by Pamela Tracy
“I’m sure—” he started.
“And then it wasn’t.”
How could she explain to him that after reading a few pages of a kid’s art book, her world had turned upside down, and she was still clinging to the hope it would right itself, that what she’d read would prove to be just a graphic novel—fiction, and nothing more.
“So nothing happened in class?”
“Nothing. It was after class, in the student union, that everything happened.”
“Give me every detail. Brittney’s been missing too long.”
“You talk as if you knew her.”
“Her dad’s my insurance agent. Her family attends the same church I do. I’ve known her since she was born.”
Janie couldn’t imagine that kind of stability. Rafe had lived in Scorpion Ridge his whole life. She’d bounced from her father’s place to apartment after apartment, neighborhood after neighborhood with an alcoholic aunt. In some ways she was still bouncing. Maybe she always would be, as her goal was to paint exotic animals in their natural habitat, and this meant lots of travel. Right now, she was saving every dime and putting together her portfolio and résumé, hoping she would be chosen as a visiting artist in Johannesburg, South Africa.
She could hardly wait.
Rafe, on the other hand, was a third-generation law officer with roots so deeply grounded in Scorpion Ridge that even during his few vacations, he’d rather have been home.
Janie’s idea of home didn’t match his.
She’d figured that out during their one date.
He’d been all about Scorpion Ridge, its people, the way of life. She loved it here, too, but there were people to meet and places to go.
And pictures to paint of so many different things far away.
* * *
RAFE OPENED HIS top desk drawer and withdrew two flyers. These were just the newest. From the day his father entered the Scorpion Hills Police Station to serve and protect, missing persons had received special consideration.
But his father had never solved the one missing-persons case that was the most important to him—his own son, Rafe’s brother. Ramon could have been dead all these years...or he could be alive, waiting to be found.
Not knowing he had a family that loved him and that had never stopped searching for him.
Rafe stared at both flyers for a moment before casually placing one in front of Janie.
Three words could describe the photo: young, pretty, happy.
In comparison, Ramon’s missing-persons photo had been of a baby not even forty-eight hours old.
Compassion warred with fatigue across Janie’s face.
Brittney’s white-blond hair streamed past her shoulders. A gray, sleeveless blouse hugged curves that hadn’t had time to mature. In her right arm, she clutched a brown-and-white spotted dog, maybe just a puppy, that stared happily at the camera.
Janie leaned forward and began re-creating.
While she worked, Rafe logged onto CopLink and learned more about the late Derek Chaney.
The kid’s rap sheet was long enough to make Rafe grind his teeth. However, nothing but petty crimes were listed. And yet, judging by the names of those alongside Derek during his criminal activities, the boy was capable of finding himself in the middle of a murder.
Rafe would love to give Brittney’s parents some good news. But Derek’s involvement only pointed to bad news. For everyone.
He’d just noted the absence of sound, the lack of pencil scratching against paper, when Janie asked, “Do you think Derek died because of the art book?”
“Anything I say would be speculation, and this early in the case, I’d rather not speculate.”
She gave him an indignant glare that spoke louder than words. “But if—”
“If is a pretty powerful word,” Rafe returned.
She gripped the pencil tightly, scratching out words on the paper as if she had to get them out, away from her. Finally, she finished, but not before whispering, “I’m afraid.”
“I understand,” Rafe said. “I’ve not slept a full night since Brittney disappeared. Neither have her parents.”
She let out a deep breath and turned the last paper so he could see it. “I’ve re-created everything I remember.” She finished by tapping on the last paper. “When I got to her name and then the blood in the dirt, I stopped and headed for my division chair.”
Blood in the dirt...
He’d have to, in some form or another, repeat this information to Brittney’s parents, so they didn’t hear it on the news. Reporters were like cockroaches, they showed up where they didn’t belong and were hard to get rid of.
No matter how much Rafe wanted to handle Brittney’s case without sensationalism, the media would get involved, would push the envelope, wouldn’t care whose emotions got trampled as long as their ratings soared.
“And you’re sure you’re done?” He nodded toward the paper on his desk.
She glanced again at Brittney’s photograph on the flyer and then picked up the pages she’d created. Four in all. Slowly, carefully, she examined each one. After about fifteen minutes, only erasing a few things or adding a detail here and there, Janie scooted the paper across the desk and settled back in her chair. “I’m done.”
It took him just two minutes to scan the haunting sketches.
“This is it, all you remember?”
“There wasn’t that much more, but after I got to this, I stopped and went to see Patricia.”
It had been the right move. The moment she realized what she had in her hand, she should have turned it over to the authorities—too bad it hadn’t been the local police. Rafe could only imagine the grief Nathan was giving the campus cops over the art book’s disappearance.
Still, he wished she’d read the whole thing, memorized every picture.
