Or it might’ve been a schoolgirl’s shortcut once upon a time.
The hill sharpened into a ridge that dwindled into the distance. Before it did, a gnarled tree, as old as Methuselah and just as hardy, clung to an outcrop. Its tangled branches nearly touched the ground—but silhouetted against the silver sky, one bore a single apple.
This had to be the far end of the Barrett family holdings. Which meant I was close to the Wentz place as well. The path and the creek all combined to make me think I was in the right spot. I tapped my brakes, slowed to a crawl. But I didn’t see anything resembling a home Pamela could’ve grown up in.
And then I saw the lilacs.
Great bushes, without blooms in this season and as overgrown as jungle plants, clogged the entrance to what had been a lane.
I coasted to a stop, crowded the yawning ditch at the side of the road. But that was as far as I dared go. With my low-slung chassis, I wasn’t ready to risk my undercarriage to a rutted farm track—and if I was in the wrong place, and Dawkins had given me good advice, I wanted to be able to get out in a hurry.
I left the Jag, pushed past the lilacs and their falling heart-shaped leaves. Yellow weeds, as high as my knees, bowed and curtsied in a gusty breeze. Animals had been through here. Rabbits, maybe, or deer. They’d crushed the grassy stalks with their passing and carved out a kind of trail. It led to a clearing of packed earth between an abandoned farmhouse and a decaying barn. Nothing wanted to grow here, but I was willing to bet in the not-so-distant past, things had grown—and that this had been the heart of the Wentz family farm.
I supposed the house had been built around 1880 and that it had been white. Now weathered wood warped where paint had once kept it straight and true. Under the eaves, much of the hand-turned gingerbread tracery had fallen away, leaving remnants to cling to the house’s corners like torn spiderwebs.
The windows stared blankly at me. Through filthy panes, I could see horizontal blinds broken to bits. They reminded me of broken teeth.
When I glanced away and back again, my imagination or Dawkins’s warning got the better of me. From the corner of my eye, I could’ve sworn I saw a teenage girl flitting past an upstairs window. But that was ridiculous; the house had clearly been deserted years ago.
And that was all right.
Because I really wanted to see the barn.
Its massive door hung open on misshapen casters, allowing the elements and the late-afternoon sunshine to stream inside. I entered, too, kicking up dust motes that tickled my nose and danced among a tractor, a tiller, and other farm machinery I couldn’t even begin to name. The rust on them was so thick, it was like red fur.
Behind them, a wall of gray, disintegrating bales of straw had caved in on one another. And overhead, five rafters hewn from the hearts of mighty trees did their best to support the crumbling roof. Pamela had died dangling from the middle one.
With a shaking hand, I pulled my cellphone from my pocket, called up the photos from the cold-case file. I thumbed through them. In my palm, I found the one I was looking for.
Pamela, no longer a delicate beauty, was bloated and purple in baggy blue sweatpants and a faded Fallowfield Baseball T-shirt as she hung from the end of a rope she’d tossed over the center rafter two stories above. Before slipping the loop around her neck and probably jumping from the tractor’s seat, she’d secured the other end to the tractor’s steering column. I wondered how long it had taken her to tie that knot—and how many tosses it had taken to lob the rope over that joist.
Most of all, I wondered what it had taken to put her head in the noose.
“Are you one of Pamela’s friends?”
I jumped like I’d been goosed, reached for my Beretta—but I’d stowed the weapon in its special compartment in my trunk before I’d visited the sheriff. Still, that didn’t mean I was defenseless. And with clenched fists, I whirled to face my questioner.
A woman, in her early seventies perhaps, blinked at me with all the innocence of a child. She wore flamingo-pink polyester pants and a short-sleeved T-shirt with yellow butterflies embroidered on it. The white cross-trainers on her feet looked like they’d never been out of the box before today.
“I’m looking for Pamela,” she said.
Because something wasn’t right. Not with this lady. And not with her mind.
I glanced at the dilapidated house, wondered if hers was the form I’d seen drifting past the upstairs window.
“Do you live here?” I asked.
