“Call in the others.” Sheriff Maguire issued the order through clenched teeth. “Nobody’s off duty until we find this girl.” He dropped his forehead forward to rest on his fingertips and heaved an audible sigh. “And notify the state police. Much as I hate having the state boys messing around in my jurisdiction, we need all the help we can get right now.”
“Frank’s up in Mrs. Baldwin’s room, getting a written statement, but soon as he’s finished—” Matt snapped his mouth shut when the sheriff’s cell phone rang.
Maguire unclipped the phone from the waistband of his tux and held it to his ear. “Maguire.” He paused. Even across the room Derrick heard an excited female voice, though he couldn’t make out the words. “Put it through.”
For a moment the sheriff didn’t move. Then his head snapped up. His wide eyes sought first Matt’s and then Kenneth’s. “Y’all need to hear this. I’m putting it on speaker.”
He punched a key on his cell phone and laid it on the table in front of him.
Derrick jerked upright when he heard the voice coming through the phone’s tiny speaker. Jazzy’s voice.
TWENTY-SIX
“Where are you taking me?”
Jazzy had no idea if the person on the other end of the cell phone could hear her or not. She had tucked the phone’s cover beneath her leg to hide the screen’s light and to muffle the sound. The bottom half was unobstructed, but it was on the other side of the truck cab from Les. The radio speaker in the door was right beside her knee, less than twelve inches from the phone. For all she knew, the only sound the 9-1-1 dispatcher could hear was Merle Haggard crooning, “The Bottle Let Me Down.”
And if she had accidentally pressed the end key and disconnected the call, nobody could hear anything.
Les gave a humorless laugh. “You in a hurry to get there?”
Her heart flip-flopped at the reminder of the fate that waited for her when they reached their destination. “No, but I’d kind of like to know how long I have left.”
“It ain’t far now.”
Tears sprung to Jazzy’s eyes. If they didn’t have far to go, how would the sheriff and Derrick ever find her? She had to give them some sort of clue, just in case someone was actually listening to this conversation.
“We’re miles and miles from Waynesboro, way out in the country. All I can see are trees.” That wasn’t going to be much help. If only she knew which direction they were heading in. If only they would pass a street sign.
Les gave her a suspicious look. “Yeah. So?”
Blood roared through the veins in her ears. The throbbing sound made it hard to concentrate. She had to keep him talking. Any clue she could feed the people who might be listening would improve her chances of being rescued.
“They’re not in town.” The sheriff pointed at Kenneth. “Call the dispatcher on your phone. Get every available car out there. I want every road in the county covered, and I want it five minutes ago.”
Kenneth unclipped his cell phone from his belt and stepped away to make the call. Derrick and the others huddled around the dinette table, all of them staring at the sheriff’s cell phone. Tears glittered in Caitlin’s eyes, and Liz’s lips were pressed so tightly together they’d gone white. Derrick leaned both hands on the table and exchanged a nervous glance with Matt.
Keep talking, Jazzy. Tell us where you are.
“Uh, can I ask a question, Mr. Kirkland? Why did you kill your brother?” There. If anybody was listening, they knew who had kidnapped her.
“It’s a long story.”
She managed a feeble smile. “The longer the better, if you ask me.”
He put his head back and laughed. “You’re a funny girl. Smart, too. You gotta be smart to play a fiddle, I guess.”
Violin. Jazzy bit back the correction. She did not want to waste what might be her last minutes talking about how smart she was. Smart girls did not run away from the deputy guarding them.
“Your brother?” she prompted. “Did he make you mad somehow?”
Les’s jaw bunched, and his grip on the steering wheel tightened. “All the time.”
“When we talked this morning I got the impression you sort of looked up to him.”
A blast of disgust sprayed drops of spittle on the windshield. “Everybody looked up to Josh. All through school, he’s the one everybody was proud of. The big football player. The one everybody wanted to sit by at lunchtime. Nobody wanted to sit with me, but he made ’em. Used to tell ’em, ‘If you want to hang out with me, you have to hang out with my big brother, too.’”
