by Adrianne Lee
Beau’s heart kicked up a beat, and he cautioned himself not to get excited. Or hopeful. It could be bad news. “About Callie’s dress?”
She nodded. “I was going to call you, but I wanted to check out something first.”
The fact she hadn’t called him immediately cooled his jets faster than any talk he’d given himself. The news was not good. “The dress?”
“Oh, sorry. The lab found a speck of blood on the hem. It was not Callie’s. A DNA match popped up in the data base. A Wanda Dillard. She has a rap sheet that crosses state lines, though she’s rarely been convicted.”
The Dillards. He supposed he should feel something about having actually gotten confirmation and physical proof. But it put him no closer to finding Callie, and that left him numb. “She’s either Merry Sue Mann’s mother or a sister.”
Nora Lee’s ice-blue eyes widened; she blew a low whistle. “I’ll be damned. I’d say it’s her mother, then. Age fifty. I’m having her mug shot faxed.”
“There’s a photo of her?” The numbness receded and the first spark of excitement stirred. “How soon will it be here?”
“ASAP. I was hoping to have even more news for you. I just got off with a source I have at the local FBI.
I had him checking to see whether there was a Wanda Dillard listed anywhere in the area. He found an address, but said it came up bogus.”
“Figures.” He propped himself on her desk, arms stiff and palms flat. “Think your source would also check out Wanda Nash and Wanda Bascom?”
“Aliases?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll call him.”
The outer door banged open, and Luanne stormed in, cursing under her breath. “Talk about unprofessional. She really takes the cake.”
“Dr. Warren?” Nora said in a disinterested tone, swinging toward the phone as if anxious not to get into this conversation.
“Who else?” Luanne’s glasses were steamed, her brown curls wild. “You know, if I don’t show up for an appointment, my insurance won’t pay her but she charges me. And I work hard for my money. But when she doesn’t show up, what am I supposed to do? Send her a bill?”
Beau felt as if someone held an icicle against his spine.
“Dr. Warren didn’t show up for your appointment?”
“No. And she didn’t call and reschedule, either. In fact, her office is locked and dark, all the blinds drawn.”
Nora Lee stopped with the receiver halfway to her ear. “That doesn’t sound like Dr. Warren. You can usually set your watch by her schedule.”
Beau agreed. She was obsessive to a fault. His gut pinched, and he tried telling himself it had nothing to do with Deedra’s stolen tapes. But he feared it did. “Make your call, Nora Lee. I’ll check on the doctor.”
He hurried to his office, looked up the doctor’s home and office numbers. He tried her home first. No answer. The machine wasn’t turned on. Odd. He dialed her office number. After five rings he reached her voice mail. The outgoing message said she’d closed for the day, but would be in by nine in the morning. It was yesterday’s tape.
He cursed. His mind conjured nasty scenarios and he prayed he was jumping to conclusions. That she’d had a family emergency or something equally unexpected that hadn’t left her time to notify anyone. But she wasn’t the type to leave her patients hanging. He ran stiffly on his sore leg into the booking area. “Nora Lee, come with me. Luanne, stay here and catch the phones.”
Nora Lee waited until they were in the cruiser. “What’s happening? Where are we going?”
“To Dr. Warren’s office. I have a nasty feeling in my gut, and I hope to hell I’m wrong.” He explained about the doctor’s call, about the missing tapes, about the doctor deciding she didn’t want him nosing into her files. That she would handle it. “I shouldn’t have listened to her. Should have insisted, but with all that’s been going on with Deedra and Callie and…”
“Don’t beat yourself up, Sheriff. Not much you could do if she wouldn’t cooperate.”
He knew that. But maybe if he’d followed through… The thought scattered as he skidded to a stop in front of the doctor’s office. Closed blinds covered the windows. Even in the waiting area, and Dr. Warren never closed those. The pinching in his gut sharpened.
He climbed the porch, Nora Lee right beside him. She took a position on one side of the door, he on the other. He tried the knob. “Locked,” he said, and added a cautioning, “Stand back.”
