Leighton Jones Mysteries Box Set

by N. M. Brown

  When Leighton stepped out of the station building, a yellow cab pulled up and Angela Blanchette climbed out of the shuddering vehicle and hurried over to him.

  ‘Angela, what’s going on?’ Leighton asked.

  ‘You never got back to me,’ she said, frantically, ‘so I thought I’d come down and find out what the hell is going on. I can’t just sit there and do nothing – it’s killing me.’

  ‘I get that.’ Leighton nodded. ‘Listen, I need you to come with me right now.’ Leighton glanced back over his shoulder at the station building.

  ‘Do you know where she is then?’ Angela asked.

  ‘I’m not sure – maybe. I think so. But we really need to go now!’

  Leighton quickly led Angela to his car, and they both climbed in.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

  ‘Into the country on the north-east of the city.’

  ‘Oh,’ was all Angela could say. She felt Leighton’s words push against the edge of the protective barrier surrounding her mind. Despite the certainty in Leighton’s voice, she almost didn’t dare to hope anymore. The last few days had taught her that to hope was very tempting but also dangerous. Hope could easily arrive full of promise and sweetness only to turn sour and leave her more broken than before. And yet this time it seemed different, as if the strength of her belief could somehow restore her lost child.

  ‘Do you really think that–’ she began to ask the questions, but her speech was eclipsed by a surge of aching desperation to hold her child again.

  Leighton reached across, momentarily placed his hand on hers, and nodded. That was enough for Angela Blanchette who smiled and mouthed a silent plea to the universe.

  As they drove out of the station and on to Mission Avenue, Leighton turned to Angela. ‘Look, I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to join the dots.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Angela said, ‘you seem to be the only one who tried.’

  ‘Let’s just hope I’m right,’ Leighton said and floored the gas pedal.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  Tina slid unsteadily back down the slope, just in time to glimpse the stranger clambering out of the pit into the jagged wreckage of the barn. Luckily, the thickening smoke drifting down the slope served to conceal her from his gaze. She paused and watched as he ran around the place in demented circles.

  Unable to return to the relative safety of the barn, Tina limped toward the back wall of the office, but with the fire spreading all around, she knew it was only a matter of time before she ran out of ways to avoid her pursuer.

  Creeping along the side of the office wall, Tina listened carefully. When she reached the corner, she glanced around it and saw the stranger. He was standing still and staring into the trees, transfixed as if he had heard something. After a moment he sprinted into the wilderness and vanished.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Leighton was driving quickly along the winding road out of the city. If he had been calmer he might have noticed that the roads were much quieter than usual, but his mind was so focused on the road that he almost didn’t notice when Angela Blanchette – who had seemed almost catatonic – started to speak.

  ‘I knew life could hurt when David left us,’ she said as if to herself, ‘we had all been good at the start. Every Friday he would bring me flowers – yellow roses – they were my favourite. But then he stopped doing that and spent more and more time away from me and Tina. It kinda hurt even then, but there was the two of us locked together. And when he left, I reckon I hurt more because of what it meant for Tina than for myself.’

  ‘That must’ve been tough,’ Leighton said.

  Angela continued to stare out of the window. ‘It felt like a pinprick compared to this,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Leighton nodded. ‘I can only imagine your pain. My daughter is everything to me.’

  ‘Is she with her mother?’

  ‘No, my wife died sixteen months ago.’ Leighton glanced sideways at the road edge to avoid meeting Angela’s gaze.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’ve done nothing wrong. Annie is staying with her grandparents for a couple of days.’

  ‘Will she like that?’

  ‘I think so. They’ll spoil her with gifts and make sure she has better food than the pizza and ice cream I give her.’

  Angela smiled and Leighton noticed. ‘What’s funny?’ he asked.

  ‘One summer, Tina got a taste for mint choc chip ice cream. She’d tried it a neighbour’s house and convinced me to buy her a couple of pints. Anyway, she got up one morning saying she didn’t want her breakfast waffles and was too sick for school. When I asked her if she had eaten anything the previous evening she just shrugged. But when I went to throw her breakfast in the trash I found an empty ice-cream carton.’

