Web of Lies

by Brandilyn Collins

  Briefly I told Chelsea about the shooting I’d witnessed and the possibility of two missing people — Amy Flyte and a young man not yet identified. “Amy has brown hair. She might be the girl in your vision. And I’m wondering if the person whose body you were in is the young man.” I studied Chelsea’s expression for the slightest hint of recognition. If God had given her this vision — and I believed He had — He could continue talking to her, right? Give her new impressions?

  She focused on my words, her body still. When I finished, she eased back in the chair, gaze drifting to my desk. For a moment her eyes closed, as if she were praying. It struck me then — the deep level of her caution. This woman would not be swayed to believe one iota more than what God showed her. If anything, her fear of doing so might lead her to err on the side of being too cautious.

  Chelsea shook her head. “Annie, I know you hope my vision can shed light on your case. But I don’t know.” She spread her hands. “I don’t feel anything one way or another. Logic tells me that, with the timing of all this, the vision is relevant. But again, that’s just my logic, not a knowledge God has given me.”

  Disappointment pulled at my mouth. I worked to keep my expression placid. So what am I supposed to do, God? If You’re going to send somebody a vision, why don’t You fill in the details that count?

  Chelsea tilted her head and shrugged — a gesture that looked almost childlike. “I know you’re frustrated. I wish I could tell you more, I really do.” She pushed to her feet and wandered aimless steps away from me, one hand rising to her neck.

  I watched with a half-wary silence. This woman’s ability to read me was on a par with Jenna’s. More than a little disconcerting, considering we’d just met. Yet she was candid enough to voice her perceptions and she responded with understanding. Had to admit, that was better than Jenna’s arguments.

  Chelsea turned back to me, her voice thickening. “My problem is the same as yours. Always has been. I wish God would tell me everything. Sometimes He does. I’ve had visions where I saw enough to know exactly what I was supposed to do and why. Other times, I know what to do, but nothing about why. I’m left with more questions than answers. And I tell you, every time it’s like — ” she brought her palms together, moving them up and down — “like stepping off a cliff. I know God will bring me to safety. He’s never failed me yet. But I’m like you, Annie. I just wish I knew everything from the beginning.”

  Something inside me shifted. Watching Chelsea struggle, I felt resolve flow through my own limbs. Then, bam, memories from the Poison Killer case hit. I leaned forward, fists pressed against my legs. “If we knew everything up front, Chelsea — ” my voice was low — “we’d be too scared to walk off that cliff.”

  She dropped her hands. “I know. You’re so right.” She returned to her chair, sank into it. Summoned the ghost of a smile. “Okay. So. Now that I’ve got that out of my system, maybe I should describe the face I saw after the vision?”

  Yes, the composite. Back on familiar ground. As I reached for my drawing pad and pencil, a new thought wafted into my brain. What if this face was the face of the captor, not the second captive? What if that face belonged to Orwin Neese?

  I looked at Chelsea expectantly. “Ready if you are.”

  Chapter 17

  For a week now he hadn’t seen the second spider.

  Thing had to be dead. Probably eaten by the female.

  He stroked the side of the terrarium with a finger. Good reason these babies were sometimes called widow spiders. After mating, she’d just gobbled him up.

  See? Murder happened even in nature. No big thing. Besides, who cared? The female was bigger and more interesting to watch.

  He drew his mouth down, idly wondering how many males would hatch from the sac. Would their sisters mate with them, then eat them up too?

  Women were plain deadly.

  He squinted through the glass, looking for the spider. Most of his specimens were in the basement, but he’d brought this terrarium up for a few days. Soon he’d exchange it for another. Kept the fascination fresh that way.

  Yeah. There was the female. He could barely see her under those twigs in the corner. Sleeping. Button spiders were nocturnal.

  He tilted his head, studying the messy web. He could see the egg sac, full of promise. Can’t wait till those little buggers pop. But as for stored food in the web — nada. Lazy little mama, eating and sleeping her life away. She’d soon need the fly he’d trapped in a jar. He glanced at the insect buzzing against the glass and laughed low in his throat. You’re about to come to a bad end, pal.

