by L. T. Vargus
* * *
Mrs. Whitmore was no further help, not even after Darger dragged her out to the little playhouse and showed her the marking over the door.
“Does this mean anything to you? Is it something you ever saw Christy draw? Or maybe Dustin?”
Mrs. Whitmore shook her head, pulling her sweater tighter around herself.
“It’s just kid stuff, you know? They start out scrawling on the walls and the furniture as toddlers. Once they get older, you think they’ve outgrown it, but it’s just different. They doodle on their school notebooks and their backpacks. Christy and Cat, they used to draw all over one another with Sharpies, giving each other fake tattoos. One time, I came home and they each had a strip of hair colored in like rainbow zebra print. It looked cute for an evening, and then they washed their hair and all the colors bled together into a mess.”
Her eyes seemed to blur then, like her mind was somewhere else, perhaps transported seventeen years earlier.
“They had a whole made-up language. Christy and Cat, I mean. So they could write secret notes back and forth no one else could read them. They tried to teach it to me once, but I couldn’t follow it. God, I’d almost forgotten about that.”
She smiled sadly, glancing around at the abandoned playhouse.
“Kids,” she said quietly, more to herself than anything, Darger thought.
Darger thanked her again for her time, and she and Fowles headed back to the car.
“What’s next?”
“Tracking down this Dustin Reynolds guy, for one,” Darger answered, sliding into the passenger seat and pulling the door shut behind her.
“You really think he did it? I mean, he would have been seventeen or eighteen at the time of Christy’s murder, right? A kid.”
The buckle of Darger’s seatbelt clicked into place. She sighed.
“It’s hard to imagine, but it happens. Ed Kemper killed his grandparents when he was fifteen. There’s a theory, with some circumstantial evidence to back it up, that Ted Bundy abducted and murdered an eight-year-old girl when he was fourteen.”
Darger sat back in her seat and watched the Whitmore house grow smaller in the side mirror of the car.
“Then again, right now all we have to go on is Carole Whitmore’s gut, and I don’t know if I should trust her instincts all that much.”
“You think she was lying?”
“Not lying. Just… biased. You heard what she said, right? She described her relationship with Christy as ‘best friends.’ Everything I saw in that house screamed Smother City.”
“Just because they had a close relationship?”
Darger’s eyes slid sideways to look at Fowles.
“There’s such a thing as too close. A healthy relationship has boundaries, and the way Mrs. Whitmore talked, I don’t think she had many with Christy. It sounded to me like the line between mother and daughter was totally blurred.”
Darger rubbed her eyes.
“My point is, she’s not exactly a reliable source. She probably would have resented any boyfriend Christy brought home, because it was something in Christy’s life she couldn’t take part in. Anyway, I’m sure it’s hard to be objective about your daughter’s murder,” she said, then sighed. “That being said, Dustin Reynolds is still the best lead we have to go on. If he’s been in town recently, I’d like to know what he was up to.”
Chapter 28
Butterflies twirled in Darger’s belly as they drove away from the Whitmore house. With the symbol in the playhouse matching the one on the fence outside of Shannon Mead’s house, they were finally getting somewhere, and the stimulation seemed to shift and stir things in both her mind and her abdomen, little flutters of excitement flushing cold tingles through her core, making her twitchy.
She had to remind herself to not get too excited, though. They had something that felt tangible — a piece of evidence they could photograph and puzzle over — but at best it was a baby-step in the overall case.
The killer was still out there, whoever he was. As dangerous as ever. Lying in wait.
As Fowles pulled to the curb near the front door of the police station, he shifted into park but didn’t turn off the ignition.
Darger had one foot out of the door when she stopped and turned back.
“Aren’t you coming?”
“No, I have a few errands to run.”
Darger raised an eyebrow.
“More pig leg experiments?”
“How’d you guess?”
“You’ve got a one-track mind, Fowles. Bugs on the brain. A little pork on the side, I guess.”
He shrugged, smiling.
“I’ll catch up with you later?”
“Sure thing,” Darger said, pushing the door shut and waving briefly as he rode off.
Inside, Darger filled the Chief in on what they’d learned from Carole Whitmore, including a photo of the scrawled symbol in the playhouse, the one that matched the marking at Shannon Mead’s house.
“Still don’t know if it means anything,” Furbush said.
“Yeah. But it’s at least a small piece to connect Christy Whitmore’s murder with the new ones.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon searching for a lead on the whereabouts of Dustin Reynolds.
Furbush brought up Dustin’s driver’s license entry in the state database and immediately pointed at his listed height and weight.
“Over six-feet tall, 240 pounds. Not a small guy, is he?”
Darger nodded solemnly. She’d been thinking the same thing. It was at least one way that Dustin fit the profile.
“DMV’s still got his driver’s license and vehicle registration listed under a Sandy address.”
Marcy came around to look at the computer screen, bending closer to get a better look.
“That’s his parents’ house. Or was. I don’t think they live there anymore.”
After confirming that neither Dustin nor his parents lived at the Peach Street address, Marcy called the post office and wheedled a forwarding address out of a friend that worked there. It was a Portland address — not too far — but when Darger finally got a call back from the management company for the property, it was another dead end. Dustin hadn’t lived there in over seven years.
