Joey rubbed his eyes. Those paralyzing seconds coasting by the truck on Old Shed Road replayed in his head. He looked up at Karla and blurted, “I saw this guy—”
“Joey, what’d I tell you?” Mike spoke over his younger brother’s voice. “You don’t know that guy from Friday. You have got to stop making up stories about people.”
Mike jabbed a finger on the table and leaned closer to Joey so Karla wouldn’t hear. “Last spring it was what’s-his-name—Johnny Shannon, that punk who had you all in a tizzy at school? So don’t go spreading rumors about people you don’t know. I’m warning you for the last time.”
“OK,” Elmer said. “You made your point, Mike. We came here to eat supper, not to heap troubles on your brother here. The boy’s done no harm.”
They all ordered the dinner special—meat loaf, fried potatoes, and onion rings.
Joey’s eyes locked on a man sitting at the counter, dressed in the same one-piece bibs as Elmer, only where Elmer’s hung slack from his lean body this man’s spilled over with rolls of fat. The heavy man rotated on his stool and looked straight Joey’s way.
“You got a grip on them boys, Elmer?” The fat man’s body jiggled when he laughed. “Karla tells me that boy’s seen a ghost.”
Realizing the fat man was poking fun, Joey raised his chin angrily. “It’s no ghost. I never said that!” He faced the other way, hurt. “It was the truth, Gran.”
Elmer rapped his great brown knuckles on the table. “I know you’re not fibbing, son. Don’t pay attention to Mr. Barnes. Mike’s right as far as showing your hand to others. They know how to get you going, joking and kidding around like they do.”
Joey was sick and tired of hearing it all. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes deeply with his dirty hands. “I’m going to the bathroom.” At least nobody would be scolding him or laughing at him there.
Slowly rubbing the grainy bar of soap between his hands, Joey listened to the diner talk through the thin paneling. The fat man who’d laughed at him was snickering like the bullies at school did. Joey hated that. The thought of Johnny Shannon—his nemesis in the hallways—wrestling him to the ground and kneeing him in the groin while Shannon’s punk crew chuckled was too much to bear.
Joey leaned his forearms against the sink. The smell of Lava soap and greasy home fries mingled. Someone entered the diner in a hurry, a man puffing.
“Say, boys, Julie Heath’s been reported missing. Just heard it on the scanner. An APB’s out for her already. She plum disappeared without a trace a few hours ago. After visiting a friend at the Rhinelander place on Old Shed Road. No one’s seen her up at Libby’s, Harris’s Grocery, or anywhere else. Police report said she’s wearing a green skirt and a white button-down shirt.”
Joey dropped the soap, his hands foaming white. He looked at himself in the heavily etched mirror hanging over the sink and remembered seeing something. Like polka dots. He fought to calm himself, the way Mike always said to. He placed his glasses between the faucet handles and splashed cold water on his face. He had to be sure. He blinked to clear the water, then refitted his glasses.
The old truck had been pulled over as if parked in a hurry, one wheel over the curbstone. That look the man first gave Joey when he rode by—he could never forget it. It was right afterward he saw, when the man turned to shove something in the back of the truck.
Without drying, he turned and grabbed the door handle. The man who mentioned the police report was standing next to the heavy man on the stool.
Interrupting them, Joey said, “Hey, mister, did you say Julie Heath?”
The man stared down at the boy. So did the other men at the counter.
Fat Fred Barnes noticed Joey’s dripping hands. “Boy, you forgot to dry off your mitts, didn’t you?” He laughed, making a sound like a tuba.
Joey paid no attention. He wiped his hands on his pants, still looking at the man standing by Barnes. In an unfaltering voice Joey said, “She goes home the same way I go. Same place I saw this strange man on Old Shed Road.”
He swallowed hard, not worrying anymore about Mike getting angry or anything other than what the actions of the glaring stranger had to mean. What they could only mean.
“He was stuffing something in the back of his truck. He didn’t want me to see.” He rode his glasses back up his nose. “But I did see. A painter’s tarp, like it was covered with polka dots. Red ones.”