He lifted his good leg and rammed his boot heel into the door below the knob. Once. Twice. Wood cracked. He kicked harder. The bolt gave in a wrenching clank and the door bounced inward. The waiting room was as dark as the secrets of Dr. Warren’s patients.
Beau drew his weapon from its holster, flicked off the safety and saw Nora Lee had done the same. “Ready?”
She nodded. He entered first. Nora Lee followed. He found a switch. Darkness fled in a glare of bright overhead light. He blinked against the sudden change of focus. Nora Lee checked behind the door, while he moved into the waiting area, gun barrel pointed at the ceiling. His eyes took in every inch of the room. He called, “Dr. Warren, are you here?”
The waiting area held a love seat and two chairs, chosen, he suspected for their uncluttered lines and nonthreatening hues. Plants stood sentinel near the two front windows. Unlike a medical doctor who booked quick appointment after quick appointment, Dr. Warren saw one patient every hour. The visits lasted fifty minutes, assuring no runover of folk to fill her waiting room.
“Dr. Warren?”
Flies circled in the still air. On cat feet, Beau crept toward the end of the room, noting no one had dusted the glass-top tables or straightened magazines or wiped away fingerprint smudges. He doubted the latents left behind would do more than identify the last patients she’d seen yesterday. He called again, “Dr. Warren?”
As he neared the end of the room, he caught it…a familiar sickly sweet stench that made his stomach churn. The smell of death. His heart wrenched. He stopped Nora Lee in her tracks. “You check out her office, I’ll do this room.”
Nora Lee did as directed. “The door’s locked.”
“Then leave it be…for now. And call the M.E.”
Surprise filled her voice, “The medical examin— You mean, she’s dead?”
“Someone sure as hell is.” He tried the door. Unlocked. The stench was intense and he hesitated, knowing what awaited him. Dreading it.
He braced himself and shoved the door inward. The buzz of flies was thick here, colliding with a rhythmic static that echoed through the darkness. He groped for the wall switch. Light stroked over the exercise stand, the minifridge, the half-full bottle of water on its top, and the fly-littered body on the floor. The odor slammed into his nostrils and he reeled back, his gaze glued on Dr. Elle Warren.
It was the first time he’d ever seen her long sandy hair mussed, he realized. It had come free of its band and spilled over the hefty base of the bench’s metal framework, half hiding the doctor’s face. There was no mistaking the identity of the rusty fluid pooled beneath her head. Dried blood.
Damn it. Damned woman. Why hadn’t she let him help?
A Walkman was hooked on the waistband of her workout shorts, and the headset rested near her knee. Static radio music blared from each earphone.
“M.E.’s on his way.” Nora Lee came up behind him, her hand on her nose, her eyes wide with horror. “Oh, God.”
“Yeah,” Beau agreed. He expected she might be sick, but though her eyes remained wide and her skin had paled, she didn’t run out. She hadn’t gotten ill at Nell Carter’s either, reacting less like a rookie and more like an old hand at homicide, and he wondered where and when she’d faced her first dead body.
“Was it an accident?”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Just in case, don’t come in. And don’t touch anything.”
“Of course not.”
“Use your cell phone and get the crime lab over here, too.”
As she m
ade the call, he scanned the room again. The nasty buzz of the flies mixed with the static beat from the earphones scraped against his nerves. He forced his concentration to the doctor. One hand was outstretched, her index finger covered in blood. He studied the floor near it. Had she been trying to print something…in her own blood?
Stepping with care, he inched closer. It looked like a letter, but he couldn’t be sure. He crouched down for a better slant and flies came to investigate the newcomer. He batted them from his eyes. Cursing. Here the static music was louder, too, more irritating.
He reached to shut off the Walkman and froze. The edge of an envelope poked out from under the headset. His pulse lurched to the rhythm issuing from the small radio. He shouldn’t touch the envelope. But he knew he had to. Knew it was for him.
Pinching the edge, he tugged it from beneath her. His mouth dried. His name was on it, written with the familiar hated curlicued E. He didn’t even try to be careful. Just tore open the flap.
“Sheriff?”