“Here?” The question stumped her and she rubbed at her goosebumpy arms as a chilly draft blew in from the yard. “Are you the Gebhardts’ daughter?”
“No, ma’am, I’m not.” I slipped out of my suede jacket, wrapped it around her shuddering shoulders. “Why don’t I drive you into town?”
“I can’t leave yet. I’m looking for my daughter.” Her empty eyes drifted to the rafters high above us. To Pamela’s rafter. “Have you seen Pamela?”
“Not today.”
Mrs. Wentz’s chin began to tremble. “I’ve looked for her everywhere. She’s not in her bed.”
“Does she do that often? Go missing from her bed?”
“Oh, no. Pamela’s a good girl. She doesn’t sneak away at night to smoke cigarettes or drink beers like fast girls do.”
“Maybe she went to visit a friend,” I said carefully. “Or a boy?”
Mrs. Wentz giggled. “Pamela’s too young to think of boys.”
“Maybe a boy thinks of her. Has she complained about anyone bothering her at school? A classmate, maybe? Or a stranger?”
“A stranger?” Mrs. Wentz clutched at the lapels of her borrowed coat. “There’s one boy. A strange boy—”
“Mom!”
Eric Wentz stormed into the barn with all the fury of a five-alarm fire. He seized his mother by the shoulders. But like hers had, his eyes drifted—just for a moment—to the center rafter above.
“Mom, you know you’re not supposed to come out here on your own. Let’s get you back to Glendale. The nurses will be looking for you.”
But Mrs. Wentz wasn’t ready to leave quite yet.
She smiled at her son, extended a knotty hand to me. “Eric, this girl is a friend of Pamela’s.”
“Your mother’s here without a coat,” I said.
Eric shed his own windbreaker like a snake sheds its skin. He stripped my jacket from his mom’s back and shoved it at me. He replaced mine with his.
“She’s no friend of Pamela’s, Mom. She’s a friend of Adam Barrett’s.”
“That nice boy?” Mrs. Wentz asked.
Eric’s face darkened and he turned on me again.
“This is private property. What are you doing here?”
“I was out for a drive. I saw your mother.” And that was mostly true. “Did she walk all this way from town?”
“She does that sometimes.”
Eric looped an arm around his mother’s waist, practically pushed her out of the barn and into the late afternoon sunlight. A silver Mercury idled in front of the farmhouse. I hadn’t heard it roll down what was left of the drive.
Eric guided his mother to the car. I had to trot to keep up with him. He yanked open the passenger door, tucked her into the seat.
I grabbed the door before he could slam it. “Your mother mentioned a boy. She said Pamela—”
“Don’t talk about my sister!” Eric rounded on me. “Don’t talk about what Adam did to her!”
“What makes you think it was Adam?”
“I followed her, all right? I saw her cutting across the fields to meet him, so I followed her and I saw them together.”
“If you did,” I challenged, “you also saw him tell her to go home.”
“No! I saw him with his hands on her! I saw him kiss her!”
“Then if you thought it was wrong, why didn’t you intervene?”
Eric’s pale face flashed purple.
And he hit me so hard my head snapped sideways.
Automati
c tears blurred my vision. And my cheek burned with fire. Bells rang in my ears, but I could still hear him bellow.
“I don’t have to justify my actions to you!”
And he swung at me again.
But this time I was ready for him.
I shoved the car door into him. The impact of all that metal knocked him back. He crashed into the doorframe, slid south, and landed on the ground on his ass. His mother didn’t notice. She peered through the windshield at the abandoned house’s windows and murmured about Pamela. She’d be no help if her son came at me again. And that’s exactly what he did.
My car was so far away. I had no weapon at hand, nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. I’d have to defend myself.
Because, scrambling to his feet, Eric flew at me.
“Hey!”
Vance McCabe’s pickup bounced to a stop behind Eric’s car. Barrett was already out of the cab and coming at us. He gripped a crowbar in his fist.
“Get away from her!”
Chapter 10
Barrett closed the distance between us in a flash. He seized Eric by the throat, slammed him against the back panel of the Mercury. I latched onto his arm before he could swing his pry bar. But Barrett was strong. I had to throw all my weight into holding him back—and I knew I couldn’t hold him for long.
