“That is odd, especially when you consider what they went through together, as mothers of children who went missing together.”
“One would think. But Sierra was always a very self-centered, self-indulgent woman, at least my mother thought so. As long as something didn’t directly affect her, it didn’t have any relevance in her life. I doubt she gave my mother’s death more than passing notice.”
“Well, I’d like to speak with her, as well as with some of the people living at her little commune. Assuming she’s still there.”
“You can bet on it. Sierra’s lived on that ranch with her merry little band for years now. She’s like the queen bee, you know? Queen of all she surveys? Everyone defers to her. That little world just revolves around her.” Kendra’s voice held a touch of bitterness. “The only way she’d leave would be in a pine box.”
“And I think it’s important that we speak with the boy who followed Ian and Zach the day they left, and with his parents.”
“There was only his mother, as I recall. I don’t think his father was ever around. Another fatherless boy, just like Zach. Frankly, my mother always felt Sierra treated Zach like an afterthought.” Kendra looked out the window, at the lights that sparkled here and there out among the hills. “I didn’t remember how open it is out here either.”
“It’s open all right. It’s pretty empty, actually, outside of the cities. There are a lot of ranches in this part of the state, cattle ranches and some cotton farms.”
“We haven’t passed many towns.”
“A lot of the towns down here are no more than dots on a map, places where the ranchers pick up their mail. And of course, a ghost town or two.”
“Cochise County,” she murmured, reading the sign they’d just passed. “Cochise was the Indian whose bow Ian wanted to buy.”
“Think that was a scam? What are the chances it was an authentic Cochise artifact?”
“I don’t know. Zach was pretty certain, said he’d seen something that made him think it was the real deal. I don’t recall exactly what, though. Of course, Zach was twelve, so what had seemed credible to him could have been anything. And truthfully, at the time, I wasn’t terribly interested in what the ‘kids’ were doing.”
“I’m assuming the old man was questioned after the boys disappeared.”
“There’d be a statement in the sheriff’s file, wouldn’t you think?”
“You’ll be able to ask Sheriff Gamble in about ten more minutes.” Adam followed the signs for Bisbee.
“We’re here already? That didn’t take long.”
“Seventy-nine minutes.” He grinned. “But who’s counting?”
Cole Gamble of the Cochise County Sheriff’s Department was looking out the window when the dark blue sedan pulled into the parking lot. He’d been looking forward to this meeting ever since John Mancini, who was head of some special investigative unit of the FBI, had called him the day before and asked that he cooperate with a field agent who’d be visiting the following day. If Mancini’s polite request hadn’t caught his attention, the case they were looking into surely did. Cole Gamble had vivid memories of the Smith case. Two boys disappearing in the hills, no trace ever found. A third boy found hysterical in the clutches of a convicted child rapist, who was promptly arrested for the murder of the two missing boys. A sensational trial. A conviction that was based, some legal purists argued, on the thinnest of circumstantial evidence and an overabundance of emotion.
Cole Gamble remembered every bit of it. He’d been fifteen years old at the time, three years older than Zach Smith. And until Edward Paul Webster had been tried, convicted, and locked away forever, Cole’s mother had barely let him out of her sight.
The car’s headlights still illumined part of the lot, then dimmed just before a tall man got out from behind the wheel. He was met in front of the car by a small, slender woman. The lot was too dark to see either of their faces, but he knew the woman was the sister of one of the boys, the one from back East, and the man was some hotshot FBI agent who used to play pro football. Mancini had mentioned his name, but right now Sheriff Gamble was focused on the woman. He’d seen her years before. The newspapers had been filled with her picture, and that of her mother, back during the days of the trial. He’d even seen her in front of the old courthouse a couple of times. He remembered how fragile she had looked, yet how steadily she’d supported her mother to the waiting car.
“Sheriff Gamble?” The agent now stood in the doorway.
Stark. Right. Adam Stark. Played for the Steelers. Retired to join the FBI. Who in their right mind did a thing like that?
“Yes. Agent Stark, Ms. Smith.” The young sheriff greeted them both with a smile.
“I hope we didn’t keep you too late.” Kendra took the hand he extended to her.
“Not at all. You’re actually earlier than I’d expected.”
“Agent Stark drives like a . . .”
Adam coughed.
“. . . like the wind.” She smiled.
“I’m sure he does,” Gamble nodded and shook the agent’s hand. “Come on into my office. I already have the old files out. As you would expect, a lot of investigation went into this case. There were boxes of interviews, records, reports . . .”
Adam and Kendra followed Gamble into a room where several open boxes containing manila files sat on the floor, three chairs were arranged around a small round table, and fresh coffee dripped into a waiting pot. The sheriff offered mugs to his visitors, and when everyone was settled, he rested his arms on the table and said, “Agent Mancini gave me a rundown on the case you’re working, and the reasons why you wanted to revisit this one. But I’m not certain I understand exactly what you’re looking for.”
“Something that could connect our killer to the disappearance of my brother and cousin.” Kendra explained that Ian’s watch had recently been found. “Someone, at some time, had to come in contact with him—or with his body—for them to have gotten his watch.”
