The Innocent

by Amanda Stevens

  The work was frustrating and tedious, but Abby had stayed with it until the names on the printouts had begun to blur together and she’d been forced to call it a night.

  But in spite of her exhaustion, she was too wound up to sleep. A glass of wine hadn’t helped her relax, and neither had a hot bath. Nothing in her grandmother’s house, which Abby had inherited when her mother had died three years ago, had been able to soothe her.

  She would have liked to sit in the garden for a while, but as late as it was, the mosquitoes would be unbearable. She compromised by curling up in a rocking chair next to the window in her grandmother’s sewing room, where she could gaze out at the lightning bugs flitting through the darkness.

  An ache welled inside her for the loss of her grandmother and her mother. For Sadie. For little Sara Beth Brodie and Emily Campbell.

  “Please let us find them,” she whispered to the darkness. “And let them be alive.”

  After a few moments, the inaction filled her with despair. She returned to the living room and the stack of files she’d brought home, and for a long time, she sat on the floor, going over the reports, reading witness interviews, studying photos shot at both crime scenes. But nothing made sense to her. She didn’t have enough pieces of the puzzle to see anything clearly. Something was still missing, and if she didn’t find it soon, Abby was very much afraid those little girls would remain lost forever.

  Rubbing her stiff neck, she glanced at her watch. Almost midnight. Long past her bedtime. She couldn’t keep doing this for much longer. She couldn’t continue to work fifteen hours a day, and then come home to fret about the cases for the rest of the night. She had to get some rest. Dropping from exhaustion wouldn’t help find those children.

  But once in her bedroom, Abby found herself slipping into fresh jeans and a T-shirt rather than into her pajamas. Grabbing her keys, she ran out to her car and within minutes she was pulling to the curb in front of Fairhaven Academy.

  This time of night, the school was dark and deserted. A little spooky, with its three stories of windows and ivy-covered walls. There were streetlights around the perimeter of the grounds and the moon was up, but much of the light was blocked by a thick canopy of leaves from the towering oak and pecan trees.

  As Abby climbed out of her car and stood gazing at the school, an unnatural hush seemed to hang over the night. But in the silence, she could have sworn she heard the echo of children’s laughter. Could have sworn she saw one of the swings on the playground move in the breeze.

  Crossing the street, she jumped a small ditch and scrambled up a slight embankment to the sidewalk that ran parallel to the playground. In spite of Sadie’s disappearance ten years ago, the grounds remained unfenced. The playground equipment was a good hundred yards from the sidewalk, however, and Lois Sheridan, the director, had assured Abby that the children were never left unsupervised. At least two teachers from each grade were with the students at all times.

  But a fence, such a meager expense in hindsight, might have prevented Emily Campbell’s disappearance. It would not, however, have stopped Sara Beth’s abductor from grabbing her in Ferguson’s Drugstore.

  In spite of the heat, a chill crept up Abby’s backbone as she made her way around the darkened school yard. Somewhere down the street, a dog barked and a slight wind ruffled leaves overhead. The back of her neck prickled with unease.

  Don’t be an idiot, she scolded herself sternly. She was a police detective, armed and—she liked to think—dangerous to the criminal element. Nothing to be nervous about. Nothing to be afraid of.

  But she found herself humming an aimless little tune as she checked all the ground-level doors and windows that faced the playground. So many, and yet no one had seen anything. No one had been watching from any of those windows when Sadie and Emily had been taken from this very school yard.

  Something brushed against her leg, and Abby jumped, then let out a nervous laugh when she looked down and saw a skinny gray cat rubbing itself against her.

  “Don’t you know better than to sneak up on a girl with a gun,” she whispered, kneeling to pet the stray. “And why am I whispering, for heaven sakes? There’s no one here but you and me.”

  But she’d scarcely spoken the words when a shadow moved on the playground, not fifty feet away.

