A Distant Memory

by Traci DePree

  Kate shook her head, stunned as she realized what the girl was asking of her.

  “You’ve got to help us,” Becky begged. “What other options do we have?” Her voice cracked, and with it her brave facade.

  “We know she’s alive,” the teen managed as she turned to her father. “You know it too.”

  “Honey...,” Brad began.

  “Don’t call me that!” Becky said. “You think Mom is dead!”

  Kate glanced at Paul and saw compassion and sadness in his blue eyes.

  Becky turned back to Kate, her gaze pleading, expectant.

  Kate couldn’t undermine Brad’s authority as a father, and yet she could understand where the girl was coming from. There were still questions that needed answering, particularly questions about what had led to Sonja’s disappearance. And Kate couldn’t help but wonder why Willy Bergen, who’d been closer to the source of the shouting that day, had failed to hear a thing. Though he had been in the creek—that might’ve kept him from hearing.

  Would it really hurt if she did a little digging on her own? She glanced at Becky, who’d turned away now and was crying in Judy’s arms.

  Kate wouldn’t tell them she was looking into it. She didn’t want to offer the very thing that Brad was trying to avoid—false hope. But she still felt a niggling sense that there was some way to find Sonja. The woman couldn’t have simply vanished. The police had found no body, nothing but speculation to back up their assertion that she had drowned. Sure, they’d found Buster, but they hadn’t found Sonja.

  Were there more clues, beyond the shouting she’d heard, that the police had missed?

  Kate glanced at Becky, who had grown quiet, though her eyes were still on Kate. What was it like for the girl to know that everyone had given up on her mother?

  Somehow, quietly, Kate had to find what the police with all their experience and expertise hadn’t been able to find: a trail that led to Sonja Weaver. Hopefully alive.

  THE TRAGIC EPISODE at the Weavers’ still seemed remote and unreal until Brad stopped by to talk to Paul about a memorial service the next night. Kate had just returned from choir practice at Renee Lambert’s house, and she could hear their voices in the living room as she prepared a snack in the kitchen. She brought them a tray of sugar cookies and lemonade.

  “I have to do this,” Brad was saying as Kate set the tray on the coffee table, “for the sake of the kids. They need some sort of closure, or they’ll go through life with this...thing hanging over their heads.” He lifted his eyes to Kate in thanks for the cold drink.

  “It’s understandable,” Paul agreed. “How are they coping?”

  Brad shrugged. “How does anyone cope at a time like this?” He took a sip of his lemonade, then closed his eyes. “They’re devastated. If it wasn’t for their friends and Judy...”

  Kate studied him when he mentioned the woman’s name. The corners of his lips lifted, and a smile touched his eyes.

  “When would you like to hold the service?” Paul asked, picking up a pen to jot down some notes.

  “This Friday?”

  “That works,” Paul said.

  “Now...” Brad paused. “Do I talk to you or Malcolm Dekker about a headstone?”

  Malcolm was Copper Mill’s mortician. The request surprised Kate. A headstone was so permanent, and without a body, she wondered why Brad felt it was necessary.

  “Malcolm can point you in the right direction,” Paul said.

  “Are you sure you want one?” Kate asked, concerned about how Becky and Brian would react to seeing their mother’s name etched in granite. “It’s so final.”

  “Kate,” he said, lifting a weary gaze, “that’s exactly why I do want one. I want this nightmare to end.”

  Brad finally said farewell at around nine o’clock. Kate took the dishes to the kitchen, but her mind was rolling through all that had happened with the Weavers.

  She turned on the tap to fill the sink with sudsy water. They hadn’t found a body. The search-and-rescue boat had dragged the creek, hoping to dislodge Sonja’s body from whatever might be holding it under. But there had been nothing. That truth bothered Kate more than any other. It opened the door to the possibility that Sonja was still alive. The volunteers had searched several miles upstream and downstream from where the dog had been found, but there was no sign of Sonja, other than her bracelet snagged on the dog’s leash.