  ‘Midnight feast?’

  ‘Yep, and she never touched the stuff ever again.’ Angela smiled sadly and gazed through her window.

  Leighton followed her concerned gaze toward the horizon where thick columns of smoke rose from the surrounding hillsides. Leighton had noticed them too and was glad that, under these particular circumstances, Annie was staying with her grandparents.

  ‘Please hurry,’ Angela said. There was no need to explain that if they didn’t make it in time, the smoke would be just as effective as any other killer.

  ‘We’re almost at the place where I think I saw her,’ Leighton said.

  Up ahead, a fire officer dressed in tan coloured protective clothing was standing in the middle of the road waving both arms to halt Leighton.

  After braking to a stop, Leighton rolled down his driver window as the firefighter approached the car.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, this area is in the red zone; you’re going to have to turn around quickly.’

  ‘I’m a cop!’ Leighton said as he held up his badge with one hand, ‘I really need to get through.’

  The fire officer shook his head. ‘Doesn’t matter if you’re the police commissioner, the fire chief told all units that nobody’s getting through! The fire is spreading in all directions and we’re evacuating all homes in a six-mile radius. This whole place might be ash by morning. So, you have to move out!’

  ‘Fair enough, I guess,’ Leighton said with a shrug.

  ‘What?’ Angela’s eyes widened in horror. She turned and stared at Leighton in disbelief.

  ‘Okay,’ the fire officer said as he tapped the roof of the car, ‘you can turn around here and head back the way you came. Most roads back to the city should be clear.’

  ‘Sure, thanks,’ Leighton said and rolled up his window.

  ‘What the hell!’ Angela looked at Leighton with tears in her eyes. However, rather than say anything, he simply reversed his car at ninety degrees until it was facing the exact spot where Tina had vanished five days earlier, then accelerated as fast as he could into the countryside.

  The roar of Leighton’s engine caused the fire officer who had been walking away to turn around. His eyes widened in horror, and he attempted to run after the vehicle, but it had already been swallowed by a wave of white smoke.

  The car shuddered and clattered as Leighton drove through the smoky landscape. Bushes had caught in his wheels, making a sound like dried fingers scratching on the underside of the car.

  ‘Look at the map,’ Leighton said as he reached into his pocket and pushed the folded piece of paper towards Angela. ‘Look at this. You see that area circled in red?’

  Angela unfolded the map and then nodded.

  ‘Well that’s a place I found written down in Craven’s trailer. It’s too much of a coincidence that he’d be writing the name of a place that’s so close to where I saw Tina. If Tina’s not with him – and I don’t think she is – then I figure that’s where he thinks she is.’

  ‘How far is it?’

  ‘Ten – fifteen minutes, maybe. Depends if this smoke thins out a bit.’

  ‘How would she have gotten so far out here?’ Angela asked.

  ‘Wal
ked most probably. I think he had her in his car, was driving towards his trailer, and she escaped somehow. This is where she ran to.’

  Hot tears began to slide down Angela’s face as she thought of her small, scared daughter alone in this place. Her emotional pain and sense of guilt was so strong that it threatened to overwhelm her, but it was, of course, eclipsed by another thought – one that gave her power rather than took it from her. Angela Blanchette imagined what she would do to the man who did this to her child.

  ‘Hopefully the spreading fires mean that Craven won’t still be in the area and we can focus on finding Tina.’

  ‘I hope he is still around,’ Angela said with a voice that Leighton barely recognised.

  Leighton and Angela continued driving through drifting pockets of smoke until eventually they found themselves at the bottom of a tree covered slope. Leighton slammed on the brakes, knowing that the trees were too close together for the car to fit through. The car lurched to a stop.

  ‘We’ll have to walk from here,’ Leighton said, but as he turned to see if that was okay with Angela, he discovered she was already climbing out of the vehicle.