  Her heart hammering, Abby froze. Kneeling as she was near the building, she didn’t think she could be spotted. Her hand idly soothed the cat’s fur as she tried to calm her racing pulse. She peered through the darkness and saw the shadow again.

  It was a man. Large. Tall. Stealthily moving through the playground equipment and the trees.

  Suddenly, he stopped and turned to gaze at the street. Moonlight reflected on his profile, and Abby caught her breath.

  The man was Sam Burke.

  She’d been reaching for her weapon when she recognized him, and now Abby let her hand fall to her side as she watched him. He knelt on the playground, and for the longest moment, for an eternity it seemed, he remained motionless, watching the street. It was almost as if he were putting himself on the level of a five-year-old child, Abby thought.

  After several long moments, he stood and strode to the street. Abby thought he was leaving, but instead, he positioned himself on the sidewalk so that he had an unobstructed view of the playground. And, as he had moments before, he stilled himself as he studied the landscape, as if he’d placed himself in some sort of trance.

  Another chill swept over Abby, and she started violently when the cat dashed off suddenly into the shadows. Distracted, she watched the animal for a moment before turning back to Sam.

  The street was deserted.

  In the space of a heartbeat, he’d vanished. Like Sadie. Like Emily. Like Sara Beth Brodie.

  No, not like them, Abby thought, moving around to the side of the building. Sam Burke was a grown man. A federal agent. He could take care of himself. Those little girls couldn’t.

  Still, there was something about him….

  Those eyes…

  Abby wouldn’t let herself finish the thought. Nor would she let herself be spooked away from her mission. She continued her exploration of the school yard, moving slowly, methodically, trying to imagine the scene as it had been on the afternoons the abductions had occurred.

  The classrooms and playground were the farthest from the street, but the building housing the administrative offices came within only a few yards of the sidewalk. Was it possible one of the doors had been left open and the abductor had entered the building to lie in wait until he could somehow lure Emily back inside? Had he watched Sara Beth from one of the classroom windows?

  The supervising teachers would have been keeping an eye on the street. They wouldn’t have been worried if one of the children had gone back inside.

  Out of habit, Abby tried one of the doors now. It was locked tight. She kept moving about the school until she came to the back, where an alley ran adjacent to the building. Cafeteria deliveries were made here, judging by the pile of food boxes stacked near the Dumpsters.

  Someone posing as a delivery man—even a legitimate delivery person—would have access to the building. Might even be familiar enough with the school to find his way in and out quickly. But could he move about undetected carrying a terrified child?

  What if she wasn’t terrified? What if she knew the abductor?

  Abby walked over to the boxes and shone her flashlight beam over the labels. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a movement near the building. Whirling, she caught a fleeting glimpse of a shadow as something launched itself directly toward her.

  Abby gasped and reached for her weapon as she automatically stepped back. Her foot encountered one of the boxes, and she went sprawling, losing her grip on the flashlight. She clung to her gun as a cardboard avalanche tumbled over her. In a panic, she fought her way up through the boxes.

  Nearby, the cat scurried toward the trash bins, scrounging for food. That had been the movement Abby had seen. A flash of gray fur
. A shadow magnified by the moonlight.

  She reached up and wiped away a trickle of blood from a scratch on her forehead.

  “Great,” she muttered, retrieving her flashlight. She was glad no one else was about so word of her attack couldn’t get back to the station. That’s all her male colleagues needed to hear.

  Sergeant Abby Cross, fearless female detective, cold-cocked by a scrawny stray cat.

  SARA BETH AWAKENED to darkness. And to voices.

  Her first thought was that her mama and daddy were fighting again, but then she remembered that she wasn’t in her room or her bed. She wasn’t exactly sure what this place was, but she knew it wasn’t home. She knew her mama wasn’t just down the hall.

  Lying very still, she listened to the urgent murmurs in the darkness. She thought she knew one of the voices. The familiar sound should have made her feel better, but it didn’t. Sara Beth couldn’t understand why she’d been brought here. Why she wasn’t allowed to go outside and play when it was daytime. Why there were dark curtains over the windows. Why she couldn’t just go home.

