I considered Bennett a few seconds, and then I pushed through the thick foliage.
Chapter Seven
Day Two: 4:00 p.m.
“Ava!”
The three fell silent. The man leaned against the Land Rover and flipped a loaded key chain round and round his finger. The bill of his ball cap cast darkness across his face.
“I see you’ve recovered since yesterday,” I said to Ava while the others stared at my wet clothes and hair. “I took a tumble in the river,” I tried to explain.
“Special Agent Hansen!” Ava finally decided to acknowledge me, and then turned to the other teen. “That’s the police officer I was telling you about.” Her eyes lit with excitement when she looked back at me. “I wanted to show them where I found the bodies.”
“I bet you were popular at school today. People love a good crime scene story.” I extended my hand to Ava and then the teen next to her. Unlike Ava, this young woman gave me a suspicious look and was hesitant to shake my hand. Instead of giving me her name, she asked, “How did you find us?”
“I heard the voices from the river. It looks like you all have a regular hangout in the clearing.”
I turned to the man who had yet to introduce himself and offered my hand. His cautious frown opened to a big smile. “Cody Allard,” he shared with enthusiasm. “I’m not sure what you thought you saw out there, but I’m one of the coaches at the high school. I bring the team up here to run,” he said with an arc of his arm.
I made a mental note of his suspicious phrase—I’m not sure what you thought you saw—and immediately thought of Linda Clarke. Sanders had said she was able to quickly turn on the charm for law enforcement and the courtroom. I’d just seen a similar shift in personality from Allard once he realized I wasn’t going away.
“Special Agent Luce Hansen from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation,” I said. “I’m investigating the recent deaths in the area.”
“It’s very sad,” Allard said. “The entire town is mourning.”
“I’m surprised to find you so close to the place where the bodies were found, Ava. It must bring back some scary memories.”
She nodded and the pile of blond hair tied on top of her head bobbed back and forth. “I had nightmares last night, but I really wanted to show my friends. Sometimes it feels like it didn’t really happen, you know?”
“It can be disorienting,” I said. I understood what she meant—after I found Marci’s body when I was sixteen, I also went through periods where it seemed like a nightmare or a horror movie I watched rather than reality. It was the mind’s way of protecting itself by only giving as many images as one could mentally take. While Ava’s quick return to the scene seemed odd, there was strength in numbers, particularly for teens. What interested me more than Ava, however, was the relationship between the other teen and Mr. Allard. Those two seemed to share a connection that didn’t include Ava; I recognized the looks that passed between them, a communication that Ava wasn’t privy to. Both the other teen and Mr. Allard looked uncomfortable. Whether that was because of my presence or simply the location, I couldn’t be sure.
“Where is the rest of your team?” I asked Allard.
He shrugged and gave another million-dollar smile. “You know teenagers. They finished their run and didn’t want to hang around to talk to this old man.” His forced laugh only drew my attention to the fact that he was not an old man at all—he looked to be in his late twenties.
“Could I see your ID?”
Allard smiled even bigger. “Sure.”
The photograph on the ID matched the person in front of me—a twenty-six-year-old white male.
Suddenly, I recognized the teen beside Ava. “Sadie Reid?”
She nodded. Here was the young woman I’d heard so much about. Sadie, the daughter of Wilma Henderson, and the one Ava had been so worried about when she found the dead bodies.
“I met your mother yesterday. We talked about the women who have been murdered, her tattoo, and recovery.”
“Heart to Heart?” Ava immediately recognized she’d spoken without thinking and caught a dirty look from Sadie. In an attempt to hide her sudden blush, Ava looked at her feet. Her reaction told me Sadie was in charge and that Ava probably spent a good deal of her time trying to impress Sadie.
Sadie’s body went rigid while everyone fell silent. And then she made one movement so minor most would miss it. Her left hand fell flat against her thigh, the exact same movement someone would have made to hide a tattoo on her inner wrist.
“Well, it sure is a great view from the clearing,” I said. “You can see everything for a good quarter mile. Since the bodies were found right below here in the river…”
“I’m sorry, Agent,” Allard said. “We haven’t seen or heard anything. Like I said, the team just comes to these hills to run on occasion. We haven’t been out here in weeks.” He reached for Ava’s elbow, leading her toward the passenger door. Sadie followed to the back door. “If there’s nothing else, I need to get back to school.”
“I understand,” I said. “Quick question before you go, Mr. Allard. Why does a weight lifting team need to run?”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t know much about weight lifting, but isn’t it a non-aerobic sport?”
“Running builds stamina,” he said, and climbed into the Land Rover.
The thing was, no one was sweating. If they’d just finished their team run, as Allard indicated, I expected at least a little perspiration.
Ava gave me a little wave, and Allard stepped on the gas pedal. I stood there on the dirt track until there was nothing left to see.
Bennett stepped out of the foliage.
“You get some pictures?” I leaned down and examined the tire tread markings of Allard’s SUV. Other vehicles had driven on the dirt path as well.
She nodded. “I texted the license plate to Richardson.”
“Good call,” I said. “Do you know where this road leads?”
