by M K Dymock
A day ago she needed water more than anything; today she drowned in it.
Elizabeth and Grace spent the night opening the spillway of Lost Gorge’s secrets. Not enough to flood the town, but enough to get everyone unsettled. As the mayor’s daughter and sheriff’s wife, Grace knew where all the bodies were buried and, until now, had the good sense not to dig them up. “Somebody,” Grace explained, “knows something.”
A lot of what they discovered, Elizabeth already suspected. Small-town secrets are hard to keep—especially amongst the women.
Someone mentioned a best friend who liked the ladies too much when drunk. A cashier at Bateman’s didn’t want to talk out of school, but when Grace reminded her about loaning her a bit of money when the till “accidentally” came up short, she had a lot to offer. Apparently, the cashier at a grocery store—who’d sold more than her share of condoms, alcohol, and a few months later, pregnancy tests—knows more than a priest.
She knew all the troubled marriages, including Clint’s wife, who bought two bottles of wine every time he went out of town for “training,” as she put it, air quotes and all.
The gossip had gone nowhere, but Grace promised she’d keep turning over rocks. Secrets or not, everyone swore they’d do anything to help find Keen.
As dawn signaled another day of failure, Grace dropped Elizabeth off at home. “You’ll get some sleep?” she said.
“Sleep?” Elizabeth opened the Escalade’s door and slid out, missing the step and almost falling.
“You at least have to try. You’re not any good to Keenley like this.”
“I want to find out who she was calling that day.” Elizabeth clenched the car door for support. “Makes me feel like I’m doing something.”
A couple of raindrops fell on the windshield, a cold couple of drops. “You know, I talked to her Sunday.”
“Yeah, I saw your number on the call log.”
“We didn’t talk long, wanted to wish her good luck at school. Told her to rebel a little and not tell you.”
Elizabeth didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “What’d she say?”
“Something like ‘oh, Grace.’ Figured that was her way of ignoring my advice without saying so. She doesn’t have a rebellious streak in her.”
“I never thought I’d say it, but I wish she did,” Elizabeth sobbed. “I wish this was her running off, but it’s not.”
Grace turned off the engine and walked Elizabeth inside with the command to sleep or try to. Once she left, however, Elizabeth pulled out Keen’s laptop.
Clint had told her that the phone number was for an unpaid cell, unable to trace. Four calls had gone out from Keen’s phone in a half hour’s time. Two calls to Elizabeth, one call and a text to Jacob, and a call to the unknown someone else. While the number was unknown to her, it didn’t appear to be unknown to Keen. A few calls and texts had been exchanged between the two phones.
She plugged the number into Google, but this time didn’t stop reading at unknown. It took a few clicks to discover the phone was a Cricket, but not much else.
An online search revealed prepaid cells come with the zip code of where they were purchased. The one Keen called had a local code. Theirs was a likely store in the valley to sell such a thing, but they didn’t. She called Bateman’s and a few gas stations, but no luck.
The last one suggested she call the Junction, the gas station owned by Jake’s parents. She called and Jake’s dad answered. A few months ago, the two families had barbecued together, relieved their kids had found each other at college.
“How can I help you?” His chipper voice was fingernails on a chalkboard.
“I’m looking for a prepaid cell, preferably Cricket. I’ve heard that’s a good brand.” The lie to someone who once was a friend came without effort.
“You’re in luck today. We only started carrying them a few months ago.”
She thanked him for her luck.
Gauge Ferguson was friends with Keenley Dawson. Not that anyone knew, maybe not even Keenley. Gauge, at times, had his own doubts. He didn’t have much experience with friends. His father always managed to find homes—if you could call where they slept a home—far away from the world. The less the world knew about the Fergusons’ goings-on, the better. Gauge met the occasional “friend” at school, but his schooling was, at best, intermittent.
When he did return to school, it was always the same group of kids. The area his family wandered in was large but the population small. He always remembered Keenley as they grew up, while not together, at least side by side. She stayed more to the edge of the main group like him. Unlike him, she usually had at least one friend.
One night he passed by Dawson’s on his way home and saw her out front, hood propped open on her car. When he pulled up next to her passenger side in his truck, she left the hood and walked over to the driver side, a wary look on her face. He tried to smile, but that lasted a quarter of a second before he dropped his gaze and muttered something like, “Car broke? I could maybe, if you wanted, look at it.” The words came out as a muttered blurb, and he gestured to his truck, which had his company’s logo for further explanation.
She glanced around in indecision before answering. “I guess, if you don’t mind.” The two of them stood for a moment, staring at the pavement.
Eventually, he fixed her car enough to get her home. Told her she could bring it over to the shop and he could fix it proper. She was nice to him; other than the occasional teacher, he couldn’t remember a girl being nice to him.
With everybody their age out chasing faraway adventures and jobs, they formed their sort-of friendship.
Word was the search had been called off for the day but everyone would regroup for tomorrow. He heard about the bike and, like everyone, wondered where Keenley was. He wouldn’t join the searchers today. Had to get out to the west hills to take care of some business. The cows and some other stuff needed checking on.
