“Well, you’re putting your own personal spin on it,” Chelsea quipped with a smile.
Tori sniffled and laughed, shaking her head in amusement. “I suppose.”
“And for the record, you’re not always combative and argumentative. Just when you think you’re right, which…on second thought, is most of the time.”
“Thanks a lot,” Tori replied with a light laugh, dabbing at her eyes with tissue.
“I’m your best friend around here, so this I know. You are a blast to hang with, especially after you’ve had a few at a party and you let that flirty side show. I wish you’d do that more often, let your guard down and just cut loose. And you’ve got more friends and more people that care about you than you know.” Her roommate held up her wine glass for a toast. “And as for your sister, let me say this. Jessie would love who you’ve become. She’d be happy you’re living your life and that she’s a big part of it.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
The two of them clinked their glasses and took long drinks of their wine before each pouring themselves another full glass.
“You know,” Chelsea stated after a moment, swirling her glass, “it might not hurt you to talk to someone about all of this.”
“Therapy?”
“Yes.”
“With someone like you?”
“I’m not that person yet, but in a few years I will be. In the meantime, I could help you find someone to work with now if you wanted.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“When you’re ready you let me know.”
She thought back to Chelsea’s offer and wished she’d taken advantage of it as she approached Manchester. With the miles to town rapidly ticking down, the nervous fidgeting started. Her sweaty grip squeezed the steering wheel. There was the nervous tapping of her left foot. Her eyes darted pensively around the horizon. Her heart was beating faster, the anxiousness building at the thought of coming home, of actually investigating her sister’s disappearance where it happened. Then the vestiges of Manchester started appearing, and they appeared far sooner than she’d expected.
When Manchester was home, the H-4 was a slender two-lane highway that went through the center of Manchester as it meandered its way farther north into the dense forested depths of Minnesota lake country. Now there was a sign for the “Old H-4 Cutoff” which was the old highway route into Manchester. Instead the highway veered more northeast. “This is new.”
And the H-4 was a true highway now, a wide four-lane flowing highway via a bypass that swung well to the east between the outskirts of the town proper and the Manchester State University campus, the soaring spired clock tower visible in the distance to her right, perched high upon the bluff overlooking the town.
“My gosh, this all looks so different,” she ruminated, seeing two suburban-like housing developments springing up in what were once densely wooded areas southeast of town before she got her first real shocker as the Manchester city limits sign appeared on the right. Population 44,234.
“That many? Holy cow!”
And it wasn’t only the population that had grown; the commerce had multiplied with it. Big box retailers and small boxy strip malls filled with specialty retailers were now situated along the frontage roads paralleling either side of the H-4 as she approached the exit for Lake Drive.
She exited down the ramp. At the bottom she turned left and cruised ahead into Manchester and looked about in wonder as she passed brand retail stores and then a string of chain restaurants and fast food drive-thru joints.
However, once she was past those staples of typical suburbia, she drove deeper into the downtown area. Despite the seriousness of her trip, she became thoroughly amazed by the modern transformation of Manchester’s once dated downtown core into a quaint yet bustling and thriving business and entertainment district. Amidst the old two-story brown and red brick storefronts housing Bloom Drug, Babe the Blue Ox Ice Cream Shop, Martha’s Place and Wavy Café restaurants and the ACE Hardware store, were an impressive collection of boutique, craft and clothing shops, antique stores, art galleries, a coffee house and wine bar interspersed with a mixture of small ethnic restaurants and at least two craft beer taprooms. Kitty-corner from each other at the intersection of Lake Drive and Interlachen Avenue in the center of downtown were two impressive identical squared five-story office buildings with exteriors containing a mixture of dark-tinted glass and Kasota stone. With the noon hour approaching, the streets were teeming with shoppers and casual walkers and there was a lively vibe along the town’s main street.
“Is this really Manchester, my Manchester?”
A block short of South Shore Drive and the bustling beach on the shores of Steamboat Lake, Tori found the imposing and historic Shepard County Government Center.
Situated in the northeastern part of Shepard County was the Cuyuna Range, the little sister to the more famous and massive Mesabi Range farther north. The thirty-plus mining companies that once operated in the Cuyuna Range together financed the massive government structure, all back when the iron ore mines ruled this part of the state seventy years ago.
As a child she always thought the building dwarfed the rest of the town. Three stories tall with four tall, round, ribbed pillars across the front, the building was a sturdy and handsome mass of granite, marble and concrete, an edifice the sheriff once said was so indestructible it could easily withstand a nuclear attack. “Everything else would be flattened, but this sucker would still be standing and not a stone, a block or a panel will have moved,” Big Jim Hunter once said to his girls.
She pulled into a visitor parking space and sat back and took the old building in. It was the only thing in town that hadn’t seemed to really change. The years of her youth were spent running its halls with Jessie. Yet the last time she walked out of it was a solemn occasion, leaving with her father’s personal office effects following his death. She hadn’t been back since—until now.