“My guess is that it winds down the hill and catches up with the main road along the river. It looks like a service road to these fields.” She pointed to the corn growing on the opposite side of the road. “It’s really hidden. You’d need to know the path was here.”
I looked over at the place where Bennett and I had come through the foliage. Just as it was along the river’s bank, there was very little indication of a footpath behind the thick line of trees. No one would guess the wooded area held a clearing only a few steep yards down the hillside. Any vehicle parked along the single lane would be well hidden from anyone on the river or any of the major roads surrounding us.
“May I use your cell to call Riley?”
She handed me the phone. “What’s up?”
“We’ve found the killer’s entry point to the river,” I said, and thumbed behind me into the woods. “It’s the path the killer used to drop the bodies on the land bars.”
*
It wasn’t that I hadn’t thought about the shared tattoo’s image: heart to heart. However, hearing Ava say the words out loud made it seem like a concept, a very real place of gathering, rather than just a catchy phrase inside my head. I sat down with Bennett on a fallen tree trunk as heart to heart rolled through my mind like a mantra. I’d alerted Riley, and the team was on its way. “Don’t touch anything,” he told me. “You need a forensic investigation suit. The crime scene investigators need to comb through everything.”
Autumn colors surrounded Bennett and me as we waited for the team, trees filled with fiery reds and oranges, bright yellows, and greens. Without a cloud in the late-afternoon sky, everything glistened with the rumbling sounds of the river rolling along below us.
Bennett gave me a solid look up and down and chuckled. I looked ridiculous; wet clothing hung from my body, and I was coated in mud from the knees down. My braid had fallen out, and I knew my hair frizzed around my face as it air-dried.
“There is a very good reason for my appearance,” I tol
d Bennett. “I’m hiding my stealth detective skills behind an incompetent veneer. No one sees me coming.”
“Ah, so that’s what’s really going on here. It’s quite a disguise.” Bennett reached out for my cheek, and her fingers rubbed along my jawline. “I’m not sure how the mud made it onto your face.”
I let her fingertips rub away the streak of mud, feeling the electricity beneath her touch.
“There,” Bennett said. “Rocker-cool as ever.” With the sunglasses perched on top of her head, I could see her brown eyes were flecked with gold. Kaleidoscope eyes.
Then, just as suddenly as the moment came on between us, I fell back on my usual escape: talk of work.
“Ava responded to the word recovery,” I said. “Heart to Heart sounds like the name of a church group or some kind of recovery program. It could be a program that involved our newly sober victims.”
Bennett agreed. “It’s a touchy-feely title for sure, but I haven’t heard of any drug rehab programs using that name in this area. It could be located out of town in Columbus or Cleveland.”
I thought about my interview with Jill Chamberlain. She said her mother called from the Wallace Lake area about her recovery. She also said her mother was working with a group of women on that recovery. “Maybe it’s not a recovery program but some sort of a sober living or halfway house.”
Bennett considered the option and nodded. She added, “What is up with that creepy coach, anyway? He was alone in the woods with two teenage girls. Ava, at least, is his student. Sadie might have graduated, but she’s still a teenager. Do you think they saw something, maybe the drop of the bodies?”
“They all are hiding something—I’m just not sure what it is.”
What was taking the team so damn long? It was torture to wait so close and not be able to investigate the area. I wanted to go back to the clearing and look at its view of the river once again. I knew the damage my footprints could do, though, and the possibilities of contaminating the scene.
While we waited, I decided to test my theories out on someone new now that the ghost of my father was virtually gone.
“Did you ever study the Linda Clarke case?”
“The BWS Killer?” She waited for my nod. “Yeah, I did. We spent a lot of time on her case when I studied poisons.” As soon as she said poisons, she gave me a quizzical look. “What are you thinking?”
“The BWS Killer case broke the mold of other black widows, and I keep thinking about where and how Clarke positioned the bodies. And her motive for murder.”
“Money.”
“There was a point to Clarke’s murders besides money: punishment,” I said. “She tortured and punished each of her victims for her pleasure. You could say she liked to play with her prey. I have a feeling our killer also enjoys the process.”
“Hmm. A gut feeling.”
I smiled. “Not something a scientist or medical doctor takes seriously, huh?”
“I try, and quite frankly, I’m jealous. I’d love to have instincts that guide me toward the truth. Besides, I’ve heard through the law enforcement grapevine that you are known for your gut reactions. In the past, at least, your gut instincts have been correct.”
We both stood at the sound of vehicles climbing the dirt road. The fleet of vans rolled into view and parked along the rows of cornfields. Within minutes, the entire hillside was crawling with investigators in Tyvek suits and booties. Yellow tent markers dotted the landscape and two detectives took molds of Cody Allard’s tire tracks that still lingered in the mud.
“We’ll need to bring in the three people you found up here for questioning in the morning,” Captain Riley told me. “Richardson’s running searches on them all now, and we’ll see if anything turns up.” He looked around the area. “You think the killer drove the bodies up here and then carried them down the hill into the river? That method would have taken a lot of strength.”
“Maybe they used something like a four-wheeler. Once in the water, the killer could have guided the floating body to the land bar.”