  She didn’t understand, but she knew enough to be afraid.

  Squeezing her eyes closed, she fought back tears as she strained to listen to those voices.

  “…can’t stay here. It isn’t safe and you know it. Someone could stumble across this place.”

  “We have to stay,” the voice that Sara Beth thought she knew said angrily. “It’s too risky to move her.”

  “Then what,” said the first voice, in a tone that sent a chill up Sara Beth’s spine, “do you suggest we do with her?”

  EMILY AWAKENED to darkness. And to silence.

  But she wasn’t alone. She could feel invisible eyes watching her from the deep shadows of the room, and she huddled more deeply under the cover. She was very frightened, even though she hadn’t been hurt. She’d been given plenty of food and water. Dolls to play with. Pretty clothes to wear. But she wasn’t allowed to watch TV or go outside, and she wasn’t allowed to call her mama.

  That frightened her most of all. If she couldn’t call home, how would her mama know where to find her? How would she be able to come and get her?

  And Emily desperately wanted her mama to come and get her. She didn’t like it here. In spite of the pretty dresses and the dolls, she didn’t like this place. She wanted her own toys and her favorite Pooh pajamas and the soft, pink quilt her Grandma JoJo had made for her. She wanted her own room and her own bed, but most of all, she wanted her mama.

  She started to sob softly into her pillow, and a voice said from the shadows, “Hush, child. Hush, now. You’ll be with your mama real soon.”

  Chapter Five

  Friday

  By the time Abby got to work the next morning, she was operating almost entirely on caffeine and sheer determination, chased with a large dose of desperation. Having to dodge reporters lying in wait outside the sheriff’s station didn’t improve her mood much, either.

  Plopping her folders on the table in the small conference room off the sheriff’s office, she settled in for the morning briefing, going over the remaining names she’d compiled from the printouts the night before while she waited for everyone else to arrive.

  Of the ones she’d yet to check out, the most promising was a man named Bobby Lee Hatcher from Palisades, a tiny community near the Louisiana border. He’d been arrested for the aggravated assault and kidnapping of a local businessman’s daughter nearly ten years ago, and had served nine years in Parchman. He’d gotten out of prison a month before Emily had gone missing.

  Nine years, Abby thought, as she stared at his name. He’d been arrested for kidnapping in October after Sadie had disappeared in August. Could he be the one?

  Unlike the other people whose names she’d taken from the printouts, Bobby Lee Hatcher resided beyond the hundred-mile radius of Eden that Abby had set as a parameter. He was a long shot. A very long shot, but when children were missing, no stone could be left unturned.

  After the morning briefing, Abby talked to Sheriff Mooney about making a trip down south to check him out.

  “I called Sheriff McElroy down in Palisades this morning,” she told him. “He’s faxing me the guy’s rap sheet. He said after Hatcher was released from prison, he came back to stay with his grandmother, but McElroy hasn’t seen anything of him lately. He said Hatcher used to hang around with an older cousin. He didn’t remember the guy’s name or anything else about him except that he was one heck of an auto mechanic. But he thinks if we find the cousin, we may be able to find Bobby Lee. I’d like to drive down and talk to the grandmother, see what I can get from her.”

  “Think anything will come of it?” Sheriff Mooney asked her.

  Abby shrugged. “I don’t know. Palisades is a long way from Eden, but I’d like to go down there and check it out just the same. I thought I’d ask Special Agent Burke to ride along.”

  Sheriff Mooney sat down heavily behind his desk, his expression troubled. “Actually, I need to talk to you about Sam Burke.”

  “What about him?” Abby’s heart skipped a beat at the sheriff’s ominous tone, but she was careful to keep her expression neutral.

  “You spent some time with him yesterday. What’d you think?”

  Other than the fact that he had the coldest eyes she’d ever looked into? Other than the fact that she’d felt an immediate attraction to him in spite of their animosity?

