The trunk. I could barely see the shape in the dark water—probably it was more instinct than actually seeing. I reached out, grasping the edges, preparing myself for a shocking imprint.
I felt . . . nothing.
Just the weight of the box, which, though considerably less in the water, was more than I could lift. I pulled, and my body shot downwards, under the trunk. I pushed again, flapping my legs wildly, but I couldn’t tell if I was going up or down. Was the trunk filling with water? What made it so heavy?
I pushed harder. Something brushed my leg, and I imagined a hand before I remembered the fish in the river. My lungs felt like bursting, though I knew I hadn’t been in the water long enough to need air.
Yet.
Down. Or up. I couldn’t tell. There was no sun to guide me. The need in my lungs grew. I tried pushing in the direction of what I thought was the bank. If only I could find some purchase for my feet.
There, I felt something. I kicked out, but whatever I’d felt only bruised my foot and continued down the river. Was I drifting, too? What was happening with Jake? With Shannon? The need to know burned as brightly as the need to breathe.
I was going to have to leave the trunk or drown with it. The knowledge came with a deep sorrow. What would I tell Sophie and Dennis?
I felt my hands slipping but not of my own accord. My sight blurred.
No. I would survive. I wouldn’t let the river take me as it had Winter.
I pushed outward, one last time and then angled for what I hoped was up. Within seconds I heard shouting, which I joined the second my head split the water.
“Down here! It’s right here!” Too late, I wondered if it would be the Asian and Robison who greeted me.
But it was Jake who stood anxiously over the water, calling my name. Behind him, I saw Shannon checking the Asian’s pulse. Jake waded into the water and grabbed me.
“The trunk!” I reminded him.
We went after it together, joined by Shannon. Between the three of us, we got the trunk up the bank. Only then did I see Peirce and the dark-skinned officer standing near the car with a stoic Saito. Beyond the big Asian, the guard Robison lay unconscious, one foot in the river.
“Open it,” I said to Shannon. I was shaking now, as much from fear of what we would find as from the cold water.
Shannon took out his gun. For a moment, I thought he’d shoot off the lock but wasn’t surprised when he used the butt to break it instead. No danger of ricochet. I was on the opposite side of the trunk, so as he peeked in, the lid obstructed my view. He dropped the lid immediately.
“What is it?” Jake asked.
Shannon shook his head and didn’t answer.
Not good. Worse than not good if he wasn’t even feeling for a pulse. Tears leaked from my eyes as I slumped to the ground. My short hair was plastered to my head, reminding me of that other time when I had waited on the bank by the Willamette, worrying about Winter.
What was I going to tell Sophie?
Near the car, Saito was still impassive, an uncaring monster responsible for a child’s death. I hoped he rotted in prison forever.
Shannon was talking into a borrowed phone, directing more officers to the location. He had a large gash on his forehead and occasionally dabbed at it with impatience. Jake stood staring at the trunk, his face frozen. I knew exactly how he felt. I wanted to yell at Shannon for continuing to do his job, for not caring enough, but I could see the tightness in his face, could feel the anger radiating from him. He cared.
Someone had better make real sure Saito was kept far away from Shannon.
And from me.
“I want to know who’s responsible,” I said. “There’s got to be something I can read. Give me something.”
“We know who’s responsible,” Shannon said.
Jake shook himself back into the conversation. “Could have been the attorney. Maybe that was the deal. To do it himself.”
Shannon considered a moment, looking first at me and then at Jake. The antagonism I usually felt between them had vanished. Whatever had happened with the Asian while I was in the water had changed something. I might never know what, and at the moment I didn’t care.
“It could be bad,” Shannon said. “The imprint.”
Jake flinched, but he took one look at my determined face and said, “She’ll handle it.”
I wasn’t so sure, but I was going to try. I owed Sawyer and his parents that much. I nodded.
Shannon motioned us back. “I’ll see what there is but don’t get close. Trust me when I say it’s not pretty. There’s not much left.”
