Rusty beckoned to another officer. “Find out where my uncle went after he left the newspaper offices. There has to be somebody who’d seen him. And let me know as soon as you get a line on Jake DeGraff.”
Tess felt as if a vise were tightening around her head. Her son had been kidnapped and these people were standing around talking. “What are you doing?” she shrieked. “Why won’t you listen to me? My son is not with my brother. He was taken by whoever was driving this car. We have to find the car. Look,” she strode past the people who were gathering evidence and pointed to the dirt path. “There are tire tracks here. Someone should be following them. Someone has to have seen the car.” She began to head down the road that led to the clearing. “If we follow these tracks…”
“Tess,” a familiar voice cried. Tess looked up and saw Dawn, who had just arrived, waving frantically to her from behind the police lines.
At the same moment, Rusty Bosworth grabbed Tess roughly by the upper arm. “You could be destroying evidence. Get out of the way and let us do our jobs.”
Tess jerked her arm free from his grasp and rubbed it with her other hand. “Your job is to find my son.” She pointed behind her. “You’ve sent half your people out into the woods and my son is not out there. He did not run away. You’re wasting precious time asking questions about Nelson Abbott’s death. I know he was your uncle, but since when is a dead body more urgent than a missing child? You should let someone else take over. Someone whose priorities aren’t all messed up.”
Rusty Bosworth glared at her, his face red. “When I want your advice about how to handle things, I’ll ask for it,” he said. “There’s your mother. Go home with her. When we have something to tell you, I’ll let you know.”
CHAPTER 23
“Stop the car, Mother,” Tess cried, glimpsing a hiker on a neighboring trail. “Maybe this guy knows something.”
Dawn glanced in her rearview mirror as her car bounced along the rutted, dirt road. Her face was chalk white and impassive. “All right,” she said.
Tess leaped from the car and began to stumble through the brambles, calling out to the young man on a nearby trail who was wearing a backpack and a knitted hat with earflaps.
The young man stopped and looked up at the frantic woman who was crashing through the woods in his direction.
“Help me!” Tess cried. “I need your help. Did you see a car with a young boy in it coming along this trail maybe—I don’t know—an hour ago? Probably going very fast?”
The hiker, who had a tufted beard and mild eyes, shook his head and his earflaps rose and fell. “The cops already stopped me and asked me. I told them I wasn’t on this trail. I was on the other side of the lake forty minutes ago. I didn’t see anybody over there.”
Tess’s small flicker of hope was doused by his words. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. What’s going on anyway?”
Tess shook her head. “Never mind.”
“Wish I could help,” the young man said.
“Thanks.” Tess trudged back to her mother’s idling car and slid into the front seat.
“Nothing?” Dawn asked.
Tess shook her head and pressed her face against the car window, trying to peer through it into the curtain of bare branches and evergreens, dense and twisted, that stretched as far as the eye could see. “How will I ever find him?” she asked. “Nelson Abbott is dead.”
“I know,” said Dawn.
“I thought it was Nelson, but it wasn’t. There’s another killer.”
“I guess so,” said Dawn.
Tess turned and looked at her mother. “Where is Kenneth Phalen today, Mother?”
Dawn yelped in dismay. “Ken!”
“Yes, Ken,” Tess cried. “Why should he be above suspicion? He was around when Phoebe was killed. His own daughter was a suicide at that same age. All of a sudden, after all these years, he shows up here out of the blue—”
“Tess,” Dawn cried. “Stop. Just stop it.”
Tess fell silent.
“Sweetheart, I know you’re desperate. I know exactly how you feel. But it’s not going to help to make a scapegoat out of that poor man.”
Tess glanced over at her mother’s sagging profile as she drove through the woods. Dawn had been through this same ordeal once before in her life. “How can you go through this, Mother?” Tess asked. “Again?”
“Don’t think like that. It’s not the same. It’s different these days. When a child disappears, the FBI gets involved right away…it’s not going to end that same way. It can’t,” Dawn said, keeping her eyes fixed on the narrow road.
