After they were settled in her car, she waited to turn on the headlights.
“Forget something?”
“What are you going to write in your story?”
“Body of woman found dead in the river. What else?”
Although she could barely make out his face in the darkness, she met his gaze.
“I know who she is . . . was. It’s Becky. The waitress I told you about from the diner. She and I talked.”
A throbbing silence enveloped them.
“Did you see that thing around her?”
“No. I didn’t see that thing. It’s called an aura. Why would I have taken her photo? She seemed happy. Alive. Now she’s dead. By her own hand or stupidity? I don’t think so. I think it’s more than that. Worse.”
Seth tapped the car door.
She wanted to scream at him to stop.
Didn’t.
“It’s all connected.” His voice came out dead.
CHAPTER 55
“The sheriff verified the body early this morning. They found her purse near the edge of the river. She left a note.” Seth rolled his chair near hers.
Kate stretched, trying to fully wake up. By the time she’d fallen to sleep, half the night had passed. “A note? What did it say?”
“Sheriff said she apologized for what she was going to do but her life stunk. Something like that.” He unwrapped a Tootsie Pop. “So much for your theory.”
“I still don’t believe it.” The sugary smell of his candy floated over to her. She reached for a stick of gum from her desk drawer. “She seemed happy. Excited about life. I think her death is connected to Earl somehow or Mole.” She remembered the full mailbox. The veiled threat.
About the time she decided to dig a little deeper into Becky’s background, Tim rounded the corner. “Got someone who wants to see you, Seth. Says she has a story needs getting out.”
A young woman stepped into the room. The toe of her cowboy boots tapped on the hardwood floor as she pulled her hands out of her jeans pocket. She looked like she just stepped out of the rodeo.
###
Another fiery redhead. Seth wasn’t sure he could take another one this early in the morning. He rose and maneuvered around the desks until he joined them. She was a knock out yet looked like the hard-to-please kind of woman. Not his type. And young. “How can I help you?”
Tim excused himself. The woman dropped into a nearby chair so Seth did the same.
“It’s my best friend. Shelly. She’s missing.”
“What happened?” Seth glanced over his shoulder toward Kate. She saw his look because she picked up a tablet and pen and hustled over. “This is my assistant.” Kate snorted but settled into the chair next to him.
The other redhead, Mandy Baker, had invited her out-of-town friend to visit her for the week. Last night, Mandy barrel raced at the rodeo on the outskirts of town. Shelly was supposed to watch. But when the rodeo ended, Mandy couldn’t find her friend anywhere. “I told her to wait by my car but she never showed up. When I called the sheriff, he told me to settle down. People walk off all the time. He said give it time. I gave it time. Now I want help and figured the newspaper will do something since the law won’t.”
“How old is Shelly?” Kate spoke softly. So unlike her. Now he wanted to snort.
“We’re both eighteen. Old enough to know better if you get my drift. No way on this here earth would Shelly take off with someone. But she hasn’t called, hasn’t come back for her suitcase. Nothing. I called her cell and it’s turned off. I called her mother and she said Shelly hadn’t called her either. She’s not worried but I am. Something isn’t right.” The girl’s voice trembled.
Seth exchanged glances with Kate. Another missing woman?
“Do you mind if my assistant takes your picture so we can put it in the paper with your story? It might help catch the readers’ eye. And do you have a picture of your friend?”
With a swift movement, she dug into her leather bag and produced her phone. She scrolled through her apps using one of her pink nails. “Right here. Can I send it to you?”
Kate gave her the paper’s email and left. She returned with her camera. “Do you mind standing against that wall for me?”
It didn’t take much to get Mandy to pose. He suggested several shots so that Kate could choose the one that looked best for the paper. Seth doubted her story about knowing better. Mandy looked like an easy mark herself. She preened like she was in a dog show.
“Thanks, Mandy. Seth will get the rest of your information while I work on this.” She winked at him before returning to her desk.
After asking Mandy a few more questions, he promised to run the story in this week’s paper. Then he herded her out to Rhonda at the front office where she recounted her story.
Seth set out for Tim’s office.
He found an empty room. Next he checked the men’s room and then interrupted Rhonda to ask where he went. She shrugged. Her usual response. All she was good for was greeting people. Oh, and painting her dumb nails. Seth stepped outside. Another summer storm brewed overhead. He double timed it to the parking lot to check that he’d closed his windows and to see if Tim’s truck was still parked there. No on both accounts.
Where did Tim run off to all the time?
Seth jogged toward town and scanned the main street. Nothing. In fact the Bend looked like a funeral itself. Few businesses remained open as Earl had closed most of them. The burned-out theater still waited for someone to tear it down. His heart sank when he remembered Amy and her excitement to enlighten the Bend. No one could do that. Only Earl with his plans to get everyone to submit to his authority.
A bolt of lightning snapped overhead.
He hoofed back to the office where Rhonda was still deep in conversation with Mandy. Seth stopped next to her. “Did you ever attend one of Brother Earl’s rallies?”