Darger tried Google, which only brought up the two addresses they already knew about. On a hunch, she typed his name into Facebook, hoping it would have a current location listed, but that was a bust as well. Dustin Reynolds didn’t appear to be on the site.
“So he just disappeared off the face of the planet seven years ago?” Furbush said. “I mean, he’s gotta live somewhere. Have bills. If he’s still driving the same truck, it’s getting to be pretty old.”
“Christy Whitmore’s mother mentioned a girl Dustin supposedly hooked up with after Christy’s murder,” Darger said, reaching back into her memories for the name. “Cat. She said they moved away together after graduating.”
Marcy frowned.
“I don’t remember a Cat. She was from here?”
“I think so. She was a friend of Christy’s,” Darger said, flustered at Marcy’s fixation on this detail. “The reason I brought it up was to point out that if Dustin is living with someone, even if it’s just a roommate, the bills could be in someone else’s name.”
“It’s still a little suspicious. Him not having any current records,” Furbush said.
“A little. But I wouldn’t draw any conclusions from it.”
Marcy let out an excited little yelp.
“Now I remember!”
“Remember what?” Darger asked, thinking maybe Marcy had recalled some rumor or whisper of Dustin’s plans after high school.
“Cat! She was friends with Christy. Actually, she was practically Christy’s shadow. Copied everything she did. I always thought it was a little sad. Like, be your own person, you know?”
“Sure,” Darger said.
Furbush hooked his thumbs into his belt.
“Do you remember her last name
?”
“Well, no. Totally blanking on it. I mean, she had like no personality. I’m not surprised I didn’t remember her at first. Anything remarkable about her was stolen from Christy. I can’t believe she and Dustin had a thing. Mrs. Whitmore really said that? I never heard that.”
“Marcy,” the Chief interrupted. “Could you think on that last name again? If the two of them did go off together, we might be able to find a lead on Dustin through her.”
Darger got out her phone and dialed Carole Whitmore’s number. She’d remember the girl’s name. But there was no answer. The phone rang and rang. No voicemail either, apparently. She clenched her molars together and jabbed at the End Call button.
Marcy was still considering the question, eyes squinted shut. In real or mock concentration, Darger wasn’t sure.
Finally, Marcy shook her head.
“Sorry, I really don’t remember it. But I bet I can call around and find someone that remembers. Oh! Or maybe my yearbook! I’m not sure where it is, but I can have a look when I go home tonight.”
Furbush sighed.
“Thank you, Marcy.”
After another round of fruitless internet searches, Chief Furbush suggested they check out the Reynolds family compound.
“His aunt Mamie is the reigning matriarch. A real ball-buster and just about as old school as you can get. The type that prefers the personal touch of a face-to-face visit over a phone call,” Furbush explained. “What do you say we ride out and see if she’ll talk to us?”
For the second time that day, Darger followed Furbush out to his vehicle and climbed in.
“Carole Whitmore said the Reynolds family goes way back in Sandy.”
Furbush nodded.
“It’s not exactly the same as going way back out east where you’re from, you understand. There was a small community here at the turn of the last century. Pioneer types, come to live off the land. There are still two or three families in town that can say their great-granddaddy built the first post office or hotel or used to own half the township. The Reynolds clan came from one of those early settlers.”
“She seemed to suggest that Dustin Reynolds wasn’t treated as a real suspect because of that.”
Furbush shrugged.
“I wasn’t here, of course. And I can see how some folks might see it that way. Most of the township board is made up of old-timers who make no bones about the fact that they like a certain status quo. But you were there when we talked to Chief Milton. He didn’t strike me as the type that would bow to that kind of pressure. Not with something like this. If he had any reticence about Dustin Reynolds being the guy, I would think it had more to do with the lack of evidence.”
The Reynolds compound was a short drive outside of town. The main house was a big Victorian farmhouse that overlooked a clearing with a pond. According to Furbush, there were two smaller homes — a cabin and a trailer — elsewhere on the sprawling property.
Porch boards creaked and popped under their feet as they climbed the front steps of the main house. A wind chime hanging near the door tinkled in the breeze.
Chief Furbush jabbed a callused thumb at the doorbell. A dog woofed somewhere inside, and then a tough-looking lady with steel grey hair was pushing aside the curtains near the door, peering out at them with a frown. A moment later she opened the door, stiff-backed and upright. Darger figured this to be Mamie Reynolds.
“Sorry to bother, ma’am. I’m Chief Furbush with the Sandy Police Department.”
The woman’s hard eyes didn’t blink.
“I know who you are.”
“Right. OK. Uh, we’re looking for your nephew,” Chief Furbush said.
Darger thought she detected a note of unease in his voice. Old Lady Reynolds was making him nervous, and she could see why. She was a tough old bird. Not intimidated by Furbush’s uniform or position in the slightest. Darger noted with amusement that she was relieved she wasn’t the one asking the questions.
The woman crossed her arms and stared at the Chief of Police like he was half-stupid.
“I have six nephews. You’ll have to be more specific.”