Tess looked back out the window as the car crept along the road leading out of the woods. Erny. She wanted to call out his name, but she knew that he would not answer. He was with Nelson Abbott’s killer. Whoever it was who had come to the forest to bury Nelson had snatched Erny, not as part of a plan, but impulsively. She could only pray that Nelson’s killer was not someone who would hurt a child.
“The DNA proved that Nelson was guilty,” said Tess. “But somebody killed Nelson. Somebody who was desperate.”
Dawn nodded with a distant look in her eyes.
Tess sighed, rolled down the window, and leaned her head out. She knew it was futile but she had to do something to relieve the pain in her heart. She began to scream Erny’s name.
When they got back to the inn, another car had already pulled into the parking area and two men who were clearly not guests were getting out of it. One man pulled a transmitter from inside his windbreaker and began to speak into it. “The police are here,” said Tess. Dawn nodded agreement. “I’m going to ask them to keep the reporters away,” she said.
Tess didn’t even wait for Dawn to pull into her parking spot. She asked her mother to stop near the front door. She jumped out of the car and went inside, not looking up when reporters called her name. She hung up her jacket and went through the inn, to the phone in the kitchen. She had to speak to someone who could explain to her how it was possible that Nelson Abbott had been set free. Obviously, she was not going to call Ben Ramsey. She called Chief Fuller, whose number was written on a pad by the phone. His daughter-in-law answered on the second ring. Tess identified herself and asked to speak to the former chief.
“He’s can’t come to the phone,” said Mary Anne.
“Can you have him call me?” Tess asked hopefully.
“No, he won’t be calling anyone. He can’t talk. He had a terrible night. He’s, um…we had to put him on hospice care this morning.”
“Hospice!” Tess exclaimed.
“You knew he was sick,” Mary Anne said accusingly.
“I know. But I didn’t realize he was that bad.”
“Well, he is,” said Mary Anne in an angry tone.
“Is he there? Is he at home?”
“Yes, he’s at home,” Mary Anne said indignantly. “But he’s extremely weak. He can’t talk on the phone. Now leave the man in peace.” Without waiting for Tess to reply, she hung up the phone.
For one moment, shaken by this news about Chief Fuller, Tess forgot about why she had called. And then, instantly, it returned to her, like a stabbing pain in her own heart. Erny.
She came out of the kitchen and into the hallway. Her mother was standing between the two casually dressed men she had seen in the parking lot. One was short with dark hair and a mustache and the other was a large overweight man with small porcine eyes.
“Miss DeGraff?” said the dark-haired man. “I’m Chuck Virgilio. This is my partner, Mac Swain. Chief Bosworth sent us over. We sent the press jackals packing like your mother asked us to. I don’t know how long they’ll stay away, but…for the moment…”
Tess nodded. “Thanks.”
“We’ll be monitoring your phones in case anyone calls about…ransom.”
Tess’s knees felt like jelly. “Ransom.”
“Don’t get me wrong. We’re still betting your son got lost in the woods. The search party is going to keep on looking
for him. But meanwhile, we’re covering this end. Believe me, I understand how stressed out you are. I’m a parent myself. Anything we can do to help, we will.”
“Thank you,” said Tess.
“I’m here to help, too, if I can.”
Tess turned around and saw Ben Ramsey emerging from the library. Tess stared at him, too shocked to speak.
“Listen, I heard about Erny’s disappearance,” said Ben. “I had to come.”
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” she said.
“Why don’t we step outside,” Ben said. “You look like you could use the fresh air.” He pulled her jacket from a hook in the foyer and offered it to her.
Tess snatched it from his hand. “Please leave,” she said.
“Tess, come outside for a minute,” said Ben in a low voice. “I really need to talk to you.”
“You heard the lady. You’d better clear out of here, Counselor,” said Officer Virgilio. “Get going.”
“Okay, I’m leaving,” said Ben to the police officers. “Tess. Two minutes. Please. I may be able to help you.”
