Hunter's Moon

by Karen Robards

  Watching herself plead for Susan’s safe return on The News at Noon, Molly felt suddenly light-headed. She’d seen other broadcasts like it before: distraught family members begging for the lives of beloved children. In every case Molly had ever heard of, there’d been no happy ending; the children had been found dead.

  Please, God. Please.

  The dogs and their handlers were still out as the afternoon progressed; more volunteers arrived to comb the fields. J.D. and Thornton and Tyler Wyland were among this group, along with Tom Atkinson, whose mother had come with him. Instead of heading off with the search party, Flora bustled into the kitchen. She had brought over a chicken dinner complete with all the trimmings, and was determined to feed anyone who needed feeding. Molly was grateful for her help. Though she herself could not eat, Ashley and Mike and Sam needed food, and Flora was the best cook in the county.

  Watching Sam bite into a drumstick, Molly smiled at Flora and went out onto the porch. She could still see the search party in the distance. Restless, Molly decided to join them. She could not, for the life of her, just stay in the house and wait.

  Trapped by the fence, Pork Chop whined with disappointment as Molly climbed it. His whines turned to barks and his barks to howls as she started to walk away.

  “Hush, Pork Chop!” Molly told him as he leaped vainly at the fence. He was still howling as she crested the rise and disappeared from sight.

  The day was cold and bright. Wrapped in a down coat of Ashley’s, Molly kept her eye on the ground as she walked, looking for something—-anything—that might indicate Susan had passed that way. A tiny white fuzzball in the brown grass, perhaps; the nightgown had a tendency to pill and shed. Or a blond hair. Or—or what, she didn’t know. Because she loved Susan, Molly felt she might notice what the others had overlooked. She almost felt that her love could lead her to Susan like a divining rod to water.

  Please, God. Please.

  Molly had prayed more in the last thirty-six hours than in the entire rest of her life.

  “Su-san!” Periodically the searchers called Susan’s name as they progressed. Other search parties, farther away, did the same. Susan’s name echoed forlornly over the countryside. The sound had a mournful, keening quality that clutched at Molly’s heart.

  Something was coming up behind her, moving fast and low over the grass. Molly heard its approach, saw it coming out of the corner of her eye, and turned her head.

  “Pork Chop!” she said as the dog slowed his head-long gallop to come trotting up to her. He was panting. His tongue hung out and his paws and muzzle were covered with dirt, but he looked very pleased with himself.

  “Did you dig under the fence?” she asked in a scolding tone, because Pork Chop had done it before. The dog was not supposed to be on Wyland Farm property for fear he would spook the horses. But the horses were in barns now, so what harm could he do? Molly thought about ordering Pork Chop to go home—not that he was likely to obey—just from general principles, but then realized that she would be glad of the company. Pork Chop would keep her from feeling so alone.

  “Come on, then,” she said to the dog. He wagged his tail at her, snuffling small hillocks of grass as he trotted alongside.

  J.D., the Wylands, and the others were by now almost an entire field ahead of her, Molly discovered. She glanced up in time to see them scaling another fence. They were headed toward the woods beyond the stallion barn, Molly knew. The consensus was that Susan could not be out in the open. The grass was too flat at this time of year to provide much concealment. If she was in the fields, she would have been found by now.

  Nobody had said the words her body, but Molly knew that was what they meant. If Susan’s body was in the fields, they would have found it; if she was alive, she wouldn’t be in the fields.

  Please, God. Please.

  Sam would be devastated if Susan did not come back. He and his twin had never been separated, even when they were moved from one foster home to another. If for no other reason, Susan had to be found alive for Sam.

  Molly remembered Sam’s dream of the night before. Susan wanted to come home, he’d said. She was in a big hole, in the dark, and she wanted to come home.

  Tears rushed to Molly’s eyes; she blinked them back. Susan wanted to come home. Of course Susan wanted to come home.

  She was in a big hole.

