“He may not have tried to go far. I agree with the assessment that he’s from this area,” the sheriff replied.
“This snatch began Friday after 4 p.m. If he’s been watching the kidnappers, it’s very likely he had stepped out of his normal routine and essentially disappeared. We need names to eliminate until we find the right guy, and we don’t have a lot of time.” Luke knew what he was asking of the man, to name men he knew as suspects, who might have killed three people today.
The sheriff got up and walked over to the window. “Maybe he hasn’t disappeared, but he hasn’t been seen around over the holidays, and I’m a bit surprised at that—Mark Medton. He’s older, an iron worker from before the mill closed.”
The sheriff walked back to the files he had brought and searched for a photograph.
“Any registered guns?” Luke asked.
“He’s an avid hunter and camper. He would know that campground well.”
“Let’s check him out in the morning. Who else?”
“Gary Gibson hasn’t been around. I wouldn’t place him as your shooter though; I doubt he’s ever owned a gun. He’s a bit of a recluse after being badly burned in an industrial fire. He’s had more surgeries in three years than most men could ever survive. I know he’s a pretty good photographer, has his own darkroom, and the like. He’s not a violent man and he’s friendly enough, just not very social.” The sheriff passed over another photo.
Luke studied the photo of a man scarred by fire. Someone who had lived through that kind of pain . . . He understood the eyes. Gary had emerged a survivor. Whatever had to be done could be endured because it was necessary, even crossing the line of morality to kill a man. “You don’t need to be an excellent shot to kill a man if you pull the trigger at close range before he starts to react to the threat. Three deaths were fast. The two at the table couldn’t have gotten away even if they wanted to, and the last man was hit twice and somewhat wildly with about four shots fired in his direction. Gary lives around here?”
“He now owns his parent’s property east of town. And I heard the settlement for his accident was six figures; he could have bought something else recently.”
“It can’t be Gary.”
Luke turned to see Caroline in the doorway. “I thought you had turned in for the night.”
“I couldn’t sleep. Gary’s a nice guy; Benjamin likes him. He wouldn’t do this.”
Luke got up. “If we are to find him, we have to consider even names of those you think of as friends. For Sharon’s sake we have to.”
“I know that. But it doesn’t do to waste time.”
“It’s still worth a visit to see him,” the sheriff said, looking at Luke. “If he has an alibi for the afternoon, his name comes easily off the list.”
“We’ll check him out,” Luke agreed, looking at Caroline and knowing how like a knife this must feel to her as he investigated those she knew. “Who else should we be talking with?”
“Adam Reece.”
Luke added him to the list. It would be a long list before they ended work tonight. Beginning tomorrow, he planned to check out every name in great detail.
* * *
Caroline settled in the guest bedroom to get a few hours of sleep, the door cracked so she could hear Luke and the sheriff’s conversation. She didn’t want to think about last year and what it had been like when the stalker appeared in her life. But the memories of last fall were already returning of their own accord, a mix of emotions as she thought about the night that had become the turning point in her relationship with Luke. The night had begun with so much promise . . .
* * *
Was she dating Luke or not?
There were days Caroline didn’t know how to answer that question. She slowed her car and pulled into her driveway, tugging out a soft pretzel stick from the deli sack rather than wait until she was inside.
He’d cancelled a date again, for dinner and a night at the theater. Her replacement plans for the evening had turned out to be two hours with Sharon, helping move bookcases around Benjamin’s room, followed by a stop at the grocery store. It wasn’t the same.
A car was parked off to the side of her driveway. Caroline tensed until she saw the license plates. Luke. She searched the shadows and saw him, sitting on her front porch steps.
She parked beside his car, considered the groceries in the trunk, and decided nothing needed to be carried in immediately. She pocketed her keys, left her purse on the front seat, and picked up the pretzel sack.
He didn’t say anything as she approached. She considered inviting him inside, but there was something nice about the silence outdoors. This day hadn’t gone particularly well since the moment she got up.
She sat on the porch beside him. Luke offered the sack he held and she tugged out a pot sticker. “Tell me again why you love carryout Chinese food so much,” Luke said.
“It stays hot better than most take-out options. Hamburgers and fries, they tend to go cold first; pizza’s not far behind. And those taco things, it’s not even worth mentioning what cold refried beans taste like.”
Caroline offered her deli sack.
“Pretzels? It’s been a while since I had one of these.”
“They aren’t bad.”
“I’m sorry about cancelling our plans.”
“I bought a new dress.”
“Now I’m really sorry.”
“Was it work?”
“It always is.” Luke pulled out another pretzel stick. “You’re right; they are good.”
Caroline traded him sacks. “I’ll take the last of the pot stickers.”
“I bought a double batch for you.”
She ate them slowly, pausing when she finished one to stand the sticks upright in a neat little line, the tips wedged into a crack between boards of the porch.
Luke leaned back against his hands and stretched out his legs. “They say it will be a full moon tonight.”
“It’s cloudy enough I doubt we get to enjoy it. Why the late-night stop, Luke? Not that I mind. It’s nice to see you.”
