“It’s empty,” he said. “I can tell from the weight of it.”
Bruce rolled his eyes. “How about you indulge me and open it anyway.”
George bent down and uncoupled the ornamental brass fittings and lifted the lid.
Inside, the pristine white silk was dusted with a bit of soil. Other than a faint depression in the silk head pillow, the interior of the casket looked like it had never held a body at all.
19
“I picked up a Sweetie Pies take-and-bake,” Gin told her mother several hours later. “I knew you’d be getting ready for the city council meeting, and I figured neither you nor Dad would feel like cooking.”
“You’re right about that,” Madeleine said as she came through the door and set down her briefcase, which was bulging with reports. “I’ve got twenty-four hours to come up with a convincing argument for additional state funding for heavy metal contamination remediation along Industry Avenue near the old plant. Speaking of your dad, have you seen him?”
“Actually, I’ve only been home for a few minutes myself, but he left a note saying he was going over to the garden.” Richard was an avid member of the community gardens near the banks of the river, where he grew heirloom vegetables in his carefully tended plot. “I’m about to head out myself—I want to get a run in before dinner.”
Madeleine glanced at her watch. “Okay, I’ll wait an hour or so before I put the pizza in—that’ll give you time for a shower, and I can make a few calls before we eat. And maybe your dad will bring back some snap peas.”
Gin grabbed her water bottle and tucked it into her waist pack, then headed out into the late-afternoon sun. As she started out at an easy pace along the ridge road, she gazed down at the town below, the river glinting in the sun, the traffic moving lazily along the edge and over the bridges.
Running was Gin’s favorite way to center herself, to let her subconscious mind wander freely, making the connections and leaps that her conscious mind could not. Especially when she was under stress, or working on a confounding case, solutions often came to her paradoxically when she was thinking nothing at all, just focusing on the rhythm of her feet on the trail, her arms pumping at her side, her lungs filling with air and releasing it.
But she’d only gone a few blocks when she realized that today, she would not achieve that serene state. Something was nagging at her brain, a break in a pattern, a piece that didn’t fit the puzzle. Finally, as she left the paved road for one of the many trails that crisscrossed the ridge above the town, she gave up and began to talk herself through her thought. It was one of the advantages of these seldom-used trails that there was no one to hear her.
“Douglas Gluck, dead of natural causes, laid to rest—then disinterred. Not clear when.
“Second John Doe, unknown cause of death, found in Gluck’s grave.
“Marnie Crosbie, dead from presumed overdose.”
“Jonah Kischer…”
Here she got stuck. Jonah was connected to Gluck in two ways: Gluck was a patient of his father’s—and Jonah had discovered his body. Coincidence? Maybe.
“Keith Walker. Cindy Walker Ewing. Logan Ewing.”
She had crossed Keith off her mental list, but maybe that was premature. Could his nice-guy persona be faked? On the other hand, she knew nothing about Cindy other than she was having trouble with her son, who was involved in some frightening interests. And Logan was the right age—and temperament, perhaps—to have made a connection with Jonah.
But it still seemed like a stretch. Still, she had nothing else to go on. The autopsy of the body found in the grave might reveal more, but for now, Gin wanted—needed—to act. The sense of urgency that had followed her since her disturbing nightmare had only grown.
She stopped for a rest at the top of the ridge, taking a moment to watch the sun slipping down to where the horizon met the sky. Even the natural beauty failed to calm her, though, and she took out her phone and tapped out a Google search. It took a little poking around, but in moments at least one of her questions was answered.
Cindy Walker Ewing. Nurse’s assistant at a dialysis center in Greenport, where she also owned a condominium. Formerly employed by the Sears distribution center that had closed last year. Divorced a little over two years.
If Logan was involved somehow with the body discovered near the family cabin, would Cindy know?
Was it possible that Cindy was involved herself?
It made little sense—but right now there was nothing else to go on, at least until the newly discovered body was identified. Greenport was only a ten-minute drive. It was doubtful that there were any answers waiting for Gin there … but as beautiful as it was high on the ridge, there were definitely no answers here.
She tucked her phone back into her pocket and began running down the path toward town.
* * *
By the time she showered and changed and drove to Cindy’s condo development, at the end of a narrow access road leading off Route 837 through a desultory thicket of scrub trees, the sun had set, and a chilly mist had set in along with the darkness. The towns along the river were in the grip of an unseasonably cold and gloomy spell where the sun shone for only a few hours here and there. Soon summer would arrive, heralding backyard barbecues and Sunday drives and ball games, but for now the intermittent rains were encouraging the wildflowers and coaxing new growth along the river banks.
Cindy Ewing’s condo development probably didn’t look like much in the best of days, but with a light rain beginning to fall on dumpsters spilling over with trash, puddling on the cracked asphalt, and dripping from the curling roof shingles, it looked little better than a tenement. Gin found Cindy’s condo, a plain gray two-story unit wedged between four other identical ones, and parked in a visitor space out front.