  Out of nowhere Molly remembered the well. The one she had fallen over, breaking Ashley’s shoe, the night she had found the ringer. Had anyone looked in the well?

  She glanced up, suddenly excited, meaning to call the search party back and send them in a new direction. They were mere specks in the distance, already almost to the woods. She would have to scream her head off for them to hear her.

  Molly decided to go herself. Turning in the opposite direction, she whistled for Pork Chop, who had been ranging farther and farther afield and was at this point nowhere in sight. When he didn’t respond, Molly shrugged. The dog could find his own way home, she had no doubt. Walking very fast now, she headed for the veterinary hospital. She would have to use it as a reference point. Without it, she wasn’t sure she could find the well again, as it blended completely into the ground.

  A ten-minute walk brought the hospital into sight. Molly stood in the open field and looked at it, trying to remember at precisely what angle she had approached it. The Big House was about a half mile to the north. Glancing over her shoulder, she determined that she had crossed the field perhaps a hundred feet farther to her left.

  “Susan!” Calling her sister’s name, Molly walked toward the barn, scanning the ground carefully on both sides as she went. Even so, she would not have seen the well cover had it not been for the tiny strip of silvery leather from Ashley’s shoe.

  It still clung to the edge of the hole that had tripped her.

  Molly hurried to the well. It did not look as though it had been disturbed in decades, but still …

  “Susan!”

  She put a hand in the hole, which was perhaps six inches in diameter, trying to shift the stone cover. It weighed a ton; she couldn’t budge it.

  “Susan!” she yelled down the hole.

  “Molly!” It was a man’s voice, and it came from behind her instead of from underground.

  Molly glanced around to see Tyler Wyland striding toward her across the field. He must have seen her heading in the opposite direction from the search party and decided to join her. Molly was glad to see him. At that point, she would have even welcomed Thornton.

  “What are you doing?” he asked as he drew closer.

  “I just remembered this well,” Molly said, standing up. “But I can’t lift the cover. Can you help me?”

  He was beside her, looking down at the stone circle that was barely visible beneath the spongy carpet of brown grass.

  “How did you find it?” he asked.

  “I tripped over it the other night when I was walking home from your party. I got my foot caught in the hole, and broke off the heel of my shoe.”

  “That’s too bad,” Tyler said.

  Molly glanced at him impatiently. “See if you can lift it. If you put your fingers in the hole, you can get a grip on it. It’s too heavy for me to move.”

  Molly dropped to one knee beside the well, inserting her fingers into the hole to demonstrate. The stone was rough and cold beneath her hand. The afternoon chill had her shivering despite the protection of Ashley’s goose-down coat.

  “The cover weighs about two hundred pounds,” Tyler agreed. “But it’s not a well down there. It’s a hidey-hole. Local abolitionists used to hide runaway slaves in it in the days of the Underground Railroad.”

  Before Molly could ask him how he knew, something smashed with crushing force into the back of her head.

  Molly felt a blinding pain, and then the world went dark.

  50

  Despite his preoccupation with Susan, Will could not keep Howard Lawrence’s death out of his mind. Something about it bothered him. It kept niggling
at the edges of his consciousness; he had the feeling that he was missing something, something important.

  He could not waste time on Lawrence today. The man was dead; with every hour that passed, the chances increased that Susan might be too. She had to be found, soon.

  Uncovering the link with Libby Coleman was a break. It narrowed down the list of possible suspects considerably. Right now a dozen assorted cops and feds were combing every available record to find anyone who had left the area just after Libby Coleman’s death and returned before the latest round of animal mutilations began. Among the names they compiled should be that of the perp.

  The records were not computerized. Time was running out. Hurry, hurry, hurry was the refrain that ran through Will’s head.

  Still, he could not get Lawrence’s death out of his mind.

  Finally Will stopped what he was doing and leaned back in his borrowed chair in disgust. Massaging his temples with his fingers and closing his eyes, he let his mind off the tight leash on which he’d been keeping it.