  Would Kate have given up so easily if Paul were the one missing? Though she knew it was far from easy for Brad and the children, it didn’t seem right to be planning a memorial service when there wasn’t positive proof that Sonja was dead. Would there ever be proof?

  The thought of never knowing tugged at Kate. Since they’d heard the news, she and the church had been praying for God to lead them to Sonja, yet their prayers had gone unanswered.

  Father, Kate prayed again silently while she washed the glasses and plates, setting them in the drainer to dry, there’s something more here. Something we’ve missed. Open our eyes to see what it is. If Sonja is gone, allow Brad and his children to know that for certain.

  She turned to see Paul watching her from the other side of the counter.

  “It doesn’t seem real, does it?” he said.

  “No.” She shook her head and let the water drain from the sink. Then she wiped her hands on a towel. “What if she left the park?”

  “Without her car?”

  “If she was abducted...,” Kate offered.

  “There isn’t any proof of that.”

  “Except for the arguing I heard,” Kate reminded. She sighed and then said, “I keep hoping for something else, some clue. Deep down, I think Becky is right.”

  “Are you going to start looking for Sonja yourself?” Paul asked. He knew her well.

  Kate bit her bottom lip. “Do you think that’s all right?”

  “Of course I do.” He came around the counter and placed an arm across her shoulders. “I trust your sensitivities and instincts. But you might discover that the police are right,” he cautioned.

  Kate sank into him, and he rested his cheek against her hair. “Then we’ll be right where we are now.”

  Finally he pulled away and kissed her forehead.

  “I’m going to head to bed. You coming?” Paul said.

  “In a bit,” Kate said, lifting her face to his and giving him a peck on the lips.

  He smiled, touching her cheek with the back of his fingers. “You need your rest.”

  “I’m not tired,” she said. “I might putter around for a while.”

  With all that had happened in the past few days, she had yet to upload the photos she’d taken with Livvy. So, pulling out her laptop and setting it on the dining table, she plugged it in and waited for it to start up. When the computer finally hummed to life and its start-up rigmarole had finished, she pushed the memory chip from the camera into the side of the laptop and clicked on “upload new photos” when the appropriate box popped onto the screen.

  There were more than fifty pictures in all—greenery, flowers, wildlife—much of it good fodder to trace as stencils for sun catchers. Kate clicked on the shot of the pinecone dangling from the end of a branch. There was a lovely symmetry to the shot, but it was what was in the background that caught Kate’s eye.

  Something yellow. Given the distance, it was too large to have been a flower, and it was obscured by tree branches. If the photo had been taken in autumn, she would have thought it was a small bush that had turned with the season, but it was spring, and the rest of the forest was green. It definitely looked out of place.

  Kate clicked on the button to enlarge the photo 300 percent. Then she positioned the image so she could get a better view of that particular section on the bottom right-hand side. Whatever it was, it appeared to be part of a bush, or perhaps it was entwined with a bush. It almost looked like a piece of clothing.

  Kate sat back, at first puzzled. Why would someone have left clothes in the woods? Then a realization came over he
r. Was it possible that Sonja had walked that far? Search and rescue had focused their search two miles south of where that shot had been taken, near where her car was found. It would have been quite a hike.

  Kate remembered the noise she’d heard in the woods before she’d taken the photo. The shouting, the panicked words liar and help. She’d wondered if the sounds had been connected to Sonja’s disappearance, but there hadn’t been any proof. And both Livvy and Willy Bergen had said they’d heard no such noise.

  Yet hope ignited in her heart as her mind raced across everything she’d seen that day, trying to recall any other clues, anything that would offer a glimpse into why that yellow clothing was tangled in a bush. But there was nothing. Was this the answer to the prayer she’d expressed earlier?