  Hurrying after Angela into the hazy wilderness, Leighton had to brace himself against the choking smoke that was thickening around them. He caught up with Angela who was coughing loudly as she scrambled up the dusty slope.

  ‘The air should be clearer at the top,’ he said.

  Angela nodded, and together they made their way up the crumbling slope.

  Leighton’s theory proved to be correct – the air seemed to clear as he and Angela neared the top of the ridge. It was as they reached the summit that Leighton and Angela found themselves looking down on the cluster of old orchard buildings. The hill they stood upon curved around either side of them like a crescent moon.

  ‘I think we should split up and take a side each,’ Angela said.

  ‘We’d be safer together.’

  ‘She could be on either side,’ Angela said. ‘If we split up then we have a better chance of finding her.’ What Angela did not say was that if Tina was dead, then she didn’t want anyone else to be there if she found her. That would be her undoing and she couldn’t face that with an audience. In her back pocket was a packet of pills. If it turned out that Tina was there, and she was dead, Angela did not intend to return from this trip.

  ‘Okay.’ Leighton nodded. ‘But I want you to take this.’ He reached to his holster and realised in horror that he had left his utility belt and gun back in his locker.

  ‘Shit! I’ve no gun.’ Leighton kicked at the dry ground.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Angela said. ‘I’m going anyway.’

  ‘Well, you shout out if you see anything. Okay?’

  Angela nodded and then vanished down the slope. She wasn’t even thinking, but Leighton couldn’t blame her. He would be exactly the same in that situation.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  Angela had been clumsily descending the slope through the trees when she noticed something familiar lying in the dust. Tina’s blue canvas sandal half concealed in a small ditch. Stifling a sob, she fell to the ground and reached for it.

  As she turned the small sandal over in her hands, hot tears scorched Angela Blanchette’s cheeks. The shoe had her daughter’s name and class neatly printed inside in case it got mixed up at school. Angela held on to it as if it were the most precious thing in the world. She felt as if the universe was somehow rewarding her for her belief.

  ‘Leighton. I’ve found something,’ she called through the smoky air. ‘My baby was here! You hear me, Leighton? She could still be alive’

  ‘Not for long,’ said a voice from directly behind her.

  Angela turned around quickly, but was not quite fast enough to avoid the sudden blow to her face, which sent her tumbling into darkness.

  Edward Craven grinned as he stepped over the woman’s motionless body. For a moment he considered dragging her down to one of the nearby traps and springing it on her leg, but he was interrupted by the sound of Leighton calling Tina’s name from somewhere nearby. Glancing back at the woman, he saw that her eyes had rolled back like white marbles, indicating she was unconscious. The smoke from the fires was thickening all around. He therefore tore the sandal from Angela’s hand and hurried in the direction in which she had been yelling.

  By the time Leighton had heard Angela’s muffled voice calling, he was already down on level ground. As he moved through the trees, he narrowly avoided stepping on to a sprung trap, which sat like a shark’s mouth beneath a tree. The tree was cut in half, as if somebody had taken an axe to it for hours on end. He figured whoever had attacked the tree and set the trap was clearly very dangerous. Stepping cautiously out of the tree line, Leighton found himself standing in the patch of dry ground between the office building, a long wooden building and what appeared to be an abandoned picnic. Cupping his hands to his mouth, he called Tina’s name again, but the smoke drifting into the area had made his throat hoarse. Glancing up at the slope above the buildings, he could already see the first hungry tongues of flame licking at the trees on the ridge. He knew that if he didn’t get Angela out of there soon, they most probably would never leave.

  ‘Tina!’ he called again into the thickening air. There was no response and, in the silence, Leighton became aware of another sound. It was a deep roaring sound that reminded him of a waterfall or fast flowing water. In a moment of lucidity, he realised it was the sound of the approaching fire.

  Leighton called one last time, and he was almost ready to leave when he saw her.

  A small, skinny seven year old, in a dirty orange T-shirt and shorts was standing in the remains of the crumbling barn and looking directly at him. Leighton felt his heart jump with fright.

