THE ONLY WITNESS: A Mystery/Suspense Novel

by Pamela Beason

  He finished his dinner and set the tray on the side table. Cargo nabbed the tray and trotted off with it. After spending a minute and a half on the Tika Kinsey story, the news program moved on to a report about road repairs and then the weather—more above-normal temps to come in the next week.

  Finn slid a photo out of the breast pocket on his shirt. Apparently, the Kittitas County Sheriff's Department had succeeded in keeping this story quiet so far, which was actually pretty amazing. Technically, the case was not in his jurisdiction, but he had more experience with dead bodies than anyone in the county, so they called him in. The photo was hard to look at, even for him. The reality had been worse. Before breakfast, the farm wife had found her Labrador retriever chewing on what she thought was a discarded doll from a neighbor's garbage heap. She'd nearly fainted when she took the 'toy' from the dog's mouth.

  A tiny corpse, covered in dirt, decayed and brutally mangled. John Doe, once an infant boy, now a miniature mummy: dark, dried skin stretched over a skeleton. Buried for weeks or maybe even months among the wheat stubble.

  "Homicide?" Everyone had asked Finn, as if he was a miracle worker who could read mummies.

  It was impossible to say if murder was involved. Whoever had buried the naked corpse had done it before the field was harvested; time and heavy equipment had obliterated whatever evidence might have been there. Finn had left the case in the hands of the County Sheriff's department, which would have to get more information from the coroner. Finn had suggested the possibility of a stillbirth to a worker in the country illegally; every year the police across the U.S. ran into a few unclaimed bodies in farm country. That's probably why the discovery had been kept quiet; few people wanted to admit to knowing illegals worked in their community. But babies didn't naturally turn up in farm fields. Or in the family dog's jaws.

  A crunch from his own canine drew Finn's attention. Cargo flopped next to the fireplace, with the plastic shreds of the frozen dinner tray at his feet.

  "For chrissakes, dog." Finn slid the photo back into his pocket, got up and cleaned up the remnants. He had to play tug-of-war with the mutt over the last piece, ending up with slobber up to his elbows.

  "I should let you eat the damn thing." He stuffed the plastic pieces into the trash bin under the kitchen sink. "It would serve you right."

  Cargo whined and collapsed onto the rug with a melodramatic sigh.

  The television was stuck in commercial break mode. What was this, the fifth ad in a row? He wanted to see the sports scores before he went to the den to paint. He sat back down and raised the chair's footrest. He chose a multi-legged yellow wall-walker from an assortment in the bowl at his elbow and lobbed the toy at the large framed photo on the opposite wall. It smacked Wendy just below her wedding tiara and began the slow crawl on its suction-cup feet down her face. Such a beautiful face. So sweet and unpretentious. Or so he'd thought, up until six weeks ago. Now Wendy was living with her pretty-boy business professor outside of town, and he was stuck here in Podunk, Washington, with her dream house, her parents, and her animals.

  His former dearly beloved had bought these sticky toys for the cats, who watched his motions with interest. When the first toy dropped off Wendy's wedding photo, he lobbed another, a green one this time. It glommed onto the bride's perfect little nose and quivered there for a second like a horrendous wart before rolling over onto her upper lip.

  An orange furball leapt onto his abdomen. The cat deposited the yellow wall-walker onto his chest. It curled its paws under its body and purred, proud of itself.

  He tapped the cat on the head. "So you fetch?" Dark orange stripes across its forehead looked like delicate feline eyebrows. The cat lifted its chin and pressed its head against his palm. He couldn't help but stroke it. The fur behind its ears was so soft Finn could barely feel it against his callused fingertips.

  "Nice try," he said. "But you're still going to the pound."

  * * * * * *

  When Brittany saw the passenger seat of the Civic was empty, she screamed and dropped her groceries beside the car. Several people turned around to stare at her, and a kind, fat woman started picking up her groceries up from the pavement.

  At first, Brittany had the insane thought that Ivy had crawled off. Leaving the driver's door open, she got down on her hands and knees to peer beneath the car. Only an old plastic bag was moving down there, inching its way across the filthy pavement in the light breeze.

