Gone

by Lisa Gardner

  “Out!”

  The Bakersville deputy, who’d been loitering inside the door, obviously enjoying Kincaid’s discomfort, finally got moving. Payback was a bitch, however, and the deputy took his sweet time escorting the reporter from the room.

  “I’ll just keep asking around,” Danicic threw over his shoulder. “Someone always wants to talk to the press. Hey, maybe I can get an exclusive with the kidnapper himself. Ever think of that?”

  “Ah, Jesus H. Christ.” The double doors finally clanged shut. Kincaid whirled toward Mac and Quincy. There wasn’t much a sergeant could do about an aggressive member of the fourth estate. Them, on the other hand . . .

  “You.” Kincaid started with Mac. “Who are you, why the hell are you here?”

  “Mac McCormack, detective, Georgia Bureau of Investigation.”

  “Georgia Bureau of Investigation? What, you got out of bed this morning and took a wrong turn?”

  “I’m with him,” Mac supplied easily, nodding toward Quincy. “Technically speaking, I’m dating his daughter.”

  “The FBI agent,” Kincaid filled in.

  “That’s the one.”

  Kincaid’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “And where is she right now?”

  Mac shrugged. “I don’t ask too many questions. She’s really good with a gun.”

  Kincaid looked dangerously close to throttling someone. Mac was used to it by now. Seemed anytime he hung out with Kimberly and her father, someone tried to kill him.

  “You look like shit,” Kincaid told Quincy.

  “Wearing a lot of it, too.”

  “Whatever you think you’re doing, it’s not helping.”

  “True. Actually shooting the reporter would’ve been much more satisfying.”

  “I know you consider yourself an expert in these matters, Mr. Quincy, but you’re also family. Surely a man of your intelligence can realize that there is no way for you to be clearheaded and objective about this investigation.”

  “She’s a number to you,” Quincy said softly. “A statistic passing across your desk. Solve it, and your life goes on. Don’t solve it, and your life goes on. There’s no difference.”

  Kincaid leaned down. While Mac had expected the OSP sergeant to launch into another tirade, his voice was surprisingly solemn. “All the cases you worked were statistics, too. Did that mean you slept in late, took weekends, went home to have dinner with your family every night? Yeah, I thought as much. I have a wife, Mr. Quincy. I have a beautiful baby boy and there’s nothing I would rather do right now than wrap up this case and go home to them. Hey, let’s hand over a boatload of cash, get your wife, and call it a day. I can take a hot shower, change into dry clothes, and put my feet up in my favorite recliner with my boy on my chest. Sounds good to me. Let’s go.”

  “You’re the one who refused to pay,” Quincy said steadily. “You’re the one making things difficult.”

  “Because I’m trying to do it right, dammit! Because I listened to you, the expert, and what you had to say. What was your professional opinion, Mr. Quincy, what did you tell me when we were having a grand ol’ time digging up a graveyard?” Kincaid didn’t wait for an answer, but counted off the points on the fingers of his right hand. “One, these kinds of cases are almost always personal. Two, the majority end with the victim found dead. You know why I’m dragging this out, Mr. Quincy? You know why I’m busting my balls writing message points to some UNSUB kidnapper when even I know I’m in over my head? Because I’m afraid the minute we agree to pay the ransom, Lorraine is dead. I’m not trying to get home to my wife, Mr. Quincy. I’m trying to save yours.”

  Quincy didn’t reply. His lips, however, were set in a thin, stubborn line.

  “If we drag things out,” Kincaid said more calmly, “the kidnapper has to keep her alive for proof of life. And maybe, just maybe, we can finally make the link between her and him. I got the scientists working the car and the notes. I got good people retracing your wife’s last steps. We got Sheriff Atkins shaking the local felony tree. This case is still in its infancy. We’re going to get some leads yet.”

  “Any calls to the hotline?”

  “No.”

  “But given that he didn’t show here, you’re assuming he read the paper.”

  “Maybe he needs a little time to think about things. Form Plan B.”

  “Do you have a Plan B?”

