“And told you what it meant,” McKinney said slowly.
“No, he mentioned an article I wrote years ago, and I thought it might be a book code, and I played around with it until I found a good match. The key…”
She trailed off. A deep, raspy sound had started somewhere deep in the man’s chest. He began shaking. With a start, she realized he was holding in laughter.
Then he couldn’t hold it in anymore. A throaty chuckle filled the office. “He called you? He spoke to you in code?” McKinney managed.
“Look, he gave you the code too. Is it really so difficult to believe?”
As quickly as it had started, the laughter stopped. McKinney’s face turned back to stone. He sat down and started scratching at his reports again.
“Sheriff.”
“I think we’re done here,” he said.
She couldn’t believe it. It was like living a nightmare. To have the knowledge of what might be Teresa Mitchem’s exact location, and to be rebuffed by the very man charged with finding her, was nothing less than surreal.
The girl who cried wolf, she thought. Except that she’d never in her life lied to this man. Embarrassed him, maybe, but never lied.
“Is your pride really so important you can’t let me help you?” she asked.
He didn’t bother looking up. “Help from a woman like you is worthless.” He sighed, like he was letting her in on some foregone conclusion. “It’d just be a waste of my time.”
“Where’s Frank Stuart? I need to speak with him.”
“I’m not here to pass messages between lovers. This isn’t middle school.”
“I need to see Deputy Stuart. Right now.”
He glanced up. “Deputy Stuart, who we know is your source, is on suspension. Maybe permanently.”
Despite all the promises she had made to herself—promises about all the things she would refuse to do again—she decided to tell him. She’d already thrown away her chance at the story. In for a penny, in for a pound.
“Frank Stuart is not my source,” she said. “I’ll swear to that on the record.”
But Sheriff McKinney just shook his head. “He never should have trusted you.”
CHAPTER
19
SHE BANGED ON Frank’s door. After what felt like an hour but was probably more like three minutes, the door swung open. She barged past him into the living room and started spreading papers out onto the coffee table.
“Laura,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper.
She glanced up at him. “You look terrible.”
It seemed like he’d lost ten pounds. There were dark hollows under his cheeks, black circles under his eyes. He wore a tank top that had been white once, now yellowed with overuse.
“Well, I feel like shit too,” he said.
“What happened?”
“What the fuck do you think happened? They fired me, Laura. With prejudice. I’m done as a cop in Orange County. And what kind of recommendation do you think McKinney will give me?” He ran a hand down his face. “I’m done as a cop period.”
“Maybe not in a big city,” she said.
“That’s your dream, not mine.”
“Besides, I heard you’re just suspended.”
“Administrative bullshit. It takes time to get the paperwork through, but believe me, I’m fired.”
She patted the couch cushion. “Sit with me a minute.”
All the fight had gone out of him. He folded himself into the space next to her and she could smell his sickly sweet stench, warm booze mixed with body odor.
“I told him you’re not the source.”
“Who?”
“McKinney.”
“You told him,” he repeated slowly.
“Yes. I marched into his office, let him fire off a few salvos about my worth, or lack thereof, as a reporter, and about you being my source. And then I corrected him. I told him it wasn’t you. I told him I’d go on the record if I had to.”
His eyes widened. “And?”
She glanced away. “He didn’t believe a word I said.”
“But you’ll go on the record. If you do that, I don’t think he can fire me.”
“Maybe so, maybe not. Look, Frank, I want to be straight with you. I didn’t visit McKinney to go to bat for you. I went because I know where to find Teresa Mitchem.”
He froze.
“Did you hear me?” she asked.
He picked up an open bottle of whiskey and took a swig. “I heard you.”
She tried to pry it out of his hands, but he pushed her away and pulled on the bottle again.
“Frank, I need you sober.”
“Is this what you told McKinney? That you know where the Mitchem girl is?” He grimaced as he swallowed. “No wonder he didn’t take you seriously.”
“I know you’re hurting. I know what a job can mean to a person. Working the right job, the whole world just makes sense. Without it, everything seems pointless.”
He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, then drank again.
“But you didn’t become a cop just to wear a badge and carry a gun, did you?”
“Hell, no.”
“Then why?”
He said nothing.
She slipped a picture out of the folder in her hand and held it up for him to see. “This is why.”
He stared at it. A girl’s ear so small and perfectly formed it looked fake, like it was made of plastic. His face didn’t react, but he nodded.
“So let’s help her.”
Frank considered her for a second, seemed to come to an internal decision, and set his jaw. He nodded again. Even a few days ago he would never have accepted such flimsy evidence, but getting fired had changed him. He was willing to listen, ready to take a risk.
What did he have to lose?
Step by step, she walked him through the process that had led to her conclusions. The phone call. Her therapist’s mention of book codes. The critical inductive leap between the Kid’s mention of that one specific article and the numbers delivered to the police. Through it all, Frank tried to stop her, tried to ask questions, but she steamrolled right over him. Once she started talking, she couldn’t stop. The story poured out, fact after fact, a terrible crescendo of human misery leading inexorably to that green smudge on the map.