26
When Blake returned to the office and opened his door, his father-in-law sat perched on Blake’s chair behind his own desk.
“What’s up?” Blake asked as he shut the door behind him.
“We have our appointment today.” The mayor looked every inch the outdoorsman with his Carhartt pants and red button-up shirt, but with everything perfectly clean and pressed.
It took Blake a minute to remember what day it was. He counted days in numbers now—Friday, day four of Keen missing. “I thought with everything going on we would wait until next week.”
“Because of all that is going on is why we need to meet this week. Always remember, my boy, not to let anything interfere with progress. I’m disappointed that I didn’t hear from you about finding the girl’s bike. Am I to assume you’re looking at this as a criminal case?”
As usual, Blake sat in a guest chair in his own office. “Yes, but Sol is also organizing searches in the fields and valley around.” That was a lie, as no one had talked to Sol in a day. “Deputy Shinlock circled off a perimeter directly around the bike and finished up forensics on the site. He’s processing everything now.” He didn’t add that so far, the evidence had told them zilch and the site lay under a few inches of water.
“It must have been an out-of-towner or some seasonal worker.”
Blake didn’t know that but understood it would be the most popular theory. In the hierarchy of the Gorge, it went year-round residents, part-time residents, seasonal workers, and then the tourists—who everyone played up to but secretly gave the mental stink eye to. “Possibly, but right now the focus is still on finding Keen.”
“Don’t give me that PR crap. I taught you that. Tell me, are you going to find this girl? If you don’t, it will hang over all future elections.”
Blake hated him in that moment. Hated what having a father-in-law like him made him have to do. “I will find her.”
“Good, now let’s move on to other things. I am meeting with the town council next week to go over the figures for downtow
n.” For years the council had been pushing to rebuild the downtown. The hope was to make it look less like a cow town and more like a ski village with a functioning ski lift from the hotel to the resort’s base. None of it actually necessary; tourists could drive faster to the resort parking lot than riding a lift, but it would look good on a brochure.
The project would bring in more of those hated tourists and their much-sought-after money. Blake served on the committee with the mayor to make sure it happened.
“I’m a little concerned about the budget, Blake, and I think you know why.”
Discrepancy. The one word no one who deals in numbers wants to hear. “I thought you said that little miscalculation would work itself out.”
The mayor leaned across the table on his arms. “We can’t afford to have outsiders looking into the town. Find the girl, and quickly.”
Blake responded as he always did to his father-in-law’s requests. “I’ll see what I can do.”
William’s pleas for a little help now and then couldn’t be ignored. Blake justified it, because if he didn’t, William would find a sheriff who would. At least Blake could put up more of a fight for the things that truly crossed the line than some other lackey could. He’d kept William within limits—until now.
He pushed those concerns aside to focus on finding Keen.
Charlie chased down three of Jacob’s friends, who all swore he’d been with them on the river all morning before they drove back to school together. Also, Jake had no motive to hurt the girl; he had her at his beck and call.
Nobody had found the Ferguson brothers, the last known people to have seen Keen before she went biking other than her mom. While Gauge was mostly clean other than some trespassing issues, Colt had been charged with assault against a woman. That charge had come about, according to a very sleepy deputy two counties over, from an argument with a woman bartender who didn’t appreciate a stranger’s hand in the tip jar. Colt beat the bartender with a stool for questioning his integrity. The bartender smashed the back of his head with a beer bottle.
The charges would’ve been more but the bartender left town before a trial, due to extenuating circumstances of hers for selling fake IDs. The county was forced to plea and Colt received probation. His only defense at sentencing was that he had defended his honor, such as it was.
Clint had finally tracked down an address during the night. Colt was technically still on parole, and Blake called his parole officer to join him on a surprise visit to the Ferguson residence to check up on Colt.
Knowing Colt Ferguson and his father—and being in law enforcement meant you knew them well—there’d be something illegal at that house. The officer agreed to go out immediately. Blake wanted to make sure neither man would leave town. That family had the tendency to go off-grid and stay there—at least until one did something stupid and landed in jail. Blake wasn’t sure whether it was Colt he wanted or the brother, Gauge. With his record, Colt was lower-hanging fruit and getting close to one would get him close to the other.
Blake followed the small SUV of the parole officer along a dirt road that had disintegrated into mud from the previous night’s rain. A few ruts proved that they weren’t the first car to traverse this road since the rain. He fought against being sucked into the tracks by keeping it in four-wheel-drive after leaving the paved road.
In the yard of the Ferguson house, a boy Blake assumed was Gauge loaded a rifle into his truck, which also had a four-wheeler in the bed. Blake touched the weapon at his side. The parole officer jumped out of his car, but Blake waited until the rifle had been stuck behind the seat of Gauge’s truck before exiting his own vehicle. If the parole officer, Dennis, wanted to be gung ho and get shot, Blake would let him. He walked behind the two, but stayed quiet to assess the boy.
Gauge Ferguson was a creepy kid; there was no getting around that. He spoke in a monotone voice and only lifted his eyes from the ground once. He crumpled the oily Cat ball cap he wore as he explained his brother went into town for some beer.