  She shrugged. “I didn’t think much about him one way or another. He seems to know his job. Anything else I should know?”

  Sheriff Mooney picked up the phone and said something to his secretary. After a moment, the door to his office opened and a tall, blond man walked in. The guy was extremely easy on the eyes, the kind who would have set most female hearts a-flutter. But Abby didn’t feel so much as a twinge when she looked up at him. He just wasn’t her type.

  And Sam Burke is? a little voice asked sarcastically.

  Oh, what do you know?she countered.

  That same little voice had steered her grandmother, her mother and her sister into relationships that had all ended disastrously. Those breathtakingly handsome men had all moved on to greener pastures, leaving the women in Abby’s family behind with broken hearts and fatherless children. Abby’s dad had stuck around longer than most. He’d sired two daughters before taking off to parts unknown.

  “Abby, this is Special Agent Talbot Carter. He’s the agent we were expecting from the field office in Jackson yesterday afternoon. This is Sergeant Abby Cross. She’s working the Brodie investigation.”

  Carter’s brows rose as he turned back to Sheriff Mooney, barely acknowledging Abby’s presence. “I would have thought someone with more experience would be assigned to these cases.”

  “Sergeant Cross is a very able investigator,” Sheriff Mooney assured him.

  But the agent didn’t seem convinced. He gave Abby a cool, dismissive look, one she’d seen too many times in the past. The fact that her age and gender, rather than her ability, were still issues rankled. But she knew enough to keep her mouth shut. Contrary to Carter’s opinion of her, Abby had enough experience to know that some people’s opinions regarding women in law enforcement were never going to change.

  “Abby, Special Agent Carter here needs to ask you a few questions about Sam Burke.”

  Abby glanced at Talbot Carter in surprise. “What kind of questions?”

  “Questions about his possible whereabouts. Sam Burke lied to you and Sheriff Mooney yesterday, Sergeant Cross. He’s not assigned to this case. In fact, he’s not assigned to any case. He resigned from the FBI a month ago.”

  A chill ran down Abby’s spine. “Are you saying he’s down here flashing around fake credentials?”

  “Oh, his creds are authentic,” Carter said. “He used to be a profiler with the Investigative Support Unit at Quantico. If you saw the movie Silence of the Lambs you got a somewhat glamorized version of what they do there. Burke still consults on cases, and he teaches criminal personali
ty profiling at the Academy. But he’s no longer a special agent.”

  The irony was more than a little unnerving to Abby. Profiling had been a dream of hers for years, a secret ambition that had been carefully tucked away long ago, just like the acceptance letter from the FBI Academy she’d received after completing her masters in criminology at Ole Miss. The letter now resided in the farthest corner of her top dresser drawer where Abby had put it the same day she’d received it, never to look at it again.

  The ambition had been a little harder to ignore, but over the years, she’d come to terms with it. She’d come to accept the fact that she would never leave Eden. Not as long as her sister harbored the hope that Sadie could still be found, and that if anyone could find her, it was Abby.

  “In the last ten years, Burke’s worked nearly every major serial killer case in the country,” Carter was saying.

  “Serial killer? Is that why he’s here?”

  “To be honest, we don’t know why he’s here,” Carter admitted grimly. “We know our office didn’t contact him for assistance, and as far as I can determine, none of your people called Quantico for help. But the fact that he led you and Sheriff Mooney to believe he was officially investigating these abductions is…puzzling to say the least.”

  “Not to defend his action or anything,” Abby said. “But a profiler might be able to fill in some of the blanks for us here. Give us a fresh perspective.”

  Carter scowled. “That’s why I’m here, Sergeant Cross, to offer the expertise and the technical support of the FBI.” He paused. “Do you have any idea where I can find Burke this morning?”

  She shrugged, but her mind was spinning in a dozen different directions. Sam Burke was no longer with the FBI. He’d lied to her. But why? What was he up to?