by K. J. Emrick
"There's a difference between this place and Misty Hollow," he said.
"Oh? Tell me, Mister Detective, what's the difference?"
"Misty Hollow has Darcy Sweet."
Sometimes, he knew exactly what she needed to hear even when she didn't know she needed to hear it. She rewarded him with a kiss on his temple.
"Love you, too," he said. "We're here. This is the place."
The house was a little white rectangle with an addition built onto the back. Brown trim bordered the windows and doors. Shrubs lined the front, trimmed to a flat top that held uneven piles of snow. A line of Christmas lights hung from the edge of the roof, dark and unlit, lending a little bit of cheer to the exterior. Jon pulled into the driveway behind a beat up old pickup truck and a small blue car that had seen better days. It was a simple home, kept in neat order but without a lot of flair.
"Did you call ahead?" Darcy asked. "Are they expecting us?"
"No. I want to catch them off guard. If they aren't expecting me then their answers should be more honest."
They started for the front door along a short walkway that had been shoveled clear of last night's snowfall. Before they got to the steps, the door opened.
A man stepped out, crossing his arms across a barrel chest and leaning against the doorframe. His face was wary and stern, the top of his head starting to show through thinning gray hair swept over to the right. Despite the cold, he was in jeans and a white t-shirt with rips at the neck.
"What do you two want?" he asked in a gruff voice.
This was Megan's father, Darcy realized. And none too happy to see, well, anyone.
"Mister Bortchowski?" Jon greeted him. "My name is Jon Tinker. I'm a detective with the Misty Hollow police force. I'd like to talk to you about your daughter."
"My daughter's dead. What's to talk about?"
The reply was so gruff it stopped Darcy in her tracks. The temperature dropped around her and she found herself shivering inside her winter coat. They were looking for someone who already knew Megan was dead. How did…?
"How do you know she's dead, sir?" Jon asked the same question out loud. "We have a report of a missing person. My department is officially looking for Megan."
"I don't care."
Braun Bortchowski stayed where he was, his expression unchanging, blocking them from his house.
"Sir," Jon tried again. "If you have information that could help us find your daughter, please tell me. Let me help Megan."
"My daughter is dead," Braun repeated. "To me, she's dead. If she ain't dead now, she'll be dead someday soon. She's living a bad life. You can't help her no more."
Darcy looked at Jon. Could this be their killer?
"Braun?" a woman's voice called from inside the house. "Who is it?"
"No one," he snapped. "Stay inside."
"I just asked—"
"I said stay inside!"
Darcy knew the woman must be Braun's wife, Megan's mother. She sounded scared.
"Now, you two," Braun turned back to them with a pointed finger, "get off my property. I got nothing to say to you."
"Mister Bortchowski," Jon said, trying one last time, "do you know anyone who might want to hurt your daughter?"
That made Braun snort. "The way she lived her life? Who knows. Maybe that girl she took up with. You talk to her, did you?"
"Yes, sir. We spoke with Blair. She mentioned that you didn't quite approve of their relationship."
"You listen to me." There was enough heat in Braun's voice that Darcy stepped closer to Jon, to stand behind him. "When my daughter left town she was as normal as you or me. She had boyfriends, had herself a job working at a hotel over in Oak Hollow, she had herself a life! Sure, she never went to college but neither did I. She had a future. That's what she had. Then she leaves here and takes up with some loser over in Misty Hollow. That was bad enough. But when she met this Blair girl she quit everything and refused to talk to us and that's when we lost our daughter. Lost her completely."
There was just the briefest pause then, a delay in Braun's tirade where his lip quivered, and Darcy could see pain and loss in his eyes.
Now what did that mean, she wondered.
"She's missing, is that it?" Braun said, picking up his pace after a deep breath. "I know what that means. She fell too far away from the right path. If she's missing, it means she's dead."
He stared hard at them, then his eyes looked away, into the house, and he said in a lower voice, "If you do find her, tell her to call home, will you? Her, uh, her mother misses her."