The room grew quiet. Everyone heard the words. It was one of those odd moments people would recollect later, something taken out of time, words that floated out, hardly skipping a beat. The room stayed silent until the man who’d said Julie was missing stooped beside Joey and said, “Boy, you sure about this?”
Barnes hopped off his stool, too, breathing hard. The other men crowded around. Joey could hear Mike cussing behind them, then his grandfather’s voice rising, saying, “Just a minute, Mike!” Another man went to a pay phone by the door. Joey heard a coin drop into the phone. The men standing in front of him were blocking Elmer and Mike from getting through. Others asked questions too fast, one on top of the other.
Elmer’s face poked over their heads and shoulders, and then he sidled through. “Excuse me, please,” he said. “Let me through to my boy.”
With Elmer’s hand on his shoulder, Joey looked straight into the eyes of the man stooped beside him, and said, “I’m sure. I am very, very sure.”
This time not a breath could be heard; not even Funny Bones Barnes moved a muscle. The words didn’t break the spell, they added to it, almost as if Joey was a silence conductor, and the diner patrons, his orchestra, were playing out the chords. But theirs was the music of hushed breathing, only the sound of so much hushed breathing.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sheriff Joe McFaron gunned the motor of his cream-colored Ford Bronco. The cell phone trilled on its base mount over the transmission hump. McFaron picked up the small black portable.
“Joe here,” he said in a deep voice.
“Sheriff, seems there’s a commotion over at Shermie’s Diner. Evidently, Joey Templeton knows something about Julie Heath.” Mary rocked back in her chair, revealing to an empty office the full extent of her paunch. Her barrel chest was little different from that of a heavyset man. The police uniform gave Mary a distinctly androgynous quality, masking the purely female desire she secretly harbored for the sheriff. She leaned forward in her seat, reaching for the keyboard, then tapped open a screen of daily report details while she conversed with McFaron.
“I’m two minutes from there. I’ll head on over,” McFaron said. “Over and out.”
McFaron unbuttoned his collar. Out his side window he saw a combine make a wide turn, swallowing a whole row of feed corn. Crows were cawing and swooping behind it. The angle of the late afternoon sun had suddenly cast a rich sepia tone over everything. He always liked how the light at the end of the day softened the edges of the trees and fields. Late afternoon in high school he would run the bleachers after everyone else had gone home, run till the sky turned rosy, then take a seat in the stands. The soothing effect was closer to worship than anything he’d ever experienced at a church service.
McFaron pulled up in front of the diner and got out. A full six foot two and handsome as a cowboy, the sheriff had a chest size that was still several inches larger than his waist. At thirty-five, he had a full head of wavy dark hair that was covered most of the time by his wide-brimmed trooper hat. Often, late at night, he would fall asleep on the office couch with the hat on.
McFaron opened the diner door, and the commotion inside quieted momentarily. “Hey, Joe,” Shermie said. “Wilson here claims Julie Heath’s gone missing?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” the sheriff said, his face serious. “So listen up.” He cleared his throat. “Julie’s fourteen, five four, thin, has long frizzy blonde hair, and is wearing a green skirt. She was last seen leaving Daisy Rhinelander’s place on Old Shed Road around two forty-five today,” McFaron continued. “Her mother, Karen
, called it in. Look, men, keep a sharp eye out. She could be hurt beside the road or in a ditch. Give the station a call right away if you see or hear anything.”
“Joey here saw something,” a loud voice called out. Immediately the room started to buzz with the sound of hushed voices.
“Give me a minute, will you, fellas?” McFaron walked over to the table where Joey Templeton was seated with his brother and grandfather.
The sheriff touched the boy’s head. “What did you see, son?”
Joey’s eyes locked on McFaron’s the way they always did on his grandfather’s, with complete trust. “A real creep. I saw him when I was biking home.”
McFaron nodded. “Where was this?”
“Riding my bike the back way from band practice, a little after three thirty. The road that starts by the end of the school field?”
“I know it. Old Shed Road.” McFaron shoved up the brim of his hat. “What happened next?”
