Scene of the Crime: Deadman's Bluff

by Cassidy, Carla

  He hated taking her back, but was hoping that by being there, by retracing some of her steps, she might remember something important.

  “I was on my way to visit my Aunt Rose in Tulsa,” she said suddenly.

  He looked at her in surprise. “Then why hasn’t anyone heard from your aunt when you didn’t show up there?”

  “It was a surprise visit. I hadn’t told her I was coming. I just got up one morning and decided to take the drive and stay with her for a couple of days. She’s not my real aunt...she was a friend of my mother’s and while we aren’t super close, we try to stay in touch every couple of weeks by phone.” Her face was pale, her features filled with tension in the waning daylight.

  “Is this too hard on you, Tamara? We can go back to the house if you can’t do this.” He’d hate to miss the initial crime scene investigation, but he’d do it if she wanted to.

  “No, I need to do this,” she replied, the force of her words at odds with the frailty of her body language, the sheer vulnerability that shone from her eyes.

  As he drove he couldn’t help but shoot surreptitious glances at her, trying to gauge her emotions as the miles clicked off. Would the scene of her abduction unlock the last of her memories? And would she be able to handle those memories if they came rushing back?

  He realized he was scared for her...afraid for her mental health...afraid for her very sanity.

  “An ostrich. Why would he call me an ostrich? Did I see something I shouldn’t have? Or not see something I should have?”

  He felt her gaze on him, intense yet bewildered. “I can’t imagine,” he replied. “I wish I had all the answers for you, Tamara. I wish I could shoulder the pain of what you’ve gone through.”

  She leaned back against the seat and sighed. “I’m afraid to remember,” she admitted in a small voice.

  “What you must keep in mind is that you’ve already endured whatever happened to you and you survived. Your memories can’t hurt you. You’re a survivor, Tamara, and you’ve already lived through whatever your memories bring to you.” He flashed her a forced grin. “You’re tough and I know you can handle this.”

  She cast him a wry glance and released a tremulous sigh. “I hope you’re good at reading character.”

  “It’s one of my strengths,” he assured her. However, this case had made him doubt that sentiment. In all the people he’d interviewed he’d read both strengths and weaknesses but he wasn’t sure he’d sensed a psychopathic killer.

  Of course, psychopaths were difficult to read because they were so adept at appearing normal. The mask they wore in their everyday life was firmly in place and only slipped when they finally lost control of their impulses and compulsions.

  “I think it’s almost over,” she said, pulling him from his thoughts.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. Ahead he could see the rest area and the congregation of official vehicles and officers awaiting their arrival.

  “I just have this thrum inside me that makes me feel like something is about to happen...something is about to blow.”

  So she felt it, too. The ticking time bomb that he’d felt for the past couple of days.

  He pulled to the curb beside the sheriff’s car and shut off the engine. He was about to unbuckle his seat belt when she stopped him by placing a hand on his arm.

  Her eyes shimmered as she tightened her grip on his arm. “I just want you to know that whatever happened to me was worth it since it brought you to me. I’ll never forget you, Seth Hawkins, and I have no regrets about anything that happened between us.”

  An uncomfortable laugh escaped him. “You act like you’re never going to see me again. We’re just going to get out and look around and then we’ll be back at Linda’s to eat that dinner you made.”

  She nodded absently, her gaze captured on the brick building that had the men’s restroom on one side and the ladies’ on the other. The whole area was a parklike setting with big shade trees and short walking trails.

  “I remember being here,” she said. “I decided to make a quick pit stop here before heading on to Aunt Rose’s house.”

  Seth opened his door and she followed suit. As she joined him on the sidewalk in front of where they’d parked he reached for her hand, wanting to support her through this ordeal.

  Sheriff Atkins nodded at them both. “We haven’t done anything yet. We were waiting for the two of you to see if Tamara’s memory might be jogged by being here.”

  She let go of Seth’s hand and took several steps toward the ladies’ side of the building. “I was here. It was just starting to get dark.” Her voice was faint, as if coming from a dream. “I went inside. There was nobody else around.”

  “No cars parked in the area?” Tom asked.

  She shook her head. “Not when I went inside. I was the only one here.” She stepped up to the building and placed a hand on one of the tan bricks. She raised her head as if to smell the fresh scent of the nearby pine trees.

  Seth wasn’t sure if she was steadying herself by holding on to the building or exploring the surroundings with all her senses. Touch...smell...she was in the moment of memory and he glanced at Tom, indicating that everyone stay quiet while Tamara experienced being here once again.

  She closed her eyes and drew in another deep breath. Seconds stretched to minutes and still she didn’t move. Finally she opened her eyes and pulled her hand away from the side of the building, a deep frown cutting into the center of her forehead.

  “When I came out there was a man. Even though I was alone I didn’t feel a bit afraid. He was walking a dog, a cute little pup.” She stared at Seth, but he knew she wasn’t seeing him. “I bent down to pet the dog and...and...” A helpless expression filled her face. “And that’s all I remember.”

  “Can you tell us what the man looked like?” Tom asked. “Short...tall...anything about him?”

