A bullet sizzled right by her face. She threw herself back behind the boulder. Her heart felt as if it were going to tear a hole through her chest. Then she heard Russell Cunningham’s voice:
“What the hell is going on?” He charged down the other side of the stream, waving a gun. “Where’s my granddaughter?”
Nick had managed to cross the stream and hide behind a boulder opposite Gwen, nearer the kidnapper.
“Russell, get away!” he shouted.
But the old man continued down the hill, oblivious to the gunfire as he stumbled toward the stream.
Gwen crawled to the other side of the boulder and looked out. The bag was still there, in plain sight, like some sort of prize in an athletic contest, waiting to be claimed.
“Daddy, come back!”
Shit, now Priscilla was in the act. Gwen shimmied over to the other side of the boulder and saw Priscilla running after her father.
“Daddy, don’t! Come back! Daddy, listen to me, come—”
A gunshot stopped her cold. She threw up her hands, as if surrendering, her mouth an almost perfect circle. The entire forest seemed to freeze along with her, the sudden silence like a huge vacuum sucking in movement, sound, air. Even the old man stopped and stared. Nick leaned out from behind a tree, watching. A splotch of red emerged on Priscilla’s white blouse, quickly spreading across her entire chest. A second shot rang out. Priscilla crumpled to the ground.
The old man bellowed something indecipherable as he charged back up the hill toward her. Still holding a pistol, Nick raced back down the hillside and into the stream, heading for his wife. Gwen listened for Tess. Surely all the gunfire, the shouting, would have alarmed her? Why was she so quiet?
A horrible roar from across the river resounded through the forest. The old man, hands akimbo, eyes facing the sky, howled until his voice gave out. Then, as if remembering something, he spun around, facing the clearing across the stream, and froze. Gwen crawled to the edge of the boulder and looked out at the clearing.
The duffel bag was gone.
Russell Cunningham collapsed to his knees as Nick Lawrence stood and turned toward the river.
“Tess!” He lunged down the hill. When he was waist deep in the stream he stumbled and fell into the water. He got up immediately, coughing, and charged ahead, paddling with his hands as he continued to shout his daughter’s name.
Gwen slowly stood up, confident but not completely certain that the kidnapper had left. She made her way around the boulder, decided she was safe, and ran across the small clearing to the area where she’d heard Tess’s voice.
“Tess? Tess, where are you?”
She pushed aside low branches, forearms stung by prickers. She screamed when she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Nick looked at her with fierce, panicky eyes, his chest heaving.
“I…I was…”
He turned away from her, frantically scouring the vicinity for his daughter, shouting her name over and over and over, his voice growing weak and hoarse. Finally, he leaned against a tree and slowly sank to the ground, hands bloody from the prickers.
“She’s not here,” he said, beginning to sob. “Oh, Tess, oh, Tess…”
Gwen walked over to him. “Do you have the phone with you?”
He shook his head. “Priscilla has…oh, God, Priscilla.”
He glanced across the stream. Russell Cunningham was kneeling over his daughter’s body, rocking slightly.
“Priscilla has the phone?”
He nodded slowly, still gazing across the river with wide, disbelieving eyes.
“I’m going to call an ambulance,” she said, already running down the slope toward the stream. If she did something helpful, made some positive contribution, perhaps…
Perhaps what? She crossed the stream, pulling herself through the water with her arms. Perhaps she wouldn’t feel responsible for what had just happened? Even then, charging through the freezing water, she knew that wasn’t possible, and never would be.
Back on dry land, she sprinted up the hill and knelt beside the old man. He looked at her a beat, puzzled, seemed about to say something, then turned back to his daughter. The phone was clutched in Priscilla’s right hand, covered with blood. Gwen gently slid it out from her grip—her death grip, she thought, for it was obvious that Priscilla wasn’t breathing—and pressed the power button. She glanced across the stream and saw Nick, still sitting with his back against a tree, staring across the ravine at them, as motionless as his dead wife.