“It doesn’t have to be much.” In a murder situation, pretty much anything could hold an imprint. Strong emotion did that to objects. On our first case together, I’d been able to identify a little girl’s kidnapper from touching her bicycle. We hadn’t found her in time, but we had managed to lock the man away and save another child in the process.
When Shannon opened the trunk, I couldn’t help looking and then had to turn away, gagging. I saw a blue-checkered shirt that resembled the one I’d heard Sawyer had been wearing when he went missing, but the rest wasn’t recognizable as anything human, not anymore. I was glad for the dark and my distance.
Shannon gave me a hard look as he shut the trunk again. Before he could show me what he’d taken, more officers arrived. Leaving the trunk to them, Shannon motioned us further down the bank where he produced something between two fingers. An antique soldier mounted on a horse. Sawyer’s most favorite of the soldiers I’d given him. Back at Ian’s he’d probably let the housekeeper’s son play with the other soldier, reserving this one for himself. When they’d gone, the other child had left his borrowed toy behind.
I hesitated, glancing behind me at the men kneeling around the trunk. At least one was a medical professional, or they would have to call one. There would be an autopsy. What kind of world did we live in that a young child was a pawn in a deadly game of revenge? I pushed my sodden bangs from my eyes and reached for the soldier.
The tall, blond man set a change of clothes on the table.
I recognized the man as Ian and that the imprint had taken place in the kitchen at his apartment. At the same time, I knew the person making the imprint had never seen him before.
I stared up at the man with dislike—a complete dislike that had no solid reasoning. This man had sent away the bad guy who grabbed me in the sandbox and promised to take me home, yet I didn’t trust him. He wore a fake smile, and his voice was greasy.
“Put these on,” the man said.
“No.” I loved my shirt. It was like the soft one Daddy wore when we went camping.
“Do it,” the man ordered. “Those clothes are dirty. You can’t go to your parents wearing dirty clothes.”
Did he mean it? Going back to Mommy and Daddy and Lizzy? The woman began taking off my shirt like Mommy always did. She was Edgar’s mommy and she was nice.
“I’ll give the child a bath when I get home,” she said. “What time are they coming for him?”
“Seven or eight.”
The man put my shirt in a bag. I tried not to cry. I didn’t want to be a baby in front of Edgar. I liked Edgar. He was playing with my other soldier by the table.
The thin man handed the woman a folder. “Here are the adoption papers. Make sure they get them when they come.” The man was staring at my horsey soldier. I grabbed it tight in both hands.
Mine!
But he came at me like a snake.
No, not my toy!
I blinked as the imprint cut off. Another took its place, an older, more pleasant one from a week ago, but I shoved the soldier into my pocket to make it stop.
Jake and Shannon were staring at me anxiously.
“It’s not him,” I said. “What’s in that box isn’t him.” I felt like screaming it. “Ian took his clothes and this toy earlier at his house and was planning to send him away with a woman. He gave her adoption papers to pass on to someone else who
was coming to get him.”
Shannon blinked. “I know what I saw in that trunk. The remains are human.”
“That’s what I saw.”
“Wait here.” Shannon jogged to the knot of officers around the trunk.
“It’s not Sawyer.” I leaned into Jake, a hysterical giggle bubbling up inside me.
His arm went around me. “Then what’s in that trunk?”
“I don’t know. Wait.” I pushed away from him. “Ian said the people coming to get Sawyer would arrive at seven or eight. I think the imprint was before dinner, but I don’t know if he meant tonight or tomorrow morning. What if we don’t get there in time?”
“I’ll get Shannon.”
Not without me he wouldn’t. We both hurried toward the trunk, our wet jeans making odd rubbing sounds.
“You’re right,” a man I assumed was the medical examiner was saying to Shannon. “It’s definitely not a child and not a recent demise. This person has already been embalmed. The blood is probably from another source. There’s no doubt they wanted the trunk to sink, though. The bottom is lined with six inches of metal.”
Shannon snapped his fingers. “I think we may have found the missing cadaver that was stolen from the university this morning. Or part of it.”