“If you know anything pertinent to this case, Mr. Ramsey,” said the larger officer, Officer Swain, in a menacing tone, “you’d better tell us about it right now.”
“That’s right,” said Tess. “If you have any idea where Erny is…”
Ben shook his head. “Of course I would tell you. Immediately. Please, Tess. I just want a word with you. Come outside with me.”
“I don’t want to go outside,” Tess complained. “It’s cold. And I need to be here if Erny calls or—”
“I’ll come get you right away,” said Dawn. “Go ahead and talk to him. Just stay close by.”
Tess saw the intense expression in her mother’s eyes and realized that Dawn was not making a suggestion. It was more like a command. Tess sighed and then threw on the jacket Ben had handed her. “Two minutes,” she said. She opened the door, walked out, and stood on the granite stone of the entryway. She heard Ben step out and close the door carefully behind him. Tess gazed past the circular gravel driveway to the wooded lane bounded by a stone wall. With the reporters gone, it was the image of peace and tranquility. It was the kind of picturesque view that drew people to New England. Historic and unchanging. A fairy-tale place. A mirage. “All right, what is it?” she said without looking at Ben.
“Come and sit down,” he said.
He indicated the pair of wooden, church-pewlike benches, painted the same green as the shutters, that flanked the front door. Behind each one was a white wooden lattice screen that extended up to the low overhanging roof. In summer, roses grew on the lattice. Now, in late October, there were only brown vines. Tess hesitated, but she could not resist. She did feel wobbly on her legs. She sat. He sat beside her. She still did not look at him. It was chilly sitting on the wooden bench. She shivered and jammed her hands into her pockets.
“Look, I know you’re angry with me…” he began.
Tess turned and looked at him. His silver hair glinted, even in the gloom of the afternoon. And his frowning eyes seemed to refract light like a prism. “Do you think so?” she said.
“I’d like to explain to you what happened,” he said.
“No, I’ll tell you what happened,” said Tess. “You got Nelson Abbott sprung on some technicality and somebody killed him and tried to dump his body. And in the process, that person kidnapped my son. My son is with a murderer. For all I know…” She tried to continue, but her voice broke. She wiped her eyes angrily and looked away.
Ben ignored her tears. His voice remained calm and matter-of-fact. “Look, I know you want to blame someone, but I had no way of predicting this. And I’m as sorry about it as I can be. Both for you and for Nelson.”
“Nelson Abbott?” she cried. “You feel sorry for him?”
“Tess, it was not some technicality, as you’d like to think, that exonerated him.”
“Sorry. I meant to say ‘constitutional protection,’” Tess said sarcastically. “The rights of the accused. I know all about it. You found out that I obtained that hat with Nelson’s DNA without telling him. Went into his house and walked out with his filthy hat. I can just imagine your righteous indignation. I’m surprised you didn’t have the cops arrest me.”
Ben shook his head, but did not respond.
Tess pointed a shaking finger at him. “The police were doing nothing. Somebody had to trap Nelson Abbott in his lies. When I brought the hat to Chief Fuller, he said it would be okay. And it was, until Nelson hired you—the crackerjack lawyer. It’s your job to find loopholes. And you seem to be very good at it. Anybody that tries to hurt my family, you find them an out.” She could feel her cheeks flaming, and she knew very well that it was unreasonable to impugn him for doing his job, but she felt helplessly furious with him.
Ben’s expression did not change. “Stop it, Tess,” he said firmly. “I’ll explain to you what really happened, if you will listen. I think you might want to hear this. It’s important.”
Tess stuck out her chin defiantly, but remained quiet.
Ben spoke in a low urgent voice. “While Nelson was being questioned, I asked for, and was given access to, the DNA results that supposedly implicated him. I’m sure Bosworth thought that it would just look like a jumble of numbers to me, but I’ve had a lot of experience with DNA evidence. And what I saw in those results set off alarm bells in me. I had another lab—a highly reputable lab—check them for me. The lab I sent it to said that the results did not match Nelson’s DNA.”
