Max had to look away, because he was dead right on that score. Stormy, claiming to be tired and wanting to hang out in her motel room and maybe take a nap—that was totally off. "It's not like her to admit to needing a rest—even when she does."
"I know "
"You're worried about her, too, then?"
Lou nodded.
Jason said,” Do you…have some reason to worry?" When they both looked at him, he went on. "She told me about the shooting. Is she really all right?"
"That's what the doctors keep telling us,” Max said.
"But you don't believe it?"
Chief Fieldner came back into the room, moving on legs that seemed too thin to carry a normal-size torso around. Yet despite his gauntness, he seemed strong. Almost unnaturally so. He had a map in his hand and was unfolding it even as he worked his way across the room to the desk, to lay it out.
"Here we go,” he said. A skinny finger with a cracked, chipped nail pointed to the map. "This is a map of the entire town. Here's that visitor center you were asking about." He lifted his dead, pale blue gaze to each of theirs in turn—they lingered longest on Jason's face. "You have some basis for being curious about that particular spot?"
Yeah, Max thought. Stormy got an odd feeling about it. She hadn't said so, but Max had seen her reaction. It wasn't something she was willing to ignore. But she kept all of that to herself. Lou would think it was foolish, and it wasn't anything the others needed to know.
"Just seemed a likely place to start,” Lou said.
"It's closed, you know. Been closed for years."
Lou nodded. "We passed it on the way into town. Wouldn't have known it was closed to look at it. Maybe the girls didn't, either."
The chief sighed and returned his attention to the map. "Well, there's not much out there. Parkin' lot. Woods out back. You can see, those woods spread out some. Run right down to the coast. But I did a walk through myself, last night. Didn't find a thing."
"You searched the woods?" Lou sounded surprised.
"Well, sure. I took a look around after this young fellow told me about his sister and her friend vanishing like they did. I couldn't do anything official, them bein' gone only a matter of hours at the time. No sign of foul play. No basis for a case. But that doesn't mean I didn't want to help out if I could."
Lou sent Max a look, almost as if he were saying "See? I told you he was an all-right guy." She rolled her eyes, because she didn't agree. Lou turned his attention to the cop again. "How thoroughly did you search them?"
"As good as you could. Probably better, bein' I know my way around out there."
Lou nodded.
"You won't mind if we take a look ourselves all the same, will you?" Max asked. "Just for my peace of mind?"
"You wanna waste your time, be my guest,” the chief said. "Fact is, even if they did run off, I don't think two girls slipping away from their families to raise some hell would go into the woods to do it. No, I expect they'll turn up anytime now. You'll see."
"Still, I'd like to go out there,” Lou said.
The chief nodded. "Fine by me. Just make sure it's before dark"
Max went silent, turning wide eyes on Lou. His were just as startled, and then they both turned to stare at the chief. "Why's that?" Lou asked.
"This town has a dusk-to-dawn curfew in effect,” he said. "Didn't you see the sign?"
"A little town like this?" Max asked. Her voice had gone soft. She didn't want to start thinking what she was thinking. But damn. Vanishing girls. No one allowed out after dark. Scrawny pale guys? What was she supposed to think? "Mind if I ask why?"
The chief shrugged. "Aah, we had some trouble a few years back. Kids coming down from bigger towns, raising hell. It was starting to turn into party central for the college crowd. Beer bottles all over the beaches. Goddamn metal music blasting from their car radios." He shook his head. "It was a nuisance. So we instituted a curfew."
It was not, Max decided, a very logical reason.
Lou sighed. "As a professional courtesy,” Lou said, “one cop to another—"
"You're a cop?" Fieldner asked. ,
"Yeah. Twenty years on the force in White Plains . I'm retired now."
"I see." He seemed to mull that over and looked not at Lou, but at Jason.
"So as a favor to a fellow officer, would you give us permission to be out after dark if we need to?" Lou smiled his friendliest smile. "After all, it's not like we're going to have a beer party on the beach."
