Rodgers straightened himself up. “What about your boyfriend, what did he say?
“Who, Timinski?” She tried on a smile, but it dropped away when he didn’t respond in kind. “He’s off it. OCSO isn’t calling in the cavalry, so he’s probably not even in the state anymore. But he let me take another look in the cabin.”
“You really think anyone would be stupid enough to go back there?”
“No, but I’m working backwards here. If there really is a third man, then this whole thing was designed to bring Hobbes out into the light.”
Rodgers rubbed his shoulder. “Easier ways to do that.”
“Fuller said the same, but go with me here. Say that’s the case—who would know about Hobbes? Who would want all of us to know about him?”
Rodgers rubbed his chin. “Someone who knew him personally, I suppose.”
“Exactly. I mean, a guy like Hobbes, he cuts a swath of destruction through people’s lives.”
“And generally ends those lives.”
“But what if he didn’t?” She shoved her hands deeper into her pockets. “Somewhere, sometime, a person tangled with Hobbes but escaped with less than a death sentence. That’s the kind of person who might want some measure of revenge.”
Rodgers squinted at her. “You think your third man is someone Hobbes abused as a child.”
Laura nodded. “And now they’re all grown up.”
“That’s a hell of a broad profile. We don’t have the slightest inkling what Hobbes was up to for the last twenty-nine years.”
“That’s why we need to focus on what we do know. We need to concentrate on the murders from the late ’80s.”
She produced the manila envelope from inside her jacket and handed it to Rodgers.
He pulled out the photos, examined them, then shrugged. “What am I looking at here?”
“Timinski and I found them in the cabin.”
“Gold crosses.”
“I was thinking trophies.”
He let out a sharp breath. “That’s a stretch. Besides, there are four of them.”
Laura said nothing.
In a second, he worked it out for himself. “A fourth girl all those years ago?”
“It’s not impossible, is it?”
“Let’s go inside,” she said.
They warmed their hands over the wood-burning stove in the kitchen and Rodgers put the kettle on. When it whistled he poured out two measures of hot water into teacups, then pulled out his bottle of bourbon.
She shook her head once. “Not today.”
“Warms the soul,” he said, but acquiesced, screwing on the cap and putting the bottle into a cabinet. He handed Laura her tea.
She sipped at it. “Just say I’m right. Who could the fourth victim be?”
“Lot of girls, potentially. Back when it was happening, we would assume the worst every time a girl went missing. Most of them were home safe and sound within a day; that’s how missing persons always works. But some weren’t.”
“They could have been taken by Hobbes.”
“Sure, or a hundred other things. We never found them posed in a field. Sometimes people just disappear, and that includes children. It doesn’t take a serial killer.”
Laura chewed on that, then said, “Let’s just keep assuming the theory is true though. One of those girls was actually taken by Hobbes.”
“But he didn’t pose her in a field,” Rodgers said.
“He didn’t even kill her. That’s the whole idea. Do you have files on the possibles?”
“Of course, I’ve got copies of everything.”
They spent the rest of the day and most of the night reading. At midnight, Don Rodgers stretched and yawned and pushed his chair back from the kitchen table.
“I’m done for the night,” he said.
“You sure?”
“When you get older you’ll understand. Past a certain age and hour, the mind turns to Swiss cheese. I’ll be more use after a good night’s rest.”
Laura started packing up some of the file folders strewn across the table top. “I can take a hint.”
“No, no, stay if you want.”
“I’ll take off. We can pick it up tomorrow.”
He crossed his arms. “How many cups of coffee have you had?”
“Three?”
“In the last hour maybe.”
“Okay, call it three plus.”
“You drink coffee like a cop. I remember those days, sucking down a metric ton of caffeine and then lying in bed, staring at the ceiling and listening to my heart jitter. Really, you can stay.”
“If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” he said. “Couch is in the den when you crash. Besides, Cooper can use the company.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder.
On a thick rug in front of the wood-burning stove, Cooper slept on his side, belly toward the heat. Every few seconds he let out a snore.
“Okay, see you in the morning,” Laura said.
Once Rodgers had closed the door to his room, she unstacked the file folders, trying to return them to their previous positions. One stack was for unread, and then there were several stacks for already examined. One stack for no, one for the maybes, one for the files she had unresolved questions about. She plucked up another and got back to reading.
An hour and a half later, she found it.
The folder was labeled with a name: FINCH, PATTY. Inside was a copy of the police report, a photo of the girl, and something else. Rodgers had taken from the official file two sheets of construction paper. Both had drawings on them. One of a house, in front of it a boy and a man, hand in hand, smiling. The second one she recognized. It was the same blue ribbon, the same beige oval.
The picture in the Patty Finch file.
The picture from the cabin.
They’d been done by the same person. She could feel it in her bones.
Three quick raps brought Rodgers out of his room, bleary-eyed.
“What the hell, Laura?”
“I found it. Here, look.” She laid the file open on the table in front of him.
“So what?” he said, and rubbed at the stubble on his chin, yawning.