His wife came out to the porch at that point, a frail looking woman wrapped in a pink robe. She put her hand on her husband's arm and watched everything with distant eyes.
"I don't know where Megan is," Braun repeated, pushing his wife's hands away. "You want to go look for her, knock yourselves out. We lost our daughter a long time ago. I can't make it any righter than it already is."
Jon's expression tightened, taking stock of what Braun had just said. "Can I just ask you—"
"No."
Braun pushed his wife inside, closing the door with a slam. Darcy heard the lock clicking into place.
"Well," Jon said after a moment. "I guess that's that."
***
"What now?" Darcy asked.
They were already an hour out of Cider Hill, headed back home. The sun had come out, but rather than make driving easier it turned the leftover snow on the road into a sloppy mess, forcing them to go slow or risk ending up in a ditch.
"Now, we look into the Bortchowskis. Financials, known associates, that sort of thing. Who knows. Maybe we'll get lucky and Braun has a criminal record. He strikes me as the type to have spent some time in prison. He definitely made it to the top of my suspect list."
"Yeah, me too," Darcy agreed, sinking down lower and putting one foot up against the dash. "For being a creep in the first degree."
"He has no respect for women, that's for sure."
"Oh, you think? You saw the way he treated his wife, right?"
"So let's dig into his life and see where that takes us. Do you think maybe you could do another communication with Megan and get some more information?"
A car that had been following close behind them pulled out now on a straightaway, passing on the left. It fishtailed before the driver regained control and pulled back into the right lane.
"Keep going, genius," Jon spoke to the car as it pulled away. "I'll be investigating your accident before the day's out."
Darcy snickered. "Let's keep from having any accidents of our own, Mister Tinker. Do you want me to call JoEllen and let her know we'll be back soon?"
"We probably should. I don't know what I'm going to do about her. It's nice that she has such great trust in me and my abilities as a police officer, but there's only so much I can do about those outstanding warrants for JoEllen Meyers."
"Could you maybe contact the agencies with the warrants and clear them up?" she asked him. "There's only two actual warrants, right?"
"Yes, just two. Isn't that enough?"
Darcy supposed so. "She changed her name, right? Ellen Gless. Could she hide under that name? She's done it before."
Jon thought about that. "I don't like that idea. From a cop's standpoint, I mean. It would only last for so long, anyway, without real documents to back the name up. She would need a birth certificate. Driver's license. That sort of thing."
Another car came up quick behind them. Darcy looked back and rolled her eyes. "Is everyone stupid?"
"Yes, everyone is stupid. Including us for trying to help a killer."
"That's not really fair," Darcy said, although she thought maybe it was more fair than she wanted to admit.
The car, a black SUV, came up around them to pass and Jon slowed to let them go.
Which was when the SUV swerved close enough to clip their front end.
Beneath them, Darcy felt their car sliding out of control, going into a slide that threatened to become a f
ull out spin. Jon's hands spun the steering wheel wildly left and then right and then left again. Darcy sat up and gripped the door handle and her seat as her breath caught deep in her throat.
"Hold on!" Jon cried out, his voice strained.
Darcy looked up, saw the world turning sideways around them. And something else as well.
"Jon!"
The SUV had pulled to a stop ahead of them, across the road.
The driver was rolling down the window.
"I see it!" Jon told her, his expression becoming panicked. There was nowhere for them to go. He couldn't get the car to stop and they were running out of room before they would strike the SUV broadside. The trees on either side looked too close to give them any breathing room. They were boxed in.
The driver of the SUV leaned out. Darcy could see very little of his face under a black beanie cap and sunglasses. There was just the hint of a strong chin and then something else drew her attention.
"Jon?"
The handgun he was pointing at them.
"Jon!"
"I see it!"
Giving in to the momentum of the vehicle Jon turned the wheel to the right and went with the spin instead of fighting it. Their car roared off the road with a muffled protest of the tires and the brakes and then they were bouncing over the ditch and flying sideways between trees that Darcy was sure were too close together for them to fit through.
