He yanked open the bedroom door and saw the kitchen counter set with two places. Replacement stood there grinning like the Cheshire cat with a frying pan in one hand and a spatula in the other. She was wearing a big old Fairfield High School shirt. Jack walked around the counter and saw that the shirt was all she was wearing.
“Knock off surprising me in my bedroom and go put on some pants.” He shook his head. “That stuff is weird.” Jack couldn’t bring himself to frown because he was so happy about breakfast, so he settled for trying to look stern.
“You like scrambled eggs?” She pushed a large plate toward him that also had four pieces of buttered toast.
“I love them.” Jack grabbed his fork but stopped with his hand halfway to his face.
Replacement had the same look Aunt Haddie would give him when he didn’t say grace. He sighed, folded his hands, and bowed his head as she began.
“Thank you, Lord, for this food. Thank you for Jack’s help. Please help him find my sister and have her be okay. Bless Aunt Haddie and say hi to my brother. In Jesus’s name, thanks.”
Jack kept his eyes closed, and his head bowed. There were times when he felt like he didn’t have anything that was core to his being. That he was missing something about being a human. Missing was the wrong word to use even. Missing meant that at one time, he had it, and it was now gone. He shook his head. He didn’t think he ever had what Replacement possessed. It was like he was defective. Something inside him was incomplete. This was one of those times. With his eyes still closed, he shook his head. Replacement understood something he didn’t.
He opened his eyes and dropped his fork in surprise. Replacement’s face was right next to his and staring into his eyes as if she were searching for something.
“There you go again, kid. You have to give me some space,” he protested but swiftly grabbed his fork and started to eat.
“What? I’m just looking at your face. Did you just think of something?” she asked, eyeing him.
“You can just ask me. Don’t get right next to me, don’t sneak up on me, just ask.”
She walked over to the far counter and returned with two cups of coffee. “Are we off to the reservoir?”
“Coffee, yes . . . whatever you want. Wait, no,” he added. “I’ll call Sully this morning first. But I was thinking last night, we should go see if we can find one of those kids. They may know something.”
“Why are we going to hunt down kids first?” Replacement didn’t mask her disappointment well.
“Look, I think the kids are just that, kids. We need to know if that’s where they found the car or if they drove it there. On the other hand, maybe they saw something. There’s an Eddie’s Sport on 54, and it has a small garage for ATVs, snowmobiles and dirt bikes. It’s on the way to the reservoir. It has to be local kids so a short conversation might yield us a name.”
Jack looked down at the empty plate, and then glanced at his watch. Five after seven. He didn’t think breakfast was a bribe, but if it was, it worked. “How soon can you be ready?” By the time he finished asking, she was already pulling out a pair of jeans.
“I need a minute.” He grabbed his coffee and headed into the bedroom.
Between Ben Nichols’s shotgun and the dogs at Sullivan’s, Jack had wished he’d had his gun twice yesterday. He opened the small safe under the medicine cabinet and grabbed his pistol and holster.
Chapter 15 ~
Chicken Head
As they drove to Eddie’s Sports, Replacement fidgeted in her seat. She looked up as they turned. A large sign read Ridge Hill High School with a picture of a mountain lion in blue and white.
“The high school? What’s here?” she asked.
“Kids. We’re looking for the group of teenagers who were at the car. One of them has that helmet, another’s a hefty, fat boy in a giant red parka. It’s worth a drive-by. We might be able to see them here.”
“That’s great. How are we going to pick them out of that crowd?” Replacement pointed to the sea of teens arriving at the school.
Jack scanned the crowd and began to doubt the wisdom of his decision too.
“There,” Replacement called, pointing to a heavy kid in a red parka. “Wait, over there too.” She pointed again.
“I get it. Look for the Mohawk kid.”
“Third red parka but sort of thin.”
He scanned the sea of jackets and slowed down even more.
“Fourth fatty in red off the starboard bow,” she bellowed.
A large group of students turned to glare at the car. Jack realized she’d rolled down her window and was now halfway out of the car as she yelled.
Jack pulled her back into her seat. “Keep it down, Captain Obvious.”
She sprang right back up. “There he is. It’s him.” Replacement almost opened the door as she frantically began jabbing the air with her finger.
“What did I just say?” Jack was getting ready to abort the whole thing.
“No, there he is. It’s him,” she yelled and gestured wildly.
“Where?” Jack scanned the crowd, milling around the buses.
“The chicken-headed kid.” She grabbed his chin and turned his head. Jack saw the teen parking his motorcycle, and atop his helmet was a large gold Mohawk.
Jack double-parked right behind the bike, blocking him in. “Stay here.” He jumped out of the car, and the rider, who was being greeted by a group of friends, turned back toward him.
“Excuse me,” Jack called. He wanted to talk to him without the friends. “Can you come over here for a second? I need to ask you a quick question.”
The kid has to be close to eighteen. Judging from his helmet and the fact he’s driving a motorcycle in winter, he thinks he’s a tough guy.
“You a cop?” he laughed as his friends circled a little closer around him.
“I am. I just have a question.”