  The frown in her forehead deepened. “No. I remember the dog was some kind of a terrier mix, but I don’t remember anything about the man other than I wasn’t afraid.”

  “Did you see another vehicle in the parking lot?” Raymond Michaels asked with obvious impatience. “We can’t exactly arrest all the people in town who have cute little dogs. We need something more specific.”

  “And you need to back the hell off,” Seth said, a steely strength beneath his soft voice.

  “Get the team together and start going through the bathrooms,” Tom said to Raymond. “Maybe you’ll find something specific in there.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said miserably. Seth reached for her hand and she grabbed it, holding tight. “I remember the dog, I have no memory of the man. I remember leaning down and touching the soft fur of the dog, but after that my mind is blank.”

  “It’s okay, you’re doing the best you can.” Seth wanted to take the haunted glaze from her eyes, to assure her that nobody expected anything from her. She’d lived through whatever had happened to her and that was enough.

  “I’ll make sure my men go over this place with a fine-tooth comb,” Tom said. “We’ll check the building and the surrounding area and parking lots. I doubt that the trash has been picked up out here since Tamara was here. We’ll cart it all back to the office and see if our killer threw something away.”

  Seth nodded. “I’m taking Tamara back to Linda’s place.” He’d noticed that she’d begun to shiver despite the heat of the night air.

  “I was a woman alone in an isolated area. Why wasn’t I afraid to approach the man? Why didn’t I go right to my car and leave?” she asked. But they were questions without answers at the moment.

  Her shivering intensified and Seth dropped her hand and instead wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Come on, let’s go home.”

  “I was stupid. I let some stranger get close enough to me to take me, to drug me or something and then he took me to the sand dunes and buried me.” Her voice rose with an edge of hysteria. “I heard the scrape of the shovel. I felt the heat of the sun on my face as he bur
ied my body. ‘You’re nothing but an ostrich,’ he said. What does that mean?” She looked to Tom and then back to Seth. “For God’s sake could somebody please tell me what that means?”

  Seth squeezed her closer against him. “Come on, honey. Let’s get out of here.” With a nod to Tom, knowing that he and his men would probably work through half the night, Seth led Tamara back to his truck.

  It was a long, silent drive back to Linda’s and Seth’s heart ached as he realized she’d pulled into herself, and he wasn’t sure if he should attempt to interact with her or just leave her alone to process whatever was going through her head.

  He didn’t want to remind her that when she’d been taken from here she hadn’t been taken directly to the dunes, that there was still another place that must contain horror for her someplace in this small town.

  When they reached Linda’s she went directly into the kitchen and began to reheat the meal for dinner. It was as if she needed to do something to keep herself whole and functioning.

  It was at that moment, as she stood in front of the microwave, that Seth realized the depth of his love for her. He’d never felt this way about any woman and now he understood why people married, why they took a chance at happily-ever-after even though statistically it seemed as if the odds weren’t in their favor.

  His love for her filled him up, swelled in his chest until he felt as if he might explode, but instead he sank down on the sofa with a weariness of spirit.

  For the first time in his life he understood what it felt like to love somebody, and if events worked out as they expected she would go back to Amarillo and he would return to Kansas City. All too quickly he would also learn how painful it was to tell that somebody goodbye.

  * * *

  THEY WERE BOTH QUIET as they ate their meal. Tamara had no idea what was going on in Seth’s head, but in her own was a cluster of emotions and thoughts that battled against each other.

  The meat loaf and potatoes couldn’t begin to take away the taste of fear that lingered in the back of her throat as the sensations of being at the rest area played again and again in her head.

  There was no question in her mind that was where she’d been taken. Whether the man with his dog had anything to do with her abduction or somebody else who she didn’t remember had come along and taken her, she couldn’t answer. She only knew that standing in the lush grass just outside the building had shot a sense of terror into the back of her throat that she couldn’t quite swallow.

  As bad as that was, she felt like an utter failure. She’d remembered so much, being at the rest stop, anticipating the last of her drive to her surrogate aunt’s house, even the man with his little dog. But she hadn’t been able to identify anything about the man. She hadn’t noticed a vehicle in the parking area.

  Why hadn’t she been more careful? She was a grown woman, one who rarely took chances of any kind. So why would she allow a strange man to get close enough to her to grab her or do whatever he’d done to her? It didn’t make sense. Nothing about all of this made any sense at all.

  It wasn’t until they were finished eating and had moved to the living room that she finally talked to Seth about all that was going on in her brain.

  “I’m not a careless woman. I know about personal space and checking my surroundings when I’m out shopping or running errands,” she said. “Yet, I’m positive when whoever took me approached, I felt no danger.”

  “Maybe because of the dog?”

  She hesitated and then shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’ve heard the stories of perverts dragging around dogs to entice children and vulnerable women closer to them. There has to be another reason I felt safe enough to let him get close enough to grab me. For all I know the man with the dog had nothing to do with it. Maybe he drove away and somebody else arrived before I got into my car.”

  A sigh of frustration escaped her. “I feel like such a failure. I was so sure once the memories started coming back I’d have a face, or at least an impression of the man who took me. But I’ve got nothing. And now you have nothing.”