She winced. “One time with my parents. They tried to get me to go to the Club for training. I threatened to run away if they did. Only reason I didn’t get forced to go was because David sided with me.”
“Earl’s brother?”
A smile snaked across her lips. “The one and only.”
Seth squatted next to her. “Listen to me, Mandy. Did you tell David that your friend was coming to town?”
“He’s the one who suggested I invite her. Said everyone likes a rodeo. Especially outsiders.”
“And have you and David ever gone out together, like on a date?”
That same smile reappeared. “Give me time.”
###
The picture of Mandy blew up her screen.
“Anything?” Seth’s warm breath fluttered against her ear. His idea to take a photo of Mandy had been good. Fortunately the aura they feared didn’t appear.
“Nothing.” She clicked out of the program. “I’m glad you suggested it though. Wait . . .” she spun back around. “I didn’t upload the photo she sent me of Shelly.”
Another few clicks.
Her email sputtered.
Finally opened.
She clicked on the photo link.
Kate inhaled as the photo of Shelly materialized in front of them.
Seth’s hand dropped onto her shoulder. “It’s there. Isn’t it?”
She scrubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.
Nodded.
“It’s fading.”
CHAPTER 56
The room lacked windows. He had chosen this place on purpose. Why look out when all the Trainer needed to see lay right before him? The walls—oh yes, he loved the extra touch he’d added to them.
“Do you like the wallpaper, darling? I hung it myself. Got a little sticky at times but nothing I couldn’t get myself out of.” He chuckled as he stroked the embossed crimson roses in the design. His mother had used a similar pattern in their living room. A fitting tribute. He liked to think that her last view on earth was of those roses. Before she became fertilizer for them.
After the freezer, he a
nd his father finally dug up the trellis on the back of their property. That’s where the Trainer got his first hard lesson in digging. It was also when he first hated his father who sat on a rock and watched as sweat dripped from the Trainer’s brow.
“Good practice for you. Learn life the hard way like I did,” his father said between puffs of his newly formed cigarette habit. He tossed the butt at the Trainer when he finished. “Bury her deep. Don’t want wild animals digging her back up.”
His father changed once his courage returned. No longer did he act meek and mild. No, he strutted around like a rooster with a new hen. His business improved. He seemed like a new man. Even went out on a date with a local woman.
“Let me go, please. . .” The Trainer’s new candidate roused. Time to teach her the next lesson.
She lay in the box with her wrists secure against the sides. Maybe this time he would use his longer knife like his father did with his mother. The reaction was always more pronounced.
“How are you feeling? Get a good rest?” He stood over the makeshift coffin, staring down at Shelly’s tear-streaked face. Too bad her mascara ran. She had looked so nice when he chose her. And now the part of his training he enjoyed most—the first slice.
CHAPTER 57
Congealed grease covered the pizza. Kate bit into it anyway. The only other food choice in her fridge was an overripe banana and a carton of yogurt. Neither appealed to her taste buds and she had been too tired after work to grocery shop. She almost suggested to Seth that they stop at the cafe for something but after she told him about Shelly, he looked green.
Tim had finally returned with a string of stories for them to follow up on the next day. A canoe contest down the river, a fishing derby, and the ladies’ sewing group was having a quilt raffle for the library.
Seth, on the other hand, was following up on Shelly. He planned to go to the rodeo and talk with the set up people, check their video feed if they let him and nose around. What real reporters did on the job.
She sipped her water.
None of what either did would make a difference to Shelly’s life. Whatever was happening to her was already happening. Seth knew as well as she did there was only one place they needed to nose around. They just had to figure out how to get there.
As she brushed the pizza crumbs into her hands, her cell rang.
“You missed pizza,” she said. “I could have warmed it up for you.”
“I bet. Listen,” his voice held that familiar edge. “I have an idea for tomorrow night.”
“Dinner? Because that would be great since my choices have dramatically diminished with this last piece of pepperoni.” She tossed the chunk into her mouth.
“A better plan. I vote we go to the Club again. Only this time through the back door.”
A cutting pain twisted her stomach. She slumped down into the chair. “You’re not serious.” Trespass onto Earl’s property? She remembered the mountains and trees behind the cabins. “At night?”
“If we go late at night, we arrive early in the morning at first light. When everyone is sleeping. I think we could find out who is there and who isn’t.”
And she thought he was a wimp.
“You know I limp, right?” She rubbed her leg where the pain never left. “It will take me time.”
“I can go alone but two would be better. Another eye-witness. Pack your smallest camera, too.”
His argument made sense. If they discovered women were being held captive or heaven forbid injured or killed—she didn’t want to say that word—two of them would be safer.
“All right. I’ll go. I don’t have a better plan.”
“Good. I’ll fill you in tomorrow at work. Lock your doors and close your blinds.”
Her house looked like a dungeon already. What little sunlight that remained filtered through the kitchen window.
“Sure.” She touched the front pocket of the khakis she wore. The familiar shape of the pocketknife reassured her. More than the closed blinds.