She hesitated before dialing. The ravine was suddenly, infinitely silent. No one spoke. The birds were quiet, the trees still, the air calm. Even the cicadas had stopped singing.
Chapter 11
Dwight Hawkins arrived at the ravine as an ambulance pulled up, about ten minutes after a very strange call from a woman he’d never heard of. The dispatcher had put her right through to him.
“There’s been a woman killed,” said a female voice. “At Devil’s Ravine, it’s off Route Twenty-four, just north of—”
“I know Devil’s Ravine. Who are you?”
“Gwen Amiel…Please, just—”
“You say a woman’s been killed?”
“Yes, a minute ago, she’s—”
“How was she killed?”
“Shot, she was shot, and now her little girl is missing, the kidnapper—”
“Whoa, kidnapper?” It was sounding more and more like a hoax, although the woman would have to be a pretty good actress. “Look, the murdered woman, it’s Priscilla Lawrence, okay? Priscilla Cunningham? She’s been shot.”
Dwight Hawkins grabbed his car keys. The Cunningham name got things moving in Sohegan.
He let the paramedics precede him down the hill to the stream. He used to swim at the ravine as a kid. How long since he’d been back? Thirty years? Forty? Hard to believe he could measure his past in decades. Even at sixty-one he had a tough time with sentences that began “Thirty years ago” and “Back before the war.”
The paramedics reached the body, down by the stream. He could tell from their lack of urgent movement that the caller had been right: Priscilla Lawrence was dead. Shit. In thirty-three years on the force, fifteen as chief of police, he’d had only one contact with the Cunninghams—that business with the son—and it had been a disaster. Now he stood fifteen yards from Russell Cunningham, once again bent over the lifeless body of his child. This wasn’t going to be easy.
He headed down the slope, already sweating through his shirt. According to the weather map in the paper that morning, hot humid air was blowing in from the Plains and the Ohio Valley. That’s what the map said, but it felt as though the air had slithered in a while ago and just stopped dead. He’d bet the wind-speed indicator in the attic of his house read zero.
An attractive woman approached him a few yards from the body. Tall, nice figure, in her thirties, he guessed. Her T-shirt, darkened by sweat, clung to her. Her pants were streaked with dirt.
“I’m Gwen Amiel,” she said.
“Dwight Hawkins, chief of police. What the hell happened here?”
“Priscilla Lawrence was shot…Her daughter Tess was kidnapped and the family came here to—”
“That’s the second time you used the word kidnapped. Mind telling me what kidnapping has to do with Miss Cunningham’s…I mean, Mrs. Lawrence’s death?”
She nodded as she wiped tears from her face, leaving a dirty smudge across her cheeks.
“Tess Lawrence. That’s her grandfather there with—”
“I know who he is.”
“Anyway, Sunday night, the child was taken from her room at Penaquoit.”
“Why wasn’t I notified?”
As if he needed to ask. Russell Cunningham would sooner shut down Sohegan Tack & Hardware than ask the local police for help.
“I don’t really know. I guess they wanted to handle it themselves.”
They both spoke in hushed voices, though he sensed that
the old man, just a few yards away, wasn’t paying much attention to them. He walked over to the paramedics and told them not to move the body. “She’s beyond help anyway,” he said. Russell Cunningham was gripping his daughter’s arms, as if trying to hold her down.
“Where is the granddaughter now?” he asked Gwen Amiel after rejoining her.
“I don’t know. I…guess the kidnapper still has her.” She looked away. He let her have a few moments to herself, noticing her bra strap through the damp T-shirt, the fine blond hairs just below her neck, the way her jeans loosely gripped her small waist, leaving gaps in front of her hipbones.
“The Sagawahnee Indians thought this river was poisoned,” he said. She turned back to him and seemed to want him to continue. “They thought evil spirits bathed in the river at night, and that anyone who drank from it would have violent nightmares, and a cursed life. They named the stream the Cohoit, which means devil.”
“It’s not, though, is it?” she asked. “Not really poisoned?”
He shook his head. “But it is kind of unusual, I always thought, how nothing much grows around it.”