“I saw this truck parked real crooked, and he was standing there. Behind it. Right near that broken telephone pole with the new one fastened to it.”
“You mean the one damaged by last year’s ice storm?”
Joey nodded. “He didn’t like me seeing him, Sheriff.” The boy’s eyes narrowed.
“Can you describe him for me?”
Joey stared into the dark space beneath a table, conjuring a more vivid image, seeing it all over again. He looked into the sheriff’s strong tan face.
“He was covering something up in the back of his truck. He didn’t want me to see it.” The boy swallowed hard. “His clothes were awful dirty.”
McFaron recalled seeing Joey at a birthday party held out at Echo Lake State Park earlier in the summer. The boy had become excitable over a minor teasing incident. A smart aleck had poked fun at him for playing with the girls. Luckily, the boy’s grandfather had been there to console him and had taken him for a walk to cool down.
“Did you see the man’s face?” The sheriff sat down opposite Joey and removed his hat. “Can you describe him?”
A hush fell over the diner. Karla put down her tray, and Shermie stepped away from the grill.
“He was sort of young. I’ve never seen him before in my life. He was wearing one of those one-piece suits that mechanics wear. Real dingy and splattered down the front. It looked wet.”
“Describe his build for me,” McFaron said. “What’d he look like?”
“Not real tall, pretty thin. His eyebrows were thick—it was hard to see his eyes. Honest, Sheriff, I think Julie was stuffed in the back of that truck.”
“Why do you think that?” McFaron observed the boy closely. The sighting was significant. The timing of it, too. Joey was obviously shaken, shredding his paper napkin under the table.
Joey’s eyes welled up suddenly and his voice grew softer when he added, “What else could those splatters mean, Sheriff?”
Mike cleared his throat forcefully but otherwise remained quiet. Joey didn’t care about the scolding Mike would surely hand out on the way home. What Joey had seen mattered more—and what he was doing wasn’t the same thing as whining about the bullies or teasers at school. It wasn’t about his being unable to fight back against the Johnny Shannons of the world. He had seen something. He was telling the truth.
McFaron scratched the short hairs below the haircut line on his neck. “Describe the truck if you can. What color was it?”
Joey took a deep breath and concentrated. “Stained and real rusty, sort of grayish paint, I guess. Old, I’m sure of that. The wheel wells were big humps. It had a dark-painted grille and a big rusty bumper that stuck way out.” The boy made an S motion with his hand.
“Good, son, you’re doing real good. Suppose I show you a picture book of trucks. Think you could pick it out?”
“Yeah, I’m sure.” Joey had a good memory and had been able to recite without a hitch the first and last names of all the US presidents and vice presidents in history class this past spring.
Joey glanced at the men standing by the counter. Their faces all looked the same: their mouths sagged open. Now Fred Barnes looked like he’d seen a ghost.
McFaron’s mind was assessing: the stranger Joey had seen was on the same road as the Rhinelanders’ house, where Julie Heath had been visiting. Joey’s report of seeing something suspicious had the ring of truth about it, and his description of the truck sounded real enough. Yet he was known to be an overexcitable, fearful kid, one with an overactive imagination. The sheriff would have Mary check to see whether anyone living on Old Shed Road had had a painter or workman at their house earlier in the day.
The portable radio on McFaron’s belt blared, followed by a woman’s voice.
“Go ahead, Mary. Over,” he said into the unit, turning down the volume as much as he could.
“Bob Heath just called in,” she said. “Wants you to contact him ASAP. Over.”
McFaron glanced around the diner. “I’ll call back in a minute. Over.”
He patted Joey’s head. “Son, you’ve been a great help noticing the things you did.” He glanced up at Elmer. “I’ll drop a truck book by a little later, Mr. Templeton, unless the Heath girl turns up first.” He looked back at Joey. “Can you help someone draw a picture of this man?”
“Yes, sir, I can.” The sheriff’s belief in him made Joey stand up taller.
“That’ll be fine,” Elmer said to McFaron. “We’ll be waiting for you.”