  “Yes, sir, I do. He’s going to call, we’re going to be as accommodating and cordial as we can be. It’s his game, we just want to follow instructions. We would love to give him money, we just need a little time. And then”—Kincaid took a deep breath—“we’re going to suggest a show of good faith. He supplies more proof of life, and we respond with a down payment. Not the whole ransom amount, because the bank needs more time, but the first couple thousand, so he’ll know we’re cooperating.”

  Mac closed his eyes. He saw through the thinly veiled statement immediately, and so did Quincy. The former profiler was already on his feet.

  “You’re not going to pay him the ransom amount?”

  “It’s a down payment—”

  “You’re shortchanging him. We see that, he’ll see that.”

  “Not if it’s handled right—”

  “By whom? An overworked state detective who’s never negotiated a damn thing in his life?”

  Kincaid flushed, but didn’t back down. “As a matter of fact, I made arrangements to bring in a professional negotiator from our tactical unit. Candi, with an ‘i.’ I’m told she’s brilliant.”

  “Oh my God,” Quincy said. He had his hands held to his temples, didn’t seem to be able to come to terms with the news.

  “This kind of strategy has been done quite successfully before. A case out of Britain—”

  “Oh my God,” Quincy said again.

  Kincaid plowed on as if he hadn’t heard him. “They had a perpetrator threatening to poison pet foods if certain manufacturers didn’t make hefty payments. Rather than pay up all at once, the task force strung the perpetrator along, making a series of small cash deposits. Naturally, this increased the amount of contact the extortionist had with the companies, as well as the number of times he had to surface to receive payment. Catching him was always only a matter of time.”

  “This isn’t an extortion scheme targeted against nameless, faceless victims.”

  “Which makes it all the better. The more our guy has to talk to us, the more information he’ll give away. I’m not going to drag this out forever. Game plan is a good-faith down payment of a couple thousand, assuming he can show us proof of life. We’ll even consider it a bonus, given how patient he’s being. Arrange that for late tonight, with a setup for the full ten grand tomorrow afternoon. Meaning that he can walk away with twelve thousand instead of the original ten.”

  “Play to his greed,” Mac commented.

  Kincaid flashed him a glance. “Exactly.”

  Mac looked at Quincy. The profiler appeared ashen. He sat down wearily on the metal chair and Mac wondered once more about the physical toll this must be taking.

  “It’s a matter of presentation,” Kincaid said steadily. “We make him feel like he’s maintaining control of the situation while being rewarded for his efforts. We keep him focused on the future payoff, not the change in plans.”

  “There’s only one problem,” Quincy said.

  “What?” Kincaid asked warily.

  A faint chiming sound suddenly emanated from Quincy’s pocket. “I doubt the UNSUB is stupid enough to call your hotline.”

  Quincy pulled out his phone, checked the number, then showed them both the screen. Rainie’s name flashed across the display. “Why call you, Sergeant Kincaid, when it’s so much easier to call me?”

  “Ahh shit.” Kincaid motioned furiously to the other detective as Quincy flipped open his phone and prepared to speak.

  19

  Tuesday, 5:05 p.m. PST

  SHERIFF SHELLY ATKINS WAS TIRED. She wanted a steaming cup of hot chocolate
, a hot shower, and her bed, though not necessarily in that order. She’d had long nights before; her parents ran a cattle farm out in eastern Oregon. You didn’t run a farm without some sleepless nights. But the last sixteen hours had taken their toll. Her boots were soaked, her socks were soaked. Her first shirt, her spare shirt. Every time she ran the heater in the car, she steamed up the windows from all the moisture evaporating off her body.

  And her hands were starting to ache now, that bone-deep throbbing that bit into older, long-abused joints. She was trying not to rub her knuckles too much. Not that she thought her deputy, Dan Mitchell, would notice. Dan had been on duty since nine p.m. last night. Sitting in the passenger’s seat, he was already slumped down with his eyes at half mast. If she drove much longer, he was going to nod off completely.