Vance tumbled from the truck’s driver’s side, tried to take hold of Barrett’s sleeve.
“Come on, Adam! Be cool, okay? Eric didn’t mean it! Tell him, Eric.”
Eric gurgled and gagged. He tried to lever Barrett’s fingers from his throat. But Barrett’s grip was an iron fist.
Through gritted teeth, I said, “Barrett, Eric needs to take his mother home.”
“He can go,” Barrett growled, “when I’m done with him.”
“Eric?” Mrs. Wentz got out of the car. She blinked at the rest of us wrestling to keep Barrett from splitting her son’s skull. But she didn’t see anything amiss. “If we’re driving into town, we should pick up your sister along the way.”
Her strange single-mindedness took all the fight out of Barrett. He released Eric. The crowbar fell from his hand, thudded on the ground.
I snatched it up in case he got a second wind.
But Barrett shook off Vance, turned on his heel, and started walking.
Vance slid a sidelong glance at me and hurried after him. “Come on, man. If Luke shows up, we’re cooked.”
Barrett marched toward Vance’s truck—and passed it.
He walked up the lane, past the lilacs, and out of sight.
“Vance,” Eric rasped, gulping air like a man who’d nearly drowned. “I want you off my property. Right. Now.”
Vance, however, was way ahead of him. Maybe he realized how close Barrett had come to bashing Eric’s brains in. Or maybe he needed a hit of something to settle his nerves. He was as jittery as a June bug at the height of summer, and he couldn’t hide it. He jumped into his truck, threw it into reverse, and sped off.
“Now,” Eric spat at me, “you get out of here. And don’t come back.”
I nodded once, just to acknowledge what he’d said. And to acknowledge his pain. Because his pain was very real—and it fed on him like a leech.
With his eyes boring holes into my back, I walked up the weedy drive. When I reached my Jag, I tossed the crowbar into the back, slid into the driver’s seat, and locked my doors. The adrenaline that had flooded my system when Eric struck me was fading now—and it was taking all my courage with it.
I wiped my watery eyes with the cuff of my turtleneck, gripped the leather-wrapped steering wheel with shaking hands, and watched as the grill of Eric’s Mercury nosed through the lilacs. He punched the gas, shot onto the road toward town. His mother offered me a sweet little wave as they flew past.
Across the way, more movement caught my eye. On the far side of a broken-down barbed-wire fence and past a rusted cattle gate, I saw a dark figure walking the creek bed that cut through the old meadow. It was Barrett.
I met up with him as he crouched on a lip of earth undercut by the stream’s serpentine swath. Only two feet below us, the creek itself had dwindled to a trickle. But its bed was wide where eons of spring rain had rushed past.
“This is where Eric found her,” Barrett said, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his jean jacket, shoulders hunched against the rising wind.
Pamela, helpless and hurting, would’ve lain hidden in this fold in the earth and never been seen from the road—let alone from the Wentz farmhouse—but Barrett didn’t need to point that out to me.
“Had Pamela taken this shortcut before?” I asked.
“Not to see me. Not like that night. Before we got driver’s licenses, though, Eric and I tramped back and forth on this trail all the time. Vance, Luke, Charlotte Mead…we all used this shortcut to get between Eric’s house and my grandparents’.”
“Even Pamela?”
“I guess she tagged along once or twice. That’s what little sisters do.”
And little brothers, too, I supposed. But I didn’t know. I was an only child.
I said, “Did your sister tag along after you?”
“Elise? Maybe sometimes. Her best friend lived in town. She spent a lot of time there.” Barrett got to his feet. “Does it matter?”
I shrugged. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, Pamela could’ve fallen prey to a chance encounter with a roaming stranger. But I didn’t believe that for an instant.
