didn’t just vanish, so however he got away, the blowing snow has destroyed the path. Which means we form a grid and start looking.” She pointed to the other deputy, her voice controlled but still ringing with excitement. “The landowner lives out of state. See if you can contact the realtor and get their information. If they gave anyone permission to hunt, we might have a lead.”
“There’s no time for your grid.” I wanted to scream at her. I stepped closer, into her face, feeling my own harden into the mask I used when people needed to get their stupidity and agenda out of my way. When I wanted to make them afraid of me. “She’s taken him somewhere else. You’re killing him.”
“Lucy.” The
sound of Todd saying my name like that grated on my nerves, but it also pulled me a foot back off the edge. “You have to step aside.”
“Let me ask you this.” Frost hadn’t backed down. Instead, she glared at me, her squared jaw taut, her body leaning forward just enough to remind me who was in charge. “Do you have any idea where she might have taken him? Where she came from? What device she used to communicate with him? Did she email him from our library? Does she have a phone that might have GPS?”
“I don’t know.” I hated saying the words because Frost was out of her league and wasting time. “But Mary Weston is true evil. She convinced her first husband to lie for her. In nearly thirty years, he’s never implicated her in the Lancaster crimes–not even when the recent evidence came up. She’s a chameleon, constantly reinventing herself. As Martha Beckett, she raped a little girl with wooden spoons and then beat her to death. She forced her young son to take part and then let that child go to prison while she skipped off to start over yet again.” My voice rose as I spoke, taking on the shrill tone of someone on the verge of panic. “You cannot comprehend the kind of person you’re dealing with. She’s too smart and experienced to be anywhere nearby. She’s got a plan, and you need to notify your superiors and the state police immediately.”
“The FBI has tried numerous ways to track her.” Todd’s hand rested on my shoulder– stable, but warning. “She’s gone off the grid. No cell, no credit cards. Unless she’s suckered someone else into letting her use his. Which is very possible.”
“So I’ll have another deputy check the local Wi-Fi hotspots and the library, see if she’s been inside. I’m betting on no, but we’ve got to try. In the meantime, this,” Frost gestured to the acreage, “is our best lead. We’re not only looking for him, we’re looking for any kind of evidence we can use. You understand?”
A month ago, I’d have been thinking of ways to humiliate this woman, even imagining dousing her with poison. But arguing with her had exhausted me, and the numbness crept back in. The situation was hopeless, anyway. Mary had won. “Yes. But you’re making a mistake, and it’s going to come back to haunt you.”