The medical examiner nodded. “A strong possibility. That guy was seventy-five and died of cancer, right? But if it’s him, someone went to a lot of trouble to hide his identity.”
Shannon turned to face us, a grim smile on his face. “Let’s go for a drive.”
I wish Shannon had taken my word for it, but we hadn’t lost much time.
Someone put a blanket around me, and I looked up to see Peirce’s smiling face. “Thanks.” I wanted to tell him I was glad he hadn’t been hurt, but words didn’t seem adequate.
He grinned, his freckled face appearing much younger than I knew he was. “You looked a little cold.”
In Shannon’s unmarked squad car, he slapped a large rectangular bandage on his forehead before triggering his lights and siren. I was glad there wasn’t any talk of leaving us behind. If I was going to continue consulting on cases, he would have to get used to taking me with him.
From the backseat, I leaned forward to ask, “How could Ian Gideon draw the line at murdering a child but not at separating him permanently from his parents? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Warped minds,” Shannon said. “I’ve stopped trying to figure them out.”
It still bothered me. Ian was willing to hurt Jake, perhaps kill him. He hadn’t seemed fazed at taking down an officer, shooting me, or bilking people out of millions. Yet I believed he really liked Paige, and he hadn’t given Sawyer to the Saitos. Why? A shade of gray I couldn’t understand.
“He must have paid someone to break into the university,” Jake said. “Wouldn’t be hard to find a student who needed money.”
“A lot of trouble to fool Saito about the boy’s death.” Shannon glanced back at me. “And a dangerous game if he was discovered. My bet is that it boils down to money, not Ian’s conscience or any bit of good in him. White child, healthy, male. Even though he’s three, he probably got a good price from someone who wasn’t eligible for a regular adoption. Someone who wanted a child fast. Plus, if things went wrong, he wouldn’t go to jail for murder.”
“What if Sawyer’s not there?”
Shannon didn’t have an answer, but I felt the car speed up.
“We’ll plaster the news with his face,” Jake said. “Tell everyone he was illegally adopted. Someone will have seen him.”
“Unless it’s a foreign adoption.” Shannon’s voice was low. “There’s also a dark side to child trafficking that doesn’t include anything resembling a real adoption. The fact is, the first twenty-four hours are the best time to find him alive. We’re running out of options. We’d better hope he’s there.”
I slumped back in my seat, folding my arms across my stomach.
As when we’d been heading to the law firm’s garage, Shannon turned off the siren a few blocks from our destination. “We don’t know how involved the housekeeper might be. Better to surprise her.”
The residential area was much like the one Tawnia and Bret lived in, or it had been a decade ago. The houses were not quite as new, but most were in good repair and the yards well-groomed. There were a few For Sale signs, and some of those houses were vacant and the lawns dying or overgrown, but for the most part it was a nice middle-class neighborhood. Not one you would suspect of being involved in child trafficking.
When Shannon pulled up in front of the house, all the lights were off. He examined the sleeping neighborhood a moment, before simultaneously drawing his gun and opening his door.
“Put the gun away,” I urged. “Let’s just ask her.”
“She could be dangerous.”
“She has a little boy. Sawyer likes her. She’s working for a respected attorney who probably told her everything is on the up and up. She might sense something’s not quite right, but she doesn’t know for sure.”
Emotions ran over Shannon’s face, but I couldn’t tell what they were—frustration, irritation, admiration? Could have been all three, and more. “Okay, but any sign of danger and you two get out of the way.”
“Yes, sir.” I looked at Jake, who grinned.
Jake eased out of the car, and I noticed his stiffness because I felt the same way. After today was over, I was going to eat three steaks and sleep for a week.
Shannon motioned to the squad car that had pulled up behind us. Peirce and the dark-skinned officer slid smoothly from their seats, weapons drawn. I hadn’t noticed them following us, but I’d been a little preoccupied.
“Go around back,” Shannon told them. “Make sure no one leaves.” They nodded and hurried off.