She turned to the stream and nodded slowly. “I hadn’t noticed before.” There wasn’t a tree or bush or flower within five yards of the bank. “You’d expect the riverbank to be full of life.”
“Not much trout in there, either, and the other streams around these parts have some of the best fishing in the country.”
His eyes caught movement on the far side of the Cohoit as a man emerged from the thick woods, running toward them. He fell forward as he crossed the stream, losing his balance a few times and disappearing below the surface. The son-in-law: everyone in town knew that face.
“Call the FBI,” he shouted hoarsely as he emerged from the stream. “My daughter…she’s not here, she’s not here! You have to find her.”
He stumbled up the hill, walking right past the body of his wife. He stopped just a few inches away, eyes frantic, chest heaving.
“My daughter, Tess, she’s not here. You have to get help. Now. Her grandfather…Russell Cunningham, he’ll…he’ll offer a reward, he’ll—” He glanced at Gwen. “Where’s the phone? Get the phone!”
Gwen Amiel took a portable phone from her pocket, which Lawrence grabbed and thrust at him.
“Call someone. Please, my daughter…”
“Are you sure this isn’t a family thing, Mr.…” Damn, Sonny boy was how he was known in town.
“Nick Lawrence. What do you mean, family thing?”
“Only that most kidnappings turn out to be domestic disputes, custody battles, that kind of thing.”
Nick Lawrence stepped closer to him, jabbing a finger at his chest. “My wife is lying there dead…”
Dwight took a step back. “I’ll call in the Feds. Meantime, are you sure the perpetrator is gone?” He looked around the woods, wondering suddenly if they were being observed.
“He ran off that way,” Gwen Amiel said, pointing across the stream.
“How long ago?”
“About fifteen minutes. He took the bag and—”
“The bag?”
“The money,” she said. “It was in a duffel bag. He must have taken Tess, too. I heard her, earlier, just after the money was left. She was crying and then she just…stopped.”
She glanced at Lawrence, who seemed to notice her, really notice her, for the first time.
“Why are you here?” His voice was completely flat.
“I thought…I—” She covered her mouth with her hand and shook her head. Her eyes were swollen with sorrow.
“What exactly is your relationship with this family?” Hawkins asked.
“I’m Tess’s baby-sitter.”
She didn’t look like anyone’s baby-sitter, he thought. It wasn’t the attractive face and handsome figure so much as the eyes—skeptical, wary. Eyes didn’t get that way dealing with children.
“I’m going to radio from my car for backup, arrange for a roadblock along Twenty-four, notify the FBI. Why don’t all of you come with me? The less we disturb the scene the better.”
“But my daughter…”
“We’ll search every inch of these woods, Mr. Lawrence. If she’s here we’ll find her. But that area across the stream is full of cabins and old fishing and hunting lodges. It’s crisscrossed with dirt roads. The kidnapper had a fifteen-minute head start, so he’s probably already in his car and on his way. There’s not much you can do here, and we have to preserve the scene for the FBI. Why don’t you try to get your father-in-law to let go of Mrs. Lawrence.”
The man’s eyes flashed, as if he remembered something suddenly, something appalling. He turned, took in the scene—his wife’s blouse soaked in blood, the old man kneeling over her, one hand gripping her arm—then turned back.
“I…oh, God.” He spun around and ran to his father-in-law’s side.
“Maybe you can help them,” Hawkins said quietly to Gwen Amiel.
One of the paramedics signaled for Hawkins, who walked over to the body.
“We found this in her right hand.” He held a delicate purple flower by the stem.
“A thistle,” Gwen said.
Hawkins took the flower and looked around. “Not from here. She must have brought it with her.”
They both stared at the flower, at its inappropriate loveliness.
“Wonder what it meant to her,” Hawkins said as he slipped it into his shirt pocket. “I’ll be back in half a minute. You guys come with me.”