“And don’t answer your door to anyone. Not even lover boy.”
Bringing up David did not help Seth’s case. “He isn’t my lover boy and besides that, I haven’t seen him since the fire. I hate to say this out loud and especially to you but something about him gives me the creeps.”
A too long pause.
“I got to run. Remember what I said.”
Her cell died.
She wandered into her bedroom where she’d set up her file cabinet next to her computer. After the deliveryman brought it, she had printed off pictures of everyone she remembered that had an aura. A pack rat trying to make sense of a senseless situation. She dropped to her knees and pulled open the top drawer. Sort of like making sense of God and how He let that bomber into her school. Probably impossible.
The papers called him a martyr for his faith. His crazy faith. But then she had been crazy in love with God before that blast. Was there a difference?
As soon as she asked the question, she knew the answer. Her cheeks heated. Of course there was a difference. She tightened her jaw and pulled out the first file folder. Maybe she could find a pattern.
Drew.
They attended college together. Met the first day in Sociology. He died nine months later in a car accident on icy roads. She placed the picture of him, in his gym shorts and T-shirt, aside.
Mr. Bigalow, her twelfth grade science teacher. She’d clipped this picture from the yearbook, taken by her. Her favorite teacher. When she first saw the aura, panic filled her. Mr. Bigalow had two children. One required full-time care. His wife depended on his income. When he drowned at a class picnic that following summer, she cried for days. Her grandmother knew why but couldn’t console her. If only he had been struck by a car or a building fell on him. Something where the wife could have collected a big settlement.
Bad thinking. Always bad thinking.
She pushed the file away and went to her computer, opened a blank Word document. Her mind sifted through the facts about the Bend. Facts she had discovered since coming there at the beginning of the summer.
Two women were dead. Two had gone missing.
Brother Earl built a settlement behind his funeral home surrounded by a huge gate. Mary said she went there to learn to become a better wife. Her daughter refused to go and no longer lived in the Bend. Several men in the area wore similar rings. A good old boys’ club? And then there were the women who dressed in long outdated garb, wore their hair in braids or buns and attended the rallies as though God himself spoke in the form of Brother Earl. A new Jerusalem he declared that night. Utopia for all. A place where everyone helped everyone.
Socialism? Fanatical thinking?
And then there were Bend businesses that didn’t see eye to eye with Earl. Forced out. Burned down. Is that how he meant to accomplish his reign?
Finally, there was David. She sighed. How to explain him?
Something about the way he looked at her the day of the fire. She had tried to push that strange feeling from her mind when he asked her out again but today the thoughts would not leave her alone.
With a couple of clicks, she pulled up her Internet browser. Typed David Foreman in the search bar. She poured over the Internet for an hour, adding to her document any information she could find on him. When he graduated from high school, what sports he played—football. The captain. Went to college in Texas, moved from there to Ohio, then Michigan, and finally here.
Her fingers stopped typing. Wasn’t Texas where that huge cult was located? The one where people blindly followed their leader? What if David had gotten mixed up with them? What if he was the one who pulled Earl’s strings?
Her theory sounded crazy on all accounts. What had he done but be kind to her? She remembered his kiss. Soft. Sweet.
She blinked. She remembered his comment afterward. “You are perfect. The kind of woman the Bend needs.”
She’d laughed it off as foolishness. But why would he say that unless he was unsatisfied
with the women here? Maybe he wanted to change her like Earl tried with the rest of the female population.
A light breeze blew in her window feathering her shoulders. She rose from the desk and crossed the room. Hadn’t she closed the window earlier? She slammed it down, fiddled with the antiquated lock.
That’s when she thought about her mail. In her rush to get fed, she forgot to check it tonight. She left her bedroom and headed toward the front room. She flipped on the front porch light switch.
Nothing.
She bit her lower lip. She should have checked if the landlord replaced the bulbs on day one. Now she would have to worry about tripping on the front walk. Or she could wait until morning. It wasn’t like she got that much mail anyway. But still, when she did, it made her day.
She slipped on her sandals. Opened the door. Strode across the front porch, down the three steps toward the mailbox.
A few bills.
A package.
She hurried back inside. She hadn’t ordered anything.
She set the small box on her kitchen table for a closer inspection.
No return address. Just her name printed with a red marker.
The troublesome idea that nothing was as it seemed in the Bend rose in front of her. She winced. When had she ever been frightened by a package?
She inspected the duct tape used to seal the edges. Who used duct tape? Why not regular clear packaging tape? And red ink? Caps for her full name?
Her inspection grew old. Kate dug her hand into her pocket and drew out her knife. She sliced away the tape. Whoever wrapped it had been detailed. The corners matched. She pulled off the brown wrapping paper. Another strip of tape greeted her. She dug her nail beneath it. Lifted it up.
The lid popped open.
CHAPTER 58
The Trainer chose tonight to study his next candidate—his last candidate. The only one he ever wanted or cared about. He glanced upward to the clouds covering the moon. Then he zipped his jacket as the cooler late summer air circulated through him.
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