by Sarah Wynde
Neither the drinkers nor the dogs surprised Colin, but if the sighting in Sweet Springs was correct, Natalya was definitely under duress. She’d have to be at gunpoint to eat at McDonald’s. “All right. What do you need, then?” He tilted his head in the direction of the interview room. “She knows something, I’m sure of it. I’m not ready to give up on getting her to talk yet.”
Joyce’s expression held the self-satisfaction of a cat in sunlight. “Not what I need, but what I’ve got.”
“What?”
She pointed down the hallway in the direction of her office. “Your search warrant is printing out as we speak. The judge agreed that under the circumstances, Dr. Latimer’s drawing constituted probable cause.”
“That’s great news.” An unlabeled drawing wasn’t much to build a case on. Colin had done the paperwork to get the warrant, but he hadn’t been sure he’d find a judge willing to accept Natalya’s art as sufficient evidence to support a search. He’d been afraid he’d need to build more of a case first—at the very least, finding a connection between Thompson and Natalya or Kenzi.
“One problem.” Joyce put up a cautionary finger.
“What’s that?”
“No one’s available to conduct the search. We’ve got every warm body answering phones or liaising with search teams.”
Colin ran his hand through his hair, scowling in frustration. He liked working in a small police department. Four full-time deputies, a couple of part-timers, Joyce to run the office, and a forensics unit consisting of one enthusiastic young tech had always seemed like plenty for Tassamara. But they’d never had to investigate a double kidnapping before. And an inadequate search would be worse than no search. “All right, hang on to the warrant. I’ll work on her for a while longer.”
He turned to go back into the room, but Joyce put a hand on his arm to stop him.
“Yeah?” he asked.
“One other thing. I don’t know if this is relevant to this investigation, but you asked me to look into female deaths in the past ten days in the area. I’ve checked everywhere. There haven’t been any.”
Colin blinked in surprise. “None?”
Joyce shrugged. “None that have been recorded. It’s possible, of course, that there’s a body somewhere out there that hasn’t been found yet.” Joyce’s matter-of-fact tone held undercurrents of bleak pessimism.
Colin rubbed his chin, puzzled. He didn’t intend to admit he’d gotten the tip from a ghost, but how could Rose be wrong? And why would she have met a spirit at the hospital if the living person hadn’t died there? “No,” he said slowly. “The death would have happened at a medical facility.”
“Well, no younger women have died in the local area recently. Women under fifty don’t die every day, Sheriff.” He raised an eyebrow and she added, lips pursed, “Not around here, anyway.”
He acknowledged the point with a nod. He’d have to check with Rose, which meant talking to Akira. He glanced at his watch. Under the circumstances, Akira might be waiting with the Latimer family for news, but considering the late hour, her pregnancy, and the long hike they’d had, he suspected she would be sound asleep. Should he wait until morning or call her anyway?
“There is that one woman, though,” Joyce continued, acting as if he ought to know who she was talking about.
“What woman?”
“The drug dealer,” Joyce answered. “The unidentified woman who got shot in that…” She let the words trail off, obviously searching for the right phrase to use.
“Clusterfuck?” Colin suggested.
She gave him a reproving look. “Language, please.”
“Can you think of a better word for it?” Colin lifted an eyebrow.
She snorted. “Not in the least. Fine, clusterfuck, it is. But the Feds still haven’t identified the woman who got shot.”
“She’s not dead, though.”
“No,” Joyce agreed. “But she’s on life support, and apparently there’s no brain activity. They’re looking for next-of-kin so they can shut down the machines and donate her organs if possible.”
So if the spirit Rose had talked to was a drug dealer… Colin wanted to kick himself for missing the connection. He should have thought of that poor unlucky woman the moment they found the plot of marijuana in the forest.
He glanced over his shoulder at the door to the interview room. “When you ran the records check on the Thompsons, did you notice whether they had any kids?”
“One daughter,” Joyce replied promptly. “No criminal records for either of them, but they reported their daughter missing, a runaway, about eight years ago. She was only sixteen at the time.”
