“Jesus, Storm, how can you joke about something like this?”
“Because it doesn’t matter, that’s how. It’s over. History. Gone.” God, she wished that were true.
Jason came closer to her, reached up a hand to brush it lightly through her hair. She lifted one of her own to cover it, guided it to the spot where he could feel the misshapen bump, the scar. When he did, his eyes fell closed. “I’d have come if I’d known.”
“Max was there. Until she had to go after the jerk who did it, at least.”
“Did she get him?”
“Not entirely. She fucked up his plans, saved some people he’d intended to hurt as much as he hurt me, set him back a whole lot, but in the end, he got away.” She shrugged. “Someone will put him in the ground sooner or later.”
Jason let his hand remain in her hair a moment longer than he needed to, but then he lowered it slowly. “It means a lot to me, your coming down here like this,” he said.
“We couldn’t not come.”
“I know.” He lowered his head, paced away from her. “I knew that when I called you. I’m not going to let anything hurt you, I want you to know that.”
“That’s an odd thing to say. No one here has any reason to want to hurt me. Do they, Jason?”
“No. Of course not, it’s just—well, hell, you got hurt on your last case, didn’t you?”
She frowned, searching his face, wondering why the stupid flashes that came at the most inopportune times weren’t coming now, when she would have liked them to. If they turned out to be some sort of…of psychism, she would have liked a clue about whatever it was Jason wasn’t saying.
But then Max and Lou were back. “Lou’s in four and we’re in three,” Max called, holding up a diamond-shape plastic key ring with a worn-out numeral on its face and a copper-colored key dangling from the end. “Got you an extra key, Storm, but the pimply-faced adolescent in the office says we’re dead meat if we lose it.”
“That would be Gary,” Jason said.
“I didn’t like him,” Max informed him.
“I guessed that already.” Jason smiled at her. “You haven’t changed a bit, Max. God, it’s good to see you.”
“You, too,” she replied with a smile. Then she hugged him, more firmly than she had before. “It’s gonna be okay, Jay.”
Lou cleared his throat. “Let’s go visit with the local police chief. Best to coordinate with him from the get-go. Even if he isn’t any help.”
Jason seemed to want to argue, but he changed his mind.
Max nodded. “Maybe we can get some lunch while we’re at it? My belly button is touching my backbone.”
“There’s a diner across the road, just a little ways up. And another near the police station in town,” Jason said. “I’ll give the chief a call and let him know we’re coming.”
“If it’s okay with you guys, I’m gonna stay here,” Stormy said. “I can get settled into our room and maybe catch a nap.”
Max frowned at her. Stormy told her with a swift glance not to start in with the “Are you okay?” refrain, and Max, reading that look, kept quiet. “I’ll bring you back a sandwich,” she said instead.
“Thanks.”
Chief Fieldner had red, scraped knuckles. Maxie noticed it right off the bat. She also noticed his pale skin, gaunt face, beady eyes and the mustache that cried out to be trimmed. It hung, white and gray, like a walrus’s whiskers, drooping to his chin on either side of his mouth. She didn’t like him. And she told Lou so the first time the man left their presence, ostensibly to go look through some files or something.
“I don’t like him,” she whispered. Short and to the point.
She was sitting in one of two chairs in front of Fieldner’s spotless, tiger-maple desk. Jason sat beside Max, and Lou stood, his eyes working the room like hawks at a pigeon farm. Though there wasn’t a hell of a lot to see. Couple of phones, a bulletin board with six layers of posters and memos pinned to it. A wall’s worth of filing cabinets and a coffeepot.
His busy eyes slid to hers then. “What’s not to like? He’s no prime hunk of youth,” he said with a pointed look toward Jason, “but—”
“Jesus, Lou, look at him.” Max pretended not to notice the look he sent Jason. If he was a little jealous, fine. Better than fine. But she seriously doubted it was anything like that. He didn’t like Jason. Hadn’t from the moment he’d heard his voice on the phone, and his dislike and distrust seemed to be growing with every minute he spent in Jason’s presence. She couldn’t do anything about that right now, so she kept her focus on the matter at hand. The only cop in Endover. “If it wasn’t daylight outside, I’d peg him for a vamp, no question. And I don’t mean the good kind. Lily-white skin just hanging off his bones like sheets on a clothesline. Nothing underneath. No fat or muscle or…soul. And those eyes.”
“Vamp?” Jason stared at her, his eyes widening.
“As in vampire,” Max whispered.
Lou glanced toward the door through which the cop had gone. The only thing visible back there were file boxes stacked high.
“You don’t suppose he’s found some way to overcome the natural aversion to daylight, do you?” Maxie whispered.
“Jesus, Max, you don’t actually believe in that sort of thing. Do you?” Jason asked.
Maxie and Lou both looked at him. Max said, “You’ve missed a lot since you’ve been gone, pal.”
“I hope you’re planning to fill me in.”
Lou jumped in before Max could answer, steering her back to their conversation. “You’re jumping to conclusions, Max. You’ve got no evidence that Fieldner’s a vamp. You’re just wrought up about Stormy begging off the way she did.”
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 some take-out and head back. I don’t like this town. I don’t like that pimply-faced kid at the Bates Motel back there, either.”
“If we do all that first, that will make it heading for sundown 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 flashlights—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.
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