The paramedics followed him up the embankment. The fewer people traipsing around a crime scene the better. By the time he reached the top of the hill he already felt the situation slipping from his control. The FBI would take over the search for the lost girl, then oversee the hunt for the killer. The county crime-scene unit would have to be called, and they wouldn’t be too eager to leave once they were through picking over the ravine, not in a high-profile case like this. So he waited a few moments that belonged only to him, once he’d reached his car, precious moments, before grabbing the car phone and calling in to headquarters. It might well be the last independent gesture he’d make in a long, long time.
“Millie? It’s Dwight. I’m going to need backup here at Devil’s Ravine.”
Backup? He almost smiled. Millie Berry was one-fourth of the Sohegan Police Department and she was the dispatcher, a forty-year-old mother of three who dressed like a refugee from the fifties, beehive hair and all, and who refused to make coffee, do personal errands, or otherwise sully what she liked to refer to as her professional standing with the police force.
“I’ll send Chris and Pat,” she said. “They both hightailed it back here once they heard about the nine, one, one call.”
As if they had anything better to do. The crime rate in Sohegan was among the lowest in the state, though the police department could take little credit. There just wasn’t much worth stealing in town—everyone was as bad off as everyone else, except the Cunninghams, of course. Traffic control, domestic disputes, and the occasional DWI arrest were what kept Sohegan’s finest occupied.
“Fine, we’ll also need the county boys. Call Dave Sperling, tell him we have a murder scene here.” He ignored an inquisitive gasp from the other end. “He’ll need directions. Make sure he comes right away, we’ll probably have a gaggle of rubberneckers on our hands before long. We’ll also need to contact the FBI. There’s a number for the Albany field office in the address book on my desk. Will you get it for me please?”
She read him back the number a half minute later.
“Thanks, Millie, and call my wife, tell her I may be late for dinner.”
He clicked off before she could ask questions. Calling his wife to say he’d be late for dinner was one of Millie’s most regular chores. After thirty years of marriage he still found the dinner hour the most stressful part of the day. Perhaps if they had children, or if one of them had ever lived anywhere but Sohegan. Perhaps if Elaine showed even a trace of interest in his work…
Using the car phone again, he dialed the Albany field office and gave the dispatcher the name he’d written in his address book years ago and never once called. A few seconds later a gruff male voice answered.
“Don Reeves.”
Hawkins introduced himself, then briefly outlined the situation.
“The kid’s still missing?” The voice had a slightly accusatory edge.
“That’s correct.”
“Where can we land a chopper?”
“Behind the high school. It’s about—”
“Secure the area, we’ll be down in fifteen. Meet us behind the school.”
Dwight clicked off as Gwen Amiel approached him from the woods.
“My son will be home from school in five minutes,” she said. “I wasn’t working this afternoon so I told the people who usually watch him…You see, he’s only six. I need to be there.”
He hadn’t expected her to have a kid of her own. Those eyes, again, cool and observant; hard to imagine them softening for a child.
“I can’t let you leave,” he said. “The county sheriff’s men are on their way, and the FBI. They’ll want to question you.”
“But my son…”
A squad car pulled up, distracting them. Chris Bernard and Pat Sykes got out, both in uniform.
“Priscilla Lawrence is down there,” Dwight said, pointing. “Shot dead. Her husband’s down there with her, her father, too—Russell Cunningham.”
He studied their reaction, relishing it, somehow. A murder in Sohegan was big news. The murder of Russell Cunningham’s daughter was something else, an epic in the making. He saw the excitement in their faces. The panic, too: everything they did from now on would have consequences.
“Both of you, secure the area, don’t let anyone in or out. Get the old man and his son-in-law up here by the road and don’t let them out of your sight until I get back. And try to remember the three rules of securing a crime scene, okay?” They looked blank. “Don’t touch anything. Don’t touch anything. And don’t touch anything.” A full thirty seconds later they both got it and smiled uncomfortably.
“Right, Chief,” Chris Bernard said. “We won’t touch anything.” Bernard was only twenty-four, with a gaunt frame, prominent Adam’s apple, and pale blue eyes that looked mighty nervous just then at the prospect of being left in charge of a crime scene. “Where are you going, Chief?”
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