“As an ex-cop, you’re not going to like this next part.”
He frowned. “Go on.”
“When I was at the cabin with Timinski, I took something.”
He didn’t say anything, just glowered at her.
“Wait here a second.”
She threw on her coat and bundled out to her car, came back inside with the coloring book clutched to her chest. In the kitchen, Rodgers was fully awake. More than awake. His nostrils flared in anger.
“Christ, Laura, you can’t take things from a crime scene! Say it has any value at all. What use will it be in court?”
She pressed the coloring book flat on the table and turned to the page, then lined it up next to the one from the file folder.
Rodgers froze, staring at them.
“They’re the same, right?” Laura said, unable to hide the excitement in her voice.
When Rodgers spoke, no excitement colored his inflection. Words came out in a flat monotone. “You found this in the cabin? Hobbes’s cabin?”
“Yes. What’s wrong?”
His lower lip trembled as he tapped the name on the file folder. “Patty Finch. I know this girl.”
“Of course. You’ve read all these files a hundred times.”
He shook his head.
“No, you don’t understand. I met her. I found her more than once.”
CHAPTER
31
“THE FINCHES,” RODGERS said, “were new in town. Just the mother and the daughter, Mildred and Patty. The girl was a sweetheart. You saw the picture?”
Laura nodded.
“Doesn’t capture her at all. That was the only photo we could get, and she looks happy in it.”
“She didn’t look happy in real life?”
“In real life she looked like a puppy that’d
been kicked too many times. Nice as can be, but she’d cringe every time you lifted your hand.”
Laura paused. “What happened to her?”
He stared at her for second. “You live with your mother, don’t you? Can’t help but notice you never talk about her.”
“No, not much,” she said, and left it at that.
“Can I assume it’s not exactly a loving relationship?”
“You could assume that, yes.”
“Same for me. Only I can tell that whatever your mama did to you, it wasn’t physical. Otherwise you’d understand exactly what I’m describing. A kid who’s been hit so many times, from so many angles, that the possibility of violence starts to live in the back of their mind like a ghost. Never really there, never really gone. Hell, I still can’t be around a person carrying a cane without the hair on the back of my neck standing up.”
“Your father?”
He gave a curt nod. “The Finch girl was one like me. I knew it the second I saw her. Tried to talk to Mildred, the mom, but she was hard to track down. Never home. Always some excuse.”
“Any hint of what might have happened to Patty?”
“This was before she disappeared. It wasn’t the first time I’d run into that—a kid with a less-than-stellar home life—and usually the parents were just about what you’d expect. Drunks, antisocial personalities. But Mildred Finch was different.”
“Not a drunk,” Laura said.
“No way. Very sharp. She had the good-mother act down pat.”
“But it was an act.”
He thought about that. “Hell, I don’t know. I think so. The little girl was being beaten, I’m sure of that much.”
“And her mother?”
His eyes narrowed to coin slots. “No kid is that good of an actor, and one of them was putting me on. Who does that leave?”
Laura saw something in his face that made the backs of her hands tingle. Here in his kitchen, she suddenly had the sense of what it must have been like to sit across from him at the interrogation table, and the thought of it made her a little bit scared.
“I’m sorry,” he said, sensing her hesitation. “Bad memories. She ran away three times. The first time, she tried to recruit another girl in her class to run away with her. Well, the other girl got scared and told her mama, and her mama called the police. They dispatched me and I found her waiting in the spot they’d arranged, all ready to go. You rarely see that in a ten-year-old, a total readiness to brave the big bad world. No hesitation.”
“She made a real impression on you,” Laura said.
Rodgers turned his head to hide his face. “She was a good kid. Second time she tried to go on her own, someone spotted her with a bindle, a piece of cloth tied to stick. She probably saw it on TV somewhere. I found her down near the bridge south of downtown.”
“And the third time?”
He groaned. “I should have known. It never felt right.”
Laura put a hand on top of his. “I’m sure you did what you could.”
He drew back from her, used his other hand to rub the spot she’d touched like it had been burned by acid. “Don’t do that. Don’t pretend you can judge whether my search was adequate. You don’t know how hard I looked.”
“Okay,” Laura said. “How hard did you look?”
He paused, staring at the wall. When he spoke, it was softer than before. “The third time she went to the old speedway.”
Laura knew what he meant. On the outskirts of Hillsborough stood a remnant from the early days of stock car racing. It dated from before the sport was televised, before it even had professional drivers. They raced on a dirt track, and years of tires and footsteps had packed the topsoil down good and tight. The track was still there.
“Out by the river,” Laura said.
“Out by the river,” Rodgers agreed, and tapped a finger on the beige oval from the coloring book.
Laura’s hand went to her mouth. “The track.”
“Looks like it to me,” he said, and went to the cabinet to retrieve his bottle of bourbon. “The third time, Patty Finch went to the track and tried to find someone to give her a ride away from Hillsborough. Once her mother reported her missing, people started coming forward saying they’d seen her.”
“Did she get a ride?”