“That was nice of him.”
Jazzy shrank at the vicious gaze he turned toward her. “Yeah, everybody thought so, him included. But he let me know what a big favor he was doing me. And he let Momma know, too. Momma was always proud of her baby.” Bitterness rasped through his voice.
“More proud of him than of you?” Jazzy spoke softly.
He didn’t answer at first. Both hands gripped the steering wheel. The glare he directed toward the road in front of the truck chilled Jazzy’s blood.
“Ain’t right to treat one young ’un better’n t’other. But it weren’t Momma’s fault. Josh was smart right from the cradle. He had her so’s she’d do whatever he wanted. But he went too far.” He shook his head, his eyes unfocused. “He went too far.”
The road dipped and then curved sharply to the right. Jazzy was thrown against the door. To her horror, the phone slipped from beneath her thigh and skittered to the floor, where it disappeared beneath the pile of trash.
They heard a loud noise, and the phone line went dead.
“No!”
Derrick jerked forward and reached for the cell phone, but the sheriff beat him to it. He snatched it up and checked the display.
“She’s gone.”
His words fell like blows. Derrick sank into the nearest chair. One part of his brain knew that Maguire meant the connection was gone, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of doom those words portended.
“Can’t they trace the call and find out where she is?” Caitlin’s voice trembled.
Sheriff Maguire shook his head. “It’s a cell phone. The only address we can get is the billing address. Unless it has a GPS?”
He glanced at Derrick, who dropped his head onto his arms. If only he’d upgraded his phone, paid the extra bucks and got one of those fancy ones with all the gadgets. “No GPS.”
The phone rang, and hope flared in the midst of Derrick’s despair. Had she managed to call back?
The sheriff looked at the screen and shook his head. “It’s the dispatch office.” He flipped open the lid. “Maguire.” Pause. “No! Don’t call her back. If Kirkland doesn’t know she has a phone we don’t want to clue him in. Did you get a recording of that call?” Pause. “Yeah, well I want you and everybody else over there to listen to it again. Over and over. See if you can hear anything in the background that will give us an idea of their location.” Another pause. Sheriff Maguire lifted his eyes toward the ceiling. “Yes, just like on CSI. Call me if you find anything.”
When he snapped the lid shut, his jaw squared. He straightened and spoke with authority. “Okay, people, there’s a lot we don’t know. Let’s focus on what we do know. They’re in a vehicle and they’re out in the country.”
The man’s take-charge attitude enabled Derrick to hold the nearly overpowering despair at bay. He raised his head and steeled his voice against the tide of emotion. “Les drives a pickup. Older-model Ford. Sky-blue with a fair amount of rust.” Derrick remembered seeing it earlier, loaded down with chairs for the makeshift stage the man had been setting up.
“Good.” Maguire pointed at Kenneth. “Get the tag number and have it broadcast to every law-enforcement officer in the state.”
“But what if Kirkland has a police scanner? He’ll hear the broadcast and know we’re onto him.”
The sheriff sat silently for a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Then he slapped a flat hand on the table. “It�
�s a chance we’ve got to take. We need to find him before he hurts that girl.”
Kenneth nodded and stepped to the far corner to make another call.
“What else?” Sheriff Maguire’s gaze circled those at the table. “How many roads head out of Waynesboro?”
“There’s four hundred and sixty square miles in this county, and more roads than we can count,” Matt said. “We need a detailed map like the one on the wall down at headquarters. Maybe we ought to go down there.”
The sheriff shook his head. “We don’t have time. We have to move now. Come on, we know our own county, every mile of it. Since Miss Delaney was last seen on Main Street, let’s start with the roads leading out of town. Name them.”
“U.S. 60,” Liz said. “That’s the road we came to town on.”
Maguire shot an approving glance at her. “Good. And there’s the parkway, but neither of those have trees. The girl said she saw trees.”
“There’s State Road 121, and 431,” Matt said, “but it’s mostly farmland out that way. What about 231?”