Fieldner held Jason's gaze until Jason looked away, then slid his cold eyes back to Lou. He said, “Last thing I need is for more of you to come up missing. Those woods are dangerous in the dark. I prefer you honor the curfew."
Lou sighed but nodded his acceptance of that edict. Max had no intention of obeying.
"If you don't mind my asking,” she said, “is it true you're the only cop in town?"
He smiled at her, though it, like every other expression, never reached his eyes. Behind the mustache, his teeth were big and yellow. "Have been for twenty years."
"You're shitting me."
His grin widened. "How many men do you think are needed to tend to a handful of retirees and a few families? Heck, that's all the more reason for the curfew. I have to sleep sometime." He got up from behind his desk, walked toward the door. Clearly, he'd had enough of them for one morning. "I'll tell you, I seriously doubt those girls are really missing at all. They're safe and sound someplace, probably out raising hell somewhere."
Max shot Jason a look, half expecting him to rise to his sister's defense. Instead he only shrugged. "It's possible. Delia's been…a little on the wild side lately."
Max got to her feet. "Guess we'll head over to that visitor center now. Check out those woods."
Lou shook the other man's hand, then followed Max out to the waiting car. Glancing her way, he said, “His hand was warm. He's got body heat."
"He probably had a hot pack tucked in his pocket."
She got in the front passenger side. Jason got in the back, shaking his head. "Just as suspicious as you always were, aren't you, Maxie?"
"Not as suspicious as I am," Lou said as he got behind the wheel. "What were you thinking in there?"
"Excuse me?" Jason looked confused.
"Why did you agree with that cop that Delia probably just ran off?" He turned in his seat as he spoke.
"Why wouldn't I agree with him? It's possible, isn't it?"
"You aren't going to get any help from him if he thinks she's a runaway. And I don't think you'd be out here looking for her, much less that you would have dragged private detectives down here to look for her, if you really believed that," Lou said.
"He's upset, that's all, Lou. Go easy on him. His sister's missing." Max sent Jason a reassuring smile, then faced Lou again. "Shouldn't we insist on an Amber Alert or something?"
Lou shook his head. "Delia and Janie don't meet the requirements. You have to know for sure a child's been abducted, and you need a description of the perp or at least his vehicle."
"That's asinine."
"That keeps kids who are lost or who've run away from clogging up the system—so the ones who really need help get it faster."
"And what about the ones who slip through the cracks?"
He shrugged. "I didn't say it was perfect. I happen to think it's the best system it can possibly be, flaws and all." Then he shrugged. "Besides, officially, she's not even missing."
She could have growled at him but didn't.
Lou looked at her. "Where to, Max? This is your game, your call."
Hell, he was the one with all the cop-sense, not to mention experience. His giving her the upper hand was a means to placate her, to skirt around her irritation with him for his treatment of Jason, and she knew it. But she would take it all the same.
Sighing, she said,” I want to check around town, like we discussed. The gas stations, diners, convenience stores. But I really want to check on Stormy first. Let's grab som
e take-out and head back. I don't like this town. I don't like that pimply-faced kid at the Bates Motel hack there, either."
"If we do all that first, that will make it heading for sun-down by the time we get to the visitor center,” Lou said.
She nodded. "Yeah. That's another reason. I want to see what goes on around this place after the sun goes down. Just what is it that creepy cop doesn't want us to see?"
"Oh, don't even start with the paranormal theories, Max. You've got no basis—"
"Don't start. We both know you're too skeptical to be objective." She sighed and changed the subject. "Did we bring flashlights?"
"Just one,” Lou said. "I think I saw a hardware store up here just…right there." He pointed to it just before pulling the car into the tiny square of parking lot in front of the store. The place was no bigger than a shack, but the sign on the door read Open.
Max got out of the car and hurried into the store at Lou's side.
