Forty-Four Box Set, Books 1-10 (44) (133 page)

“And now?”

“The only thing I’m really sure of is that I miss you,” I said, trying hard to keep it together.

“That’s not a bad thing to be sure of. I miss you too. When do you think you’ll be coming home?”

“I don’t know. Maybe tomorrow. I think Frazier wants me to go to the station in the morning. After that, I don’t know what else I’d do here, so maybe I’ll head back in the afternoon.”

“I know it’s selfish, but it can’t be soon enough,” he said. “But there’s something else. The closest thing I have to ESP is ESPN, so take this with a few grains of salt, but I have this really strong feeling that before it’s over you’re going to make a difference. A big difference.”

“I hope you’re right.”

After we said goodbye, I drifted off to sleep now sure of two things. That I missed Ty and that his feeling couldn’t have been more wrong.

CHAPTER 47

The water was louder now.

I don’t know how long I had been running. Running through these dark woods. Running toward that cabin.

All I knew was that I couldn’t take another step. My lungs were one more breath away from exploding. Something was still taking me down that path, but it wasn’t my legs. They were down there somewhere, tattered and thrashed, but I could no longer feel them.

And yet, somehow, I kept moving. Beyond all sense or strength. I kept moving.

I fell down in the mud, but I got back to my feet, driven by something I didn’t understand, something small and fragile. Like a rose petal covered in frost.

Hope.

There’s still time
, a voice whispered inside my head.
It’s not too late.

It’s not too late.

But as the cabin came into view, the dread returned cold, cold and stronger than ever. Full-blown, like a hurricane.

Someone was there again.

A black silhouette, darker than the night.

He had been waiting.

Waiting for me.

Horrorstruck, I stopped.

A sudden gust shook the trees around me.

“You’re wrong,” he said, the wind carrying his voice to my ears. “You’re too late, Abby.”

CHAPTER 48

I was staring up at the ceiling, thinking about the dream, when my phone rang. I glanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand and saw that it was just after seven.

It was Frazier.

“Abby, I’ve got some news. Can you be ready in 15 minutes? I’ll be by to pick you up.”

There was something in his voice I hadn’t heard before. It was something approaching excitement.

My heart raced as I jumped out of bed and brushed my teeth.

Getting dressed, my mind drifted back to the dream, how I was once again running through those dark woods in the middle of the night. But there was something new as well.

I shivered thinking of the man standing in the shadows, somehow knowing my name and my thoughts.

After we pulled into a reserved space, Frazier cut the engine but didn’t get out.

Although I still didn’t know what his news was, I was happy to see his energy darting in light waves around him.

He hesitated.

“What is it?” I said.

“Well, I believe in you and your gifts. I hope I’ve made that obvious. But I’m in the minority. I want you to promise me that you won’t take it personally if you come across a few closed minds. Of course, most of them think that I’ve brought you in because of your own abduction and the insight you might be able to provide. For all intents and purposes, it would be easier to let them keep thinking that.”

“I understand.”

We walked through the double glass door and past an officer standing at a desk.

“Morning, Frazier.”

“Good morning, Curtis.”

“You headed downstairs?”

“No, why?”

“Because then I could say, ‘Down goes Frazier!’”

“Never gets old, does it?” Frazier said.

“How could it? You have a good one, you hear?”

“And you as well, Sergeant.”

We went up the stairs to the second floor into an open, large room full of desks. A white erase board with wheels was in the corner with some photos on it. There were three people spread out around the room. Each one glanced up as we walked by, nodding to Frazier. I didn’t see Morales.

“Let’s go to the conference room,” Frazier said.

He opened a door and we sat down at a large wooden table. A TV monitor was up at the front.

“I’ll be right back.”

Frazier returned a minute later with a file and what looked to be the same evidence box I had gone through the last time I was in town. He put them both on the table. He also had a DVD.

“I thought we’d take another look at this together,” he said.  “But first let’s talk about the development we’ve had. It’s about the dog you found yesterday. After all this time, I think it’s our first real break, Abby.”

I waited for him to elaborate.

“When we found the remains of the dog there was a knotted piece of fabric wrapped around one of its front legs. It appeared that the leg had been broken. I don’t think it was an accident. But it was that muddy, blood-stained cloth that drew my attention. There was something almost familiar about it. Like I had seen it before somewhere. I just didn’t know where. I asked Morales about it but it didn’t mean anything to him. Here’s a photo.”

He held out his phone and showed me the image. All I could see were dark discolorations of lighter and darker shades of gray.

“Okay,” I said mostly for the sake of saying something.

“The piece of fabric could have been used to bound the dog’s leg, or in the case of a compound fracture to help stop the bleeding.”

I still didn’t understand where he was going with this.

“I had one of our lab guys work on it. It turns out it’s a scarf. Here’s another photo.”

I was still having a hard time seeing beyond the mud and blood.

“See here? This striped pattern with the two alternating blues?”

“I—”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I forgot you can’t see colors. It was bothering me all night. Something about it seemed so familiar. But it was just out of reach.

“And then, then it came to me at dawn.”

He opened the evidence box and pulled out one of the framed pictures. It was the one of Emily and Gareth Campbell standing together.

“This is the same scarf, Abby,” he said, handing me the picture and tapping on the glass. “I’d bet my life on it.”

I didn’t doubt what Frazier was saying, but I still couldn’t see the resemblance. Maybe you had to see it in person, not just in a small cell phone photo. But if he was right, maybe finding the scarf was like finding one of those little threads sticking out from a sweater and pulling on it until it all unraveled.

“We’re having it checked for hair, human blood, and other fluids,” he said. “But those things take time.”

“You think the owner of the dog is the one who abducted her?”

He shrugged.