Beau jerked and glanced over his shoulder.
Nora Lee’s face registered shock, as though she couldn’t believe he was contaminating a crime scene.
“It’s from the sniper,” he said. “Wanda Dillard. Another note. Left for me. Probably about Callie.”
The shock dissolved into a look of understanding. “What does it say?”
He withdrew the single sheet of paper, and read:
“Oh where, oh where can your Callie be?
You can’t find her and you can’t find me.
But this game’s no fun, if you don’t play.
So I left you a clue in Mann’s cabin today.”
“Wow.” Nora Lee exclaimed. “What a heartless bitch.”
Beau reared up from his haunches. His heart seemed ready to explode. He had to calm down. Had to think.
“You aren’t going there alone,” Nora Lee said. “You know it’s probably a trap.”
“Probably.” He gestured toward the dead psychologist. “But this can’t wait and someone has to stay here and handle the lab and the M.E. I’m counting on you to do that.”
“Then take Heck.”
“No. I don’t want Deedra left without a guard.”
“Then be careful.”
“Don’t worry. That I will be.” He went outside to the car, sucking in the fresh air, hot and cleansing. The M.E.’s wagon pulled up beside his car as he sank onto the seat and phoned the ranch. Pilar answered and he asked for his deputy. When Heck came on the line he assured Beau that Deedra was still asleep.
Beau said, “I’ve received another note from the sniper. She’s supposedly left me a clue to Callie’s whereabouts at Floyd Mann’s cabin. I’m going up there and get it.”
“Nora Lee’s going with you, ain’t she?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll be right there. Wait for me.”
“No. Stay where you are. I don’t want Deedra left alone and vulnerable.”
“Then take Nora Lee. She’s good with a gun and sharp-witted to boot. Couldn’t ask for better backup.”
“I can’t. She has to stay here and handle the details of Dr. Warren’s…death.”
“The doc’s dead? But she was healthy as a horse.” Heck hesitated, belatedly realizing that if the doctor had died of natural causes, there would be no reason for Nora Lee to see to the details. “You sayin’ she was murdered?”
Beau explained. He and Heck rang off, hanging up in sync.
In the upstairs bedroom, Deedra replaced the receiver in its cradle. Her heart skipped along at an alarming rate. She flew off the bed and tossed on clothes. Beau was not going to Mann’s cabin alone.
Chapter Nineteen
“Shanahan’s not here yet.”
“Good. But he will be soon. And I imagine the first thing he’ll do is secure the perimeter. Make sure no one’s waitin’ in ambush.”
“Agreed. We can’t take up position anywhere around the cabin until he’s inside.”
“Let’s beat it back to the car. Won’t do to get caught standin’ here jawin’ when he drives in.”
“Right. We can see the lane from where we parked, and he won’t see us.”
Once they were inside the car the discussion began again. “There he goes. We’ll give him a good five minutes, let him get inside.”
Anticipation crammed the interior of the concealed car. The people crouched inside felt the culmination of all their lying schemes and risky deeds coming to a head. But they knew not to get too cocky.
Nothing ever went exactly as planned.
BEAU PLANNED TO SURVIVE. To get the clue to Callie’s whereabouts and come away from here intact. He backed his car into a pull-off, going in deeply enough to conceal the cruiser but leaving himself ease for a fast getaway.
As he raced up the lane, he felt keyed up. He fought the urge to rush inside the cabin. He palmed his gun and studied the ramshackle structure from a secure spot in the underbrush.
It looked deserted. But no one knew better than Beau how deceiving looks could be. Hate spread over his heart like a dark shadow. “Are you in there?” he whispered. “Just waiting for me?”
He crept through the underbrush as quietly as the wind, every step on the rocky ground no noisier than a rattler slithering through a dry river bed. If she was in there, he wanted her. Wanted her alive more than he would have ever thought possible.
He’d kicked the door in last time he was here. It still hung off its hinges. He watched for several heart-trembling minutes. Nothing moved behind the splintered wood. It made him feel no better. She might be in the other room. Might be as patient and as cautious as he.