“What I’m most sorry about,” Janie admitted, “was not paying attention to the numbers on the license plate. He’d included them, but I did no more than glance at the numbers because they were so tiny.”
“Could you distinguish the sex of the occupants?”
“They were tiny stick figures but with details.”
Still, they could label the occupants—Derek and Brittney were in the back, Chad was driving and Chris was the front-seat passenger.
“I know you’ve said that nothing happened in class, but I still want to hear about the last week. All the events leading up to you reading the art book. Don’t leave anything out.”
Her sister returned.
Janie glanced at Brittney’s photo again, then showed it to Katie. To Rafe, she said, “I’m assisting with two classes this semester. Both art. In the late afternoons, if I get an appointment, I work in the Writing Tutoring center. I’m pretty good with English, and it’s extra money.”
“And she’s taking classes at the University of Arizona as well as being employed at Bridget’s,” Katie threw in.
“My Monday/Wednesday class starts at six. I didn’t have a student appointment yesterday,” Janie continued. “So last night, I got there right on time.”
Rafe noticed a sudden blink of her eyes, a quickening, slightly out of sync. She’d either just told a lie or she’d left something out.
Janie regained her composure, smoothed back her unruly strawberry-blond hair, and went on, “I’d earlier set up the stations and put handouts on the back table. So, when I got there, the students were signing in and already starting to work on their major projects.”
“What was Derek working on?”
“It’s a medieval battle scene. Very detailed. He’s done two others so far. All pretty much the same focus. Lots of blood, battle, destruction.”
“You say you got there right on time. Is being on time important?”
She hesitat
ed before answering, “Yes, for both me and the students. I take points from students who are late. If they’re more than twenty minutes late, I count them absent.”
Rafe nodded. So, Miss Janie Vincent was a free spirit who also liked rules. “Seems to me that someone as concerned about punctuality as you are would arrive to class early, just in case a student needed to talk to you, or something.”
Her lips pursed together before she said, “I used to get there early, but then...”
“Then?”
She looked him right in the eye. “Then Derek Chaney started arriving early, too. At first, it wasn’t so bad. He asked questions because he claimed he also wanted to paint murals. I gave him some books to read. He kept them a while, then returned them.”
“And this behavior caused you to stop arriving to class early?” Rafe had to give her credit. She was a master lip purser, but she didn’t squirm at all.
“Look,” Janie said, giving him a haughty glare that reminded him of his own college days and how a professor could reduce him to age twelve without blinking. Few, however, had made him want to achieve more than a pass in the class. And none had been as pretty as Janie Vincent. “I don’t want anything I say here to slant the investigation. I—”
“Slant the investigation?” Rafe sat up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean if I tell you this guy creeped me out, had anger issues, you might believe I’d already condemned him. I can answer impartially, and—”
“Janie,” Rafe said carefully, “right now, we can only label Derek as a person of interest, that’s all. His art book and drawings are probably just the work of a young adult crying for attention.”
She gave a slight shake of her head. She hadn’t given her opinion on fact versus fiction earlier, but she clearly had an opinion now.
Not fiction.
He agreed but couldn’t let on to that.
“Innocent until proven guilty,” was a double-edged sword. In Rafe’s profession, his job was to decode, visualize, analyze and interpret. Years ago, a cop’s perspective—his intuition—had counted for something. Today, because of politics, Rafe didn’t dare share what he thought. It could later be used against him in a court of law.
Plus, Jane Q. Public—especially in the case of a missing or wayward child—wanted optimism.
“Do you want to know how many people have come forward with information about the disappearance of Brittney Travis? Hundreds. And all of them turned out to be dead ends.”
“How many of the hundreds attended the same college?” Katie jumped in.
“More than you’d believe.” Rafe leaned forward. “We investigate all leads, and certainly, we hope this one will take us closer to the truth, but chances are it won’t. Chances are you have the misfortune of reading some misguided young man’s work of fantasy.”
“I know fantasy when I read it,” Janie muttered. “Derek draws fantasy and his writing was nothing like his usual drawings.”
She had him there. And, he figured, by the end of the interview she’d get him a few more times if he wasn’t careful.
“Did you tell Professor Reynolds that he creeped you out?”
“Yes.” Janie filled him in on some of the suggestions Patricia had made for dealing with a difficult student—like one who invaded personal space, who believed in staring as a way to intimidate, and who got argumentative when given constructive criticisms. She explained how ineffective those suggestions had been and finished with, “Derek left during the break Wednesday, a week ago, and didn’t return.”
“Any idea why he left?” Rafael prodded.
She grimaced. “No idea. Patricia had me clean and put away his supplies.”
“How about the people he sat by? Did any of them leave, too?”
“The students all have their own stations. Pretty much their own worlds. The station to his left is empty. The station to his right is a reentry adult. She ignores him. I’ve heard her mutter a few times about teenagers with attitudes.”
“So you weren’t the only person he creeped out?”