Blake wondered if this runt—and with at least five inches under Blake, he was a runt—had shown any interest in a girl, more specifically Keen. If he had, he couldn’t imagine that going well. The boy smelled like cow and couldn’t have more than a fifth-grade reading level. He wouldn’t put it past either Gauge or Colt to have hurt Keen.
“I need to check his room,” Dennis explained to Gauge.
“Sally’s sleeping,” Gauge said.
“Who’s Sally?”
“Colt’s wife. They was up all night.”
Dennis insisted on them meeting the wife as he didn’t know anything about her, and Blake was curious what sort of woman married into this kind of family. A sleepy blonde-haired woman came out of the bedroom, wearing nothing but a Corona tank top and panties. Other than a mouth missing half its teeth, he was surprised to see she was a good-looking one. Blake forced his eyes up while Dennis’s wandered down a bit. A nudge from Blake did little to raise his gaze. Gauge retreated into the kitchen.
He decided to keep the focus on Colt for the time being to keep the brother’s defenses down, and Colt was the excuse they needed to look around the house. “Where’s Colt?” Blake asked.
She shrugged her shoulders.
“When’s the last time you saw him?”
“Dunno.” Her words slurred into one word and he wondered how high she was.
Blake nudged Dennis to remind him he had a duty to do and after a blank look said, “I’ll check the house if you don’t mind.” He didn’t wait to see if she did and left the room; the singlewide wasn’t big enough that he would need directions. Part of Colt’s parole meant that officers could search his personal belongings at any time and should they find anything illegal, he could be immediately arrested. Dennis went to search while Blake kept an eye on the woman.
Somewhere in this house had to be something illegal, and Blake didn’t think the wife would be smart or sober enough to hide it. That would give them probable cause to search the rest. After a few minutes of sitting in silence with her, a diesel engine truck pulled up.
He stood as the door opened, which did not prepare him for the hulk of a man who charged through the door, smashing Blake into a wall. The drywall crumbled behind him. He fell to the ground, where Colt sat on him, drawing back a fist. “You screw my wife, you little–.”
Blake pushed his hips up in one rapid motion and rolled, dislodging the beast on top of him. He tried to regain his footing. “I’m the–” Another tackle accompanied by a fist. Pain shot through Blake’s face as he fought to keep his hands up to prevent further pummels. He managed one kick to the man’s stomach, which brought a moment of relief.
“Hey!” Dennis yelled. “Knock it off.”
At the sound of his parole officer, Colt stood and Blake sat up. Blood dripped onto his shirt, a few drops catching on his badge.
“What the hell is going on?” Colt screamed at Sally.
Blake jumped up to move between the couple. Dennis came up behind him. “I’m Sheriff McKenzie, and I’m accompanying your parole officer on a check.” He glanced back and remembered the clothing of the wife. “We had just woken your wife up.”
The man’s eyes held more than anger; they held crazy. “You touch her, I’ll kill you.”
Blake unholstered his weapon and took a step back and to the side, bringing Colt’s attention away from his cowering wife. “You just threatened and attacked an officer.” Blake spit onto the carpet, which didn’t show the bloodstain. Dennis cuffed the man while Blake held his gun on him, neither one of them wanting to get in a fight with him.
They were replenishing their jail.
27
Three tents had been set up in the vicinity Keenley wandered. To even get into the country required a four-wheeler large enough to smash down the brush and carry in supplies. The tents and coolers were bought on clearance from Dawson’s by an employee who would open the store to anyone who needed supplies for the searchers.
&nbs
p; The tents had been placed in the vicinity of the trough and visible for long distances. They needed to be spotted easily, to be a beacon to Keenley. The next step would be to check each lure for a bite.
The rains made the drive in on the four-wheeler more treacherous and lengthy than the day before. The first tent sat untouched, the cooler still filled with food. Thunder echoed across the nearby cliffs as the ATV made its way to the second site.
There were contingencies if she’d only partaken of a cooler’s contents and not remained in the tent. Crushed into the mayo of the sandwiches had been a few Xanax and juice from a shrimp. She wouldn’t get far fast.
Keen’s legs lost feeling in the cold water, forcing her to abandon the stream. Her feet stayed numb long after she dried off. As she dragged her feet through the mud, she left long tracks. She’d asked for water, she got water.
Her stomach still rebelled at the liquid she kept trying to force down and brought it back too often. She had attributed her nausea to too much food and water after so little, but this seemed extreme. Exhaustion, far more than the previous days, threatened to pull her under with each step.
Keen shivered in the cold air—the first sign of hypothermia. As she walked, she took an inventory of the other symptoms. “Elevated heart rate, check. Let’s be honest, though, I’ve got another reason for that. Hunger. Well, duh, that sandwich was a long time ago.” The sleeping bag slipped off her shoulder and as she bent over to pick it up, the bile rose in her gut again and she swallowed the bitterness. “And always nauseous.”
All of that added up to an urgent need for shelter before another storm dropped on her. A lifetime of pushing herself in the outdoors had trained her to know her body’s limits. A few drops of rain fell on her already-soaked skin as if to emphasize the point. The difficult part would be building shelter that wouldn’t wash away in a storm.