She’d come up with a plan on her short run home. She’d grabbed an old jacket of her father’s and dressed in a wool blazer and coordinating pants. She planned to introduce herself as one of the counselors at Logan’s school and ask if Logan was home. She was counting on neither Logan nor his mother knowing the entire counseling staff at North Valley High—with over three thousand students in the school, that was certainly plausible. She would say that he’d left his jacket behind, and since they were on her way home, she thought she’d drop it off.
The ruse was a shaky one, and it would probably gain her little more than a glimpse into the home, a short conversation with a harried mother. Nothing that would implicate either Logan or his mother in wrongdoing—and nothing to clear them of suspicion, either. But with no other ideas, Gin simply hoped to get a sense of whether Logan was as troubled as his Facebook page implied.
She got out of the car, clutching her father’s jacket, and raced through the mist to the front porch, where she was protected by a listing metal overhang. She tried the doorbell, but when no one answered, she resorted to knocking.
In seconds the front door was flung wide open. A thin woman with limp, brassy hair and an inch of gray roots glared at her. She was dressed in a stained scrub shirt with a pattern of stethoscopes on a pale blue background, matching blue pants, and white nursing clogs. Cheap plastic reading glasses were pushed up on top of her head.
She looked Gin up and down and crossed her arms over her chest. “What do you want?” she snarled. Behind her, a girl of thirteen or fourteen peeped around the corner, then raced past and up the stairs.
“I—I’m Jennifer Miller,” Gin stammered.
“I know who you are, and I know what you’re up to. But I don’t have to say one damn thing to you. Mary Harper is a vicious old bitch with nothing better to do than spy on me all day long, and the last time you people were out here I proved to you that she was lying. Logan’s had his troubles but he isn’t a thief and I have never laid a hand on him. I’d like you to find one house in this whole place where no one’s ever raised their voice. Bunch of fucking hypocrites.”
Gin took half a step back, unprepared for Cindy Ewing’s outburst. “I—I�
��m not who you think I am.”
Cindy gave a short, bitter laugh. “Right. All you DHS do-gooders look exactly alike.” She eyed Gin’s handbag. “It’s pretty easy to judge for you, isn’t it? I know they don’t pay you enough to dress like that. I bet you’re married to a doctor, right? Investor? Wait until he leaves you high and dry with your kids and no way to pay the bills before you think you know anything.”
Then she slammed the door inches from Gin’s face.
Gin stood, immobile from shock, for several seconds before turning and running through the rain back to her car.
She’d learned something about the little family, that was for sure. But she wasn’t sure if it made them more or less likely to be connected to the string of bodies.
* * *
Gin was distracted enough as she drove toward the main road that she almost ran over a large branch that had fallen across the road. She looked up at the overhanging trees and sighed; the rain and wind had taken its toll, and the ground was littered with twigs and branches. The one in the road was dead; it had probably been ready to fall for quite some time and now extended across both lanes. She could probably drive around it, though the shoulder looked soft and slanted sharply away from the road, but she knew she ought to move it before some other motorist ended up damaging their undercarriage on it.
She put her blinkers on and put the car in park, then got out of the car. Rain pelted her face and trailed down her neck as she rounded the branch and took hold of the end. It was heavier than she expected, and she grunted from exertion but only managed to move it a few inches. She set the branch down, wondering if there was some way she could tie it to her bumper and drag it out of the way.
Something soft wrapped around her face. Gin clawed at it, startled, thinking it was a cloth carried by the wind, but there was a guttural sound behind her and a hand clapped it against her eyes. Before she could react, a pungent smell—like lemon floor cleaner—filled her nostrils.
And then there was nothing.
20
Something cold was pressing against her cheek.
Gin moaned and rolled over. Her body felt unmoored, as though the cartilage and sinew weren’t holding her limbs together properly. Her mind was foggy, her thoughts a tangle.
She tried to sit up and a wave of dizziness felled her. Wherever she was, it was so dark that she couldn’t see anything at all. Lying on her back, she used her fingers to explore: the floor felt slick, like linoleum; her face was inches from a wall with a plastic baseboard. She took a breath and couldn’t detect any smell other than her own body. How long had she been here?
She forced herself to lie still and concentrate. Slowly, it came back to her—the branch in the road, the cloth wrapping her face, the sound of someone behind her. The smell, like lemon-scented cleaner, one that Gin was familiar with from her medical school days.
An inhalational anesthetic—probably sevoflurane, which was less pungent than some but highly effective. She’d probably been out from between four and twelve hours, depending on the concentration and how much she’d inhaled.
Panic threatened to build inside her, and Gin squeezed her eyes shut and focused for all she was worth. “Stay calm,” she instructed herself. “You can do this.”
In a few minutes she felt a little better and managed to sit up, then stand, with only a little nausea and trembling in her hands. She felt her way around what turned out to be more of a closet than a room; there were shelves on one wall, and a mop bucket on wheels in a corner. As she was exploring, a thin band of light suddenly appeared along the floor.
A door. Gin lurched the few steps to it and started banging as hard as she could on its unyielding surface. “Help!” she screamed, but it came out as a hoarse croak. She tried again, pulling off her shoe and using the heel to pound harder.
It occurred to her that whoever had turned on a light could very well be the same person who had put her in here. But the darkness pressing around her was making her panic: it was like the nightmare, the feeling of being in that long, narrow tunnel with no end.
