by Lis Wiehl
“Thanks for stopping by,” Tommy said, feeling his throat again.
“Anytime.”
The officer drove away, and Tommy walked back to the edge of the pond. He saw the frog the old woman had given him, floating belly up, torn open, guts exposed.
He crouched low to examine it again. Why had she wanted him to see it? Her words, if they were Latin as DeGidio suspected, might have been the genus or species. What was she looking for?
It made no sense to him, but he supposed it might make sense to somebody else. She’d been clear about one thing—the message she wanted him to understand had something to do with the disemboweled frog.
He reached down to pick it up, thinking he could throw it in the freezer and send it to a biologist or laboratory. But when his fingers touched the amphibian, they passed right through it, and the animal that minutes earlier had been solid in his hand simply dissolved like bath salts, a murky gray cloud that dissipated in the dark water. He pulled his hand back reflexively. He found a stick and stirred the water, then threw the stick into the pond when there was nothing more to see.
These were the first to go, she’d said. “You’ll be the last.”
He was nearly back in bed when his cell phone rang.
“Tommy, it’s Frank—you’re still up, right? I didn’t wake you?”
“Still up,” Tommy told the cop.
“You said to call when we found out who she is. We got a missing persons from High Ridge Manor. Her name’s Abigail Gardener. You know her?”
“Not personally,” Tommy said. “She used to be the town historian.”
“You okay?”
“A little shaken, to tell the truth,” Tommy said. “The doctor said I was lucky her fingernails weren’t longer.”
“You already saw a doctor?” DeGidio asked.
“The one on the ambulance,” Tommy said. “Blue jean vest and tattoos? Looked sort of like a biker?”
“What are you talking about?” the cop said. “There wasn’t any doctor there—just the two EMTs, Jose and Martin. And nobody who looked like a biker.”
Tommy thanked Frank and said good night. Then he went to his computer, hoping his surveillance system might solve the mystery. His property was covered by both high-definition video and infrared cameras capable of registering the heat signatures of warm-bodied visitors. The video feed showed only darkness at first, and then, once the ambulance arrived with its headlights pointed directly at the camera and its lights flashing brightly in the night, he saw only silhouettes crossing back and forth, making it impossible to count the number of people present, even in slow motion.
The infrared imaging was slightly more useful but still inconclusive. It clearly showed his own silhouette, and Frank’s, and the old woman’s, but once the ambulance arrived, the bright red heat signatures from the engine and the headlights again made it hard to sort out what he was seeing. Sometimes it looked like there were five images, sometimes six. He even saw some sort of digital shadow or negative ghost image in blue, flickering in and out of view.
He was tired and he’d given it too much thought already.
He knew what he knew—he’d spoken to a man who looked like a biker. Frank just must have missed him.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Lis Wiehl is a New York Times best-selling author, Harvard Law School graduate, and former federal prosecutor. A popular legal analyst and commentator for the Fox News Channel, Wiehl appears on The O’Reilly Factor and was co-host with Bill O’Reilly on the radio for seven years.
April Henry is the New York Times best-selling author of mysteries and thrillers. Her books have been short-listed for the Agatha Award, the Anthony Award, and the Oregon Book Award. April lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and daughter.