Secrets Boxset: A Riveting Kidnapping Mystery Collection

by J. S. Donovan

  Grace thought for a moment and then nodded. “The mountains. He tries to get me to go hiking with him, but I’m too busy for that. Being a mother is a full-time job.”

  Richard turned back with confusion.

  Grace turned from Anna to Richard. “I guess it’s about time. Lily! Come out here!”

  Dressed in a cotton candy blue t-shirt and spotted pajama pants, a cute brunette girl, no older than nine, sheepishly walked out from the hall. She had an angular face like her mother and hazel brown eyes like her father.

  Richard knelt with a watery grin. “Hi there. My name’s Richard.” He extended his hand and held his hat to his chest with the other.

  Lily tangled her fingers together nervously and looked to Grace for guidance.

  “Go on,” Grace said. “Shake the man’s hand.”

  Too shy to look the man in the eyes, she took Richard's hand and shook it. “I’m Lily,” she said softly. “Nice to meet you.”

  “You too, little lady.” Richard said with a wide grin. He turned his glossy eyes to Grace. “Is she?”

  “Run along now,” Grace told her daughter.

  Lily vanished down the hall, taking one last look at Richard.

  “We didn’t plan on her,” Grace said. “But I’m glad she’s here.”

  “She Evan’s?” Anna asked.

  Grace smiled. “Both of ours.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Richard asked.

  Grace shrugged. “Evan didn’t want you to know.”

  Richard stepped back, shocked. “Didn’t want me--Why?”

  Grace shrugged again. “The man has his reasons, I guess.”

  Anna leaned forward, steering the conversation back on track. “Listen to me, Grace. Evan is in trouble. The police are saying he’s done a lot of bad things. I need to know where to find him. Did he say what part of the Ozark he was going?”

  “He never tells me, and whatever you think he’s done, understand this: Evan is a good man,” Grace said stubbornly.

  “They say he abducted a child,” Richard stated while glaring at Grace.

  “Not him. Not my Evan.”

  Anna’s phone jiggled. She pulled it from her pocket and checked the news notification. Wide-eyed, she turned to Richard. “They found another one of Keisha’s fingers.”

  The blood left Grace’s face. “He is a good man.”

  Police cars and news van swarmed Mai Santos’s tiny house. By the time Anna arrived, officers were shooing away the small crowd. Richard stayed in the truck while Anna jogged to the yellow tape. The same burly police officer she encountered at the Rines’s house stepped forward and crossed his arms.

  “I need to talk to them,” Anna demanded.

  The officer refused to budge. “Ma’am, please disperse.”

  “This is my home!” Mrs. Santos shouted as she burst out the front door with a scrawny police recruit at her tail. Her eyes were swollen from crying and her mascara caked black tears on her cheeks.

  “It’s a crime scene,” the boy tried to reason.

  The elderly woman turned back and shoved a finger in the officer’s face. “I’ve lived here for forty-seven years, do you know what that is like? Do you?”

  From behind the caution tape, Anna followed Mrs. Santos until the officers led her out. “Don’t you touch a thing,” she growled at the officer. When he walked away, Mrs. Santos straightened her shirt out and hit Anna with a stare of death. “Oooh, you got some courage showing up here.”

  “I’m sorry about what happened to Keisha,” Anna said. “I am going to find her.”

  “You’re not doing a very fine job of it.”

  From the corner of her eye, Anna saw Sheriff Greenbell approaching. “Tell me what happened? Please, Mrs. Santos, I only want the best for Keisha.”

  The woman sucked in her lip, fighting tears with all her might. Her voice cracked as she spoke. “I woke up this morning and found a package outside my door. The monster took another one. From her other hand this time. The officers across the street all night apparently didn’t see nothing.” The levee broke and the woman fell into Anna, crying her eyes out. “They’re going to take away my home!”

  “Shh.” Anna said softly, returning the hug. “It’s only for a few days. You’re strong, Mia. You can do this.”

  Mrs. Santos ended the hug and used the top of her index finger to wipe away the tears. “Find her. Do whatever it takes.”

  Greenbell appeared with a loaded smile. “Ms. Dedrick. I’m surprised to see you here.”