“Maybe he dropped it on the trail,” Gamble offered, “and someone picked it up.”
“With all the publicity surrounding the case, don’t you think that anyone finding such a thing would have brought it right to the police?” Adam pointed out.
“Not necessarily. Maybe someone wanted a souvenir. You have to understand that this was the biggest happening in Cochise County since the Earp brothers took on the Clanton clan at the OK Corral.” Gamble sipped at his coffee, then added a bit more sugar. “And there’s always the possibility that the watch had been dropped but not found for several years. Maybe someone finding it years after the fact wouldn’t have made the connection.”
“We’d thought of that,” she admitted, “but the watch is perfectly clean of dirt and tarnish. And it’s still running.”
“See, like I said, someone had themselves a souvenir.”
“Be that as it may, Sheriff, how did that souvenir end up under the body of one of our victims on the opposite side of the country?” Adam asked.
Gamble shook his head. “Now, you’ve got me there. How do you think it got there?”
“We thought perhaps if we looked over some of the statements from the old case, spoke with some of the witnesses. Maybe someone who was living at my aunt’s ranch at the time . . .”
“Well, I’m happy to offer you whatever help you need.” Though I don’t see what good it will do or what you think you’re going to find, he could have added. “Where do you want to start?”
“I guess we’d like to read through the file, maybe we’ll get some ideas,” Kendra told him.
“And we’re going to want to visit with Kendra’s aunt. Kendra hasn’t been out here since the trial and doesn’t remember how to get to her ranch.” Adam took off his jacket and hung it over the back of his chair. “Maybe you know where it is.”
Sheriff Gamble put his mug down on the table and stared at Kendra for a long minute.
“I guess this means you don’t know.”
“Kno
w what?”
“Sierra Smith died almost five years ago.”
Kendra’s jaw dropped.
“How?”
“Her body was found out in a gully about eight miles from her ranch. Looked like she’d taken a bad fall from the rocks, cracked her head, broke her neck, on one of the rocks below.”
“Oh, my God. I had no idea,” Kendra whispered.
“I’m sorry, I thought you’d have known. Being her niece and her not having any other living relatives.”
“There was no way we would have known,” Kendra told him. “I mean, there wasn’t anyone who’d have known to get in touch with us.”
“And she was alone when this happened?” Adam asked.
“Yes. Apparently she’d been in the habit of taking long walks into the hills early in the mornings, but she was usually back by eight or nine o’clock. When eleven rolled around and she still hadn’t returned, some of her friends from the ranch went looking for her. She was already dead when they found her.”
“Then the ranch has been sold?”
“No, no, she left the ranch to several of the people she’d been living with. Three or four women friends who’d been out there with her for a long time. She’d set it up somehow with her lawyer. She had some money that she left to them to pay the taxes and the upkeep on the property.”
“Who was her lawyer, do you know?”
“Not offhand, but I can find out for you.” He turned back to Kendra. “I’m really sorry, Ms. Smith, for not being a little more delicate.”
“That’s all right. You wouldn’t have known. Can you give us directions to the ranch? It’s been so many years, I’d never find it.”
“Sure. I can draw you a map, if you like.” Gamble patted his pockets, looking for a pen.
“What happened to the other boy?” Kendra asked as the sheriff began to draw his map. “The third boy, the one they found in the car with Webster?”
“Oh, Chris Moss?” Gamble looked up from his sketch. “The last I heard he was still in that institution up around Benson. Why?”
“He’s one of the people we want to speak with,” Adam told him. And one other, but that conversation can wait.
“Well, I don’t know that that’s going to be possible. Last I heard, he still wasn’t talking. He hasn’t, far as I know, since this thing happened. Nothing but babble, anyway. But you can ask his mother. She’s one of the ones your aunt left the ranch to.” Sheriff Gamble handed his map to Adam and, pointing to the files, asked, “Now, which box would you like to start with?”
It was almost two in the morning when Kendra stretched out on the bed in the motel where the sheriff had thoughtfully arranged for rooms for her and Adam for the night. Exhausted from the trip and overcome with more emotions than she could deal with, she was grateful for an opportunity to sort it all out. Adam and the sheriff had both walked her to her door, and while she would have been grateful for Adam’s company, she could not very well have invited him in and closed the door in Sheriff Gamble’s face.
It was just as well, she rationalized as she washed her face in the bathroom sink. She’d been feeling increasingly uneasy, almost claustrophobic, since they got off the plane in Tucson. She’d done her best to mask her unrest from Adam because there were so many emotions at war within her.
The memories of the trial and her mother’s difficulty getting through it.
They’d sat day after day in the courtroom, not only hoping to see justice served, but hoping against hope that, before the trial ended, the accused would break down and tell where he’d left the bodies. By the time the trial had ended, all Elisa Smith had wanted was to bring her son home and bury him next to his father.
But Webster had never admitted his guilt, and Elisa and Kendra had returned to New Jersey with aching hearts that would never heal.
And then there was the matter of her aunt’s death.
Kendra slipped into a nightshirt, as she tried to decide how she really felt about that. Her last living blood relative had died a year before her mother had, and they hadn’t known. What might she have done if she had? What might Elisa have done?
