TRACE EVIDENCE (4 page)
Authors: Carla Cassidy
She pulled on her nightie, a short yellow silk sheath with spaghetti straps, then returned to the kitchen for a glass of ice water.
While she sat at the table, a nice light breeze breathed through the window to caress her. The cabin had no air-conditioning except a window unit in the bedroom. She rarely ran it, preferring her windows opened and the sweet, forest-scented night air coming inside.
But tonight, with Alyssa's pressure for her to take care, she finished her ice water, then closed the window and locked it. She did the same with the other windows in the cabin, then went into her bedroom and turned the window unit air conditioner on low.
She got into bed, although thoughts still tumbled topsy-turvy through her head. She had no idea what to anticipate when she returned to school the next day. The only thing she knew for sure was that she would not be teaching classes in her own classroom.
She remembered Clay's question about students she might have that might nurse a grudge against her. Nobody specific came to mind, but her class was filled with wise guys and underachievers.
There were also some gems in the class, students who were taking the summer classes in order to graduate early or to fill the long summer days.
It was the long summer nights that far too often lately filled Tamara with longing. She was thirty years old and more and more felt the desire for a family. But in order to have a family, she'd have to first find a good man and that had been a problem.
She'd become wary since her experience with Max. And in the two years since Max, she had mentally formed a picture of the kind of man she wanted in her life. Alyssa always told her no such man existed, that she was too picky and her expectations were too high.
She rolled over on her back and stared up at the ceiling, a vision of Clay James filling her mind. Physically, he was everything she'd ever hope to find in a man.
As she thought of the way his shoulders had filled out his shirt, the lean hips in those tight blue jeans, she could swear the temperature of the room rose by several degrees.
But she knew better than to get her hormones racing where Clay James was concerned. According to Alyssa the only thing that interested her cousin came in test tubes and evidence sample bags.
According to Clay's own mother he was an angry man who had turned his back on his Native American heritage. Tamara had attempted to do the same thing for four months to please the man she'd thought she'd loved, but she'd been unable to sustain the rejection of her Cherokee blood. She would never attempt it again.
No, Clay James wasn't her dream man, either. Her dream man was still out there somewhere, waiting for the winds of fate to bring them together. Tamara was a patient woman and she'd learned long ago not to try to hurry fate, but to accept each day as a gift.
* * *
Rita James had lost track of how many days she'd been held captive. She hadn't known how long she'd been unconscious, but when she'd finally come to and realized she was being held prisoner, she'd begun to keep track of the days by the meals that appeared through a slot in the steel door. Breakfast … sometimes lunch … and dinner … a day had passed.
But tonight she couldn't remember whether it had been twenty-two days or thirty-two days and the fact that she couldn't remember for sure frightened her as much as anything that had happened so far.
She feared she was losing her mind, and that was all she had left. Her beloved husband, Thomas, had been taken from her … murdered. She remembered seeing him lying motionless on their living room floor, blood everywhere. She knew he was dead, then she'd been grabbed from behind and that was the last thing she remembered until she'd awakened in this room.
This mockery of a room, she thought as she sat in the middle of the bed. When she'd first awakened from her drugged sleep, she'd thought she was at home in her own bed. The bedspread was the same, the bed was the same, even the nightstand and Tiffany-style lamp were the same as what she had in her own room.
However, this wasn't her room. Her bedroom had a window where sweet morning light crept in and moonlight whispered good-night. Her bedroom had no steel door with a lock. This was a stage setting … a facade, a fake built by a madman who held her hostage, a madman who had yet to tell her why she was here or what he wanted from her.
Initially she'd had hope. Her daughter Breanna was a vice cop, her other daughter,
Savannah
, a homicide detective and her son, Clay, was a crime-scene investigator. She'd hoped they would find her. She'd hoped there would be enough clues to lead them to her, but with each day that passed, her hope grew dimmer and dimmer.
Twenty-two days or thirty-two? How had she managed to lose track? Thomas … Thomas … her heart cried out for her husband and the life they'd shared together, the future they had anticipated spending together.
Even if she managed to get out of this windowless, locked room, even if eventually she was found, there would be no Thomas waiting for her.
Tears burned at her eyes as she realized no matter what happened, her life would never be the same again. Her tears were also for her children, who she knew must be suffering all kinds of agony trying to find out what had happened to her.
The sound of her sob was welcomed in this silent tomb. The utter silence of her days and nights had the potential to drive her utterly mad. She'd always been a woman who had valued a certain amount of silence, but this complete isolation was soul-damaging.
The only time she had any human contact at all was when the slot in the steel door would open and two black-gloved hands would slide in a tray of food.
Over and over again she'd begged him to say something to her, anything, her hunger for interaction so great. But no word was ever spoken. The tray slid in, the door slammed shut and she was once again left alone in the killing silence.
Help me to remain strong, she prayed. Eventually she would learn why she was being held here, what was wanted from her. The terror of the unknown was with her every minute of every day.
Please, please keep me strong. She knew sooner or later the madman with the black-gloved hands would show his face, would make demands and she prayed she would be strong enough to survive.