Riley brought the radio to his mouth and told the investigators to look for evidence of a tool or vehicle used on the hillside.
“Ladies,” he told us. “We are in for a long night.”
*
By the time we reached Bennett’s truck and had the kayaks loaded in the back, it was after midnight. I was hungry and needed a hot shower. Clean clothes never sounded better. I rolled down the passenger window when Bennett started the engine.
Bennett turned on the interior light and held out her hand to me. In her palm lay a stone still moist from the river, rusty red and smooth as glass.
“I collect a stone every time I float,” she explained.
I immediately understood. “For the stone jar in your office.”
She smiled. “Observant, too.” She reached for a Sharpie in the glove box and wrote on the stone’s surface: H & B Float 1. “I have another stone jar I keep at home. But this one is for you.”
I turned the river rock over in my hand, letting my fingertips trace its smooth edges. “What is a float?”
She shifted the truck into drive and we wound away from the river. “It’s what we call a kayaking experience.”
She’d labeled the stone as the first float. I found myself hopeful that the future held more floats with Bennett and more collected rocks for her stone jar.
While Bennett drove, I held the smooth rock in my hand and couldn’t help but think of Marci. She’d given me stones as well—she called them Marci stones found inside the limestone caverns where we used to meet. Those stones were different, though, weak and pocked full of holes with multiple layers as thin as a fingernail width. This river stone was solid and smooth, a significant weight in the palm of my hand.
I’d retrieved my cell phone from the kayak’s compartment and had four missed calls from a blocked number. I turned the phone facedown on my thigh; I’d deal with that in the morning. Bennett pulled onto a main road headed back to town when my cell rang. Unidentified Caller.
“Hansen.”
“Special Agent Hansen?” a male voice asked.
“This is she.”
“It’s Gary. From Gary’s Girls? This could be nothing, but you said to call about anything that seemed odd to me. I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“Yes?” He had my full attention.
“It’s Wilma Henderson. The woman you spoke to earlier?” He took an audible breath. “Well…it’s just that…”
“What’s happened, Gary?”
“Wilma’s gone.”
Chapter Eight
Day Three: 1:45 a.m.
I handed Sadie Reid a Styrofoam cup of station house coffee, which was never much better than caffeinated hot sludge. She wrapped her shaking hands around it; her black painted fingernails had been chewed down to the quick.
Sadie sat beside her grandmother, clinging to a tissue, though neither shed many tears. I was surprised they were both willing to come to the station in the middle of the night, but with Wilma missing, they both said they couldn’t sleep.
“I’ve learned to expect the worst from my daughter,” Mrs. Henderson said. “Lord knows I’ve done my best, but Wilma is hell-bent on destroying herself. It wouldn’t be half as bad if it wasn’t also hurting this one.” She thumbed over to Sadie.
Sadie’s dark eyes were bloodshot, and she sat across from Harvey and me in a steely posture, as if she was prepared to hear the absolute worst from us. “Sadie, we have to investigate all possible suspects. Is your father a part of your life?”
She shook her head and looked down at her lap. “He died.”
Sadie’s grandmother filled in the story for us. Sadie had spent a good deal of time with her father until he died in a boating accident on Wallace Lake when she was five. He’d been fishing in one of the deepest parts of the lake at night after a day of heavy drinking. He managed to fall into the water and couldn’t save himself.
“I’m very sorry,” I told Sad
ie, who wouldn’t look up from her lap.
“Has your daughter disappeared before?” Harvey asked.
“Oh, sure, but not for quite a few years now. The last time this happened, she left Sadie on my doorstep with a note of apology. Wilma said she had to get away and wanted me to take Sadie. At least Wilma recognized she didn’t have the ability to be a good parent.”
“Is that when you gained custody of Sadie?” I asked.
She nodded. “Sadie was so young then.” She reached over and rubbed an arthritic hand over Sadie’s back. “Once the legal issues had been settled, Wilma came around again. She was never one for taking responsibility or for making apologies.”
“That was a long time ago,” Sadie said. “My mom wouldn’t leave now. Something must have happened to her.”
“How do you know that?” Harvey asked.
“I just know.” Frustrated, Sadie dropped her head into her hands. I saw the tattoo of the connected hearts on her inner wrist.
“Because of Heart to Heart?” I asked.
She looked up at me, but said nothing. Her cell phone rang again. “Sorry.” She turned it off.
“Someone is anxious to get ahold of you,” I said.
“It’s not my mother.”
“Probably Joan,” her grandmother said. “That woman is always calling.”
“No”—Sadie cut her grandmother off—“just Ava. It’s nothing.”
Sadie’s overreaction caught my attention. I scribbled Joan on my pad of paper. “Would Joan know where your mother is?”
Sadie shook her head. “No one knows anything. But I need to find my mom.”
I nodded. “Your mother’s disappearance is suspicious, particularly given the other victims we have found in the area of Wallace Lake. As far as we know, she’s only been missing”—I looked up at the wall clock—“about thirty hours. We can put out a BOLO for Wilma, a be on the lookout, but that’s about all we can do at this point.”
“That’s it?” Sadie stared at me incredulously.
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