“I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. But without question, our next step is finding him. Morales took a few men and they’re out looking for him now. We got a pretty decent description from his acquaintances yesterday. You know, the two men who say they helped him bury the dog. And they gave us a first name. Jersey or Jerzee. Everything points to him still being around. I think we have a good shot at locating him either in one of the shelters or on the streets.”

“You said something about the dog’s broken leg not being an accident?” I said. “What did you mean?”

“I can see the dog being used as bait to lure Emily. Most people wouldn’t be suspicious of a suffering animal, least of all her. I think someone broke that dog’s leg on purpose. It would be the perfect snare. Of course, I can also see how Emily might have simply dropped her scarf, maybe in a struggle or trying to evade her captor, and then one of these homeless guys comes along and finds it.”

I sat back in the chair thinking about how things were starting to come into focus, as if we were circling above like those black crows, seeing more and more.

CHAPTER 49

I spent the next few hours watching the police interviews of Gareth Campbell and Casey Korman.

Campbell was aloof and didn’t say anything new.

During the second interrogation my mind kept wandering, going from the scarf to the dog and what it all meant.

My impatience grew as did my questions. How long would it take Morales to find the dog’s owner? And if and when they found him, what story would he tell? Was Frazier’s enthusiasm justified or would it all turn out to be yet another dead end?

In the interview Frazier was in the room, but Morales did most of the talking. At one point he asked Korman why he had killed Emily.

“You’re crazy, man,” he answered, smiling and shaking his head slowly.

Frazier brought up the sexual assault charge.

“Why do you hate women, Casey?” Morales said.

Korman kept his composure.

“You’re just fishing now,” he said as cool as Steve McQueen. “You got no line, no hook, no bait. You got nothing. My alibi checked out, didn’t it? And that charge you’re talking about was dropped. It was just a little misunderstanding between consenting adults. Hey, I know my rights. Either charge me with something right now or I’m out of here.”

He shook his head again.

“I liked her,” he said. “I’m a lover, not a… whatever you think I am. I just wanted to tap that ass. Or is that against the law now, too?”

“Get out of here, you low life,” Morales said, getting up.

I couldn’t really tell anything from the recordings. I didn’t see any ghosts lingering in the interrogation room or energy patterns coming through the TV screen. Gareth Campbell was just being Gareth Campbell. And Korman gave off a serious creep vibe but that was all.

“I didn’t see anything,” I said to Frazier. “I mean, besides the obvious.”

“You don’t have a feeling one way or another?”

I shook my head.

“Okay,” he said. “How about we watch the vigil once more? Let’s pay particular attention to who’s in the crowd.”

I nodded, then rubbed my face and stretched. Frazier put the disc in the machine, dimmed the lights again, and pressed play.

CHAPTER 50

“Lunch?” Frazier said.

“Yeah, I could use a break.”

“Thai work for you?”

“Sounds good.”

He handed me a menu.

“Let me know what you’d like and I’ll call it in. We can eat at the park across the street.”

Half an hour later we made our way to a table under a large tree. Yesterday’s rain was long gone. The air was warm and sticky again, but it felt good to get out of the building and away from those interrogations.

“Listen,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.”

“Shoot.”

“It’s about that money you gave me last time. I appreciate it. But I want you to know that that’s not why I’m doing this.”

“I know it’s not,” Frazier said. “It was just a way to compensate you in part for your trouble, for the work you’ve missed or the days off that you could have spent doing something else but chose instead to be here.”

“All right. I just wanted to put that out there.”

He nodded. I stared at the branches swaying above us in the warm breeze.

“There’s something else I’m been meaning to say. It’s just that, well, you remind me so much of—”

“Please don't say Morgan Freeman.”

“No, no. John Wayne. In
The Searchers
. You’re just like his character, Ethan. You're not going to give up until you bring little Debbie home.”

“John Wayne?
The Searchers
? Just how old are you?”

“I have trouble sleeping sometimes. I watch a lot of Turner Classics.”

“I guess so.”

“What's wrong with Morgan Freeman, by the way?” I said.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. He’s a fine actor. It’s just that I get that a lot. Comes with the territory, I suppose. But I always thought of myself more of a Jim Brown type. Or Derek Strange. You know, from the Pelecanos books?”

Jim Brown I knew. But the second name didn’t ring any bells. I put up my hands and shook my head.

“I don’t read much,” I said.

“Me neither. It’s one of the things I hope to have more time for when I retire.”

“Is that coming up?” I said.

“They don’t have a mandatory retirement age here, but it’s time. One way or another, this is my last case. It’s time to go see some of those places I’ve read about and seen on travel shows. No big cities. Nothing crowded and loud. Just some spots off the beaten track. Small places where you can hear the silence.”

“A cabin on a lake? A little fly fishing?”

“Sounds about right,” he said. “But I’d first have to learn which end of the rod to hold.”

I hoped he would get to visit those places. Even though I didn’t know him that well, I sensed that there were few people who deserved it more.

We headed back across the street and he made a call.

“Morales is coming up empty,” he said as we entered the station. “After we finish here, I’m going out to help look.”

Then he stopped suddenly in the middle of the hallway, a smile crossing his lips.

“Son of a bitch,” he whispered. 

I followed him to his desk and he started rummaging through stacks of old notebooks similar to the ones Kate used. He began thumbing through them.

“He was here all along,” he mumbled. “Right under our noses.”

CHAPTER 51

“The homeless man was here, Morales,” Frazier said into the phone. “Jerzy MacTavish was here. He came into the station a couple of days after Emily went missing. He said someone hurt his dog. He wanted us to make an arrest.”

Frazier listened for a moment.

“Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. Here’s a quote from my notebook. ‘I want you to come with me and arrest the sum bitch who did this to my dog. I’ll take you to him. I seen him ’round. I seen him.’”