  "Are you okay, honey?" the fat woman asked.

  Then Brittany saw Jed and Marcus and Madison in their smokers huddle across the parking lot. This was some sort of prank. Stuck-up seniors freak out slut girl. Oh yeah, laugh riot. She stood up and dusted off her hands.

  "Yeah, I'm okay. I just … uh … saw a big spider run underneath my car."

  The woman smiled. "Oh, I hate those, too. But people say they're more scared of us than we are of them."

  "Like I believe that." Brittany picked up her groceries and slung them into the front seat before she walked over to the smokers.

  "Okay, you fuckheads, what did you do with her?"

  They did a good job of acting surprised. "What did you call us, Brittany Morgan?" Madison put her hands on her hips just like her mother, the la-dee-da head of the PTA, did when she wanted everyone to know she was outraged.

  "You heard me. Where's Ivy?" She looked around, expecting to see the beige car seat with Ivy in it on the ground between the nearby cars.

  Jed squinted. "Ivy?"

  She peered into the closest cars. "Ivy Rose, my baby." A terrible tightness began in her chest.

  Marcus walked over to stand beside her, staring through the window of a RAV4. "We ain't seen no baby, Britt." For some reason, a lot of the preppy kids talked like they'd failed English 101. They thought it made them sound tough or something.

  "No shit?" She examined each of their faces. Blank, blank, and blank. Her breath stuck in her chest. Ice water rushed down her spine and raised goosebumps all over her body. "Really, no shit, you don't have her?"

  Madison touched Brittany's forearm with her perfectly manicured fuchsia fingernails. "You lost your baby?"

  "Smooth, girl," Marcus commented. "Real smooth."

  Suddenly the scenery got wavy, like air shimmering around hot metal, and a demon inside Brittany's chest clawed to get out. She ran back to her car. Please God, let me wake up now. The seat was still empty. No Ivy, no car seat. She tugged on the passenger-side door handle. Still locked. Nothing made sense.

  The smokers joined her. She stabbed a finger toward the passenger seat. "I left her right here. She was sleeping in her car seat. Did you see anyone around here?"

  They all shook their heads. "I saw you walk into the store," Jed said, "but I didn't see a baby. I didn't even see your car."

  "That's because I parked on the other side of the—" She spun on her heel. The van was gone. Had it been there when she came out of the store? She couldn't remember. Choking down the nasty ooze that rose in her throat, she turned back. "Ivy was right here. See, I rolled down the windows a crack, and I locked the doors. All the doors. I know I did."

  "Omigod. You left your baby in the car all alone?" Madison's mouth stayed open after she said it.

  A brown-skinned woman in an orange sundress heard Madison and brought her shopping cart to a halt. "You left a baby in the car alone?" She stared straight at Brittany.

  How could she pretend she hadn't now? Brittany nodded miserably. "And now she's gone." Her heart was pounding in her ears. Oh god, it was true. Ivy was gone. "Someone took my baby!"

  The woman pulled a cell phone out of her purse and dialed nine-one-one. Then she made Brittany and the others go back into the store with her, and they talked to the manager and asked everyone in the store if any of them had seen a stranger with Ivy. Several people remembered seeing Brittany—"the girl with the strawberry-blonde ponytail"—but nobody had seen an infant at all. Nope, no baby.

  "You left your baby in the car?" everyone kept saying,
over and over. "You left a baby all alone in the car?"

  Like that was somehow more awful than somebody stealing her daughter.

  Chapter 4

  One hour after Ivy disappears

  Finn's cell phone chimed from the table beside his easy chair. There was a cat in his lap. Crap, he'd fallen asleep again watching the news. The TV, still on mute, displayed a game show. Yawning, Finn flicked the cell phone open. EPD—that would likely be Sergeant Carlisle on the desk this time of evening. He checked his watch. Damn. Officially, he still had ten minutes to go on his shift.

  "Detective Finn," he growled.

  The cat on his stomach slitted its yellow-green eyes. It looked like it was smiling.

  "Get out of those slippers and into your wingtips," Carlisle said. "We need you down at the Food Mart."

  "I wouldn't be caught dead in slippers or wingtips." Finn groaned. "The Food Mart? You kidding me?"