Derrick fixed his gaze on the ceiling and tried to build a map of the county in his mind. “Or County Road 56, or 54, or 81. Lots of deep woods out on 81.”
Maguire shot out of his chair, his eyes wide. “That’s it. Kirkland’s mother owns property out on Masonville Road, a couple miles off of 81. We went out there yesterday to break the news of her son’s death.”
Derrick caught some of the man’s excitement, but doubt niggled at him. “You don’t think he’d take Jazzy to his mother’s house to kill her, do you?”
“Nah, I don’t.” Sheriff Maguire shook his head. “But you said it yourself. There’s acres and acres of woods out there. A body dumped out in those woods would stay hidden for a long, long, time. And Kirkland grew up in those woods. Nobody knows them better.”
Derrick’s hopes sank. How could they ever find Jazzy in miles and miles of dense trees? They could wander for days looking for her.
“Bloodhounds!” The chair crashed to the floor behind him when he jumped out of it. “Bloodhounds could find her.”
“We don’t have trained dogs.” Matt looked at the sheriff. “But we could call over to Davis County, maybe borrow theirs. It’ll take them a while to get here, though.”
Maguire nodded. “Do it.”
Derrick saw a flicker of hope in Liz’s eyes. She was thinking the same thing as he was.
He rounded on the sheriff. “I’ve got an idea. I need to get back to the church.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
“What do you mean he went too far? What did Josh do?”
Jazzy had no idea if the cell phone on the floor was still transmitting. She searched for it by sifting through the disgusting collection of bags and cans and who-knew-what-else with her feet, trying to move as unobtrusively as possible. She needed to keep Les talking so he didn’t notice what she was doing.
“It ain’t what he done. It’s what he planned to do. My momma ain’t gonna be with us much longer. She’s got a weak heart, and she can’t stay away from the sweets even though the doctor told her the sugar’s gonna kill her.” His finger stabbed at the dashboard. “Josh knew that, and he was pushing her to leave her property to him. Said I didn’t know nothing about tending a property and taxes and all, and he’d take care of me, make sure I didn’t want for nothing. She believed him. She was aiming to make a will after the festival.”
Jazzy’s toe came in contact with something hard. It might be the phone. She maneuvered her feet to position the object between them, trying hard not to think about the germs her bare toes were undoubtedly coming in contact with.
“How did you find out about the will?”
“Momma told me. Said she wanted me to know, so’s if anything happened to her I wouldn’t worry because Josh would take care of me.” Les’s expression turned grim. “But I know what he was planning. He talked about it before. It bugged him that Momma just let all that land run to wild when she could make it pay. He was gonna parcel that property off, every acre, and sell it to some developer from up north. Then he’d make a bundle, and I’d get stuck with nothing.” He tilted his head back, chin high. “Well, now it’ll be mine, and I ain’t gonna let no developer within fifty miles of the place.”
“So you killed him and covered his body in barbecue sauce to make the sheriff think his death was connected to the festival.” Exactly like Sheriff Maguire said. Jazzy hoped he was listening.
He glanced her way. Jazzy halted the movement of her feet until he faced the road again. “See, I knew you was smart. I’m pretty smart myself. I wore a disguise and everything. I stayed clear of anybody who worked at the hotel who might recognize me that day, and if any strangers happened to notice me they’d tell the sheriff it was some guy with a ponytail. Everything was going just fine until you and your friends showed up snapping pictures.”
“So you broke into our room to get the camera. Why didn’t you kill us then?”
“Not the camera.” He looked at her. “Your phone. You snapped a picture right when I was walking by, and you looked right at my face. I knowed I had to shut you up. But last night I got the wrong girl by the throat. It shook me. I let go and made a run for it. Shouldn’t ’a done that.”
“But I didn’t see you in the hotel lobby. Honest.”
He shook his head. “I ain’t about to believe that. When you and that Rogers boy came upon me today down by the river, I saw it in your eyes. You recognized me. Maybe you couldn’t put a finger on exactly where you knew me from, but you’d figure it out soon enough. I couldn’t take that chance.”