Furbush’s Adam’s apple bobbed like a buoy in rough seas.
“Of course. The nephew we’d like to speak to in particular is Dustin. Your brother Frank’s boy.”
“And what do you want with him?” Mamie asked, lifting her chin ever so slightly.
“Oh. Well. We need to ask him a few questions is all. Just a… routine inquiry.”
The corners of Mamie Reynolds’ mouth twitched into smirk, and a short, hard breath puffed out of her nose. Not quite a snort, Darger thought. She was too severe for a snort. But almost a snort.
“A routine inquiry,” the woman repeated, the hard little smile never touching her eyes.
The iron gaze shifted to Darger then.
“Who are you?”
Darger cleared her throat, caught off-guard by the woman’s attention suddenly pivoting to her.
“My name is Violet Darger. I’m a consultant.”
The woman was an easy six inches shorter than Darger, and yet Mamie Reynolds somehow had a way of making her feel small. Like she was some orphan waif staring up at the towering form of her strict headmistress.
The icy eyes flicked back to Furbush.
“The last time I saw my nephew was probably eight months back. He wanted money. I told him he should get a job then. He said he had a job, but his boss hated him, so he got fired.” The almost-snort came again, this time accompanied with an almost-eyeroll. “There was a laundry list of other excuses, each more feeble and unconvincing than the last.”
“And he didn’t say where he was staying?”
“Oh, he wanted to stay here. I told him that there are rules in my house, the first being that boarders pay rent. And if he was asking me for money, I didn’t really see how that would be possible.”
“Do you know where he might have gone after you turned him away?”
The woman’s face pinched into a scowl.
“I wasn’t turning away the desperate parents of Jesus H. Christ. This isn’t Bethlehem. My nephew is a spoiled brat. If my brother Frank and his airhead of a wife still lived in town, I’m sure Dustin would be in their house right now, loafing around, eating their food, contributing nothing. Probably watching jerk-off movies in the basement or some godforsaken thing. They don’t know how to say no. Most of my siblings don’t, and as such, most of my nieces and nephews are entitled little narcissists.”
Darger raised a hand, like she was a student in class.
“Where are his parents, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Frank and Lucy moved down to Ft. Lauderdale five years ago.”
Darger exchanged a glance with Furbush.
“Any chance your nephew might have made his way down there?” the Chief asked.
Mamie Reynolds crossed her arms and blinked a few times.
“If he found someone to con money out of for a bus ticket, sure. For all I know, he’s down there right now, mooching off them as we speak. It’d be just like him.”
“Could we get your brother’s phone number?”
The woman held up a hand and disappeared deeper inside the house. A moment later, she returned with a phone clutched in one hand. She read the number out loud while Chief Furbush copied it down.
“Thank you, ma’am. We appreciate it. And if you happen to hear from Dustin, or if he shows up again, could you give me a call?”
“I suppose so. But I doubt he’d come back here. I made it quite clear that I have certain expectations when it comes to adult behavior. I don’t expect he liked what he heard.”
In the car, Chief Furbush put his phone on speaker and dialed the number Mamie Reynolds had given them.
Chapter 29
Frustration bred frustration, Darger thought. It seemed to be the way of things out here in Oregon.
Dustin Reynolds’ parents had provided another dead end in a case that seemed full of them. Darger list
ened on speaker-phone as Furbush made the call on the ride back to the Sandy PD, gritting her teeth while the two men spoke. Reynolds’ father, Frank, told them in a deep voice that Dustin hadn’t visited them in Florida in almost three years.
He also said he had no current address for his son, and that it’d been two weeks or more since he’d heard from him, though such breaks in contact weren’t abnormal. Apparently Dustin wasn’t big on phones or email or anything like that.
“Always been a bit of a nomad,” or so Frank repeated a couple times.
Perfect. So for the moment, the Christy Whitmore lead had come to nothing. They needed to find Dustin to get anywhere in terms of checking him against the current cases, and at the moment, Dustin was a ghost. But on the ride back to town, Darger realized that she had new resources that might help.
She put in a call of her own after Furbush got off the line with Frank Reynolds, getting in touch with one Lawrence Snead, a private investigator employed by Prescott Consulting. Snead had asked her a few questions and would now go about the task of locating Reynolds, his supposed specialty. Snead seemed very confident about it all. Almost cocky.
With that in motion, Darger could relax for a bit. Eat. Sleep. Let her mind think about something — anything — aside from this damned case for a few hours. She’d get back to the grind in the morning.
Upon arriving at the station, she offered a quick goodbye to Furbush and headed out to the parking lot. Visions of pizza and a bubble bath danced in her head.
She took the last three paces to her rental when a dark form approached from behind a different vehicle in the lot.
Instinct reached a hand for her weapon without her even thinking about. Her fingers flexed. Found the grip. Securing it. Finally almost used to the little Smith & Wesson, she realized. Not frazzled to find it instead of the familiar form of her Glock.
“So did you find anything?” the man said.
Shadows still concealed his face, but she recognized the voice. It was Fowles.
Darger let out the breath she was holding in, took her hand away from her holster.