For a small place, it held a lot of goods. The shelves were set close together, making narrow aisles. Not a shopping cart in sight. Every shelf was stacked with goods clear to the ceiling. Tools everywhere, a row for plumbing supplies, another for electrical, two rows devoted to gardening needs, with everything from soil, fertilizer and seeds, to hoes, rakes and shovels. A silver-haired woman was picking through the mesh sacks of flower bulbs when Max and Lou walked past her. She looked up, met their eyes and held them for an elastic moment, her own utterly blank, before finally returning her attention to the bulbs. Other customers wandered about, everyone placid-faced, calm.
Max fought down an insistent shiver. Something was just wrong with this place. With these people.
"Found 'em,” Jason called.
He came around the corner bearing several flash lights—the big Maglite brand, with their bright colors. He'd grabbed two blues, a red and a black. "One for each of us?"
"Fine,” she said. "We'll need batteries." She took one of the lights from him. "Sixteen of them. D-size."
"I've got those up front,” a male voice said.
She damn near dropped the flashlight as she spun to see a tiny, bent-over man who reminded her of something from a Tolkien novel. He smiled up at her. Well, his eyes aimed upward. His head remained bent. The man had the worst case of what her mother had called "bend-over disease" that Maxie had ever seen.
"Uh. Thanks."
He turned stiffly and walked to the front of the store, leaving the three of them to follow. Max took out her wallet, ready to give her biz-only credit card its second workout.
"I should pay for this stuff," Jason said.
"Don't worry, you will. It'll all be in your bill." She sent him a wink. The old Jason would at least have pretended to get the humor in her remark. This one just blinked at her.
Max rolled her eyes and followed the old man to the counter.
"You folks are new in town, eh? Just visiting?" the proprietor asked.
"We're here to search for two missing girls," Max said. "In fact, maybe you can help. Have you noticed any teenage girls who shouldn't be here? They would have been driving a small red car." As she spoke, Jason pulled a photo from his wallet and handed it to her. She showed it to the man.
The man looked at the photo, then at her, meanwhile taking one flashlight from her and slowly punching numbers into his cash register. "Can't say that I have. Though I'm sure they'll turn up. Girls, you say? How old?"
"Seventeen," Jason answered. "The one in the photo is my sister."
The man set the first flashlight down, picked up the second, peered at it and again began punching numbers. Good God, couldn't he just ring one of them up and multiply by four? "Well, you'll find her. Chief Fieldner, he's a good man. A good man."
He rang up the third light and started on the fourth. "Has he handled this sort of thing before?" Lou asked. "Missing-persons cases, I mean?"
"Oh, sure. It happens now and again. Hasn't lost one yet." He reached beneath the counter and began setting four packs of D-cell batteries on the counter.
"So this has happened before, then?" Max asked. "When?"
He peered at her, worry in his eyes. "I was speakin' in generalizations, missy. I can't think of a specific case. But you know, there's not much hasn't happened in a town as old as this one at one time or another." He rang up the batteries with fingers that suddenly moved efficiently—and quickly. Before she knew what happened, the items were bagged and he was swiping her credit card.
"Is there anyone else in charge around here? Besides Chief Fieldner, I mean?" Max asked.
"I don't know who would be." He drummed his fingers, waiting for the credit machine to work.
"Don't you have a mayor? A town supervisor? Anything like that?"
"No one but the prince."
"You have a prince?"
He grinned. "It's just a nickname"
The old woman stepped up behind Max with her arms full of bulbs. "Sam!" she snapped. "You mind picking up the pace a bit? I don't have all day."
Max sent her a frown, but even as she did, she heard the credit-card machine whirring to life as it spat out her receipt. Sam shoved it across the counter with a pen, and Max signed it.
"You have a nice day now. Good luck tracking down those girls."
"But you didn't answer my—"
"Honestly, some people." The old woman shouldered Max out of the way to lay her piles of bulbs on the counter. "Now, one of these has a split bulb in it, Sam. I don't expect to be paying full price for that."
"I'll take care of it, Maddy."
Lou took Max's arm about a half second before she hit the old lady's head off. She shot him a look. He advised caution with his eyes and pulled gently, so she gave in and let him lead her out of the store.
"Jesus,” Max said as soon as they were outside. "Are they all fucking vampires around here?"