“Talk to my lawyer.” The teen held up both middle fingers, and his friends laughed.
Replacement pulled herself up so her whole upper body was halfway out the car window.
“How about you come and talk to me? I don’t bite . . . hard.” She giggled.
The kid laughed, punched one of his friends in the arm, and sauntered forward.
“I’ll talk to you, babe.” His arrogance made Jack’s anger rise. He didn’t change expression, but his eyes grew blacker. He got right up next to the kid.
“You can talk to me, you wiseass, and answer a couple of questions now, or I can have your bike towed, impounded, and checked by the MVD, and then I’ll throw your sorry ass in a cell.”
The teen gulped and the color drained from his face. Jack nodded to the other side of the car, and the boy followed him.
“I need to know about the day you were out at the reservoir and saw a blue Honda Civic.” Jack spoke low.
The kid looked back at his friends, and his bravado returned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He might as well have been a peacock with how he gestured and posed.
“Okay,” Jack leaned in, and his voice turned cold. “Listen up. Now I’m doing you a favor by treating you like a man in front of your friends. If you try jerking me around one more time, let me tell you what I’m going to do. I noticed you swerving when you pulled into the school, and I suspect that you’re under the influence of class B drugs in a school zone. Under paragraph 95 of the DEA act that means I can detain you until the school principal comes and the two of us will escort you down to Mrs. Kazikinski’s office.”
Mrs. Kazikinski was the school nurse. He knew she taught a couple self-defense courses at the local Y. She was also the wrestling coach for both the boys’ and girls’ teams. She was large, burly, and at almost six foot two, she had the widest frame he’d ever seen on a woman. Jack was making up the codes, but he bet the kid would know Mrs. Kazikinski and would be extremely afraid of what Jack said next.
“Under section 53 part C, any student who’s viewed as being under the influence of a cla
ss B narcotic can and will be subjected to a full body cavity search by trained medical personnel. That would be Mrs. Kazikinski.” Jack smiled. “So what’s it going to be?”
“Teddy, Tommy, Brian and Scott, and I were down at the reservoir.”
Jack smiled again. The kid just threw everyone under the bus. Jack took out his notebook and started to write the details.
“And your full name?”
He swallowed hard. “Ricky Matthews.” He rolled his eyes as Jack wrote it down.
“You saw the car and then what?”
“I saw the car, so we figured we’d just check it out.” He shrugged.
“What did the car look like?” Jack’s voice was still cold.
“I don’t know. Um . . . it was blue. It had been there, you know. And—”
“Been there?”
“The windshield had snow on it. It snowed the night before.”
“Did you get in the car?”
He looked at his feet and shuffled them awkwardly. “Yeah, but . . . I opened the door. There was nothing in it. The keys were still there, but . . . I just looked.” He looked Jack straight in the eyes.
He’s lying.
“Did you start the car?” Jack leaned in.
“Yeah, I was just sitting there, so I turned it over. It started right up. It was busted up already. There was glass in the front seat, and the window was broken open. “
Jack frowned. He was holding something back.
“Ricky, have you ever looked at the size of Mrs. Kazikinski’s hands? She can palm a watermelon. You’re leaving something out, and you have one chance to give it up.”
The teen was squirming, and his eyes went wide. “There was a smart phone. It was wedged in the seat.”
“Where is it?” Jack’s eyes narrowed.
“I took it but . . . I forget.” Ricky was starting to whine, and he looked like a little boy who had to go to the bathroom.
Lie.
Jack pulled out a pair of handcuffs.
“No, no,” Ricky begged. “Wait a minute, I got it. I got it.” He pulled off his backpack and desperately started looking through it. “Here.” He handed Jack the phone.
“Is there anything else?” Jack’s eyes bored into him.
“No, nothing else.” Ricky waved his hands back and forth.
“Thank you for your time. I’d hurry to class if I were you.”
Ricky bolted, avoiding the friends who called after him. Jack laughed as he opened the door of the Impala and hopped in.
Replacement reached out and attempted to grab the phone.
“Hold on. I think there should be a plastic bag I threw into the glove box.”
She pulled out the bag and handed it to him.
“It’s dead,” he said as he placed the phone into the bag and sealed it up.
Jack saw the excitement on her face change to disappointment. “Do you have a charger?”
“I have a normal phone, kid.”
“You mean an old one.”
Jack drove around the buses and headed for the exit.
Replacement stared down at the phone. “Good job getting this. I hope it works.”
“Me, too.” Jack nodded back toward the school. “Think Ricky will make it to the bathroom?”
“I think he peed himself next to the car.” She started laughing.
“The kid’s angle is what I thought really happened. Three people have confirmed the car had been there a while: Sully, Nichols, and now Ricky.”
Jack’s eyes turned back to the road, and he smirked when he pictured that wise-ass kid running for the bathroom.
Jack’s phone rang. Ding-a-ling, it was an old-fashioned bell like telephones used to have.
Replacement laughed. “What kind of ringtone was that?”
“Hello?” Jack scowled at her as he answered. “Yeah, thanks for calling back Sully. I just needed to know where on Reservoir Road you found the car.”