  A deputy’s pay didn’t go that far in these parts. Like a few other members of her staff, Dan also worked part-time at a local dairy. He handled the evening milking before showing up for the graveyard shift. Sometimes she wondered how he stayed awake night after night, keeping those kinds of hours. She didn’t want to ask. Truth was, Bakersville was mostly a quiet place. If her deputies dozed off every now and then in the early morning hours, no one had ever noticed or complained.

  She needed to start thinking about staffing. Thus far, she’d had everyone up and at it since three this morning, not unusual for a critical incident, where a life might be on the line. Now, however, the case felt like it was slowing down, settling in. Kincaid had pushed back the four p.m. ransom drop. She had a feeling come evening, he’d stall again. If the situation entered a second day, or even a third, she couldn’t continue to have all her men working 24/7. The combined sleep deprivation would turn them into a bunch of armed zombies.

  She’d split them into two twelve-hour shifts, she determined. Send Dan, Marshall, and probably herself home first; they’d been up the longest. ’Course, she had a hard time seeing herself sitting things out for a full twelve hours. Three or four might not be bad. Get enough shut-eye to recharge the gray matter, then get up and at ’em again.

  She stifled another yawn and turned left down a long, winding road. Locals liked to say that Tillamook County existed due to three things: cheese, trees, and ocean breeze. The cheese factory kept the dairy farms thriving, the neighboring forests kept the loggers busy, and the beautiful beaches kept the tourists coming back for more. The people tended the land, and the land tended the people, as her father would put it.

  But as with any community, even one famous for its quaint, rolling green pastures, the county had its seedy side. Shelly and Dan had left behind the tidy, modernized dairies, with their freshly painted barns, shiny green tractors, and “Dairy of Honor” signs. Now they were looping through skinny back roads, passing trailer parks, crumbling cabins, and the other dairy farms—small, poorly equipped, with barns that looked like they’d disintegrate in the next windstorm.

  Shelly knew the kind of folks who lived here. The men were stubble-faced and rangy, with the lean cheeks and soft middles that came from drinking most of their meals out of a beer can. The women were equally thin and hunched, with stringy hair and a propensity to bruise. The kids traveled in packs, generally accompanied by one or two mangy dogs. None of them trusted strangers, and all of them could explain to you why it was not their fault that their farm was failing. The price of milk was down, the price of dairy cattle was down. Too much debt given too readily by greedy banks, looking to squeeze out the little guy. The government didn’t do enough to help them, the community wanted to pretend they didn’t exist.

  Shelly knew all about it. She’d heard all the same stories growing up in La Grande. As her father liked to point out, successful farmers worked more and talked less, whereas some of these farmers never seemed to have much to do, but always had plenty to say.

  Visits like these were still the toughest part of Shelly’s job. Walking into worn kitchens with peeling linoleum and water-stained ceilings. Trying to explain for the second or third time to some forty-year-old-looking twenty-two-year-old, with her third baby planted on her hip, that she did have options. That she didn’t have to stay.

  Knowing she’d be back again. Like the sheriff before her had probably done for this girl’s mama so many years before. Life was full of cycles, and the older Shelly got, the less she believed she had all the answers. Her parents had certainly never been rich, and God knows there’d been long stretches where their daily supper had contained more potatoes and less meat, but she’d never been forced to see her father bowed and broken. She’d never watched her mother apply makeup to cover a bruise. She’d never heard her parents blame anyone else for their struggles. We just need to work a little harder, her father had always said, so that’s what Shelly and her brothers had learned to do.

  Now she turned into a dirt driveway. She hit a pothole, her right tire spun shrilly in the muck, and for a second, she thought she was stuck. Then the SUV lurched forward, jostling Dan out of his slumber.

  “What the—”

  Dan came to his senses just in time to realize he was sitting next to his boss, and bit off the last of that sentence. Shelly grinned at him.

  “Good nap?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. One of us needs to be refreshed. We’re here.”

  She pulled up in front of a small farmhouse with a hole in the front porch the size of a boulder. The property boasted four pickup trucks, three rusted-out Chevys, and what looked like might have been a combine. Not to be outdone, various appliances also competed for real estate—old stoves, ovens, freezer units just waiting for summer to swallow some poor unsuspecting kid.