She wasn’t sure when she hit the dash with her forehead, or how the back end of their car had become wedged up off the ground like it was, or if the smoke rising from the engine meant the car was dead, but she knew Jon was tugging her out from the car on her side and if she wanted to live, following him was probably the right thing to do.
"Jon," she heard herself say, "what's going on?"
"Shh. He's coming."
They crunched through snow in silence, quickly, rushing further back into the woods. Jon had his gun out in his hand. He was watching all around them at once, expecting an attack to come through the trees.
The snow. That's right. Darcy's head felt like an egg that had been cracked and she saw a drop of red fall past one eye. She was hurt. Maybe badly. Someone was trying to kill them and they were running through the woods, through the snow, and there was some reason why that wouldn't work and her brain was trying to tell her what it was…
"Jon, our tracks." It finally came to her. Just like the animal trails she had seen earlier, the killer would be able to follow their tracks through the snow.
"I know," he said. "Darcy, you're going to have to trust me."
I do, she wanted to say. Instead she kept quiet and followed where he led.
After a few more minutes, Jon stopped. They were in a part of the forest where the trees were mostly pines and they had blocked a lot of the snowfall with their thick needles. There was only a light dusting on the ground here. Their tracks were still showing, but not as clearly.
"Okay," he said. "We're going to jump to our left, behind that stand of pines there. Got it? Jump as far as you can. One, two, three."
She didn't have a chance to argue or question. He jumped, both feet off the ground, a good seven or eight feet away from their trail. Her jump wasn't quite as long but it did the trick. They were able to work their way further back and crouch down and hide with nothing to show which way they had gone.
She could hear herself breathing. She could hear her heart thudding in her ears, timed to the pulsing pain across her scalp. The wind was a quiet rustle of branches around them.
Then, she heard the footsteps.
Jon put a finger up to his lips and waited for her to nod. They needed to keep quiet. The footsteps made a muted crunching in the snow, one at a time, as whoever was trying to kill them came closer.
And closer.
Then stopped.
Jon tensed his grip around the handle of his automatic. Their attacker had been just out past the trees where they were hiding when he stopped. Right about where their own footprints would have ended in the snow. The man from the SUV was being cautious.
"I know you're out here," Darcy heard him say. His voice was deep, easily carrying out through the woods around them. "Why don't you show yourself and let me take JoEllen off your hands. No one has to die here. How's that sound, Detective Tinker?"
Darcy looked at Jon, her eyebrows scrunched up. JoEllen? Why would he be asking Jon to give up JoEllen.
Jon pointed at her. This guy thought she was JoEllen.
How? Darcy asked with a slight tilt of her head.
Jon nodded back toward the road, back to where their car was. The guy out there must have followed them from Misty Hollow. Seeing Jon with a female passenger, the guy mistook Darcy for his target. This was the hitman gunning for JoEllen.
Wonderful, Darcy said with a roll of her eyes.
"Come on out, Detective," the man said. "It's the only smart play."
Rocking back on his heels, Jon slowly reached out for a stick, a broken twig from the pine trees they were sheltered behind. When his hand closed around it he cocked his arm back and threw it in a high arc overhead.
When it came falling down through branches on the other side of where their attacker stood, pulling his attention that way, Jon jumped out from behind cover, gun first, shouting at the top of his lungs. "Don't move, don’t move!"
Darcy cringed, waiting for what came next.
The gunshot was loud enough to make her jump.
"Jon!" she screamed, bolting out of hiding herself, stumbling to a stop when she saw Jon kneeling on top of the man from the SUV with the guy's face in the snow, pinning his arms behind his back.
"Darcy, get the handcuffs from my belt," he told her.
She breathed out a huge sigh of relief when she saw he wasn't hurt, then remembered what he had asked her to do and came over to unbutton the handcuffs from their holder at his left hip. Good thing he always came prepared whenever he went to interview someone.