Tess shook her head. “That’s crap. Chief Fuller’s guy said that they did match. Why would he lie about it?”
Ben sighed. “Chief Fuller was trying to help you, but he went too far. His friend at the lab gave him a shabby report that said what Aldous Fuller wanted to believe.”
“It’s science. He said the sample matched Nelson’s!” Tess cried.
“When in fact,” Ben corrected her, “the sample only had some markers in it that matched Nelson’s. The sample did not match perfectly.”
Tess shook her head. “You’re splitting hairs. Goddammit! Everybody knows that the sample from Phoebe’s case was deteriorated. After all these years of being stored under less-than-ideal conditions…it never was going to be perfect. But it was enough. It was enough to get Lazarus ‘exonerated,’ as you say. I notice you had no problem with that.”
Ben shook his head. “That’s different. In that case, there were no markers that matched Lazarus. He was ruled out completely by the DNA.”
“Ruled out. Exonerated. What’s the difference? The guy from Chief Fuller’s lab was able to match it to Nelson.”
Ben explained in a patient tone. “Listen to me. Nelson was Lazarus’s stepfather. They weren’t actually related. There was no match to Lazarus. But the sample did have markers that matched Nelson’s. It also had markers that didn’t.”
Tess peered at him. “What does that mean?”
“I’m saying that a person’s DNA sample is always going to be a perfect match of itself. No extra markers. No differences. A perfect match. My lab guy found other markers.”
“Then they were Phoebe’s cells,” she said.
Ben shook his head. “No. My guy checked for that. It was not Nelson who was in league with Lazarus. It was not Nelson who killed Phoebe,” Ben said. “It wasn’t. That’s not speculation. It’s fact.”
“NO,” Tess wailed in protest. “How could the sample be mistaken for Nelson’s? What are the chances of that happening? Are you saying that the guy at the state lab lied deliberately? Why would he do that? It makes no sense.”
“No. I’m not saying that he lied. There were markers that matched.”
Tess shook her head. “I’m utterly confused. What the hell are you saying? Some markers matched by coincidence?”
“Not at all,” said Ben. “Not coincidence. It wasn’t Nelson who killed Phoebe. But it was someone related to him.”
Tess stared at his grave face and felt her heart flip o
ver like an acrobat on a trapeze. She was not exactly sure of the implications, but she understood the central point. “Related to him?”
Ben nodded. “I was with Nelson when the report came in. It wasn’t until I explained the science to him that the light dawned. I could see it in his eyes. Something suddenly made sense to him that had never made sense to him before. I tried to get him to tell me, but he absolutely refused. But he’d realized the truth. And I think it got him killed,” said Ben.
Tess was shivering as she considered what he had just told her. Then she had another thought. “Nelson had no children,” Tess said, looking into Ben’s intelligent crystalline eyes.
Ben glanced at the front door of the inn, which was still tightly shut. Then he looked back into Tess’s eyes. “He has a nephew,” Ben said.
CHAPTER 24
Tess’s heart lurched in her chest. “Chief Bosworth?” she whispered.
“Rusty Bosworth is the son of Nelson’s sister.”
“He’s the chief of police,” said Tess.
Ben gazed at her somberly. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you out here, where we wouldn’t be overheard,” he said.
Tess clutched the sleeve of his jacket as if to steady herself. “Are you saying you think he could have done these things…?” she whispered.
“I don’t know, Tess. What I do know is that we can’t go to the local police with our suspicions.”
“Who can we go to?”
Ben frowned. “Well, the state police or the FBI. I have to tread carefully, though. We need proof. Not conjecture.”
Tess shook her head as if she could not take it in. “Are there any other siblings. Cousins?”
“Well, we need to find out before we start accusing the police chief,” said Ben.
Tess looked at him with keen, troubled eyes. “I don’t get it. Why are you helping me now? Why did you come here and tell me this?” she asked.
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