  He reached for the jar, remembering a story he’d read about the black button spider. The reason he just had to have a pair. They weren’t usually deadly, but their bite was bad news. Nausea, headaches, muscle cramps, banging pulse, mucho pain, and local nerve damage. In South Africa, where they were found, a young boy had been bitten on the arm while helping his daddy with the corn harvest. Kid had screamed himself to death. Literally.

  He grated out a laugh.

  Wouldn’t it be cool to watch something die from this little mama’s venom? He scratched his thigh, thinking it over. Some small animal. Like a hamster or a kitten. No, not a hamster. Too quiet. At least a kitten could mew.

  Wonder how long it would take . . .

  He tapped the glass. Come out, come out, pretty spider. All black and silky, so proud of that red-orange hourglass tattoo.

  The spider slept on.

  He sniffed. Wiped his nose. Time to feed the beast. Sorry, little fly. Your end has come.

  With one hand he held the jar, and with the other, slid the top of the terrarium aside a few inches. Unscrewing the cap, he held it in place and turned the jar over near the open space of the terrarium. Here came the tricky part. Lose enough flies, you learn to be fast. He moved aside the cap, thrust the jar into the terrarium, and shook it. The fly tumbled out. Quickly he pulled back the jar and slid the glass top in place. The fly careened into a side of the terrarium, backed up, and buzzed into it again.

  Trapped! Only a matter of time now, buddy.

  His mouth curved in a slow smile as he screwed the cap back on the jar.

  Chapter 18

  For the next hour Chelsea and I worked on the composite. As anxious as I was to see the face, I had to force myself to concentrate. Would these be the features of Orwin Neese?

  As the interview progressed, it became clear the face was not Orwin’s. Who then? Perhaps the second captive after all? The young man Orwin had also threatened to kill?

  But these questions were pushed aside as a new concern infiltrated my thoughts. Chelsea’s description of details was acute. Almost too acute. This vague smear of suspicion began to coagulate, then harden. I tried to battle through it but couldn’t deny what my training had taught me. Studies of the interview process have shown that a witness who describes a face extremely well isn’t necessarily all that accurate. Some people are simply better with words than others, while their memories may be faulty. A few times in the past I had produced composites that highly confident interviewees swore were right, only to find later that the drawings were less on target than others from more tentative witnesses.

  God, has Chelsea fixed details in her mind to a fault? Please don’t let her go too far astray.

  The worries pulled at me. I worked to keep a poker face, even as my heart picked up speed. We couldn’t get this wrong. If these features weren’t accurate, if they never led to an identification, where would we be then? Always wondering where this person was, what had happened to him . . .

  On the other hand, if this was the man missing along with Amy, authorities already had her picture. That alone may be enough to lead police to both of them.

  Then again, if we didn’t need this composite, why did God send Chelsea here in the first place?

  Minutes ticked by. My palms dampened and I wiped them on my jeans. Chelsea must have noticed my anxiety, but she never let on. She spoke with patience. Calmne
ss. Not once did she waver in her memory or change her mind. After what seemed like a long time, the general essence of the face was complete. I pulled in a breath and studied the drawing.

  Small, deep set eyes. Would they alter in the refining process? A somewhat flat nose, thin lips. Narrow jawline and prominent ears. Interesting features. Distinctive.

  “Okay.” I smiled at Chelsea. “Here’s what we have so far. There will probably be things to change, and we can do that one feature at a time.” I handed the drawing pad to her.

  She looked at it, slow satisfaction planing across her face. “Wow. It’s not far, really. Just . . . a few details.”

  “Sure.” I flipped to a page in the FBI Identification Catalog. “Let’s start with the eyes. Any of these closer to the real thing?”

  One by one the features took final shape. When the composite was finished, I handed the drawing to Chelsea once more. “Does everything look right now?”

  With one glance Chelsea pulled her head back, as if shocked to see the face fully translated from memory to paper. “Yes, absolutely. That’s him.” She stared at the drawing, lips parted. “I don’t know how you do it. This is just . . . it’s right.”