“Attitude came off of him in waves.”
“Since you were scared to be in the room alone with him before class started, what did you do after class?”
She hesitated but didn’t purse her lips. Too bad, he somewhat enjoyed watching her expressions of angst. And she had perfect lips. “Derek was the first one out the door. I don’t think the other students even thought twice about what he did after class ended.”
“So, no complaints or other students who lingered?”
“Not that I noticed.”
She would have noticed.
Katie fidgeted in her chair, but Rafe’s attention was on Janie as she stood up and perused his office, stopping to count the softball trophies, smiling at his Baxter the Bobcat keepsakes and studying his photos. Many were of him and his family. His dad had been the sheriff, and his grandpa before that. The photo in the center of the shelf was an enlarged baby picture, the kind taken at the hospital immediately after a birth. Rafe kept it there to remind him. Some of the other photos were of him and his men, or people about town. One showed him holding a fishing rod and a ten-pound bass. She didn’t wince at the mess on his desk—a bit messier since she’d rearranged things—although her eyes lingered on his Bible.
He liked her attention to details. She had an artist’s eye. It made his job easier. “How many times did Derek miss class?” he asked her.
“Four. He’d used the limit. I can’t tell you the dates without the roster, though.”
Rafe opened a new window on his computer, punched in a code, and again stared at Derek Chaney’s rap sheet. Derek had been arrested driving a stolen car at the end of November. Rafe quickly checked, but neither a Chris nor a Chad had been with him. The judge had given Derek another chance.
Derek should have been in jail, not college.
Maybe if the judge had to knock on the door of Lee and Sandy Travis, instead of Rafe, and tell them that their daughter’s car had been found in Adobe Hills Community College’s parking lot but not their daughter, maybe then the judge would have been less lenient.
Rafe still called the Travises every two to three days to tell them that there was no news.
Today, his call would be different. He’d have to mention that a student at Adobe Hills Community College had come forward with evidence—a wee stretch of the truth—and that he was meeting with all involved for details.
He wouldn’t say anything yet about the nineteen-year-old who had turned in an art book detailing their daughter’s murder.
Or that the nineteen-year-old was dead.
He leaned forward, intent, thinking. “The names in the art book were Chad and Chris. Throughout the semester, did Derek mention those names in any other context?”
Janie didn’t hesitate. “No, I’m pretty sure he didn’t. I haven’t taught or tutored any Chads. As for Chris... I’m the lab assistant for two classes on Monday/Wednesday. There’s a Chris in my first one, but she’s female. I have two boys named Chris in my second class, Derek’s class. But I never saw them with Derek, and Chris is a very common name.”
“And you didn’t have Brittney as a student?”
“No.”
“And you’d never seen her around campus?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Was this the first time Derek mentioned Brittney in his book?”
“He usually doesn’t draw modern people, so I’ve never had cause to ask him who he was drawing.”
Rafe looked at Brittney’s flyer again. Everyone—her parents, her high-school guidance counselor, her teachers—all said Brittney was an easy kid, well-liked and with lots of friends. She’d been a senior in high school and already taking college classes, thanks to dual enrollment.
Rafe’s phone rang. I
t was Justin Robbins, an undercover officer that Rafe trusted. Based on his next words and the emotion in his voice, Justin had known and liked Derek Chaney. A moment later, he told Rafe something he’d already suspected.
Derek Chaney had enemies.
Justin insisted that one of them, and not the meth explosion, had killed Derek.
And now Janie Vincent just might have the same enemies.
CHAPTER THREE
“DEREK CHANEY’S DEATH might not have been accidental. He might have been murdered.”
Katie made a sound of shock and Janie collapsed into one of his straight-back brown chairs. For a moment, Rafe again thought she might bolt from the room. Instead, her hands tightened on the chair’s arms until he expected her fingernails to leave a permanent mark.
She might look small, but her imagination was big and usually spot-on. She took a deep breath and then, somewhat shakily, asked, “How?”
Rafe only debated a moment before telling them straight out what Nathan had reported to him and what Justin believed. He wanted to see Janie’s reaction. Even more, he wanted her to understand just how serious the situation might be.
She came to the same conclusion he did.
“So, do you believe someone was trying to kill him because they knew he wanted to confess?”
“I don’t have enough facts to make a judgment,” Rafe said.
But he had already made a judgment. He agreed with Justin. Someone wanted Derek out of the picture. And even worse—
Janie, however, didn’t give him time to decide what was worse. She did it for him. “And they obviously knew about the art book because it’s missing. What if he told them he’d given it to me, before they killed him?”
Years of dealing with witnesses had taught him to be cautious, to not always share the worst-case scenario until he was sure, plus he wanted to reassure her. Aloud he said, “It could have been a drug deal gone bad, it could have been an accident. We don’t want to jump to conclusions just yet.”
She shot him a dirty look before whispering, “Poor Derek.”