Now that she was here, she wanted to make an impression. Dressed in one of her best black power suits, she added black three-inch high stilettos, stylish dark-rimmed glasses and her shoulder length hair was up tight in the back. Taking in and then exhaling a long breath, she got out of the car, grabbed her black shoulder bag and walked up the wide front sidewalk, drawing in the fresh Minnesota air, the sun bright and warm, a gentle breeze ruffling the deep green leaves on the mixture of mature maple, elm and oak trees.
She stepped inside the front door of the building and observed that while the exterior looked the same, the interior of the building had undergone a modernizing renovation, particularly the sheriff’s office, which was straight ahead. She went in the door right to the receptionist and without preamble flashed her identification. “I need to see Sheriff Lund.”
Tori didn’t recognize the receptionist but given how the receptionist’s eyes bulged when she reviewed the identification and then looked up to her, it was clear she recognized the name on the ID.
The receptionist turned in her chair and pointed down the hallway behind her. “His office is at the end of the hall. That’s where you’ll find him. Would you like me to let him know you’re here?”
“No, that’s okay.”
Tori walked quickly down the hall and saw Cal sitting at his desk. He had far less hair now and what hair he did have was nearly white, but otherwise he looked much the same. He was looking over a sheet of paper with another old friend standing to his side, peering over his shoulder. She reached the small entryway and leaned against the doorjamb and observed the two of them.
“We’ve interviewed these ten so far and nothing,” Steak said, pointing to the top of the sheet of paper.
“And Jerry Lash?”
“Soon.”
Tori allowed herself a smile. “I swear, nothing has changed around here. Not a single thing.”
Steak looked up, did a double take and then, once there was recognition, his mouth practically hit the floor in shock. He exclaimed, “You have got to be kidding me!”
“I’m blown away,” he bellowed in wonder, still stunned at the sight of her.
“Victoria, my word,” Cal Lund greeted, coming around the desk and embracing her. After a moment he also wisely noted, “This is an awfully interesting time for you to finally pay us a visit.”
“There’s a good reason for it,” Tori quickly answered, reaching into her shoulder bag to the large plastic bag. “I received this in the mail yesterday in New York City,” she explained, taking out the copy of the old news clipping along with the typewritten note, now encased in a large clear plastic evidence bag. “I’ve been invited to the ‘party’ you’ve got going on around here.”
“Well now, this is interesting, isn’t it?” Cal ruminated before handing it to Steak for a quick look.
“Cal, I want in.”
“Hmm, I imagine you do,” Cal replied, taking the bag back from Steak. “And this ought to get you in the door. But it’s not me you have to convince.”
“Then who?”
Cal waved for Tori to follow him, walking out of his office, through the entryway and into the hallway, then pointing to the left. “See that tall drink of water down the hall in that office with all the people hanging around?”
“Do you mean the guy dressed in the blue jeans and off-white cotton shirt with the stubble?”
“Uh huh.”
“I presume that’s your chief detective that I read about?”
“Will Braddock. He’s running the investigation. Will is a former NYPD detective I hired five years ago to lead my investigative unit. He’s Steak’s direct boss. You want in on the investigation in a meaningful way, you’ll have to convince him.”
“Why do I have to convince him? Aren’t you the boss?”
“Because when I hired him from New York, I said I wouldn’t micromanage his cases and that includes who he uses or who he assigns work to. Right now, he’s got plenty of help. He has everyone in this department and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is angling in on this, not to mention your employer sniffing around and offering their expertise. In other words, he’s up to his eyes and ears in assistance and advice.”
“I see.”
“And Tori,” Steak added, having walked up to them, “you’ll find that Will is not exactly the kind of guy who likes people telling him what to do or how to run his case.”
“What are you saying, Steak?” Tori asked with a mischievous smile.
“I see you all confident and self-assured, back in what you now probably view as your simple little hometown full of dumbass rubes.”
“That’s a little harsh.”
“No,” Steak replied plainly, shaking his head with a wicked grin. “It might be close to twenty years since I last saw you, so I might be a little rusty, but I can still read you. I know your expressions, your body language and so I know, I know that’s exactly what you’re thinking.”
Tori grinned back at her friend.
“I’m just warning you, if you come off like that to him,” he pointed to Braddock and laughed, a deep warning laugh, “well, he will show you the door right quick.”
“Talk with Will nicely, then come back and talk to me,” Cal counseled. “We need to catch up.”
“Cal, I mean no disrespect, but I’m not really here to catch up.”
“Victoria,” Cal replied with a warm smile but a gentle sternness in his tone, “humor an old man and an old friend who, despite the unfortunate circumstances that have brought you home, is delighted to see you.”
“Okay, Cal,” Tori relented, patting him on the arm.
Lund and Steak stepped back into the sheriff’s office. Tori stood for a moment in the hallway with her arms folded, leaning her right shoulder against the wall and sized up Braddock.