  The small police department had four detectives: two men, two women. Each twenty-four hours was split into four shifts between them, which meant they didn't really work as partners. The shifts overlapped by two hours, which theoretically allowed the detective going off shift to pass information and update the detective coming on about the open cases. Practically speaking, the system meant that most of the time each detective worked solo on his or her own case for however long it took.

  The uniforms had a tendency to call the detectives in for every crime in which the perpetrator had not yet confessed. In this economy, there was no overtime pay, just a vague promise of 'comp time' that would probably never happen.

  "Some vegan unplug the meat freezer again?" Finn asked. "Can't it wait until morning?"

  "This'll wake you up."

  * * * * * *

  Forty minutes after he received the phone call, Finn was in the Food Mart parking lot. The uniforms had taped off the parking spot and kept everyone out of the blue Civic. He walked around the little car now, stopped for a moment to ponder the sticker on the back bumper—The Dinosaurs Died for Our Sins. Probably something to do with the school board. There was some silly argument about a resolution to teach all sides of the global warming and evolution debates. Whatever the hell that meant.

  He studied the scene. A typical grocery store, cars coming and going, shoppers rolling carts up the curbs and through the lot, even now, at eight-thirty in the evening. The breeze was picking up, gusting candy wrappers and plastic bags across the pavement.

  An empty soft-drink cup rolled into the taped-off area where Finn had assigned a rookie to collect debris. Scoletti wasn't happy about the job, especially now, when Finn had just told him to scrape up and bag all the chewing gum in the zone. Each wad in a separate bag, he had to remind the kid. Man, he missed having a Crime Scene team on his speed dial.

  "Hey, Detective, you want me to get that cup, too?" The rookie's tone was smart-aleck.

  "Yep. Bag it. But mark it as from across the lot." Finn ignored Scoletti's scowl and turned back to the youngster in front of him.

  The girl, a strawberry blonde with hair falling into her eyes, appeared far too young to be a mother. Brittany Morgan had just turned seventeen, according to her driver's license. "So, Miss Morgan," he said for the second time, "Tell me again why you left your baby?"

  "She was asleep. I didn't want to wake her up."

  "And where was she when you left her?"

  "I already told you, Ivy was in the front seat, the passenger seat," she sobbed. "Why aren't you out searching for her?"

  "I need a little more information," Finn said mildly. "The baby was lying in the passenger seat in front?"

  Brittany shot him a dirty look. "Ivy was in her car seat. What sort of a mother do you think I am?" She waved a hand in the air. "I know she's supposed to be in the back, but have you ever tried to put a baby carrier in the back of a two-door?"

  Finn had already examined the interior of the Civic. Crumpled potato-chip bag, two hairclips in the back seat. An empty soda can on the floor behind the passenger seat and a bag of groceries in the driver's seat. There were faint marks on the front passenger seat that might or might not delineate the bottom edges of a baby carrier, and some crusty stripes on the floor mat that might or might not be dried drool or baby barf. No definitive sign that this girl even had an infant.

  "Car seat?" he asked now. He turned and stared pointedly at the Civic again. No sign of a car seat.

  "They took it! They took it when they took Ivy!"

  "They?" Interesting that she used the plural. Just an offhand comment, or did she know more than one person was involved?

  "Whoever!" she gestured wildly. "Whoever took Ivy!" She glanced into the car again. "Shit! They took my diaper bag, too!"

  "Can you describe the car seat and the diaper bag?" He held his pen poised over the notepad.

  Her gaze jerked to his. She pushed her fingers through her bangs, which immediately fell back into her eyes. He couldn't tell what she was thinking. She looked bewildered. A confused child.

  He tried for a more gentle tone. "There are a lot of babies in the area. The car seat and diaper bag could help to identify…" He scanned his notes for the baby's name.

  "Ivy!" she yelped. "Ivy Rose Morgan!"

  "Ivy," he repeated softly. "What was the brand of the car seat?"

  "I can't remember. It was used when I got it." Brittany scrubbed her hands against her cheeks for a minute, her eyes on the concrete sidewalk. "It was this icky color, kind of gray beige."