Colin’s lips tightened. “Get me the photo of the woman in the hospital, will you?”
He waited silently across the table from Mrs. Thompson until Joyce returned with a printout of the photo the hospital had taken. She’d placed it neatly inside a file folder. As she set it on the table next to him, she murmured, “Coffee?”
“Yes, please,” he said gratefully. “Mrs. Thompson, would you like a cup of coffee?”
“I should be getting home,” she answered, still twisting the tissue in her hands. Little flecks of white dotted her dark skirt. “It’s late. I can’t drink coffee this late.”
“A few more minutes,” he responded, before saying to Joyce, “Maybe some water for Mrs. Thompson.”
Joyce met his eyes. He could see the awareness in hers of what they both suspected was about to happen. She didn’t say anything but she put a hand on his shoulder for a brief moment before nodding and leaving the room.
“I need to get home,” Mrs. Thompson repeated, swallowing visibly.
“Soon, ma’am.” Colin put a hand on the file folder without picking it up. “Several years ago, you reported your daughter missing. Can you tell me about her?”
“Mary?” A sob burst out of Mrs. Thompson’s throat with the word and her hand flew up to cover her mouth. She held the hand over her lips as if to keep any more words imprisoned inside, but her eyes implored Colin not to say any more.
“Have you seen her since then?” he asked.
She nodded. Her voice muffled by her hand, she said, “She came home. Over a year ago. I was so…” She stopped speaking, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. The tears were flowing faster. Almost angrily, she grabbed a fresh tissue from the box and blotted her eyes.
Colin waited.
Mrs. Thompson crumpled the tissue and dropped it on the table. Straightening her shoulders, she said huskily, chin high, “But she’s gone again now.”
“Do you have a picture of her with you?” Colin asked.
“Not a recent one, no.” Mrs. Thompson glanced toward her purse, which was sitting on a chair next to her, placed neatly on top of her folded coat. “One from when she was young.”
“May I see it?”
Wordlessly, Mrs. Thompson reached for her purse and rummaged through it until she found an old, battered wallet. She opened it, fingers steady. Her tears had stopped, Colin noticed. Carefully, she worked a small photograph loose from the vinyl insert, pausing to look at it for a moment before passing it to Colin.
It was a school photo, a headshot of a girl entering adolescence. She had wavy brown hair, brown eyes, fair skin and the wary smile of a child who already knew the world wasn’t a safe place.
Holding the file folder so Mrs. Thompson couldn’t see its contents, Colin compared the two photographs, looking for any distinguishing features that would rule out the relationship. But the photo from the hospital was unrevealing. The woman in it was young, pale, but her eyes were closed, her hair pulled back and partially covered by bandages. He couldn’t say definitively that the two photos showed the same person but he couldn’t say they didn’t either. He’d have to ask Mrs. Thompson to look at the picture.
He closed the folder and set it down on the table, pausing as he sought the right words.
She nodded toward it. “Is she dead?” The words were flat, without emot
ion, as if she’d retreated deep within herself, letting go of her sorrow and fear.
“On life support,” he admitted. “But I can’t tell if she’s your daughter.”
She looked at him for permission as she reached for the folder and he nodded, sliding it across the table to her.
He knew before she said a word. She stared down at the photograph, her face suddenly looking ten years older. “Mary. Oh, my baby,” she whispered. But her eyes stayed dry as she lifted her face to his. “What do you want to know?”
*****
Colin took a gulp of cold coffee and set the cup back in his car’s cup holder before picking up his radio transceiver to report in. He’d accompanied Anne Thompson back to her home and seen her into the capable hands of a neighbor who would drive her to the hospital, an hour away.
Once Mrs. Thompson learned about her daughter’s condition, she’d been far more forthcoming. But his missing person’s case had expanded dramatically. She hadn’t seen her foster children in days.