A knot of tears clogged Jazzy’s throat. She was about to be killed for something she’d never seen. “No, really, I didn’t see you at the hotel. I recognized you from the church.”
Kirkland studied her through narrowed lids for a moment. Then he lifted a shoulder. “Well, even if you didn’t know before, you do now.”
Jazzy finally managed to maneuver the hard object between her sandaled feet. She could feel it with her big toes, the battery still warm. Disappointment stabbed through her chest. The cover had snapped closed. Nobody was hearing the conversation.
Her only hope now was to try to talk Les out of killing her. A barely suppressed sob shook her voice. “The sheriff took my phone. Mr. Kirkland, if you let me go, maybe he’ll go easier on you. But if you kill me you’ll be convicted for two murders instead of one.”
He turned his head. The darkness inside the truck turned his eyes into black pits. “Three.”
Bradley. The sob broke loose. Her chest heaved with it. “What did you do with Bradley?”
“You’ll see.”
Frightened tears wet her cheeks. He was taking her out to the place where he’d killed Bradley so he could kill her, too. One of the last things she’d see this side of heaven would be the corpse of a man she’d come to think of as a friend.
She wasn’t going to be able to talk Les out of killing her. Terror threatened to choke her. There’d never been a situation she couldn’t manage to get out of. When she’d faced and conquered her stage fright, Jazzy had realized she could handle anything. College. Finding a good job. Putting together the ensemble. Any challenge that came her way, no matter how hard. She took pride in her independence, her self-sufficiency. That’s why Derrick’s attempts at protecting her had rubbed her the wrong way.
But what good was pride in the last moments of life? Right now she’d give anything for Derrick’s protection.
“Have you been following me all day, waiting for the chance to kidnap me?” Her breath shuddered as she sniffed.
“Funny thing about that.” Les maneuvered the truck around another curve. “I was planning to follow you back home and get you there. But tonight, when I was walking along the river back at the festival, waiting for that bluegrass band to finish so’s I could put the chairs up, who do I see running through the crowd?” The grin he turned her way was more like a leer. “You. I slipped around the bank building and hid in the
alley, waiting to see what you was doing. Heard you talking with the Baldwin woman. And then I saw my chance. I ain’t never been one to let a chance go by.”
The truck slowed, and Les turned the wheel to maneuver between the trees onto a narrow dirt path Jazzy hadn’t even seen. She saw no lights, no houses, nothing but trees all around. The moon’s white light didn’t penetrate through the branches. All around her was nothing but blackness. The truck bumped and bucked, taking her deeper into the woods.
And then they came to a sudden stop. Les cut the engine and looked at her.
God, please do something. I don’t want to die!
Derrick folded his hands together beneath his chin and pleaded, “Mrs. Kirkland, you’ve got to help us. Where would Les go if he wanted to hide something?”
The old woman sat on a dingy sofa, a metal walker within reach. Her broad face wore a dazed expression as she stared at the worn carpet. “I cain’t believe it. My Lester done kilt my Joshua.”
Compassion warred with the urgency in Derrick’s gut. He wanted to take her by the shoulders and shake the information out of her, but her lost stare kept him on the other side of the room.
Sheriff Maguire stood beside him in the tiny living room, still wearing his tuxedo pants and ruffled shirt. “Ma’am, I can’t imagine how you must be feeling. I’m truly sorry to bring this news to you, but we need your help. A young woman’s life is at stake.”
Hands clasped in her lap, she shook her head with a slow movement that stirred Derrick’s heart. “I want to help you, I do. But I ain’t been out on the property in a coon’s age. I cain’t for the life of me think where he’d hide something.”
This poor woman. Derrick thought of his own mother, of her flushed face as she’d laughed up at him a few short hours ago. He remembered her grief when Dad had passed away. What must this mother be going through? She’d just lost one son, and now they were telling her that the only person she had left in the world was responsible. No comfort he could offer would ever be enough.
Murder in D Minor Boxed Set Page 17