Chapter 3
D
ecorative rocks. Clay spent most of his morning chasing down names on lists of customers who had ordered the kind of decorative rocks he'd found around his father's chair in his parents' living room and in Riley Frazier's parents' living room.
It was the only real evidence he had from the two crime scenes that had left one man dead, one man severely wounded and two women missing. One of those women, Riley Frazier's mother, had since been found dead and Clay felt the pressure of trying to make sense of what little had been left behind at each crime scene.
He was still waiting for test results on trace evidence that had to be sent to a lab in
Oklahoma City
. But he knew the lab was backed up and it might be weeks before he got definitive test results.
"Clay?"
He looked up from the list of quarry customers he'd obtained to see his sister
Savannah
standing in the doorway of the lab.
"You have any more for me on the McClane fiber?"
He nodded as his sister approached where he sat at his desk. "Unfortunately the only thing I can tell you is that it's one hundred percent cotton."
"That's it?" she asked, a frown creasing her brow.
"Afraid so." He sighed in frustration and raked a hand through his hair. "I've got a single fiber for you on a serial murder case and a handful of pebbles to try to find out what happened to Mom."
"You can only work with what you have, Clay,"
Savannah
said softly. "That's all any of us can do."
"But it's not enough." Anger rose up inside him, the anger of utter impotence. Somehow, someway, he couldn't help but think somebody had missed something … a vital piece of evidence that might lead them to their mother.
"Glen should have let me process the scene initially," he said, his anger evident in his voice.
"You know that wasn't a good idea,"
Savannah
said. "And you know your team is good. If there had been anything there to find, they would have found it."
"At least we have the rocks from Mom and Dad's house, and from Riley's parents' home," he said. "Unfortunately, it's not much in the form of a smoking gun. We don't even know if the perpetrator of whatever has been going on with the missing women is from here, from Sycamore Ridge where the Frazier's lived, or from
Savannah
laid a hand on his shoulder. "I know you're hurting, Clay. We're all hurting and we're all doing the best we can to find her."
Clay nodded, but he knew his pain was different from his sisters' pain. They hadn't fought with Rita the very last time they'd seen her alive.
They hadn't said things that needed to be left unsaid, that now might never get the chance to be unsaid.
Savannah
and Breanna missed her, were frightened for her, but they didn't live with the regrets that were slowly eating him alive.
"Have you had lunch?" she asked.
"Haven't had time."
"It's going to be dinnertime soon, why don't you give yourself a break and go get something to eat. Your brain doesn't function as well when your stomach is empty."
Clay stood from his desk, knowing she was right. His stomach had been growling for the past hour and the gnarl had become more and more difficult to ignore as time had passed.
He put away the reports he'd been reading from the quarries that had provided client lists, then left the small building that was an appendage to the back of the police station.
It had been six years ago, when Clay's father, Thomas, had been chief of police that Thomas had decided the small town needed its own crime-scene investigators and crime lab.
Thomas had been not only a great chief of police, but also a fine politician, who'd convinced the town of the need and had actively gone after private donations to get what he wanted.
One of the biggest donations had come from Jacob Kincaid, owner of American Bank, the only bank in Cherokee Corners, and a good friend of Clay's parents.
In fact, Jacob was like an uncle to Clay and as he stepped onto the hot concrete of the sidewalk, he realized it had been too long since he and Jacob had talked.
Clay walked toward the café in the
Lots of the cops ate there, but Clay definitely wasn't in the mood for company. The brief conversation with
Savannah
had stirred his guilt and the hundreds of regrets he'd lived with since the night of his mother's disappearance.
He just wanted to eat, then get back to the lab where work was piled up awaiting his attention. He already knew it was going to take hours to go over those lists from the quarries to find out who had ordered loads of that particular decorative rock.
The sun was hot on his shoulders, and the air smelled of city heat—smoked tires, hot oil and a faint overlay of spoiling garbage.
Clay hated summer, when tempers flared more quickly and crime rose drastically. He hated the dry hot wind that scorched the earth, then blew the ashes of dust everywhere.
He'd never felt a real connection to Cherokee Corners, except for that of his family. Even with them he felt a distance.
They were all into their own lives, with families and loved ones and they all worked at the
It had been that fact that he and his mother had fought about the day before she'd disappeared. At the end of the summer, the cultural center always held a huge celebration where the entire town was invited. Rita had told him she wanted him to be a part of the ceremonies, that it was past time he took his place as a member of the Cherokee nation.
He had responded angrily with words that now he wished desperately he could take back.
By the time he reached the café his mood had turned darker than usual. It was just after four and he knew there wouldn't be much of a crowd in the café. It was too late for the lunch bunch and too early for the dinner crowd.
That was fine with him. All he wanted was a booth to himself, a good hot meal and a moment of peace to enjoy it.
"Ah, if it isn't my favorite CSI hunk," Ruby greeted him as he walked through the door. Ruby Majors was a big woman with a bleached blond bouffant that spoke of a different era.