When Mary didn’t come home for Christmas, her husband had lost his temper, she’d told him. “His temper… and maybe his mind,” she’d said, as her tears started again. “He doesn’t make sense anymore. The things he says—I just don’t understand what’s happened to him.”
Colin was interested, but far more focused on where Jack Thompson might be. Unfortunately, Anne had no idea. He’d been searching for the boys and Mary, not sleeping, not eating, barely home.
“He hurt Jamie, bad,” she’d confessed. “He’s hit them before but never like that. Usually just a smack and then he’d be sorry.”
“You didn’t call for help?” Colin asked, keeping his voice deliberately neutral.
“I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to do. They’d take the boys away.”
Colin had been tempted to throw her in jail. Even if she hadn’t hurt the children herself, foster parents were mandatory reporters: her silence was a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison. Still, that case would have to wait. His first priority was to find the missing children. And Natalya. Always Natalya.
He looked down at the pictures of the boys Mrs. Thompson had given him. Teenage runaways could be hard to track. If they made it to a city, they could disappear. But the younger boys would be harder to hide. People would notice identical twins. And Natalya had said, specifically, that there was a boy at her door. Maybe it was one of these boys?
Mrs. Thompson had admitted, between sobs, that Kenzi was her granddaughter, the illegitimate product of a union between Mary and the man she’d run away with. According to Mary, he’d died, prompting her return home.
His radio crackled to life. “What’s your 10-20, Sheriff?”
Colin frowned at the radio. He didn’t recognize the voice on the other end, and the question was unexpected. Then his frown cleared. “Is that you, Rudean?”
“That’s a 10-4, Sheriff.”
“What are you doing there?” Rudean retired from the sheriff’s department long before Colin became a deputy, but Colin remembered him fondly from his childhood visits to the station. The deputy—old even then—always had a candy bar in his desk to spare for his colleagues’ kids.
“10-30, Sheriff,” Rudean replied, his tone reproving as he suggested Colin was making unnecessary use of the radio.
Colin scratched his nose, his grin wry. Not too many people scolded him these days. “Joyce roped you in to help out, huh?”
“I tried to volunteer for the search, but they said I was too old. Hmph,” snorted Rudean. “Too old. What do they know? I know this place like the back of my hand, every square mile of it. But fine, I told Joyce. Fine. You let me sit on that there radio, I said to her. I can manage it.”
“I’m sure you can.” Colin decided not to mention to Rudean that they no longer used the ten codes. Some departments in Florida still did, but he’d updated Tassamara’s protocols per the Department of Homeland Security’s SAFECOM procedures. Plain English was a lot more efficient.
“So where are you, boy?” Rudean asked.
“Take a look at the screen on top of the dispatch board,” Colin answered.
“10-4,” Rudean responded.
“See the number one? Out on Lassiter Road? That’s me.” The department might be small, but they had the latest GPS technology courtesy of a donation from General Directions.
“10-12, Unit One.” The radio fell silent.
Colin waited, wondering why he was standing by. He needed to get back to the station. He'd accompanied Anne Thompson to her home because she needed a ride and he wanted to get photographs of the boys as expeditiously as possible, but he should be at the center of operations back in town.
“All right, you’re closest,” Rudean finally answered. “10… uh, 10…”
“10-10?” Colin asked, surprised. Although they didn’t use the codes anymore, he didn’t have any trouble remembering them. He’d spent months reciting them before bed every night back in the early days. “Fight in progress?”
“No.” Even over the radio, Colin could hear the snap in Rudean’s voice.
“10-9, dispatch,” Colin responded, fingers tapping on his steering wheel as he asked for a repeat of the message.
“Ah, hell with it,” Rudean muttered, before saying in a stronger voice. “Got a tip. Joyce wants someone to check it out. Some schmo saw lights out at a house on Mud Lake.”
Colin frowned. That didn't sound like much of a lead. Mud Lake? He couldn't even remember which lake that was. “Why me?”
“Joyce said to send the nearest free car. That’s you,” Rudean answered promptly.