McFaron stood and reminded the others to report any sighting of the girl immediately to him. Then he headed out to his truck, where he called Mary on the cell phone and related Joey’s story.
McFaron started backing up the Bronco when Joey Templeton and his brother, Mike, stepped out of the diner with their grandfather. He admired the old man. Elmer reminded the sheriff of his own grandfather, who had been the first Crosshaven sheriff in the family. When his son, Joe’s father, dropped dead of a heart attack, he’d taken the sixteen-year-old McFaron in. No amount of work could clear the hurt of being robbed so young. Had Maddy Heath been robbed young, too, he wondered? Robbed of a sister? And had Julie herself been robbed of more than that?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Roadside dust swirled with the changing weather front. Prusik quickly paid the cabdriver and leaned into a headwind, squinting. A well-defined anvil—a cumulonimbus cloud—loomed several miles in the distance, topping out somewhere high above the cruising altitude of a commercial jetliner. It was oppressively muggy, and thunderstorms were forecast. She’d flown from Chicago to the small Blackie Airport on United Express—a commuter offshoot swallowed by the major carrier to service the spread-out tracts of farmland and huge hardwood forests that blanketed the middle of America for hundreds of miles, bounded by the Mississippi two hundred miles to the west and the Gulf of Mexico nearly five hundred miles to the south.
She stepped inside the FBI’s rolling laboratory, base for Bruce Howard and the team responsible for collecting and identifying forensic material recovered from the site where the body had been found.
“Stuart Brewster. Nice to meet you, ma’am.” The field agent stood up from his small desk, where a laptop computer displayed a series of plot lines on a topographical grid demarcating the crime scene.
Prusik put down her briefcase and forensic bag and shook the man’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Agent Brewster. Where is Mr. Howard?”
“He’s been down below at the scene with three other agents since this morning. They’re reconnoitering, looking for forensic evidence we may have overlooked yesterday.” Brewster was heavyset and short legged. He leaned his head out the doorway and studied the encroaching storm clouds. “Before things start to open up and turn the ravine into an erosion gully.”
Good, she thought, Howard was being thorough. Prusik did not know this man, Brewster. He was relatively new to the Midwest office of the bureau. Thorne had given Howard the leeway to bring in a few agents to build his field team. Brewster withdrew a cotton handkerchief from his back pocket and
sneezed, briefly turning his face and neck crimson.
She glanced back at the storage area inside the vehicle. Puffy collection bags filled with detritus removed from the crime scene lined the shelves, each tagged and cataloged. Hopefully, she thought, a clue lay trapped in the leaf mold.
She heard a muffled shout coming from somewhere down the steep wooded ravine. Prusik stepped outside and walked to the edge of the road, sheltered under the natural awning of several large hemlocks. Two men were methodically scanning the slope filled with dead leaves from the oak, beech, ash, and yellowwood trees that were interspersed with dark groves of cedar and hemlock. They were sweeping the area using a photosensitive ultraviolet lamp and a magnetometer to detect any metal object or other forensic clue that may lie beneath the leaves or near to the surface.
Another man shouted. She recognized the voice as Howard’s: dictatorial, almost like Managing Director Thorne’s. One of the men scanning turned to face his boss. Prusik could not see Howard, but she heard him give the agent instructions on where to search with the device. She stayed by the road, not wanting to interfere.
Howard’s head appeared, bobbing from side to side as he climbed the steep embankment. A fine sheen of sweat coated his forehead. He shoved his aviator glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Hello, Bruce. How’s it going?” she called out as he neared.
Prusik quickly assessed the field agent’s features. He looked strained. The crease between his eyebrows was deep, and his eyes looked tired. The case was getting to him too, no doubt.
“Have you been here long?” he said, picking up his pace to greet her. They shook hands.
“I just arrived.” A clap of loud thunder sounded nearby, and the sky grew suddenly darker. “Good thing you got an early start today,” she said. “I guess we shouldn’t stand so near tall trees.”
He nodded and allowed the corners of his mouth to turn up into a half smile. “Guess not.”
“Anything to report since we last talked?”
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