  Oh, Chelsea, I hope so.

  She handed the drawing pad back and I laid it on the desk. Whatever my lingering doubts, I would not voice them. Together we had done the best we could.

  Now what?

  The composite beckoned me, humming for attention. I found myself looking through it until the features blurred. The projector in my head kicked on, throwing out imagined pictures of

  Amy and this man, huddled in the middle of a concrete floor. He is talking to her, trying to keep her calm. Amy’s shoulders are drawn in, hands fisted at her waist. She whimpers, afraid to move, afraid to lift her head. A large black spider creeps toward her ankle. Tests her skin with one leg, then crawls upward. Amy screams, smacks it off . . .

  I pressed my eyes shut.

  “Annie?” Chelsea’s voice pulled me back. “You okay?”

  I shook my head. “Yes. Sorry. I just . . . I’m thinking all kinds of things. If this is the man we believe is missing, and if he’s with Amy Flyte, this drawing could help save them. Amy’s picture is being distributed in the media, but if it produces no leads as to her whereabouts, maybe this one will.”

  If it’s on target.

  Chelsea nodded. “But we don’t know for sure. So what do we do?”

  There was only one answer, but I didn’t want to admit it. Not at all. I thought of Tim Blanche, his attitude toward me. Lord, I don’t want to do this. Leaning my head back, I swiveled my chair a slow quarter turn to gaze out the window. Dave was outside, kneeling by his front sidewalk, pulling weeds. At the unexpected sight, my heart tumbled. Suddenly I longed to run across the street, feel his arms around me, beg him to tell me what to do.

  “We should pray about it,” Chelsea said.

  I turned back to her. “Yes, but we can’t sit around waiting for a definitive answer, because we both know God doesn’t always give them. In the meantime, if this — ” I gestured at the composite — “is who I think he is, the scene in your vision has already happened. And we’ve got two people who need to be found now.”

  Chelsea inhaled slowly. “You think we should go see the detective working the case, don’t you.” It wasn’t a question.

  Mentally I thrashed about for a denial. Tried to imagine shoving this composite in my desk drawer, doing nothing. Why couldn’t I do that? We didn’t know for sure that it had anything to do with Amy Flyte. But if it did? If she and this young man were shut up in that room, praying for help . . .

  “Yes, I do.”

  Chelsea ran a hand across her forehead. “Thing is, I’ve been down that road in the past. And the police didn’t believe me.”

  “I know.” I said the words gently, hoping she would hear the empathy behind them. “And this detective . . . I have to warn you about him. He’s not exactly fond of Christians in general — or me, in particular.”

  Chelsea drew herself up with a weary sigh. The dejection in her face surely mirrored my own. “Great. Then we’d really better pray.”

  We bowed our heads and Chelsea began. “Lord, we’ve come this far and now we need guidance from You.”

  Vaguely I registered the sound of the front door closing hard. Swift footfalls across the great room floor. Probably Kelly, on some critical teenage mission to fetch something from her bedroom.

  “ . . . so, Lord, I ask that You lead us. You’ve brought us together, and we trust . . .”

  The feet grew closer, then muted. Whoever it was had hit the carpet of the hallway.

  “ . . . open our ears so we can hear . . .”

  My office door burst open. I jerked up my head. Chelsea swung around in her chair.

  Jenna stood in the threshold, hair windblown, breath in puffs. “You’d better get over to the runway.” She twisted her mouth. “You’re not going to believe this. The digging crew just uncovered a skull.”

  Chapter 19

  Chelsea perched in the backseat of Annie’s SUV, mind whirling as Annie hurriedly backed out of the garage. A skull discovered — now? Was this why God called her here?

  But if that was the reason, her vision happened long ago . . .

  “You call the Sheriff’s Department?” Annie asked her sister. Jenna sat in the front passenger seat.

  “Yeah.” Jenna heaved a sigh. Her fingers drummed against the dashboard. “Why does this have to happen here? Now? They’ll close the area as a crime scene, and the runway will never get fixed.”