When she was finished, he examined the spot pinned down by her index finger, deep in the national forest, then glanced up.
“You’re seeing a therapist?”
She gaped at him. “That … that’s your first question? I’m not crazy, Frank.”
He looked up at the ceiling, scratched the underside of his jaw, then looked back at her. “Was it something I did? That made you go?”
“Christ, maybe this was a mistake.” She started shuffling the papers back into her bag.
“Laura, I’m not saying you’re wrong.”
“No?”
“No. You convinced me.”
She said nothing.
“I mean it. I’m convinced.”
“Okay.” She sat back down, relief that someone had finally believed the story flooding through her. “Now what do we do about it?”
He glanced down at the bottle in his hand as though surprised it was there, then set it aside. “McKinney didn’t believe you. You still talking to that FBI guy?”
“Who do you mean?”
He just shook his head. “Come on, Laura. I’m not that dumb. No one in the Sheriff’s Office is stupid enough to have anything to do with you—me excluded, of course. Who else could have fed you material like that?”
He pointed at the few photos still strewn across the table.
Laura gave a single small nod. If she wanted his help, this was the price of admission.
“Timinski, right?”
Another nod. “He’s out at Elias Quant’s place. I tried him earlier, but no answer.”
“So try him again,” he said.
So she did, let his cell ring to voicemail, went through the
whole routine with Quant again, but got no response. She called back and got the old man to agree to check the room himself. Ten minutes later her phone rang, and she snatched it up.
“I apologize, Miss Chambers,” Quant said. “I knocked for quite some time, and against my better judgment I opened the door. No one in residence.”
“Thanks,” she said, and ended the call.
Frank rubbed his face in his hands again, checked his watch.
“It’s just us,” she muttered.
“What’s that?”
“I said it’s just us. We could sit here waiting for him to come back, but every second we do nothing, Teresa Mitchem will be another second closer to dying.”
“If she’s still alive,” Frank said.
“Don’t even say it. She was alive when he cut off her ear.”
“Doesn’t mean he kept her that way.”
“Think about it like this: if she’s dead, then we can be careful, take our time, think this thing through. But if she’s alive, we have to move.” Laura took a breath. “We’d have to do something. Wouldn’t we?”
“If she was alive. There’s no way to tell.”
She stood. “Hope for the best, plan for the worst, right? But let’s plan for the best. We need to assume she’s alive and act accordingly, so that on the off chance that she is—”
“I can save her,” Frank finished.
“We can save her.”
He shook his head. “You’re a reporter. There’s no way I can take you up there with me.”
She started shuffling the papers into her bag again. “It’s a package deal. If you want to go up there, you’re taking me with you.”
“Give me the coordinates.”
“I put in the work, I figured it out. I’ve thrown away what could have been the biggest story of my career on the off chance we can save that girl. We can save her. You’re not leaving me behind.”
“Laura.”
He grabbed her hand, then started to pry the cell phone from between her fingers. She tried to stop him, tried to hold on to it as tightly as possible. They stood there like opposing sides before the start of a tug of war, just waiting for the whistle. Then he put a flat hand on her chest and pushed. She tumbled backward onto the couch. He stood above her, phone in hand, looking sheepish.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Don’t do this.”
“It’s for your own good.”
“For my good? Listen to yourself—all you want to do is play the hero. If you really cared about that little girl, you’d take any help you could get.”
“It’s for your own good. You’ll thank me later.”
She turned away, her face on fire, burning to spit at him or to deliver some cutting remark that would throw his selfishness into perspective. Turning back, she opened her mouth.
But he was already gone. Down on the street, a truck’s engine turned over and tires squealed against the road as he took off for the highway.
* * *
A gray wooden shack with a tin roof served as the Orange High photography lab. It was out near the football field. In some prior life it had probably been the equipment shed.
Laura had been interested in journalism even in high school. She knew where it was, only about a mile and a half from Frank Stuart’s apartment. School wasn’t in session, but she sprinted there anyway.
This was her last chance.
She knocked, and the door opened right away. Leon Botton, wearing the same black T-shirt and black jeans, pushed that long hair out of his eyes and raised his shoulders. He didn’t speak, but the message was clear: What gives?
“You have a car, Leon?”
“Uh, sure, Miss Chambers.”
“Is it that one?”
She pointed back toward the school parking lot, empty save a single vehicle: a beige Ford Taurus, more rust than car.
“Miss Chambers?”
“If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times—call me Laura. Is it that one?”
“Uh, yes.”
“Okay, that’ll have to do. Get your camera, get the keys. We’re leaving right now.”
CHAPTER
20
“THERE’S NO ONE around for miles. If something goes wrong, we’re screwed. Are you sure we should do this?”
She looked at Leon and frowned. The last thing she needed was a reluctant partner. All her focus had to be on finding the girl. Coddling a frightened high schooler would be a nightmare, especially out in these remote woods.