  ‘Hey there, Tina, it’s okay,’ he said. The girl vanished back into the vast structure.

  Leighton hurried after her into the darkness. When his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he found the girl, but her location made her impossible to reach. The upper floor of the building looked as if it had collapsed. In the middle of the barn floor was a huge pit, which appeared to contain some rusting old machinery. Stretching out over the top of this abyss was a long plank of wood. Tina Blanchette was standing on this beam, like a tiny pirate being made to walk the plank. Tina’s body looked frozen with fear. Leighton worried that any movement could spook her and send her tumbling into the pit below. Without moving at all, Leighton looked at the kid and smiled.

  ‘It’s okay, Tina,’ Leighton said, quietly.

  ‘I want my mom,’ Tina said, her eyes wide and scared.

  ‘She came here with me,’ Leighton said, ‘she’ll be here soon.’

  ‘He’s lying.’ The words caused Tina to turn around and find the stranger standing on the opposite side of the barn.

  ‘Don’t listen to him,’ Leighton called.

  ‘If your mom was with him, she’d be here wouldn’t she, but she’s not.’

  In that moment, Leighton realised that there was certainty in the other man’s voice. That meant he had already found Angela – and therefore likely killed her. A feeling of panic flooded his stomach, but he knew he couldn’t lose focus or he would lose Tina too.

  ‘She’s with me, honey,’ Leighton said, ‘she has been speaking about you all the way up here. She told me you once liked mint choc ice cream and that you once finished a whole carton of it, then had a tummy ache for a whole night.’

  A smile touched the edges of Tina’s mouth. She took a small step towards Leighton.

  ‘Hey, Tina,’ the stranger called. ‘I told you he was dangerous. He probably hurt your mom to make her tell him those things.’

  Tina glanced back at him, her eyes wide in horror.

  ‘Yeah,’ he continued, gleefully, ‘he probably sneaked into your house at night and cut her until she told him those things.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Leighton said, softly, ‘you know that’s not true. He’s just a sick man who’s saying those things to scare you into
doing what he wants. I bet that’s how he got you to go with him from the creek. Maybe he told you that you were in danger or that your mom was – something to scare you, didn’t he?’

  Tina looked at him, but her expression gave nothing away.

  ‘That’s a lie!’ the stranger called, but this time Tina did not turn back around. She knew that it wasn’t.

  ‘You can trust me, Tina. Look, I brought this for you,’ Leighton said, softly, as he reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out the small plastic poodle.

  ‘He’s not the good one! He’s a liar!’ the stranger screamed.

  For a moment, Leighton remained silent. He glanced to the side and then swallowed visibly. When his eyes met those of the child again, something had shifted in them.

  ‘He’s right,’ Leighton said, softly, ‘I’m not a good person.’ Hot tears slid down his cheeks as he spoke but he seemed unconcerned. ‘I’ve made mistakes – Tina – stupid ones.’

  ‘Like what?’ the girl asked.

  ‘Well,’ Leighton swallowed, ‘I guess I let somebody who I loved drift away from me until she was so far away I couldn’t ever reach her. That hurt her and it hurt my baby girl. I know I’m not a good person, Tina, but because of my mistakes, I want to be better – as a dad, as a cop – maybe just as a person. So, I’m trying to be a good person. If I can help somebody, I will try. That’s why I’m here for you right now. The other cops wouldn’t come looking for you. They thought you were maybe up in Alaska with your dad, but I refused to give up on you. Do you understand that?’

  The girl nodded as she stared intently at the small piece of yellow plastic in Leighton’s hand.

  ‘You know, I found this the night you ran in front of my car,’ he said, quietly. ‘You dropped it when my car gave you a fright didn’t you?’

  Tina glanced up at his face and something softened in her expression. She nodded. It was a small gesture, just visible enough for Leighton to notice.

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t find you then. But I want you to know that I came back to look for you. By then you had already gone. This was on the ground, and I knew how important it would be to you because my own little girl has one just like it, with a tiny plastic bowl too. The tail on her one broke off too, but she doesn’t mind.’