  Annie flicked Chelsea an anxious look through the rearview mirror, as if she were afraid of how her sister might sound. Chelsea gave her a wan smile — It’s okay.

  They made a few turns through the neighborhood and soon were on Grove Landing’s taxiway. Up ahead Chelsea could see the confusion that the gruesome discovery had wrought. Three crewmen wandered at the paved end of the airstrip, gesturing with wide arm motions and talking into cell phones. Beyond them lay a large area of newly overturned soil, tree stumps, and brush. A dirt-caked backhoe hulked off to the side, like a pouting warrior told to stand down.

  Annie pulled the car to a stop some distance from the work area. “Better leave room for all the folks who are going to descend.”

  “Yeah, well, they better get here pretty soon,” Jenna mumbled. “If I hadn’t been here and seen that skull come up, I swear those guys would have kept on working. I practically had to stand in front of them to get them to stop.” She folded her arms. “Drat it all.”

  Annie shook her head.

  Jenna glowered at her. “What?”

  “Nothing. You’re just . . . being you.”

  With a huff Jenna opened her car door. Chelsea pressed her lips in amusement. Jenna was one feisty gal, so different from her quiet sister. Annie turned and smiled at Chelsea almost timidly, as if relieved that she didn’t seem to judge Jenna. With that silent exchange, Chelsea caught a glimpse of Annie’s soul. The woman cared deeply about what others thought of her and her family.

  They clambered out of the car.

  At the three women’s approach the crewmen clipped off their phone conversations. “Thanks for halting everything,” Annie called. She walked to the end of the broken pavement, shading her eyes. Chelsea and Jenna followed.

  The skull lay about fifteen feet away. Chelsea scanned the dirt around it. Was that a bone she saw, lying to the right?

  “We stopped as soon as we saw it.” One of the men, tall and with a big stomach, gestured toward the skull.

  Jenna snorted. Annie paid her no attention. “Did you see anything else? Any other bones?”

  A second man, with a wiry build and leathery face, pointed. “That’s a long bone there. Like maybe an arm.”

  “I see it,” Chelsea said. “And look over there. Something else that’s white?” Her thoughts tumbled. Was a whole skeleton out there, scattered? How long would it take a body in this environment to degrade t
o bone?

  They milled around, waiting for the arrival of a detective from the Sheriff’s Department named Ralph Chetterling — the same man Chelsea had talked to yesterday. After a long fifteen minutes he pulled up in an unmarked vehicle. He climbed out, straightening his massive frame, and walked over to meet them.

  “Hi, Jenna. Hey, Annie, long time no see.” His dark brown eyes searched Annie’s face. “Hear you folks found something of interest.”

  Something of interest? What a way to put it.

  “Hi, Ralph. They found it.” Annie indicated the men, explaining their work on the runway.

  He scanned the site. “Anybody been out there since then?”

  “No. We’ve waited for you.” Annie introduced Chelsea to the detective. He shook Chelsea’s hand, curious eyes lingering upon her. No doubt he wondered why she’d needed to see Annie so badly. Chelsea cringed inside. She knew her reputation preceded her, and now look what had happened. Almost as if her very presence had caused this. I’m so sorry this is happening, she wanted to say. Instead she offered the man a weak smile.

  Chetterling nodded, then turned away, his demeanor turning all business. “All right. Let’s get to this.”

  The area soon morphed into a full-fledged investigative scene. As more officials arrived, Annie told Chelsea who they were. Matt Stanish, from the coroner’s office, appeared first, followed by Jim Cisneros, an investigator with the Shasta County Sheriff’s Department. The three men ventured into the dirt-churned area. Annie, Chelsea, and Jenna sidled to the very end of the pavement to watch. Matt Stanish picked up the skull first and examined it. He held it close to his nose and sniffed.

  “Ooh.” Chelsea brought a fist to her lips.

  “No smell.” Stanish looked to Chetterling. “Been here at least a year, but could be much longer.” He turned it over, looked at the cranium. “Got a piece missing.” He touched the back top portion.

  Detective Chetterling leaned in for a look and grunted. “Foul play, maybe? Someone hit in the head?”