"Nope," Lou said. "Still daylight."
"But what the hell? And who is this goddamn prince person, anyway? Was Gollum back there hallucinating or what?"
"His name was Sam. And just be patient. We'll find out" He popped the trunk at the VW's front end. She dropped the bag inside and got into the car. Jason said nothing, maybe afraid to get between them at that moment.
"I'd have made him talk,” Max said.
"And if that's what you want to do, you can go right back in there and do it."
Lou sat there, maddening in his patience. A boy rode past on a red bicycle, a sack of newspapers over his shoulder. "Fine,” Max said at length. "I'll bite. What's the `but'?"
"But," Lou said, smiling because he had made her ask, “you’ll make enemies of everyone in this town if you do it your way. You're an outsider. You get pushy and unpleasant, it's gonna burn through the Endover grapevine like a brushfire. If you're nice, on the other hand, people start wanting to help you out."
She pursed her lips. "I hate when you're right."
"No you don't," he said. "You hate when you're wrong. Which is why I usually don't point it out."
"Hey!"
He smiled at her. A real smile. She hadn't been on the receiving end of one of those since their conversation the night before, and seeing one now made her melt. Hell, Lou could correct her all day, and she'd still want him. He could treat her dearest old friend like a murder suspect, and even then, she still wanted him. She had it bad.
* * *
Chapter 8
Stormy waited until everyone had left, then walked around to the back of the motel. She followed a strip of blacktop, probably there to grant a garbage truck access to the large Dumpster out back. Beyond it, there was just the weed- and wildflower-strewn field. She walked to the window of Jason's motel room. She'd flipped the lock during an idle moment when they'd all been gathered in his room earlier. No one had noticed a thing. Well, she had trouble believing Max hadn't noticed. Max noticed everything, though she seemed pretty distracted lately. Still, if she had noticed, she hadn't mentioned it. And Jay hadn't noticed, or he would certainly have locked it back
up.
Stormy was convinced her old friend was hiding something, and she intended to find out what it was, so she slipped into the room through the window. No one was around to see. No one was around, period. This place was deader than a cemetery at midnight.
A shiver raced up her spine, and she shook it off, slid the window back down and faced the bland room that looked just like her own. Shouldn't take long to toss it. She was so tired, though. Listless—as if she'd been up all night or something. But she ignored the feeling and got on with her mission. She went first to the desk, checked the drawers, found a telephone directory and an out-of-date TV listing guide. Then she tried the dresser. Nothing. No clothes, socks, underwear. Apparently Jay hadn't taken time to pack before charging down here to search for his sister. That, at least, made sense. The closet held a coat, ironing board, extra pillow. The bathroom had the usual motel-provided, eyedropper-size shampoo, conditioner, bar of soap.
There was just nothing.
Dammit!
She checked the pockets of the coat as a last resort, and then she stopped dead.
There, in the pocket, she felt something. She pulled it out: a Polaroid photo, in which two young girls stared, wide-eyed with fear, at the camera. "Jesus,” she whispered.
She flipped it over and read the words scrawled on the back. "Do as you're told, or they both die."
Cold chills rippled down her spine. She ran a hand over the scrawled lines—and they hit her like a sledgehammer. Stormy staggered backward, one hand pressed to her head, eyes squeezed tight. Her legs hit something, and she fell to the floor. A man's face hovered in her mind, behind her tightly closed eyelids—the face of a fallen angel. The same dark, haunting face she'd seen beside Jason's when she'd gone off the road on the way to Maine . She hit the floor and her hand went limp. She dropped the photo and passed out cold.
"Stormy? Honey? Come on, wake up, babe."
Stormy blinked her eyes open. Max was leaning over her, looking worried. Oh hell, they were back. The realization that she'd been caught red-handed in Jay's room hit her like an electric shock, and she sat up fast—too fast. Dizziness washed over her brain, and she held her head, blinked a few times to let it pass. When it did, she tried to get her bearings and then frowned. "How the hell did I get into the bed?"
Wings of the Night 08 Blue Twilight Page 8