  Hal Jenkins owned this property. It had been a farm in his father’s day, and according to what Shelly had heard, a decent one. Small, but well run, tidily equipped. Hal hadn’t wanted to be a farmer. He’d decided his calling was in automotive repair, hence the cars. He hadn’t been bad at it. No, what had tripped up Hal was stripping car parts off of unsuspecting owners and recycling them into other people’s vehicles—while charging them full price for the part, of course. Couple of country boys, not bad with engines themselves, had figured it out.

  Calling cops wasn’t much appreciated in these parts, so they’d beaten the snot out of Hal instead, then taken a baseball bat to his house. Most of the first-story windows still hadn’t been replaced, hence the sheets of MDF nailed over the exterior.

  After spending four months in the hospital, Hal decided maybe the automotive industry wasn’t for him. He turned his attentions toward oven repair. Not so much money in appliances, however. In this day and age, people bought new instead of repairing old.

  Exactly how Hal continued to make a living was subject to much debate. Shelly’s best guess was that Hal had finally figured out the true value of a small, backwoods farm with plenty of outbuildings and few neighbors: a meth lab. The state chopper had taken a pass several times, but had yet to detect the heat signature they needed for a warrant. And so far, Hal wasn’t big on letting Shelly or her deputies wander the property. Hal would never be a rocket scientist, but he was smart in his own survivalist sort of way.

  Shelly stepped out first. Her boots sank deep into the marsh. Shit, they would be lucky to get the truck out. Dan got out a little slower, glancing at his watch. That irked her and she sent him a sharp glance.

  “Now’s not the time to worry about the evening milking, Deputy.”

  “Sorry.” He was immediately abashed.

  Inside the house, they heard a voice. It was the official Hal Jenkins greeting. No open door. Not even a look through a shattered glass window. “What?” he boomed from somewhere in the interior.

  “Hey, Hal. It’s Sheriff Atkins and Deputy Mitchell. We were wondering if we could have a minute of your time.”

  “No.”

  “For crying out loud, Hal. It’s pouring down rain and we’re covered in mud. Least you could do is offer us a cup of coffee.”

  “No.”

  “Well, I
got some bad news then. Our truck is stuck—” Dan gave her a startled glance. She shushed him with her hand. “Looks like we’re gonna have to dig through that pile of appliances and car parts over there to find something to get us out. Won’t take but a minute, though.”

  The door jerked open. Hal finally appeared, sporting three days’ worth of beard, a dark green flannel top, and the sorriest pair of jeans Shelly had ever seen. “Don’t you touch nothin’.”

  “Well, Hal, we don’t feel like standing here all day. We’re on official police business.”

  Hal scowled at her. Ironically speaking, he was still a young man, and wouldn’t be half bad looking if he ever cleaned up his act. He was tall, with dark wavy hair and the athletic build of an outdoorsman. He had a reputation as a good marksman, a hunter who skinned and hauled his own deer, often pulling the carcass for miles through the woods. And while the local boys had worked him over pretty good, by all accounts he’d put up one helluva fight. They’d arrested all three of his attackers in the emergency room; two were receiving stitches and the third had two broken bones.

  Shelly didn’t think Hal would have any trouble with a five-foot-six-inch female. And again, when sober and properly motivated, he could be cunning.

  Shelly climbed the steps of the front porch. She was trying to peer discreetly into the gloom. She wanted to see if good ol’ Hal had the most recent edition of the Daily Sun. Couldn’t tell. Lighting was too poor, and Hal wasn’t exactly a housekeeper; it was hard to pick out anything from the towering piles of trash.

  “Got a warrant?” Hal asked.

  “Got something to hide?” Shelly replied evenly.

  “Yeah. World’s greatest Chinese food. Don’t want the word to get out. So if you don’t mind, Sheriff, I think I’ll return to my dinner.”

  “And to think, you struck me more as a pizza man.” Shelly leaned against the doorframe, crowding Hal’s space and pushing him back a step. Give her another minute, and she’d have her foot inside the door. Better yet, she’d completely block Hal’s view, giving Dan more leeway to walk the grounds.