As she handed the cuffs over, he saw the look on her face. "What?" he asked. "I'm fine. He took a shot at me before I clubbed him in the face with the handle of my gun."
"You hit him in the face?" she asked, surprised. "With your gun?"
"I know, not exactly standard defensive tactics, but I figured we owed him for that cut to your head."
Darcy put a hand to her forehead, feeling the blood there. She'd almost forgotten about her own injury in her haste to get to Jon. Now that she'd been reminded, it lanced her with pain all over again. A hospital would be a good idea. A hospital, and probably some stitches.
Great.
Jon picked up the guy's gun from where it had fallen about five feet away, tucking it into the waistband of his pants. "Okay, big guy. Let's go."
Jon stood the man up. He wobbled a little, blinking, his sunglasses lost in the snow. A cut above his left eye oozed blood. A bruise was already starting around it.
"I think you hit him harder than you meant to," Darcy remarked.
"Nope," he answered with a growl. "I hit him just as hard as I meant to. Come on, let's get back to our car."
"Are we sure he's alone?" Darcy looked around slowly as she said it. Her head was killing her, but she didn't want to walk into the crosshairs of another gun if she could help it.
"I'm sure," Jon told her. "There's our tracks, and then this guy's. No one else came into the woods. If there had been a second shooter they would have come running when they heard the gunshot to make sure we didn't escape."
They started walking out, Jon helping the would-be killer walk. It took a few minutes to get back to where their car was crashed. Seeing it now, Darcy knew there was no way they would be driving it home.
Up at the shoulder of the road the SUV had been parked with only its driver's side tires still up on the pavement. Jon's wrecked car wouldn't be visible to anyone just driving by. All they would see was that black SUV parked on a lonely stretch of highway. No one had stopped to see what was going on, because nothing looked out of the ordinary.
&n
bsp; "I guess we're taking this guy's car back to town," Jon said, angling the guy up to the road. "If he doesn't behave on the way, shoot him."
The guy hung his head, looking defeated. Darcy kept seeing his eyes dart to her and knew what he was thinking.
"No, I'm not JoEllen," she said, harshly. "Moron. You should have made sure of your target before running us off the road."
"Looks like," he grumbled. "Where you taking me, Detective?"
"Somewhere you can tell us all about who hired you," was Jon's reply.
"Ha! I'm not talking to…to you," he said, his voice trailing off and his eyelids fluttering as he stumbled up the bank to the car.
"Don't you dare pass out on me," Jon warned him. "I want you awake and talking."
"After all," Darcy added, "we've got so much to talk about."
Chapter Ten
After Jon made a phonecall, the State Police met them when they were about a half hour away from Misty Hollow. Darcy was glad of it. She wasn't sure if she could have shot this guy if she'd had to, but she really, really didn't want to find out. The police escort made things a lot easier.
Darcy cleaned her cut up in the women's bathroom of the Misty Hollow police station. The office's first aid kit had an antibacterial ointment and it turned out that once the cut was cleaned and dried, it wasn't even that big, and it had already stopped bleeding. She still felt woozy but that would pass. She hoped.
The guy from the SUV—Harris Browder, according to his driver's license—wasn't so lucky. At Chief Daleson's request a doctor drove in from the hospital in Meadowood. He reasoned that driving Browder there would create too many chances for him to try something or worse, escape. No one wanted to let this guy go. Not after he'd tried to kill Jon and Darcy.
So the doctor cleaned the cut to Browder's scalp and set a few stitches in place from a bag of supplies he'd brought with him. With a hard glare levelled at Jon, he then left the station after giving Browder printed wound care instructions.
"Nice guy," Jon said after the doctor had left. "Remind me not to pick him as my primary physician. Ever."
"He doesn't know the whole story," Darcy reminded him. Two Ibuprofens were helping her headache, but the stress of having been tracked through the woods and marked for death was still with her. It wasn't exactly the first time in her life that had happened. It just wasn't something a girl ever got used to.