  Free to wander, it went straight to Howard Lawrence.

  There is no such thing as coincidence.

  Given that assumption, then Lawrence’s death was murder. The most likely scenario was that someone had found out that he had turned informant—witness the blackmail note—and killed him as a result.

  Shot him in the head at the very Dairy Queen where Will had stopped earlier in the day, as a matter of fact.

  Why, all of a sudden, did the case refuse to let him go?

  Was there any way it could be connected to Susan’s disappearance?

  Will didn’t see how, but he had learned to trust his instincts long ago. Suppose he was looking at the Lawrence case all wrong, he posited. Suppose he turned everything upside down. Suppose Lawrence’s murder was not the result of his work as an informant; suppose the blackmail note had nothing to do with that.

  Suppose Lawrence was killed for something to do with—not Susan because Susan had not yet disappeared—something to do with the Coleman case. Suppose Lawrence had known what happened to Libby Coleman. Suppose that the uncreased blackmail note with no fingerprints on it besides Lawrence’s had not been sent to Lawrence, but was soon to be sent by Lawrence.

  Suppose Lawrence had been blackmailing Libby Coleman’s kidnapper. Suppose the kidnapper had retaliated by killing Lawrence.

  At the Lexington Dairy Queen.

  Will remembered the black-and-white security monitor that recorded customers placing orders, and his eyes popped open.

  Lawrence would be on one of those tapes. Perhaps whoever killed him would be too.

  Will was on the phone before the thought was fully formed. The time it took for the Dairy Queen’s owner to be tracked down and the whereabouts of the October 11 tape ascertained had Will in a cold sweat. His greatest fear was that the tape might already have been destroyed, or erased.

  Luck was with him. In the absence of a crime, the owner said, security tapes were erased and recycled monthly. But the Dairy Queen had been robbed in October. All tapes for that month had been sent to the police so they could check to see if the robbers had cased the restaurant before committing the crime.

  Forty-five minutes later Will was seated before a TV screen in an office at the Lexington Police Department, reviewing the Dairy Queen security tape for October 11.

  There was Howard Lawrence ordering a cheeseburger, onion rings, and a vanilla shake. The next driver was a woman with two children in the car. Then came Tyler Wyland in a gray Volvo that Will had seen around the farm, ordering an ice-cream cone with sprinkles.

  Tyler Wyland.

  As far as Will knew, Wyland had never left the area, and he would have been young—sixteen, seventeen—when Libby Coleman disappeared. But he was on that security tape.

  There is no such thing as coincidence.

  Buying ice cream at a Dairy Queen was not a crime, even if the man two cars ahead died minutes later under suspicious circumstances.

  Will had not a shred of hard evidence to charge Tyler Wyland with anything.

  What he had was a gut feeling. He picked up the phone, and ordered Tyler Wyland brought in for questioning.

  51

  Molly opened her eyes. Not that it made any difference. It was so dark, she could see nothing. Dark and musty-smelling and cold, but not as cold as it had been outside.

  Where was she? What had happened?

  Her head hurt so badly that it was making her nauseous. Cautiously she moved, gritting her teeth against the pain. She was lying on her back on what felt like a dirt floor, she discovered. She could not see, but she had the impression of a vast, echoing space.

  Susan. The well. Memory came flooding back. Molly realized that she was not in a well at all. Tyler Wyland had described it as a hidey-hole left over from the days of the Underground Railroad.

  Tyler Wyland had knocked her unconscious and brought her down here. Why?

  “Susan?” Molly called tremulously into the darkness, using her hands to push herself into a sitting position. Her head swam. She shook it, hoping it would clear.

  Shaking her head was a mistake. The resulting pain was crippling. Molly collapsed onto the floor again, wondering if she had a concussion.

  “M-Molly?”

  When she first heard it, Molly thought the voice was a hallucination. Still, she struggled up again, hoping against hope.