  “I’ll be going shortly,” Anna replied.

  Greenbell’s blue eyes pierced her. “You’ll be leaving now.”

  A few of the other officers turned to her.

  “Call me if you find anything, Mrs. Santos,” Anna said. “We’re on the same side.”

  The elderly woman didn’t reply. Anna climbed into the truck and rubbed her forehead. Richard looked at her and she expected a kind word. Instead, he said. “Can you believe he never told me? Evan had a daughter. I’m a grandfather.”

  Anna smiled at him softly and headed for home. She worried for her father. None of this could be good for his mental health. It probably wasn’t good on her own. She racked her brain as she drove, trying to remember any place Evan would go. If he delivered the package, he couldn’t be too far. It was twenty miles to the Ozark. On rural roads, it was only a thirty-minute drive.

  She neared her father’s home and slowed the truck. “Seriously?”

  Richard pulled his head from the window for the first time during the trip.

  Outside his house, multiple local news crews gathered, checking their audio equipment and setting up cameras. Gritting her teeth, Anna put the car into reverse. The reporters gawked at the black Chevy Silverado speeding down the road.

  Richard sank into a chair when they arrived at the office. Anna locked the door, feeling glad that her name plaque wasn’t in place yet. She opened her laptop and pulled up news updates. The town was in a tizzy over Keisha’s mutilation and Evan Dedrick was on the lips of every parent and official in town. A few begged him to turn himself in. Others cursed his name. Some blamed Anna.

  “If she’s such a good detective, how come she couldn’t see her own brother is Pinky?” one said. “I bet my bottom dollar that the fame whore is in cahoots with him.”

  Anna clenched her jaw and shut the computer. Pinky, she thought. So that’s what they chose for him. In reference to the severed pinky fingers, she assumed.

  Richard got out of his seat and sifted through some of the packed boxes. Anna watched him, curious what he was doing but too overwhelmed to say anything. He removed a few boxes and pulled out one with failing cardboard and musty tape. He reached his hand into the tattered flaps and retrieved a deck full of old photographs. Anna watched her father flip through them, mumbling, “Why didn’t he ever tell me?” Whether he referred to the abduction or the hidden grandchild, Anna could not say. She scooted next to him as he sat cross-legged on the old carpet floor.

  Together, they looked through the memories of triumphs and glory, of their mother Ashley with her wide pretty smile and face painted like Brave Heart for Halloween, of Richard in his police uniform and of pre-teen Evan holding their Dotson, Blaze. Could this innocent child be the monster? She stopped on the picture of their fishing trip. The same one on the fridge. Young Anna presenting a fish and red-eyed Evan smiling at something off camera.

  “It was the last year we did that,” Richard said as he studied the photo. “We went to the cabin the next summer,” he frowned. “Or at least I think it was the next summer.”

  “What cabin?” Anna asked.

  “That’s right,” Richard said. “You were at summer camp. It was just me and Evan. Let me see if I can find a photo.”

  The older man dug through the box until he held a picture of a log cabin tucked away in the woods. “There it is. Evan was a bit… distant that year, but he loved this place. Said it made him feel free.”

  Anna studied th
e photo and pecked her father’s cheek.

  He wiped his hand on his face. “What was that for?”

  “You’re a genius,” Anna replied. “Tell me you remember where to find it.”

  Anna abandoned her truck at a gravel parkway at the mouth of the Ozark Woods. Clicking her Glock on her belt, she bustled down the steep trail and into the foliage. The dirt hiking trail took her to the fork marked by large mossy stone at the junction just as her father had explained. She moved to the left path that had been overgrown by weeds but noticed the grass was crunched. Someone had been through here not long ago. As she went farther down the forgotten path, the sounds of nature turned ominous and the soothing autumn covered her with goose bumps.

  The simple wooden structure came into view and appeared to be made of Lincoln logs. Outside, a woodman’s axe jutted from a slashed stump. Wooden chucks fragmented around its base. No light shone through the window. Anna had doubts anyone was home, but kept her hand on her gun nonetheless.