  Quickly she began to look through the rest of the photographs for anything else she might have missed. She clicked from page to page, expanding the images on her computer so she could see the slightest minutiae. Tree branches obscured much of the background. Then finally she saw something else in the distance: the color purple beyond brambles. She magnified the image on her screen 300 percent. There, through the twist of branches and leaves, was the form of a person, hardly recognizable as a person save for the slope of shoulders and the purple shirt with a contrasting orange trim. A sweatshirt? She wished she could make it out more clearly. She couldn’t see the face, just a smidge of red hair. It couldn’t be Sonja; she had dark hair. And judging by the form, she was fairly certain it was a man.

  Given where Kate had snapped this shot, the man had to be in the same lot where her car had been parked that day. But she couldn’t see her vehicle anywhere in the photo, though her black Honda would be harder to discern through the thick foliage.

  Kate looked for more in the picture, anything to indicate what the man was doing. But with so much in the way, she couldn’t tell. When she moved to the lower left-hand corner, she could make out what appeared to be part of a car. It was silver, and a portion of the license plate was visible. After zooming in, she could see the letters KYV, nothing more. She examined every inch of the screen to see if she could find anything else. But there was nothing.

  Kate moved through several more pictures, examining each carefully, looking at every detail for something out of place, clues in the background through the tangle of brush.

  Finally another shot yielded results. What appeared to be a white hat, like a baseball cap, only less athletic and more fashionable. There was a face too, but only a cheekbone and nose were visible behind a dark green oak leaf. Was it Sonja? Kate couldn’t make out what the person was wearing; a fallen tree blocked the view.

  Kate’s heart thumped in her chest. She glanced at her watch. A little after ten o’clock. She’d been looking at the photos for about an hour.

  Had the two people in the photos seen each other? The shots were only five frames apart, with the time stamp being fifteen minutes from the shot of the man in purple to the person with the white cap.

  Why hadn’t she seen them that day? Though she realized that they were obscured by trees, they’d been a good distance away. The sounds of the flooded stream and the noisy birds would have kept their voices from penetrating so far into the woods. Except for the shouts. Were these the people she’d heard having an argument?

  Kate pulled up the photo of the yellow object in the bush again and checked the time stamp. That one had been taken half an hour before the shot of the man in the purple sweatshirt.

  Kate picked up the phone to call the sheriff. If those images had anything to do with Sonja’s disappearance, the authorities would need to know right away.

  The phone rang several times before a voice came on the line. “Harrington County Sheriff’s Office,” the dispatcher’s voice said.

  “This is Kate Hanlon. I might have some pictures that could be helpful in the Sonja Weaver case.”

  The dispatcher told her that he’d give the message to the sheriff right away. Sheriff Roberts returned her call within ten minutes, stating that he wanted to see the photos first thing in the morning.

  After Kate got off the phone with the sheriff, she called Livvy. Livvy’s voice sounded sleepy when she picked up.

  “I’m sorry to wake you,” Kate said.

  “What time is it?” Kate could hear Danny mumbling something to Livvy on the other end.

  “It’s after ten. I’m calling about Sonja.”

  “Is there news?” That seemed to awaken her a bit.

  “I uploaded the pictures we took last Friday, and it looks like there are some items of interest in the background.”

  “Can you see Sonja?” Livvy’s voice sounded as hopeful as Kate felt.

  “I’m not sure,” Kate admitted. “The trees and leaves are in the way.”

  “But you heard someone shouting,” Livvy reminded her.

  “Sheriff Roberts is coming over first thing tomorrow to see the photos.”

  “What time?”

  “Nine o’clock, at my house...”

  Livvy didn’t hesitate. “I’ll be there. I’m sure Morty will cover for me at the library.”

  Kate’s heart lifted. “And you might want to bring warm clothes and hiking shoes.”

  Chapter Nine

  Livvy came over before nine to look through the pictures on Kate’s laptop. Paul had already left for the office.

  “Why didn’t we see this on Friday?” Livvy asked when she lifted her gaze from the screen and met Kate’s eyes.

  Kate shook her head and offered a shrug. “With all the trees...it’s pretty far in the background.”

  Still the librarian’s hazel eyes looked troubled. “If it’s Sonja, and we’d seen her...”