Jack nodded his head as Replacement tried to put her ear up to the phone to listen.
“Thanks, I appreciate it.” He hung up.
“What did he say?”
“Sully said he found it near the sharp curve in the road.”
“Are we going out there now?”
Jack nodded, but his mood soon turned as gray as the sky as they drove to the reservoir.
Chapter 16 ~
It Was Me
Replacement looked like she wanted him to speed up but at the same time not get there. Jack felt the same way.
The day was very warm for January, and they both cranked down the windows a little. The smell of pine trees soon filled the car.
When they turned onto Reservoir Road, they began scanning up and down the area where Sully had said he found the car. That’s when he noticed some marks. Jack could tell where a car became stuck on the side of the road by the turned up dirt and deep tire tracks. He pulled ahead and got out. Replacement fell in behind him.
The day had warmed considerably, and the melting snow was creating deep mud on the side of the road. He walked over to the tire tracks. The ruts by the side of the road told Jack just where the Civic had come to rest. The deep tracks of the tow truck sat just outside those of the small sedan. A series of thin ruts showed where the teens had parked to check out the car. The snow had melted, and he could see bits of plastic and broken glass.
Replacement was walking away, following the debris trail while he examined the tire tracks. What he was looking for he didn’t know. Sometimes it helped him think if he just stared at a crime scene.
It’s a possible crime scene.
Jack forced himself to calm down.
Go over your notes: Michelle went missing. The kids found the car here. If the car—
Jack was going down the list but stopped while he watched Replacement. She was not walking down the street as she followed the debris trail but across it.
Jack walked after her, following the bits and pieces of plastic and glass like breadcrumbs. Replacement’s face was puzzled as she looked up the hill. It was extremely steep for about ten feet and then it rose at an easier angle. Because of that, they couldn’t see that far over the lip, but one thing was obvious to Jack. The car had come from that direction. Tire tracks came straight down the grass hill, and he could see where the front end scraped the pavement as the car came back on the road.
Could she have been driving up on Pine Ridge?
He had to pull himself over the lip of the hill, but once he stood up it was clear; the Civic had gone off the road at Pine Ridge, come down the hill and stopped on Reservoir Road. Replacement now stood beside him, covered in dirt from the climb up the slope.
“Walk slowly after me to make sure I don’t miss anything,” he told her, but the reason for the request was different. Something felt off. Other cops and soldiers had told him to put away gut instincts and go on facts, but his gut had saved his life more times than he could count.
He could tell that this section of the hill had been the scene of a terrible brush fire years back. Because of that, the trees were new and small. A few dead trees refused to fall over, and some twisted ones refused to give in. Jack could see the trail the car had made as it careened down the slope.
They followed the path up until the trail veered at almost a ninety-degree angle and large clumps of grass and dirt stuck out. There was a slight gulley. It wasn’t very low, but it dropped off after a couple feet.
The car must have come off the granite rocks, and this was where it rolled over.
He could see some shattered glass. Jack pictured the crash. The car flipped and then landed back up on its wheels. Jack examined the original path the car traveled and then estimated its trajectory.
It was going straight toward the lake. Instead, it flipped on the rocks and went off to the road below.
Jack looked up and down again. The very straight path it had taken until that ninety-degree twist in the middle surprised him. He looked around the rocks where the car flipped over. There
was a lot of glass, a soda bottle, and some trash.
They must have been tossed out when the car—
“Replacement.” Jack’s voice was calm, and he forced himself to adopt a neutral expression. He turned around and spoke directly to her. “I need you to go and get the camera out of the trunk of my car.”
“Why?”
“It’s very important, and I need it now.”
She started to protest some more but instead turned and headed back down the hill. Jack watched her as she slipped and slid, cursing under her breath, back to his car.
Jack watched her for a long time because he didn’t want to look anywhere else. He stared down at his hands, and they shook. He squeezed them into fists and closed his eyes.
Please God, help me.
His pleas were always the same. It didn’t matter if he was in Iraq or if he was making a drug bust.
He opened his eyes and went to the top of the rock. He tried to picture the car. It wasn’t too smashed, a surprising fact considering what had happened to it, so it couldn’t have rolled more than a couple times. He looked where the car had changed direction. The tires had dug deeply into the ground in one spot. It must have landed there. He imagined the car again, and the path it took.
He walked past the spot where it had flipped, moving more toward its original path. He walked a couple feet and stopped.
No God, please. Please . . .
Jack’s eyes involuntarily slammed shut, and his head fell forward as it felt like someone crushed his chest. A low guttural moan exploded from him.
Michelle’s body was lying on the grass, partially hidden by some shrubs. Her face was turned away from him and looking toward the lake. It appeared like she was just sleeping with her head resting on her arm, but he knew she was dead. He could smell it, that unmistakable foul odor of death.
He sank to his knees and his vision blurred. He wanted to scream. Then he thought . . .
Replacement.
He staggered back down the hill. She was already almost back to him. She was muttering to herself, and she was mad. “There was no camera . . .”
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