  She moved quietly to the front door, not ready to make herself known until she had a better grasp of the situation. Through the dusty window, she spotted a bed, kitchen, and living area all sharing the same room. There was a small desk with a number of books and a hunting knife sheathed in leather on top. No movement. Anna reached for the doorknob. Her heart rumbled in her chest.

  Click. Anna knew the sound. Her fingers coiled around her pistol grip.

  “Turn around.”

  She steadied her breathing and whipped around, aiming the Glock at her brother’s face.

  Evan’s rifle stock pressed snugly against his shoulder. The barrel was a few yards from Anna. He wore a camouflage cap that cast a shadow over his dark eyes.

  Anna kept her hands on her pistol. He’s your brother, she reminded herself. Yet, she kept the pistol aimed.

  “Sis?” Evan said with a small smile. “Helluva way to say hello.”

  “You drew first,” Anna reminded him, staying completely focused.

  Evan eyed her for a moment, his motive indecipherable, his intentions unpredictable. The rifle lowered and the safety clicked on. “You gave me a scare.”

  “That makes two of us,” Anna replied, lowering her gun.

  Evan smirked and twisted around. Anna watched him disappear into the woods and return with a dead deer slung over his shoulder. It leaked blood down the front of his red and black plaid shirt, but Evan didn’t seem to care. “You’re just in time for lunch.”

  Gun holstered, Anna followed him into the cabin, keeping an eye out for any trace of Keisha. Adult male’s clothes, a few dishes, no closets. If he has her, he’s holding her somewhere else. Evan slung the deer on the covered kitchen table, propped the rifle within arm’s reach, and rolled out a tarp on the surrounding floor like a painter preparing a massive canvas. He placed a few blue buckets on the tarp at the foot of the table, approached his wooden desk, and fetched two disposable gloves from the drawer. “How did you find me?” He slid on the gloves and picked up the hunting knife.

  “An old photo,” Anna admitted as she quietly distanced herself. “You didn’t make it easy.”

  He drew out the knife from its sheath. Sunlight streamed through the dusty window and across the shiny but well-used blade. “No fun in that,” he said before gliding the blade across the animal’s gut.

  Anna turned away as she heard the soft, tearing sound of blade against flesh. “There have been a lot of bad things said about you.”

  “Oh yeah?” Evan grimaced as he yanked out a handful of leaking guts--“What sort of things?”--and plopped it in the bucket by his camouflage boots.

  Anna looked around the cabin, making sure she wasn’t followed. “That you raped a woman. That you took a little girl and cut off her fingers.”

  Evan stopped removing innards and stood up straight. He looked over his shoulder. “What do you think?” He returned to his task.

  Anna kept her hand by her holstered gun. She placed the other one on her hip. “I don’t know, Evan. You are not making a convincing argument for yourself.”

  Her brother turned back quicker than Anna would have liked. The fresh ball of bloody organs in his hand spilled crimson on the blue tarp below. “First, I didn’t rape anyone, and second, I don’t know a lick about some little girl without fingers.”

  “It’s been all over the news,” Anna pointed out, looking for any change in body language or behavior. A liar’s tell comes from non-verbals: a misalignment of word and expression. However, the gore muddled Anna’s profile. Perhaps that was his plan.

  Evan unintentionally flicked the knife’s blade as he spoke, sending a few droplets of blood on the wooden floor. “You know what I like about this place? No Internet, no people, and no phone service. It’s me and him,” he referred to the deer. “And, well, you.”

  Anna shifted her weight to one side. “So you haven’t heard of Keisha Rines?”

  “Of course. Everyone from Van Buren has.” Evan replied matter-of-factly. “I heard she went missing, but that’s the extent of it. I’ve been up here since Tuesday morning.”

  “Do you have an alibi to back that up?” Anna asked, keeping an eye on the gun, the knife, and her brother.

  Evan frowned. “No.”

  Anna felt a migraine coming on. “This isn’t looking good for you.”

  Her brother returned to the deer and shoved his hand within. “I’m innocent, Anna.” He drew out another colorful clump and dropped it in the bucket, filling it to the brim.

  “Prove it.”

  He turned back, getting flushed with red. “How?”

  Anna locked eyes with him. “Talk to the police.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

  Evan chuckled and shook his head in disbelief. “You’re funny.”