“Did she really intend for you to send the sheriff?” Colin questioned. It didn’t sound like Joyce. He was sure she’d want him back at the office, overseeing the action.
“You getting uppity, boy? Too big for your britches?” Rudean admonished him.
Colin rolled his eyes as he turned the key in the ignition and started the car. No wonder Joyce let Rudean take the dispatch duties. She’d probably taken lessons in scolding from him back when Colin was barely out of school.
“All right, Mud Lake it is,” Colin said as he pulled out onto the road. “Where is it?”
“Ah, they call it something pretty now. Some developer bought it up.”
Colin thought, puzzled for a moment and then his face cleared. “Elsinore Lake, right? Got that gorgeous house by that Danish architect on it?”
“That’s the one,” Rudean said, sounding relieved. “Lights in the house apparently.”
“I thought the developer went bankrupt.” Colin felt a trickle of excitement tingle down his spine. “No one lives there.”
“That’s the place,” Rudean said, voice cheerful. “Probably nothing. Fool’s seeing swamp gas.”
“On my way.” Colin slotted the transceiver back into its holder and hit the accelerator. Rudean was right. It was probably nothing. But he'd check it out anyway, as quickly as possible.
Chapter Eighteen
Natalya spread her hands wide. The shattered glass behind her back let in a cold breeze, the chill of the bracing night air against her skin not quite enough to distract her from the throbbing pain in her face. “Mr. Thompson,” she said, her voice as firm as she could make it with shaky adrenaline pouring through her system, “please calm down now. Let Travis go.”
“That don’t work,” snarled Travis, breathlessly struggling to keep Thompson pinned down.
“Demons,” howled Thompson. “The evil must be struck down.” With one huge push, he forced Travis off of him and rolled onto his hands and knees. Shaking his head, he paused for a moment before lurching to his feet.
Travis, sprawled on the floor, pushed himself up onto his elbows. “Run,” he gasped out. “Run. You can’t fix him when he’s like this. You just gotta get outta the way.”
Natalya ignored him. Stepping forward, she used her most authoritative doctor voice, the one that sent interns scurrying in the emergency room. “Mr. Thompson, we need
to get you help. Everything is going to be okay. I need you to trust me. I’m a doctor, and I can help you if you let me.”
If Thompson heard her words, he showed no sign of it. He lifted his head to the ceiling, his eyes glazed. “I can’t, I can’t,” he muttered. “I can’t.” And then, with a groan that sounded like pain, he shook his head as if he were a stunned bull hit by a matador and advanced on Natalya.
She stood her ground, her heart pounding, and said again, voice steady but for a breathless break as he reached her, “Please let me help you.”
But there was no getting through to him.
He reached out for her and grabbed, his hands closing on her shoulders only briefly before they slid up and around her throat. Natalya’s eyes widened and her hands came up, clutching his wrists, trying to wrench them away, to loosen his fingers. Her nails dug into his skin, feeling the give under them, the dig that said she might be drawing blood, but he didn’t relent.
Her head fell back. The pain in her cheek still hurt more than his hands around her throat, but the pressure felt as if it were forcing her larynx back into her vertebrae, a steady weight closing off her air supply. She kicked Thompson, but her bare foot against his shin was a leaf against rock. He didn’t react and her toes hurt. Drawing her leg up, she tried to knee him in the groin, but his legs were close together, preventing her from reaching an angle that could do damage.
“No,” shouted Travis.
He was hitting Thompson, Natalya realized dimly. But her eyes were already fluttering closed. Her chest burned with the pain of her contained breath and now it hurt, her bruised cheek dimming into insignificance against the fire in her lungs.
“You can’t, you can’t, you have to drown her!” Travis sounded frantic. “That’s what the book says. Drowning. That’s what you do, drown evil. Nothing else works!”
The grip on her throat relaxed and Natalya drew in a shuddering breath of air.
“Yes. Drowned in the depth of the sea.” Thompson’s husky voice sounded dazed, almost flat.