  He wrote down taupe. "And the diaper bag?"

  "The diaper bag was—well, it wasn't a real diaper bag, it was my old blue backpack, but it had two diapers and a little yellow dress in it, with a duck on the front. And some extra socks, because Ivy's always losing—" At that point her eyes flooded with tears and she made a strangling sound as she clapped a hand over her mouth.

  He stared at the lines on his pad for a few seconds, giving her time to pull herself together. "Any other distinguishing marks on the bag—backpack? Any other items of yours inside?" he prompted in a low voice.

  She turned back toward him. "I can't remember. I can't think about anything but Ivy. Why are we just standing here?" She stared at him, blue eyes pleading. After a second, she dashed over to Scoletti, who was on his hands and knees scraping gum from the pavement with a screwdriver. Grabbing a handful of the rookie's shirt sleeve, she sobbed, "Please, go look for my baby!"

  In spite of his determination to stay dispassionate, Finn's heart lurched. When older kids went missing it was bad enough, but infants and toddlers—they were portable and easily disposed of, and they never asked strangers for help. He couldn't get the tiny corpse he'd seen this morning out of his head.

  And then there were his missing cases in Chicago—a whole parade of them. Most were resolved as accidental deaths or negligent homicides, which often amounted to the same thing with careless parents. The only cases that ended more or less happily were the ones in which one divorced parent stole the kid from the other; at least those parents had hopes of their kid coming home, even if it was after a court battle. The worst case he'd worked on was the hunt for four-year-old Ashley Kowalski. After a twenty-two-hour search, they'd found her in an old refrigerator in the junk heap her grandparents called a backyard. He'd never forget catching her body as it tumbled out. He still had a scar from where he'd cut the back of his hand on the broken latch. He rubbed it now.

  The discovery of Ashley's body had been bad, but it was the autopsy report that had done him in. The girl died an hour before they'd opened the refrigerator door.

  He'd lasted two years in Missing Persons before asking for a transfer to Homicide. At least the victims there were already beyond help.

  There were no detective divisions here in small-town America. In eighteen months, he'd worked everything from vandalism to hog rustling to armed robbery. Whether this was a homicide or a kidnapping or something else entirely, it was his case.

  He walked over to Brittany and pulled the girl gently away f
rom Scoletti. He led her to a bench at the side of the store. "We will look for Ivy, Miss Morgan, but first we need to know a little more. Now, when we arrived, the driver's door was unlocked…"

  "Because I was putting the groceries in!"

  "And what did you buy?" Sometimes a peripheral question resulted in important details.

  "Diet Dr. Pepper, apples, bean dip, Fritos, oh no—" Her hands flew to her mouth again. "I forgot the Huggies! I need Huggies!"

  A dust-streaked tow truck pulled into the parking lot. The driver's window slid down, letting a blast of country rock escape, and the guy's gaze flicked from each uniform to the next. When the driver finally glanced at him, Finn tilted his head toward the Civic, and the driver started maneuvering into place.

  "I can't believe I forgot the Huggies," Brittany moaned. A mascara-laden tear rolled down her cheek, leaving a dark trail over freckles on its way to her chin. "That's the whole reason I came." Then she noticed the tow truck driver attaching the hook. Her expression changed to outrage. She jumped up from the bench. "Don't let him take my car!"

  One of the other unmarked cars rolled in, and Perry Dawes, the detective Finn most often worked with, got out, accompanied by a middle-aged man who wore blue jeans and a worried expression.

  "Daddy!" Brittany threw herself into the man's arms.

  Finn listened to the girl's sobs and her father's questions for a few seconds. Satisfied that he'd glean no more clues there, he pulled the sack of groceries from the Civic and placed it on the sidewalk for the girl. Then he pulled Dawes aside. "Did you find the father of the baby?"

  Dawes shook his head. "Not yet. Mr. Morgan told me that the baby's father is Charlie Wakefield, age nineteen. Who is in Cheney at Eastern Washington University right now, according to his parents, sharing a dorm suite with three other students. I've got the local PD checking on that. And by the way, the elder Wakefields—I had eyes on both of them—told me there's no proof Charlie is the baby's father."