  “That’s not true,” he protested. “We now have the scene of the initial kidnapping. Who knows what the crime scene investigators might find that will lead us to the killer. Tamara, don’t beat yourself up.”

  “I can’t help it. I feel so stupid. How did I allow myself to become a victim?”

  She grabbed his arm and held tight. “I’m not just scared, but I’m also so angry about it all. I want to find the man who did this to me and kill him, I want to stab his eyes out and bury him in the sand.” Seth pulled her into his arms.

  Leaning weakly against him she hit his chest with her fist, an ineffectual blow that caused him no pain but that he knew released some of hers.

  She hadn’t shown anger since the moment of her rescue and he considered her rage now to be healthy and healing.

  He had no idea how much time passed with her hitting his chest, venting the depth of her anger at an unknown assailant who had forever changed her life. Finally she leaned against him weakly, obviously spent.

  He stroked her hair and simply held her. Once again his wealth of love for her buoyed up inside him, tormenting the tip of his tongue in a need to be spoken. But he knew that telling her how he felt about her would only make things worse for them both.

  He had no idea what filled her with dread about returning to her home in Amarillo, but sooner than later she’d have to go back and face it—she had to go back to the life she’d had before she’d been kidnapped from a rest area, kept someplace for hours and then buried in a sand dune in a small town where she’d just been passing through.

  Finally she raised her face to look at him. The anger was gone, the fear had disappeared and the only expression on her face was naked need and a hungry desire.

  “Just one more night, Seth. Make love with me one last time and I won’t ask for anything from you again.”

  “Tamara,” he began to protest despite his desire to do exactly as she asked. “We can’t do this anymore. I can’t do this anymore.” He gently shoved against her so that she sat up rather than leaned against him.

  Her lower lip trembled but he refused to be swayed by anything she did, anything she said. One of them had to be strong. One of them had to be smart, and it was smart not to get in any deeper than he was, than he sensed she was already.

  “I care about you, Tamara. I care about you more than I’ve ever cared about any other woman, but as I’ve told you before, this isn’t real life. You’ve mentioned several times that there is something or someone causing you anxiety whenever you think about going home. You have issues that obviously need to be addressed there.”

  He got up from the sofa, his shoulders feeling as if the weight of her entire life rested on them. “I don’t know what your world was like before you were found in the dunes and nothing we do here and now is going to fix it. Only you can do that and it would be foolish for us to continue to pretend that there’s nothing in this world but the here and now, the you and me.”

  She gazed down at her hands now folded in her lap. “I know you’re right, but I don’t want you to be right. Be wrong, Seth, for one last night be wrong.”

  God, he wanted to make the wrong choice. He wanted to hold her in his arms one last time, to taste the fiery heat of her kisses once more. His body ached with the need to connect with hers, to take her again not only for his own pleasure, but for hers.

  But the fact that he wanted her so badly, the realization of how much he loved her made him strong. “I can’t, Tamara. We can’t play at this anymore. It’s getting late and I have a feeling it will be an early morning. It’s best if we just say our good-nights and leave it at that.”

  She held his gaze for a long moment, as if hoping to hear a different answer. He broke the gaze, looking beyond her as she finally got up from the sofa.

  Only then did he look at her once again. She appeared small and defeated but he knew there was nothing more he could do for her.<
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  “Then, I guess I’ll just say good night,” she said.

  He nodded. As she walked down the hallway toward her room, he knew that somehow in the last twenty-five words that he’d said he’d broken her heart.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was time to go home. As Tamara sat in the break room the next afternoon she knew it was time to say goodbye to Amber Lake and go back to where she belonged.

  She couldn’t be any more use to the case and she’d allowed herself to develop a depth of feelings for Seth that obviously had no future. She had most of her memories back now, at least enough of them to return home and pick up what had been her life.

  She had no idea what made her feel so anxious about returning to her apartment, but whatever it was, it was time she go back and face it.

  Tonight she intended to tell Seth that first thing in the morning she planned to rent a car and go back. She’d eventually make new plans to visit Aunt Rose and would try to put all this behind her. Once there she’d have to deal with her car insurance and get some kind of wheels, she’d need to catch up on her web mistress duties and she’d have to figure out a way to stop loving Seth Hawkins.

  It was for the best. There was no reason for her to continue to linger here when she wasn’t helping anyone and each and every minute with Seth would be an exquisite form of torture.

  The crime scene investigators had come up with little to show after spending half the night at the rest area. The problem was it was a public place and fingerprints and DNA samples were plenty.

  According to the scuttlebutt she’d heard from the deputies who drifted in and out of the break room there was little optimism that the trash cans in the area would yield any clues.

  There had been no more mention of her seeing a therapist or a hypnotist and she was convinced that what little she’d been able to give them last night at the rest area was all she had to give.

  She couldn’t give them an impression of the man, had no facial features to offer them, and maybe it was because she’d never seen him coming. Maybe the person who had kidnapped her had sneaked up behind her and somehow rendered her unconscious before she’d seen anything about him.