“It was a kid tonight. One of those tragedies that is never supposed to happen in life.”
He never talked about work in detail. It was about as clear an unwritten rule as she had been able to figure out about him. He would talk dispassionately about his job in general, but never about the specifics of his day or the case he was working on.
The cases themselves—she’d long ago reasoned they broke his heart. He was too often lost in thought and almost brooding for her not to know he was absorbing an enormous load that weighed on him long after he went off duty. She didn’t like being shut out, but she did appreciate the fact that his job was more than just a job for him.
“What happened?” she asked quietly.
“Someone pushed an agent’s kid under a train.”
“Luke . . .” The shock of his words cracked her heart.
“It happened up in New York, but the agent’s family was from here. They asked us to stay around and help locate the relatives tonight before the national news carried the name.”
He glanced at her and then away. “So I stayed and dialed numbers, and when we finally located the grandmother, Jackie went over to break the news and take her to the airport.”
“I’m sorry.”
“The girl was twelve. According to several of the eyewitnesses, she was on her way with her older cousins to an orchestral recital. They got to the subway station, and someone hollered, ‘Are you Kaci Lewis?’ When she swung around in surprise to say yes, they shoved her onto the tracks. All because she was Jack Lewis’s kid.”
“Who did it?”
“It looks gang related, likely tied to a case he testified at last month.”
She didn’t know what to say. What was there to say? She leaned her head against his shoulder.
After a moment, Luke settled his arm around her waist. “I didn’t feel like going home.”
“I’m glad you came here.”
> He split the last pretzel and handed her half.
“What happened in your day?”
Caroline sighed. “Nothing as profound, I’m afraid. I found Kelly crying in the bathroom during third period, because someone teased her in a particularly cruel way about her new haircut. Then Rick and Tom, best friends since kindergarten, decided to hate each other today and got into a fistfight over a baseball dispute and got themselves suspended. My geography lesson plan turned out to be a washout; it’s never good when you lose control of the class ten minutes into a lesson. For a fifth-grade teacher, it was a pretty bad day.”
“You don’t need to qualify it. It was a bad day. And a cancelled dinner didn’t help it end any easier.”
“The dinner part just got salvaged.” Caroline smiled. “Would you like to go for a walk or something?”
“Or something. But I’ll settle for a good-night kiss and a peppermint candy stick from your jar.”
She angled her head just a bit to see him and confirmed the smile she heard. “I’m out of peppermint.”
“That’s a shame. I’ll have to settle for a good-night kiss then.”
He lowered his head and, after a moment’s time to let her draw back, closed the last inches to softly kiss her.
She couldn’t wait to kiss him again, but it didn’t make sense to ruin the moment of a first kiss with thoughts of the second. She leaned back when he did and smiled at him. “I might have a toffee stick.”
“Not a bad second choice.” He got to his feet and offered his hand to help her up.
She scooped up the pot-sticker sticks first.
“Why do you keep mementos like that?”
“Because I want to.”
He laughed. “That’s simple enough logic. Give me your car keys, and I’ll carry the groceries in while you unload them.”
She dug the keys out of her pocket. “Deal.”
He walked back to her car and she went to the back door, pushing aside the small box she saw sitting beside the step. Another unannounced gift; they were getting to be a regular occurrence. If she took it inside now, Luke would just comment on it. She’d get it later, along with her mail.
She turned on lights in her kitchen, glad she had taken the time to set out another four of the tall glass canisters of candy sticks that Benjamin and, surprisingly, Luke enjoyed. “Toffee or almond?”
She offered the options as Luke carried in the first load of groceries. “Toffee.” He piled the sacks on the counter. “Another white box, Caroline? Not mentioning it doesn’t change the fact it came. How many does that make?”
She thought about lying, but it was a stupid way to avoid the matter. “Five.”
“I’m installing that security system this weekend.”
“I’ll just set it off and have the sheriff running out here to answer false alarms.”
“Better that than you continuing to ignore the problem.” He pulled eggs out of the sack, and she wondered how many cracked under his grip. “Don’t argue the point; it’s going in.”
“Okay.”
He looked at her and frowned. “You’ll use it? No saying you forgot or ignoring it’s there?”
“Put it in and I’ll use it.” She wasn’t going to fight with a guy whose job had him calling family members of agents to say a child was dead because of what his dad did for a living.
“Thank you.”
She stopped behind him to hug him, then reached around him for the ice cream to put in the freezer. “I’m not entirely dense. If it will make you feel better, I’ll use the security system.”
“I want you to get a car phone too.”
“Luke, there are limits. I don’t need a car phone.”
“When you’re stranded on the side of the road, you’ll need a car phone.”
“If I get stranded on the road, I’m either close enough to town or to my home that I can easily walk the rest of the way. It’s not like I spend my weekends visiting antique shops across the county.”
“It would make it easier for me to get in touch with you.”
“The answering machine, which you talked me into just two weeks ago, does a perfectly good job of recording the message that our plans for the evening have changed.”