He circled the cabin. Once. Twice. Startled birds took flight. Squirrels skittered. Bees buzzed in wild-flowers. But he saw no movement from behind the windows.
Maybe she was outside. Watching him.
A shiver scurried across his flesh. He stepped with the caution of a lamb being stalked by a cougar. He sensed the predator but he couldn’t see her. One misstep and it could all go wrong. So wrong…
He couldn’t crouch here waiting for something to happen. He had to see what she’d left him in that cabin. The clue that would lead him to Callie. He rose up off his haunches and tightened his grip on his gun. Sweat slid beneath his Kevlar vest to settle in the small of his back. “It’s now or never, Shanahan.”
He ran in a zigzag pattern to the porch. No one fired at him. He flattened himself against the building. His chest rose and fell in fast bumps. He waited two minutes. He shoved through the broken door. Without stopping to do more than peruse the main room, he rushed to the bedroom.
Through the murky light he saw that the closet door stood open, as did the hatch cover to the hidey-hole. A dark stain smeared the wooden slats where he’d fallen after being shot by Mann. His blood. A pang of pain stabbed his knee as if in remembrance. He drew a shuddery breath, pulling in the stink of cold wood fires and bacon fat.
He was alone. But for how long? He needed to find what she’d left and get the hell out of here. His gaze landed on the cradle. Something poked from beneath the baby blanket and he recoiled as he remembered the awful encounter with the rubber doll. He shook himself and strode back to the main room.
His eyes had begun to adjust to the shadowy light. He held his back against the doorjamb. It gave him the advantage of seeing both rooms at once. And it gave him the upper hand should he need to get out fast.
Rat droppings and critter paw prints disturbed the dust coating the pinochle-size table, its two straight-back chairs, the rockers and the sideboard. But there was nothing left by any human vermin. He shifted his gaze across the stove and the shelves above. Nothing.
The rumble of a motor outside galvanized him. His heart boomed. Who was it? Her? He raced to the window. As he realized whose car it was and who was inside it, he swore. His fear jumping notches higher than before.
He ran to the porch, confronting Deedra and Heck as they hurried toward him. “Get down.” He swore. �
��Keep down.”
He caught her hand and pulled her into the cabin. “Damn it, Dee, you shouldn’t be here. It’s too dangerous.”
She snapped back. “It’s too dangerous for you to be here alone.”
He shook his head. Knowing it was a waste of time arguing with his stubborn, beautiful wife, he turned and glared at his deputy. “What the hell were you thinking bringing her here? I told you to stay with her at the ranch. Can’t you follow a simple order?”
Cowed, Heck glanced at Deedra. “I told you he’d skin me alive for bringin’ you to this place.”
“Don’t be upset with Heck, Beau. The phone woke me, and I listened in on your conversation. I heard about Dr. Warren, and I wasn’t about to let you walk into a trap. Most certainly not alone. Your deputy came along to protect me and help you, if need be.”
Scowling, he stepped back to the door and again scanned the perimeter. He didn’t see anyone, but the hair on his nape prickled. The sensation of someone watching.
“I don’t like this, Dee. I wish you hadn’t come.” His gaze pinned Heck. “And you and I will discuss it later.”
“Have you found it yet?” Deedra gazed around the room, hugging herself. Purple underscored her eyes, and the lines around her mouth were drawn taut. “The clue about Callie?”
“No. But I just started looking. I don’t think it’s in this room.”
“The other room?” Deedra glanced at the open jamb and started for it. Beau followed, feeling the inexplicable sense that he should stay as close to Deedra as he could. He watched her take in the room, the hidey-hole, the dark stain. Saw her put it together. Realize it was his blood on that spot. She trembled but gazed at the trap door. “What’s down there?”
“A cellar of sorts. Dug from the soil.”
She nodded and stepped to the closet, looked inside. “How about up there?”
“Bat guano.”
Deedra stepped back and spun toward him but stayed at the closet. She studied the bedroom, and Beau again felt the creeping sense that he shouldn’t allow any distance between them. Even a short one. He moved to her side.