There was certainly no burgeoning stomach roll like the prodigious one Cal displayed and the one Steak was showing signs of developing. Braddock was tall, at least six-four, lanky yet with wide shoulders and what she could tell were long strong arms. He was sporting wavy black hair with some small flecks of gray mixed in. While she initially thought the stubble made him a bit of a poser, she noticed his weary eyes and imagined he’d simply been working around the clock and hadn’t shaved. He appeared to interact with the people around him firmly but also with a comfortable ease. After assessing him for a few minutes, she thought two things. First, he had a certain rugged handsomeness about him. Second, watching him she could see the NYPD in him. There was a certain air about him, a gravitas she didn’t often find in smaller towns.
Tori pushed herself away from the wall and walked straight toward Braddock’s office as the chief detective picked up the ringing phone on his desk. She lingered in his doorway while he conversed with the person on the other end of the phone line. When he hung up, he looked to her and asked, “Can I help you?”
“Detective Braddock, Cal Lund sent me to see you. I’m Special Agent Tori Hunter with the FBI.”
Braddock didn’t visibly react, but his eyes widened at the utterance of her name. He made a show of deliberately examining her identification. “And you’re the Tori Hunter…”
“Yes.”
“I see. Your arrival here can’t just be coincidental, can it?”
“No.” Tori reached inside her Michael Kors purse and pulled out the plastic bag again and handed it over to Braddock. “I just showed this to Cal, and he sent me your way. I received this in the mail yesterday in New York City. It seems someone wanted me to know what was happening back here in my hometown.”
Braddock reviewed the article and the typed note. He’d seen the article before, but the note was certainly new. “I assume you had this evaluated forensically?”
“Yes. I took it to my field office in New York City. No prints other than mine are on the article.”
“And the envelope?”
“There were five different sets on the envelope besides mine. None registered in IAFIS. We theorized the prints were from people handling the envelope as it went through the postal service and the doorman for my building. It seems highly unlikely that whoever sent it would be careful enough not to touch the article but leave prints on the envelope. Nevertheless, the prints are in the system now, so if we get a match, we’d have that.”
Braddock went back around his desk, sat down and studied the article, not saying a word for a few minutes.
Tori could handle the silence for only so long, “I don’t know why, but that sure looks like the killer is reaching out to me.”
“That’s what it looks like,” Braddock replied, a slight hint of skepticism in his voice, a hint that didn’t escape Tori’s notice.
“Come on, Detective, really?” Tori asked, slightly exasperated. “You can’t think Lash’s case and my sister’s case aren’t connected. Look at the commonalities. Abandoned car in a remote area, flat right front tire, happening on the Fourth of July. You do see the pattern, don’t you?” she pressed, with more than a hint of condescension in her voice.
Braddock looked up from the paper and locked his eyes on Tori, who was standing at the front edge of his desk, her arms folded across her chest.
“I mean, come on, it’s the twentieth anniversary!”
“It is, and there are similarities, but there are also some interesting differences.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Jessie Hunter was seventeen, Lash was twenty-seven. Jessie’s car was found outside of Manchester whereas Lash’s was found well east of here. Your sister was the effervescent daughter of the sheriff, an ambitious high school student with plans to attend Iowa State with her more serious and straight-laced but equally determined twin sister. Conversely, Genevieve Lash is the quintessential rich, party going, twenty-seven-year-old no-talent Kardashian-like wild child with a history of drug use living on her family’s fortune. To say the victims are different would be an understatement.”
Tori wasn’t b
uying it. “Yet here I sit with this in my mailbox.”
“Is this the first time the killer has reached out to you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ever get a little reminder like this before?”
“No.”
“So, no previous taunting, no mail, no phone calls out of the blue, no contact whatsoever for twenty years, right?”
“That’s right.”
“And you haven’t been back here in what? Nineteen, twenty years?”
“Yup.”
“So, you’ve been gone all these years, yet now after all this time, after all these years someone drops this note in your mailbox and that means everything is all connected.”
“What’s your point?”
“Yes, this could be connected. In fact, everyone seems to think it is.”
“Sounds like everyone but you,” Tori asserted.
“I didn’t say that,” Braddock replied calmly, not taking the bait. “But think about this. What better way to get everyone’s attention than getting hometown girl and FBI agent Tori Hunter back to Manchester to investigate her sister’s disappearance. What a story. It’s about the Hunter girl. The media will eat it up. Of course, then as a matter of self-preservation we’ll have to jump on it. But what if that’s not what this is all about? Now could it be connected? You bet. I knew exactly what day it was when Lash went missing and when I saw that flat right front tire, I knew what it could possibly mean. But I can’t foreclose the possibility that someone could be using that anniversary for some other reason.”
“Like what?”
“For a start, Lash’s father is wealthy. He owns the biggest construction company around here and I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your notice that the town is a wee bit different from your days matriculating at Manchester High.”
“And Lash’s father is what?”
“A cutthroat businessman who has put people out of business, a lot of people. Maybe someone is striking back. Or maybe it’s Genevieve herself. She runs with the party crowd. She has a history of drug use, has been known to hang around with some people who like the high-end blow. What if she had something on someone and they killed her to protect it and bringing you here is a sideshow way to deflect from what I ought to be looking at?”
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