“Who’s there?” A woman’s voice—gravelly, like a smoker’s—sounded on the other side of the door. “Who is that?”
“I—I’m stuck in here. I don’t know how I got here. Please, can you let me out?”
Silence.
Gin pounded again. “Please!”
“I don’t have a key,” the woman said doubtfully. “I’ll have to find Mr. Holt.”
“Please, hurry. Don’t leave me here.”
It seemed an eternity but was probably only moments before another voice came through the door. “Ma’am?” a man’s voice said, and there was the sound of metal on metal, a key being tried in the lock. A moment later the door swung open. Standing in the hall were a tall, stooped man in a dark green uniform and a woman in a matching green shirt. On the pockets of both was stitched “Pierpont Farms.”
Somehow, Gin had ended up in the chicken processing plant.
* * *
Ten minutes later she was seated in a break room a floor above. A clock on the wall read nearly three thirty—in the morning, as Gin confirmed with her rescuers. It turned out that she had been locked in an unused basement closet of the old plant headquarters. “I don’t even know why they have us clean in here,” Marla, the cleaning woman who had discovered her, said. “Hardly anyone uses it anymore.”
She had made three mugs of instant cocoa in the microwave, but Mr. Holt, her supervisor, hadn’t touched his; he was on the phone with the police.
The Pierpont Farms plant was in the Clairton police jurisdiction, and from Holt’s side of the conversation, Gin knew they’d be here soon. She had driven by the old plant hundreds of times when she was growing up; in the last few years, the plant had been expanded and modernized. State of the art equipment and record earnings had gained Pierpont the gratitude of a community still struggling to re-emerge from the collapse of its steel economy. Gin would guess that many of Cindy Ewing’s neighbors—just a few miles away—were employed here.
Though she didn’t plan to tell the police that. Or anything about her adventure, for that matter. She’d just say she’d been picking up Thai food for her and her parents; she knew there was a popular Thai restaurant in Greensboro. She’d say it was her father’s favorite to explain why she’d made the drive.
As for the rest … the truth would have to do.
So much for staying under the county police radar.
* * *
Madeleine came to pick her up. Her car had been towed; the plan was for Madeleine to drive her to claim it from the impound. Gin knew that Tuck would be angry when he found out that Gin hadn’t called him immediately—but she figured that the last thing he needed was to show up uninvited while he was on suspension.
“They would have given me a ride,” Gin protested, but Madeleine’s expression sufficed to make her drop it.
“Mom…” she began, when they were both in Madeleine’s Lexus. It was almost eight o’clock in the morning, and Madeleine had clearly not slept. Her face was drawn and there were purple circles under her eyes. She and Richard had spent the night frantically making calls, trying to find her.
“We were terrified,” Madeleine said. “After what happened in your bedroom—and all these unidentified bodies—”
“I’m so sorry.” Gin reached for her mother’s hand. “I hate that you were worried. But I wasn’t hurt, and I would have been found. Whoever drugged me didn’t mean to kill me. Only to frighten me.”
“Well, they succeeded in frightening your mother,” Madeleine sighed, then started the car.
They rode in silence, Gin’s head growing heavy as sleep threatened to overtake her. Pulling up in front of the house, she wondered if she had ever been happier to be home. Richard came flying out the front door and practically pulled her out of her seat, then held her tightly, murmuring her name.
“Come inside,” he said. “You need to rest. Are you hungry? Thirsty? Do you need some Tylenol?”
“Dad,” Gin laughed, as she followed him into the house. “I’m fine, honest. They took a blood sample at the station to see if they can figure out exactly what I was drugged with, but you don’t need to treat me with kid gloves—as you very well know!”
“I suppose I can’t talk you into staying home until this case is solved, now that we’re getting this fancy new security system,” Richard said hopefully. He’d led them into the kitchen, where they all automatically took their usual seats.
“Dad…”
“I know, I know. Honestly, you’re as stubborn as your mother.”
“Hey!” Madeleine interjected.
“Just—can you let the police handle it from here? Things are bound to settle down soon.”
Gin changed the subject. “I think I’m going to try to get a few hours of sleep. You guys should too, don’t you think?”
Madeleine frowned and looked at her watch. “Definitely. After I just call a couple of—”
“Now, honey,” Richard said. “I’ve rescheduled the security guy for tomorrow. I think we’ve all had enough excitement for today. And Madeleine … those calls can wait.”
“Oh, all right,” Madeleine said, covering a yawn. “Are you coming up?”
“In a minute.”
“Listen, guys … I’ve got plans tonight that I don’t want to break, so I won’t be here for dinner.”
“Shouldn’t you stay home and rest?” Richard objected.
“They’d better be purely social,” Madeleine said. “Second date with the mystery man?”
“N—um…” Gin had been about to come up with an excuse when she realized that Keith Walker would make a good alibi, since tensions were still high from the night before. She didn’t like lying, but she reasoned that it would only upset her parents to know the truth—even though she wouldn’t be in any danger. Probably. “Yes, actually. He’s a nice guy.”
In the Darkest Hour Page 18
