Sleeping with Anemone (12 page)

“No, Marco. I’m going. If I have to wait around in here, I’ll lose my mind.”

“You won’t get out the door without an okay from the sergeant.”

Crap
. Marco was right. I didn’t know the sheriff’s chief officer at all. Why couldn’t the Expo Center be in city jurisdiction instead of county? Reilly hated it when I got involved in police business, but he usually capitulated.

I glanced at the stern face of the sergeant, who had set up a command station on one side of the doors. There was no way he was going to give me the okay to help. But damn it, there was no way he was going to stop me, either. “Create a diversion, Marco. I’m going out.”

“Past that big cop at the door? I don’t think so.” Marco took Tara’s coat from me. “I’ll be back in a moment. The canine handler will need this to establish a scent pad for his dog.”

As Marco strode off with the coat, I wound my scarf around my neck and headed for the exit. Permission or not, I was going to look for my niece.

“Excuse me, I need to leave,” I said to the tall cop guarding the glass doors.

He gazed down at me over the bridge of his nose. “No one leaves.”

“I know those are your orders, but I’m the victim’s aunt and I really need to help search for her. Here. Do you want to see my ID?”

“No one leaves.”

“Look, it’s my fault she was kidnapped, okay? I have to get out there and find her. Wouldn’t you do the same for your niece? Don’t look away. You know you would. Tell you what, just keep looking the other way and I’ll dart out.”

“One more time. No. One. Leaves.”

I huffed in frustration. “Ever?”

“No one leaves.”

“Is that all you’re programmed to say?”

He scowled at me.

I saw Marco heading toward me, so I said to the cop, “See that former New Chapel police officer coming over here? He just got the okay to leave. If you don’t believe me, ask him.”

As Marco strode up, I used the distraction to slip past the cop and out the door, where the flashing red and blue lights of a half dozen cop cars illuminated the light snow covering that had fallen earlier, giving the scene a surreal, almost festive appearance. I pulled the scarf tighter around my neck and charged across the icy parking lot, afraid to look back for fear the cop was on my heels.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Marco called. “I got the okay.”

I glanced back at him in surprise. “It’s okay for me to help search?”

“No, it’s okay for me to take you home. The sergeant wants you out of his hair. Seems he’s heard about some of your exploits.”

Whatever. We headed for Marco’s Prius so he could retrieve his flashlight, gloves, and a wool hat, and then, as we walked away from his car, I heard something snap beneath my boot. I glanced down and saw a thin, glossy, curved object sticking out of the snow. “Marco, shine the flashlight down here.”

He illuminated the ground while I plucked half of a skinny pink headband out of the snow. “This is Tara’s. She was here, Marco! Look. Here’s the other half.”

“Don’t touch it. Leave it there for evidence.”

I quickly backed away, still holding the other piece.

“Abby, are you positive Tara was wearing that headband during the concert?”

“Yes. She gave me the yellow and orange ones and kept the pink, green, and black.”

Marco pointed to the ground. “These shoe prints are recent. We need to move away.”

“Do you see Tara’s? Small, with a pointed toe and narrow heel?”

He stepped back a few feet, then crouched down and shined his light on the area. “There’s a set with a pointed toe. And there’s a set with a one-piece sole and a deep tread pattern. I’d guess a fairly new woman’s running shoe.”

I showed him the bottom of my boot. “They’re not mine, and Kathy had on boots, too.”

“Here’s a larger print with deep, wide treads, a man’s hiking boot possibly. But if they belong to the kidnappers, why would they have brought Tara here?”

I bent to take a closer look. “Do you think Tara got away from them and came here—maybe hoping to hide in one of our cars?”

Marco rose and began to search beyond the car. “If they used a Taser on her instead of a drug, she could have recovered quickly enough to escape. Maybe they caught up with her here. I see more of the same three sets of prints heading off toward the highway.”

“You’d think if they realized they nabbed the wrong person, they’d have let her go.”

“Either they haven’t discovered their mistake or it wasn’t a mistake.”

“Or maybe Tara saw their faces. . . .”

I stopped. Marco didn’t say anything, but I knew he was thinking the same thing: If the kidnappers were afraid of being identified, they’d probably kill her.

A helicopter flew overhead, its powerful searchlight aimed at the ground, allowing us to see three police officers, one with a dog on a leash, heading in our direction. Marco walked out to talk to them while the big German shepherd led his handler straight to the half headband in my hand, and then barked to alert the officer.

I turned over the piece of headband as Marco explained why we were there. The K-9 handler introduced himself as Officer Ray Aaron of the Sheriff’s Police, then asked us to step away so the other cops could take photos and collect evidence. With the wind blowing the snow around, I feared Tara’s trail would be lost, but Officer Aaron assured me that the cold air would actually help preserve her essence.

“A search dog’s goal is to locate the source of the scent,” Aaron explained. “His ability to track isn’t affected by cold weather, only by heat, which can dissipate DNA.”

When Eros, the German shepherd, was given the command to search, he put his nose down and headed toward the highway. But at the edge of the road, he began circling.

“He’s lost the scent,” Aaron explained. “We’ll continue across the road to see if he can pick it up, but my guess is that the kidnappers had a vehicle waiting here.”

My heart sank as I stared up the dark, windswept road. A half mile ahead was a junction, with on-ramps that led to an interstate highway. Tara could be headed anywhere in the country.

I turned to study Uniworld’s Distribution Center on the other side of the road, where at least two dozen semitrailers were parked in rows between the road and the loading docks, and even at night, trucks were loading and unloading. I watched as a semi backed up to one of the bays, where an overhead door was raised to move the cargo inside.