  “Susan?”

  “Molly?”

  “Oh, Susan!” Ignoring the pain in her head, Molly scooted along the floor toward the voice. “Susan, Susan!”

  “Molly?”

  Suddenly Susan was there with her, in her arms, hugging her as if she would never let her go. Molly wrapped her arms around her little sister and thanked God.

  “Oh, Molly, did he get you too?” Susan was shaking, crying, her head burrowing into Molly’s shoulder. Molly held her sister close. Her initial euphoria evaporated.

  Susan had not been found. Instead, they were both missing.

  52

  Waiting for Tyler Wyland to be picked up, Will drove back to the farmhouse to apprise Molly of the break in the case. There were so many vehicles crammed into the driveway and in the yard in front of the house that he had to park on the grassy verge across the street. Eaton was in the house, along with Mike, Ashley, and Sam, and assorted neighbors. Molly was not; she had gone out an hour or so previously.

  Probably to join a search party.

  Mrs. Atkinson pressed chicken and dressing on him, which Will politely declined. He comforted the children as best he could, giving them hope without promising anything he couldn’t deliver. Then he went out on the porch, roaming restlessly through the yard. Where was Molly? Why was it taking so long to pick up Wyland?

  The cellular phone in his pocket rang. Will answered it, talked to Captain Bill Sperry of the Lexington police, and hung up.

  There were cops at Wyland’s house and at his sister’s house, but Wyland himself was not there. The word was that he had been with a search party that included his nephew Thornton, but the search party had been located and Tyler Wyland was no longer with them. According to members of the search party, Tyler Wyland had separated from them at around four o’clock, striking out over the fields on his own.

  No one had seen him since.

  It was 5:45 p.m. Night was falling, and the temperature was dropping. The search parties were trailing in. Will went into the house, talked to the kids, talked to Eaton, and came outside to pace again. It was full dark, though it was not yet six o’clock.

  Where was Molly? She should have been back by now. A quick phone check confirmed that all the search parties were in. Molly had not been seen. Was she out in the fields looking on her own? In the dark?

  Where was Tyler Wyland?

  Wyland would have no reason to attack Molly. If he was the perp. Will had to remind himself that there was no proof yet that Wyland had done anything.

  Just his gut feeling, after seeing that tape.

  His
gut feelings were usually pretty accurate. At the moment his gut was screaming at him that Molly should have been back by now.

  Where was she? Will walked up the slope to the fence, staring restlessly across the fields. In the dark he couldn’t see much. Just shadows dancing over the grass, and in the distance the gray shapes of hills and trees against the night sky.

  The moon was rising on the horizon, yellow and swollen and round as a ball.

  She would have been home by now, unless something had prevented her. Will knew it with a conviction that bordered on certainty. Remembering how she had gone to investigate the sounds she had heard that night in the veterinary hospital when anyone with a lick of sense would have hightailed it back out the window, Will grew increasingly alarmed.

  What if Molly had found something that led her to Susan? What if Tyler Wyland had found Molly where she had no business to be?

  It was after dark, all the search parties were in, and both Molly and Tyler Wyland were still missing.

  There is no such thing as coincidence.

  Will’s blood ran cold. Snatching the phone out of his pocket, he dialed the Lexington office. He wanted those bloodhounds back out here, pronto.

  They had drawn a blank with Susan, following an old trail to a playmate’s house. Susan, of course, had on the night of her abduction presumably been carried from the house. But the dogs had at least proved they could follow a trail. Will wanted them put on Molly’s trail. Now.

  Matthews called back minutes later. The bloodhounds were on their way to an exhibition in West Virginia. They could not possibly get back before morning. He would see if he could scare up another pair of tracking dogs in the surrounding counties.

  Will said a few choice words into the phone, and hung up.

  At the idea that Molly might have joined the ranks of people who disappear never to be seen again, cold terror ran through Will’s veins. He didn’t think he could bear to lose another woman he loved.