  “I know; I thought the same thing. But we can’t play that game,” Kate cautioned. “It’s always easier to second-guess. Even if we had seen her, we didn’t know she had Alzheimer’s, and we wouldn’t have known that she was missing.” Kate was repeating words she’d said to herself since discovering the shots the night before.

  Sheriff Roberts and Deputy Spencer arrived then, as did Brad Weaver, whom the sheriff had invited to the morning meeting. Kate met them at the door and led them to the dining table, where Livvy rose from a chair to make room for them.

  Kate opened each of the shots on her laptop as the sheriff furrowed his brow to study them. “Did you print these?” he asked, and Kate handed him the blown-up photos she’d printed out.

  Brad bent to gaze at the photo of the person in the white cap. He blew out a heavy breath, then he lifted his face to Sheriff Roberts.

  “This is Sonja,” he confirmed. “It looks like her nose, and she has a cap like that. She wears it all the time.”

  “And the item in the bush?” the sheriff asked.

  “Hard to tell.” He rubbed one palm with the thumb of his other hand. “And I have no idea who this other person is. Maybe the kids would know.” He gestured to the picture of the man in purple. Brad’s brows were knit together in obvious confusion. “Do you think he had something to do with her disappearance?”

  Sheriff Roberts pressed his lips into a thin line. “The two of them aren’t together in either shot, so who knows if he’s connected to Sonja,” he said.

  “But he could be...,” Brad pushed.

  “If the evidence points that way. But this doesn’t necessarily change our conclusion, Brad,” the sheriff cautioned. “You have to remember that tomorrow it’ll be a week since Sonja disappeared.”

  Brad’s face dropped a fraction, and Kate knew that he too had begun to hope.

  The sheriff pointed to the computer screen and turned to Kate. “We’re going to need you to show us where you took these.”

  “Of course.” Kate nodded to Livvy, who offered a brave smile. “We’ll both show you.”

  THE MIST LIFTED FROM THE HORIZON to reveal the view beyond, where the silver ribbon of Copper Mill Creek wove between hazy mountains.

  Skip had parked his police SUV in the same lot where Kate and Livvy had parked th
e Friday before while Sheriff Roberts headed back to headquarters.

  Climbing out of the tall vehicle, Skip and Brad followed Kate and Livvy down the trail as they retraced their steps.

  Kate searched her mind, trying to recall every detail of their hike the previous week, especially the argument she’d overheard. Had it been with the man in purple? Who was he? And what was his connection to Sonja?

  Livvy moved alongside Kate on the trail as the two men fanned out on either side. Livvy looked as troubled as Kate felt. Livvy’s eyes scanned the fern-covered forest floor for any clue as they walked.

  Sheriff Roberts radioed in to Skip that he’d stopped to show the photos to Brian and Becky. They had no idea who the man in purple was.

  The sheriff gave strict instructions to his deputy to let him know if they found anything of significance. He’d seemed doubtful that they’d uncover anything new, which bothered Kate. Yet he’d offered to reopen the case at the slightest ray of hope when he’d talked to Brad the other day. Now that he’d seen the photos, wasn’t he willing to consider the possibility that Sonja might have survived?

  Kate’s thoughts turned to the man in purple. Whoever he was, he might have crucial information about what happened to Sonja.

  Kate led the others up the path that wound along the creek. The banks had eased back into their regular course some since the week before, leaving a widened muddy landscape behind. The stream curved around a bend, still flowing swiftly, its current a rumble in the morning calm.

  “This is where we saw Willy,” Kate pointed out, then she paused to look at the spot, not sure if she saw what she thought she saw. It looked as if there were two sets of footprints in the dried mud along the bank: a man’s shoes, and smaller impressions like those of a woman’s shoes. Yet she and Livvy had stayed back on the path when they’d spoken to Willy. Clearly someone had joined him at the creek’s edge that day. Had he told authorities?

  “What is it, Missus Hanlon?” Skip asked, moving alongside her.

  “Do you see that?” She pointed to the spot as she rushed forward with the others right behind her. “Two sets of prints...”