“No one knew. Of course the track hadn’t been used by NASCAR in decades, but it hosted an exhibition race—I forget why—and there were people from all over. Always thought one of them gave her a lift, gave her the head start she always wanted. I figured that’s why I couldn’t find her.”
He poured a slug of bourbon into his empty coffee cup and downed it in one swallow.
She gave him a minute, then asked, “You never considered her as a possible victim of the Kid?”
He shook his head. “Not seriously. She wanted to run away so bad, tried so many times, we all just assumed she finally succeeded. Maybe that’s just what I wanted to believe.” He poured and drank again.
“You said they were new in town.”
“They came that winter. Patty registered at the school halfway through the year, I remember that much. By the time summer rolled around, she was gone.”
“Where did they come from?”
“It’s all in the file.”
She paged through his notes, found a notation that read PREVIOUS ADDRESS? scrawled across the page. “Here,” she said.
“It’s coming back. Never could get a straight answer out of Mildred Finch. Fact is, I only got to question her twice, maybe three times. She moved again.”
Laura sat back. “Her daughter disappeared, and she moved away that quickly?”
Rodgers nodded.
“Seems like a lot of parents might be inclined to stick around, assist in the search. And if they really thought their daughter ran away, they might want to be there in case the child tried to come home.”
“You heard my opinion of her,” he said. “When I found out she was gone, it wasn’t a surprise.”
“No forwarding address?”
Rodgers didn’t answer, just filled his cup again.
“We need to track her down.”
He sighed. “This is a real lead, Laura. You keep tugging at the thread, what are you going to find? I’m worried about you.”
“I’m not letting this one get away.”
“Let’s try talking to Fuller together. I used to be sheriff. He’ll listen.”
“You can try if you want, but he wants nothing to do with me.” She took a breath. “I’m a pariah.”
“It’s dangerous now. You shouldn’t do this alone.”
“So help me. Don’t quit ten yards from the finish line. You of all people should be ready to back me up.”
“The police can do that.”
“Christ, take a teaspoon of concrete and harden the fuck up.”
He shrugged. “I’m an old man, Laura. I’ve been looking for Eugene Hobbes for almost thirty years, and now I found him. Haven’t I done enough?”
Laura shook her head violently. “Hobbes may be gone, but the other one is still out there. We need to find him. Olive Hanson is dead, but Teresa Mitchem might still be alive. Samantha Powell might still be alive.”
“You don’t want to end up like me. It’s always something. Always one more clue, one more hint. I guess I just can’t do it anymore.”
She grabbed her coat and slipped her arms inside. “All these years you’ve been thinking about this case, turning it over in your mind. You know what would cure that? The truth. An answer about what really happened. Maybe saving a little girl’s life.”
She gestured to the kitchen filled with file boxes in the corner of his shabby house perched among the failing, lonely fields.
“You’re right—I don’t want to end up like this.”
He stared at her for a second. Then his shoulders sagged and he reached for the bottle on the table, poured some into a random glass. When he spoke, his voice was near breaking.
“I just don
’t have another one in me.”
She went to leave.
“Wait. Come back and see me again.”
“I’m going to be running this thing down. Maybe in a couple days.” She opened the door.
“Two days,” he said. “Call at least, so I know you’re okay. Promise me.”
“I promise,” she said.
She turned back, and he did look different. Smaller somehow, as if all along he’d been a set of those Russian nesting dolls and now someone had stripped away the defiant exterior shell, revealing the smaller broken one inside.
CHAPTER
32
“I THINK I’VE got something here, Tim.”
“What time is it?”
“After two. Did I wake you?”
“Hold on.” A sound like the rustling of sheets.
“Are you alone?”
The shuffling of footsteps, the click of a door latch shooting home. “Sorry, you caught me off guard.”
“I shouldn’t have called.”
“No—it’s good to hear your voice.”
Quickly, she ran down the story. Stealing the coloring book, matching it to an old Sheriff’s Office file, and finding the name associated with that file: a possible fourth victim.
At the end, Timinski said, “You stole evidence?”
“I knew that’d bother you.”
“We have to pretend you never told me about this.”
“Or you’ll cuff me?
“I’m not playing.” Steel in his voice. “You just admitted a felony to a federal agent. And don’t tell Fuller about this, he’ll arrest you just to shut you up. Even if there was another one, where does that leave us?”
“You should take credit for the connection. Maybe get yourself a nice office out it.”
“You mean the connection made using stolen evidence? I can’t have anything to do with that.”
“Not even if we can catch this guy?”
“I’m not going to report you or anything. I just can’t help.”
“I understand.”
“That’s probably not what you want to hear, but I’ve got other things to—”
“Tell it to Angie Mitchem,” she said, and hung up the phone.
* * *
She thought of Angie Mitchem, sitting in a worn-smooth pew and clutching her Bible, then glanced down at the images from the coloring book. She’d lined them up on her bed before calling, like soldiers marching across her duvet. Two feet in old-fashioned sandals. One big, one small. Sudden recognition flashed through her mind. There was a story that fit the bill.
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