But he wasn’t wrong.
“Getting cold feet?” she asked.
That one simple question was enough to put a kink in his pride. He drew himself up, as much as was possible while crouched in a laurel thicket, and gave a tight-lipped shake of his head.
“We’ve come this far,” he said.
He whispered it, even though the cabin was at least two hundred yards away.
* * *
We’ve come this far.
Distance traveled amounted to a hundred and eighty miles. Three hours on the highway, the last thirty minutes on roads progressively more bumpy and remote. Frank had taken her phone, and the coordinates along with them, but there had been nothing to stop her from working them out again.
First she made Leon drive her to the Chambers farm. Her mother had been asleep in her room, napping the afternoon away. Laura tiptoed down to the basement and found the corner where her father’s things were stored. On a high shelf, behind a box of his old ashtrays, she found what she was looking for and pulled it down.
The box was crafted of wood inlaid with gold trim. Inside, a velvet pad held the gun in its center.
She lifted it out.
A Browning Hi-Power.
Before he died, her father had taken her out into the fields a few times and let her plink cans. That’s what he called it, anyway, and she had thought it would be like using a BB gun. The first time she pulled the trigger, the gun had jumped back so hard it hit her in the face, splitting open her bottom lip. The sound cracked like a mile-long whip, so loud she couldn’t hear afterward. Her father had pressed his grimy shirt cuff against the cut and let the blood thicken, then picked the gun up off the ground and pressed it back into her hands.
Once she could hit her target more than fifty percent of the time, he’d said, “Now you’re ready for the shotgun.”
And she had learned to shoot that too, to brace herself and prepare for its incredible roar.
She ran her finger down the side of the grip and remembered him doing the same thing while describing the invisible mechanics hidden inside. He’d told her all about it: how it was a knockoff of the Colt 1911 his own father had carried in World War II, how it was a decent copy but still inferior to its inspiration, how a cheap knockoff was all he could afford.
She lifted the heavy velvet lining out and found .40 caliber shells rattling around the box’s bottom. One by one, she fed them into the magazine, and when it was loaded, she stuck the gun under her shirt. If her mother was awake upstairs, she didn’t want to have to explain anything.
But her mother wasn’t awake. Laura had pulled on hiking boots and slipped out the door, into the waiting car. In no time at all, they were gone.
* * *
The Browning hung like a lead weight in her pocket. She tried not to let it bang on the nearby tree as she shifted her weight.
Below them was a large natural bowl carved into the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was too small and shallow to be called a valley, too round to be a canyon. It was almost perfectly circular, with steep walls rising about a hundred feet above the floor and a flat bottom covered in widely spaced pines.
In the center, located directly on top of the message’s coordinates, stood a cabin. It looked to be one or two rooms, built of rough unfinished planks and cross-hatched logs. Barely visible behind it was the top of a small outbuilding. A rutted dirt track led in down the shallow side of the bowl, but there were no cars in sight.
“Where�
�s Deputy Stuart? You said he’d be here,” Leon said.
“He left thirty minutes before us. Maybe he got lost.”
Leon shrugged.
It wasn’t impossible. They had never managed to find a spot where the dirt track leading to the cabin connected to any larger road. After driving back and forth a few times, they had simply pulled over and started through the woods on foot, heading toward the coordinates. Eventually they’d hit the edge of the bowl.
“Maybe he’s not coming,” Leon said.
“I don’t think he’d give up that easily.”
Leon shrugged again. “You know him a lot better than I do. What about the light, though?”
She looked behind them at the sky. They’d left at about three thirty, and now it was almost half past seven. The sun hovered dangerously close to the horizon.
Leon followed the direction of her gaze. “Could be he realizes how close we are to sunset. Maybe he turned back.”
“Maybe,” Laura said, and remembered another trick from her time outdoors with her father. She held up her right hand, index and middle fingers extended and pressed together, pointing to her left. It looked like she was making a gun and turning it sideways. Held up to the sky, the arc length of two fingers was about equal to the distance the sun would travel in thirty minutes. She made another gun with her left hand and, starting at the sun, walked her fingers down to the horizon. She counted two thirty-minute spans, plus a little extra. An hour and fifteen minutes.
Down in the bottom of the bowl, though, sunset would come earlier.
“It may only be light down there for another thirty minutes or so.”
Opposite them, on the east side, fog started flowing over the rim and pouring down into the bottom. It crept across the floor of the bowl, snaking between the trees, filling it up with a thin mist. The setting sun infused the murk with a faint orange glow, the air smoldering from within.
Beside her, Leon shivered. “You ever see anything like that?”
“Fog in the mountains? Sure.”
“No, like that. Fucking orange mist. It looks like goddamn Halloween down there.”
It was the first time she’d ever heard him swear, but it sure as hell didn’t seem like the right time to dish out a lesson in manners.
“No, I guess not,” she conceded.
Last Girl Gone Page 17