I scanned the landscape the way my father, the general, had taught me. I divided it into sections of my own making, assessed the threat potential within each one. But a dozen things could’ve changed since the night, over twenty years ago, when Pamela had been assaulted. A dozen hiding places could’ve come and gone. More obscuring bushes and fewer brambles could’ve clotted the hillside back then. A fallen tree along the creek bed could’ve provided cover. After all, Eric hadn’t seen anyone lurking, lying in wait for his sister, as he’d stomped along this path, agitated and angry with Barrett. Nothing like that was here now, however. The only feature that would’ve remained the same was the twisted apple tree looming at the top of the ridge.
I struck out for the tree and the vantage point the crest of the hill would afford. The track was steep, but the switchbacks made it manageable. I heard Barrett’s boots thudding on the dirt behind me as he hustled to catch up with me. His gait was slightly off. I supposed, after weeks in a cast, his leg was cranky about cooperating.
In the morning, it would be Monday, and Barrett had an appointment with an army physical therapist on the books. She’d set him straight before he returned to his regular duties. Except I doubted he planned to head to D.C. and Walter Reed tonight. I wondered what excuse he’d given to his superior to be granted a few extra days of leave instead—but the question slipped to the back of my mind as I topped the rise and got caught up in the beauty of the view.
Halting alongside the magnificent apple tree, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Rip Van Winkle asleep under it. It was wild and wonderful with branches that seemed to scratch the underbellies of the clouds above. Others reached low and got lost in a tangle of yellowing grasses growing all around its trunk. Except for the one apple I’d seen, its overripe fruit had dropped from its limbs. They scented the air with cider and made me feel like the coming dusk was warmer than it really was.
Beyond the tree, the land sloped to form a golden bowl. Like some kind of shorthand, more fruit trees and splintered stumps dotted the hillside as regularly as Morse code. Altogether, they formed an old orchard, untended and untamed.
Where the ground leveled out, stones had been stacked on one another to create a foundation. Whether a house had ever been built on it, I didn’t know. But in the distance, above the rim’s far side, I could see the peaks of a familiar yellow Victorian home and the roofline of a bright red barn, too.
“This is the end of your family’s land,” I said as Barrett joined me on the hill.
“No.” Barrett sat on the gras
s. He stretched his legs in front of him, crossed them at the ankles, and scowled at the shallow valley. “This is the start of it.”
“ ‘Barrett Orchards,’ ” I quoted, recalling the sign in front of his grandmother’s house and putting two and two together. “ ‘Since 1799.’ ”
Barrett nodded. He’d been drinking again. The tang of bourbon clung to him and clashed with the scent of the apples.
I sat beside him. The earth was cool with a hint of the coming season, and the ancient tree’s shade chilled me as it spilled into my lap. But the grass had soaked up the sun’s goodness during the course of the afternoon, and it felt warm when I raked my fingers through it.
“Since 1799,” I repeated. “That’s quite a legacy.”
Barrett didn’t respond.
“I thought the trees along the lane to your grandmother’s house were impressive.” I turned away from him, looked up into the old tree’s tangle. “But this one’s my favorite.”
“Local folklore says Johnny Appleseed planted it.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Barrett’s voice was hard. And the edge of it was as sharp as a scythe. “My grandfather proposed to my grandmother under it. My father proposed to my mother here, too.”
Something in his tone had me scrambling to my feet—and feeling uncomfortably like I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Part of me wanted to ask whether he’d proposed to his ex-wife beneath the tree’s branches. But I suspected I wouldn’t like the answer.
Beside me, Barrett got tired of glaring at the landscape. He scrubbed a hand across his eyes. “I had no idea Eric’s mother was such a mess.”
She certainly was. And her son was barely holding himself together. I’d seen it in the way he’d waved that shotgun at Barrett.
And I’d sure felt it when he’d backhanded me.
The throbbing he’d left behind in my cheekbone had simmered down, but when I ran my tongue along my teeth, a couple of my molars wobbled. They’d be all right. I’d just have to give up chewing for a day or two. They’d serve as a great reminder that Eric was capable of cleaning my clock. And they’d remind me to stick to Dawkins’s advice to watch my step. I stopped probing my mouth, shoved my fists into the pockets of my suede coat—and I caught Barrett looking at me a little too intently.
The Kill Box Page 8