  Anna crinkled her brow. “So you’ve got something to hide?”

  Evan’s tongue swirled around the inside of his cheek. “Law enforcement and I don’t get along.”

  “Lawyer up if you’re that worried. The press will hate you for it, but it will keep you safe. Legally, at least.”

  Evan remained silent and studied the bloody knife in his hand. He looked up at Anna with tired eyes. “It’s that serious?”

  With pursed lips, Anna nodded.

  Evan turned the red knife in his hands. He placed it on the table. “If you think it’s for the best.”

  “It is,” Anna said truthfully.

  After pondering for a moment, her brother’s face softened. “Let me finish up here. I don’t want to see him go to waste.”

  Anna gestured for him to proceed. Taking a small hatchet from a toolbox next to the table, he shattered the ribs and cleared the chest cavity. Once the animal’s insides were outside, Evan requested Anna to grab the cooler from the other side of the room. Cautiously, she handed him the two bags of ice. Once they were inside the deer, twine ropes sealed the surgical flap and Evan dropped his gloves into a full bucket.

  “You’ve done this before,” Anna stated.

  Using the top of his hand, he wiped the glancing sweat from his forehead.

  “Give me a hand with this guy.” By its feet, Evan slid the carcass onto the tarp. He grabbed one end of the tarp and smiled playfully at her. “He won’t bite.”

  Hesitant, Anna picked up the other end of the tarp, completing the hammock. They marched the deer to a nearby tree where Anna fed the rope to her brother as he strung the animal up by its neck. After dousing it with a number of water bottles, Evan put on some rubber gloves and proceeded to remove the legs, arms, and skin. When only red meat and muscle remained, he harvested the meat with precision and placed it in the icebox. The whole process took a little over an hour.

  Anna assisted him with the meat buckets and tossed the contents into a small hole they dug. “I’d never hurt you,” Evan said after a long while of loaded silence.

  Anna didn’t reply. I don’t know, Evan. I don’t know anything about you. “We’ve kept Garrett waiting long enough.”

  Evan frowned at the name but s
aid nothing. He stripped down to his boxers, revealing a body with a lifetime of unfelt scars and calloused slashes. Folding his dirty clothes, he dressed in more plaid and jeans and followed Anna to the gravel parking area.

  “I parked a ways down,” he explained.

  “I’ll come with you.” It was not a suggestion. Down the road mile, they found her brother’s sedan. Quietly, they rode back to Anna’s truck.

  “I’ll follow you,” she ordered as she stepped out of the car.

  “You need to be little more trusting,” Evan said through the rolled down window.

  “It comes with the territory.”

  The Silverado tailed the four-door, mimicking every move and ready to accelerate at her brother’s escape. There were so many questions, and Anna felt as though she learned nothing from her trip to the cabin. Evan remained as what Grace said: an enigma. Every word she took with a grain of salt. Every motion she looked for a hidden motive. Was it paranoia, or was her gut telling her something? She’d find out the answer. The police station came into view along with more news vans and locals enjoying their five minutes of fame.

  At the sight of Evan’s car, cameras flashed, video operators sprinted into position, and reporters abandoned their current interviews. They swarmed the steps as police officers burst through the door, making way for Evan. The attention annoyed Anna, but she pressed up a step and then another.

  “Child killer!” someone from the crowd yelled.

  “Rapist!” another said.

  “Fame whore!”

  A wad of spit splattered in Evan’s hair. He looked over his shoulder at Anna. “At least we’re bringing people together.”

  Reporters shouted for interviews or a statement like starving dogs barking at unreachable scraps. Sheriff Greenbell held open the decaled glass door. “Glad you could make it,” he yelled over the noise.

  Evan smirked at the sheriff. “Keep this up and you might have a riot in your hands.”

  He slipped in through the threshold. Officer Ashburn guarded the door as Greenbell entered. “We’ll take it from here, Ms. Dedrick. Thank you for your support.”

  “I brought him in.”

  “And I thank you on behalf of the Van Buren Police Department,” the gray-haired officer said. “Unless you are reporting a crime, please return to your vehicle.”