“Caroline—”
She smiled at him but firmly shook her head. “Let it go, Luke. I don’t need or want a car phone or a cell phone or for that matter a pager. I like not being in touch for ten minutes of my day while I drive to and from work; it’s my time.”
“Then make it temporary. What’s it going to hurt to have one for a few months?”
She put down the sack she was folding. “Why are we fighting about this?”
“Because you need to say yes.”
“You need to take a no as no.”
Luke leaned back against the counter and folded his arms.
Caroline frowned. “Do you know how annoying that is? Lean back, fold your arms, wait for the obstacle to pass—not every subject in the world has to be resolved with your point of view prevailing.”
“There’s no logic in your refusal.”
“And there’s logic in your request?”
“Someone is leaving those ‘gifts,’ and I use that term loosely. One day he’s going to approach you and say, ‘Hi, Caroline. Did you like what I sent you?’ And you’re either going to be looking in the face of a creep or a very dangerous creep. Get it through your head that this is not something to ignore and deal with it.”
“I am dealing with it. I’m careful. I watch where I am and where I go. But I’m not changing from being who I am just because someone else needs some help.”
Luke dropped his hands. “I’ll be by early to install the security system. It would help if you called the monitoring company before then to give them your contact numbers. This is their number.”
“I’ll do that.”
“I’ll get the last of the groceries and let you get some sleep tonight.”
Ten minutes later, she stood at the back door and watched as he pulled out of the driveway and turned onto the road. It had been stupid to fight about something as basic as her safety, and to do it tonight of all nights. She shut off the outside lights and closed the door, turning the perfectly good dead bolt.
He thought she couldn’t take care of herself, couldn’t handle the details of the cases he worked, couldn’t handle being more than just the lady he occasionally dated. He’d smother her if she let him; smother her in the concern built up and reflected from all the stresses of his job. She wasn’t fragile, threatened, or avoiding reality. She just saw it differently than he did. And she didn’t know how to convince him that when she needed to be strong, she could be as strong as he needed her to be.
I always said I wanted a complex man in my life, with layers and depth. Luke is all that and more.
She picked up a candy stick for herself and undid the ribbon and plastic wrapper. It had been a nice kiss. They hadn’t bumped noses or any of the other awkward figuring-each-other-out movements she had expected that would mar a very sweet memory. She smiled. Six months. He’d taken his time with that first kiss. If it was another six months to the next one, she was going to kiss him instead of waiting.
She tied the short piece of ribbon off her candy stick around the pot-stickers sticks and took them upstairs to add to her memory box.
* * *
Caroline woke up when she heard the sheriff move into the hallway, preparing to leave. She listened to Luke, hearing the tension and fatigue in his voice as he made final plans to meet up for the search tomorrow. The door shut, and minutes later Luke came upstairs and walked down the hall to check on Benjamin.
It’s going to be okay, Luke. We’ll survive this. If finding her stalker was the next step they had to take, they would take it together.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Luke pulled into the driveway of his home in Sandy Hill very early Wednesday morning. He needed to pick up a change of clothes and search out the document copies from his saf
e, as Mark was in no shape to visit the bank deposit box to retrieve the originals.
Neither one of them wanted to risk the paperwork not being in order should a question arise regarding Benjamin’s legal guardianship while Sharon was missing. Reporters were digging into anything that could be behind the snatch, and the task force had already had to dodge questions about Mark’s partners and his recent marriage. Before he unlocked the front door, Luke picked up the newspaper from the stoop and lifted the lid on the mailbox to confirm his neighbor was picking up his mail.
The Friday paper still sat open on his kitchen table, a pair of scissors marking the comic page. Dry cleaning hung on the coat rack ready to go out the door with him, and the smell of lemon oil hung faintly in the air. Helpless bachelor didn’t fit his lifestyle. Luke set down the current day’s newspaper and glanced at the pile of mail on the counter. It would wait for another day.
He moved through the house turning on lights and took the stairs two at a time going upstairs. There was no reason to have a place with four bedrooms and two baths except for the fact he liked having the space. His one concession to the job, the travel, was the fact he had bought a house in a co-op community so he didn’t have to keep up a yard.
He took a fast shower, washing away the grime, and returned to the master bedroom. It would be a day spent with the sheriff interviewing people. Luke pulled out a blazer to go with the dark slacks and white shirt. Out of habit, he reached for a tie.
He listened to the weather report as he stopped at his chest of drawers, picked up his wallet, and slid it into his inside coat pocket. The handgun in its holster was clipped to his belt, with two additional clips beside it. He picked up his badge and polished it, then slipped it onto his belt beside the gun. The Bureau should pay him more, but otherwise he had few complaints. For all the problems a bureaucracy as large as the FBI created, it still had room to let him be a lawman first and foremost.
He met his eyes in the mirror as he combed his hair, accepting the shadows he saw and their cause without dwelling on the emotions. Luke set down the comb and nudged Mark and Sharon’s wedding photo from last year back into alignment with the one of his parents. They looked so happy in that photo.
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