“Can you search for my niece over there?” I asked Officer Aaron, pointing toward the warehouse.

“If Eros picks up the scent,” he said, “you bet we will.”

We crossed the highway and Eros was again given the command to search. The dog sniffed the air for a moment, put his nose to the ground, and headed into the parking lot, weaving in and out of the big rigs. Alongside one trailer, he stopped and barked.

Officer Aaron crouched down to shine his flashlight underneath, then called back to us, “Looks like the same kind of headband, but in green.”

It had to be Tara’s. I clasped my gloved hands together and whispered a quick prayer. It seemed as though Tara had ducked under the truck to hide and lost her headband there. But where was she now? Surely if she could see us or the cops, she’d come out of hiding.

And how had she managed to lose two headbands? Mine were on so tight they pinched my scalp. She would have had to take them off. But why now?

“Marco,” I cried, “I think Tara’s leaving a trail.”

“That’s why it’s so vital to have a search dog,” he replied.

The wind had grown fierce, blowing the snow into spirals. I pulled my scarf up to cover my nose and mouth and watched anxiously as Eros worked his way down the trucks parked at the loading docks. All at once he began to strain at his leash, leading his handler into an empty bay, where they disappeared from sight. Moments later, I heard a bark.

“Eros found something!” I called to Marco. “Maybe it’s the third headband. Come on!”

As we approached the empty bay, I heard the squawk of the police radio, followed by Aaron’s response: “County eight-one. I have a ten-zero and need a supervisor.”

A ten-zero? I glanced at Marco for an explanation.

He sighed heavily. “A dead body.”

A
search dog’s goal is to locate the source of the scent
.

I leaned against Marco, so light-headed I thought the ground was going to swallow me.

Please, God, not Tara
. I’d never forgive myself if I brought this tragedy upon her—indeed, upon our whole family. I couldn’t begin to imagine the heartbreak of losing her.

“Take a deep breath,” Marco said. “Do you want to sit down?”

I shook my head. “Marco, please, would you go see? I need to know how—what happened.”

He gazed at me for a moment, as though unsure. “Stay here, then.”

I paced back and forth, trembling in fear, counting the minutes until Marco returned. When at last he came around the corner, I held my breath.

“It’s okay, Sunshine. It’s not Tara.”

I burst into tears of relief, burying my face in his coat. Marco held me. “It’s a blond woman. She matches the description Tara’s friends gave.”

“How did she die?”

“It looks like she was run over.”

I shuddered, trying not to picture it, and wiped icy teardrops off my eyelashes. “But why did Eros bark?”

“He found Tara’s black headband in front of the loading dock door. Aaron called for backup so they can search the warehouse.”

“Marco, if Tara comes through this, I won’t get involved in any protests ever again.”

“Can I get that in writing?”

After four squad cars unloaded more cops, Aaron briefed his sergeant, who immediately had all employees vacated from the warehouse. Within ten minutes, grumbling workers shuffled outside to wait while Eros tracked inside off-leash. I huddled against Marco, waiting, worrying, praying, until finally we heard the squawk of the sergeant’s radio as Aaron reported in. The sergeant turned to give his men a thumbs-up. “He found her.”

I stared at Marco in astonishment. “They found Tara! Oh, my God, they found her!”

Marco put his arms around me and nearly lifted me off the ground in an exuberant hug. As we waited near the doorway, I heard the sergeant contact his men at the Expo Center so they could tell Kathy and Jordan the joyous news. The sergeant spotted me standing with Marco and came toward us.

“I thought you were on your way home,” he said to me.

“This seemed more important.”

Officer Aaron appeared at the door and motioned for me to come forward. “Your niece wants to talk to you.”

I stepped inside the big warehouse to find one of the sheriff’s deputies with Tara, whose petite body was enveloped in an oversized black wool coat. Tara held out her arms to me, as she used to when she was little and wanted to be picked up. I ran to her and hugged her against me. “I’m so glad you’re safe. Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

Tara’s face was pale but her eyes blazed with anger. “I was Tasered, Aunt Abby! It hurt, and I couldn’t move.”

“I’m so sorry.” I hugged her again. Tara couldn’t begin to understand how sorry I was.

Breathlessly, Tara began to relate her escape. “A creepy woman in a bad blond wig Tasered me in the bathroom, then wrapped this smelly coat around me, dragged me through the lobby and outside where her scuzzball boyfriend was waiting. The Taser had worn off when they shoved me into a junky old van sitting in the parking lot, but I pretended like it hadn’t so she wouldn’t use it on me again. I waited until she was climbing into the passenger seat; then I jumped out and ran to hide among the cars.

“I thought maybe Dad had forgotten to lock his car—he does that a lot—so I ran there, but I couldn’t get in. That’s when I dropped one of my headbands, to let you know I’d gotten away. Did you find my headband trail? Is that how you knew to come here?”

“Yes! The search dog followed your trail straight here. That was fast thinking, Tara.”

“I knew I had to do something. But the creeps caught me again and tied my hands together. Then they put tape over my mouth and drove me over here. They parked the van behind a big semitruck, then started arguing, so I managed to get out again.”

“I can’t believe you got away twice.”

“It wasn’t that hard. They tied my hands in front, so it was easy to get the tape off my mouth. And they forgot to tie my feet. They weren’t very smart, as far as kidnappers go.”

I wanted to laugh, but the seriousness of the situation kept me from it. “Do you know what the kidnappers were arguing about?”

Tara rubbed her eyes. I could tell she was exhausted. “The scuzzball wanted to take me inside the warehouse, but Blondie said that was a stupid idea. She wanted to go where no one would hear them.”

Where no one would hear them? That was ominous enough to make me shudder.