At the door, Shannon rang the bell and waited. There was room for only two of us on the porch, and Jake indicated that I should stand next to Shannon. I stepped up, knowing that I was less intimidating than a mulatto man with locs who looked as though he’d barely survived a gang beating.
We were about to ring again, when the sound of dragging footsteps made us stiffen to attention. The porch light flicked on, and I could see motion behind the peephole.
“Who are you?” said a woman’s voice that I recognized from Sawyer’s imprint.
“Mrs. Duval?” I said before Shannon could speak. “We’re here for the child Mr. Gideon placed with you.”
“You aren’t supposed to be here until morning.”
“Please let us in.”
A long-suffering sigh we could hear even through the closed door. Then the lock clicked, and the door opened. Greta Duval, wearing lounge pants and a T-shirt, was younger than in Sawyer’s imprint, but then to him every adult must seem old. She had beautiful, sleek black hair that hung straight around her face, as though somewhere in her genealogy she might have had Middle Eastern ancestors. The rest of her was pure American, from the smattering of freckles to her attractive brown eyes.
She studied Shannon and me, faltering as people always did at my bare feet. Or maybe it was the bandage I wore. Could she tell we were soaked?
“You must be the new parents,” she said. “Too anxious to wait, I bet. Well, he’s been anxious to see you too, ever since Mr. Gideon told him you’d be coming for him. He’s a nice boy, and I’m happy he’s getting a second chance at having a family after losing his parents.”
She paused, taking a manila folder off the battered upright piano behind her. “Here. You can look at the papers while I get him. He’ll probably be asleep. I’m not sure I can wake him.”
“No need.” Shannon said, “I’ll carry him.”
“Just stay here. I don’t want to wake my son.” Mrs. Duval had seen Jake behind us and her eyes narrowed. “You are here because Mr. Gideon sent you, aren’t you?”
“Yes, of course,” I said.
She turned to go, but Shannon passed me the folder and put a hand on her arm. “I need to go with you.”
Mr
s. Duval clutched at the neck of her T-shirt. “Who are you really?”
Shannon eased his badge from his wet slacks and held it up for her to see. “I’m Detective Shannon Martin with the Portland police. We’re investigating the kidnapping of three-year-old Sawyer Briggs. We believe he’s here, and I can’t allow you to leave this room without me. We don’t believe you had any part in the kidnapping, but we don’t know that for sure, and we can’t risk that you might do anything to the boy.”
Mrs. Duval was shaking her head, her skin suddenly too white against her black hair. “I wouldn’t hurt him! And I didn’t know he was kidnapped. Mr. Gideon told me his parents died in a car accident. That’s all I know.”
Anger spurred me to words because Mrs. Duval had handled the folder of adoption papers with enough anxiety and guilt that she had left an imprint. Not enough to evoke a vivid scene in my mind, but the emotions were clear.
“You felt something was wrong,” I said quietly. “You should have called the police to make sure.”
She brought her hands to her face and wept. “Okay, I guess I did think it odd that Mr. Gideon asked me to help him, and he was acting strange. But I really wanted to believe him.”
“Is there anyone else in the house besides you and the two boys?”
“No. No one. My husband works the night shift. I’ll show you where the boys are.”
Shannon went with Mrs. Duval. I handed the folder to Jake, relieved to get rid of it. The minutes seemed like hours until at last Shannon reappeared with his gun still holstered and Sawyer in his arms.
Sawyer moved restlessly and opened his eyes, blinking several times before he was awake enough to recognize me. “Autumn!” He held out his hands for me, arching away from Shannon. I took him in my arms and hugged him tightly. He started crying. “I want my mommy. Can you take me to Mommy?”
“That’s why I’m here, buddy. We’ve all been looking for you. Everyone’s waiting. You’re safe now. I promise.”
He clung to me weakly and sobbed soft tears of relief that I echoed.
Behind Shannon, Mrs. Duval had her fist to her mouth. She was also crying. “I’m so sorry. If I’d known, I would have talked to him about what happened, but I didn’t want to make him think about his parents if they were dead.”
On the Hunt Page 23