“Nothing,” she whispered to the room as she turned out the lights. “I don’t think we would have done a damned thing.”
That Kendra still harbored animosity toward her aunt had much to do with the fact that her mother had gone to her grave blaming Sierra for what happened to the boys. Between her drug use and her apparent inattention to her son’s activities, Sierra had, in Kendra’s own opinion, left the door wide open for disaster. And when disaster had occurred, Sierra had merely shrugged and told Ian’s grieving mother and sister that “sometimes these things happen.”
Kendra felt the tide of bitterness rise within her again, and let guilt flow over her as she realized the truth: She could not mourn for Sierra Smith.
It hadn’t even occurred to her to ask the sheriff if he knew where they’d buried her.
Chapter
Sixteen
He sat in the worn, overstuffed chair, restlessly punching at the remote control with his thumb, skimming past daytime dramas, quiz shows, and reruns of old detective shows. He hadn’t missed a news broadcast or a newspaper in days, yet there’d been no comment about his sly little reference to Kendra. And surely someone had noticed, for heaven’s sake. This was the FBI he was dealing with, wasn’t it? You’d think that someone would have noticed by now that all of his ladies had one thing or another in common with Kendra.
He wondered if she appreciated all the trouble he’d gone to, getting all those little mementos exactly right. He sincerely hoped she did.
After all, imitation was the sincerest form of flattery.
Funny there’d been no mention, though. He frowned.
And then there was the matter of last night’s press conference. Kendra hadn’t been there. Nor had Adam Stark. The only member of the team he recognized was that tall dark-haired Agent Cahill. Now there, he smiled broadly, was a dish fit for a king.
He amused himself thinking about Miranda Cahill and wondering if he should add her to his list of potentials. He’d have to think about that. There just may come a time when he’d need to get the FBI’s attention in a way they couldn’t ignore.
And the way they were ignoring his little gestures on Kendra’s behalf was annoying. More than annoying. It was insulting. The more he thought about it, the more he knew for certain that it hadn’t been overlooked. They had chosen not to acknowledge it, and that in itself was an insult. It simply wasn’t fair play.
He searched his jacket pocket for a cigarette, then leaned over to tie his sneakers. He’d have to go outside to smoke. It was a rule. It was okay, though. He didn’t mind. If that was what Father Tim wanted, he didn’t mind at all.
Now, on the other hand, he played devil’s advocate to himself as he walked through the peaceful gardens, wasn’t there always the chance that maybe no one had caught on yet?
Nah, he rejected that thought as he blew a long trail of smoke from one side of his mouth. How could that possibly be? How could they miss something so obvious? Aren’t we dealing with some of the best criminal investigative minds in the country here?
And yet he had them all stumped, didn’t he? No one had a clue. He guessed that made him one of the best criminal minds in the country.
The thought cheered him, and his chest swelled with pride, that he could best the best.
Even her. Especially her. She had always been too smart for her own good.
But where was she? He frowned again. Were they hiding her? He wanted her here, to watch. Here, where she could watch up close, where she would be able to understand, to appreciate, his cleverness. Sooner or later, she was going to have to admit just how clever he really was.
Tires crunched on the stone drive, and a car door slammed. He turned in time to see the pretty young woman get out of her car and take several bags of groceries from the backseat. With one foot, she closed the door, took several steps, then stopped, warily, l
ooking around as if testing the air. She stood for several long moments in the same spot, her head slightly tilted to one side, as if trying to decipher something that eluded her, then turned her back, and went about her business.
He watched from behind a low stand of mountain laurel, and it suddenly occurred to him that should ever the need arise, there was one sure way of getting Kendra’s attention.
He wondered why he hadn’t thought of it sooner.
Chapter
Seventeen
Adam rested a reassuring hand on Kendra’s shoulder.
“How do you feel, coming back here after all these years?”
“I don’t feel much of anything,” she told him honestly. “I thought maybe I’d have a sense of some emotion, or, oh, something relevant. But I don’t.”
“Are you ready to go down and see if they’ll speak with us?”
“Yes.”
“Come on then.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze. “We’ll have to leave the car here and walk down, since the gate’s locked.”
He ducked under the fence, waited for her, then held his hand out for her. She took it, and hand in hand they walked down the slope that led to the ranch house a quarter of a mile ahead.
“Think we should have called first?”
“I don’t know what I would have said.”
“Well, you better think of something.” Adam gestured in the direction of the house. “Someone just came out onto the porch.”
“Wonder if she’s one of Sierra’s heirs.”
“Guess we’ll soon find out.”
The air was warm for just past nine in the morning, and the sun, still on the rise, cast the shadow of the barn across a clearing that separated the house from several outbuildings. The woman who’d come out of the house sat quietly in a rocking chair, watching their approach. Except for the gentle rocking, there was no other motion that Kendra could see.
Their footsteps making a scuffing sound in the dry gravel, Adam and Kendra walked toward the thin figure hunched in the rocking chair. They were within twenty feet of the porch before she acknowledged their presence.
Until Dark Page 19
