by Cindi Myers
Gage squatted down beside the chair. “Ask her if the man who was shooting at you and me was the same one who hurt her parents,” he said.
“I can’t do that,” Maya said. “Can’t you see how upset she is? We need to wait for the victim advocate.”
Gage’s jaw tightened, and she could almost hear his teeth grinding together, but he stood. “She’s supposed to be here at ten, so I thought I could give you a ride to the station.”
“I can drive over in my car,” Maya said.
“You could. But it will be easier to get through the reporters if you’re with me.”
“Reporters?” Maya glanced over at Paige.
“I hadn’t mentioned them yet,” Paige said. “They’ve been gathered outside since dawn. And the crowd is growing. I had three calls this morning from national networks. I finally had to take the phone off the hook.” She frowned at Gage. “Can’t you do something about them? They’re interfering with my business.”
“As long as they’re not trespassing on your property, there’s not a lot we can do,” Gage said. He returned his attention to Maya. “Travis thinks we should have a press conference this morning, and let them take some pictures. It’s up to you whether you want to grant any other interviews, or allow Casey to speak to them.”
“Absolutely not.” She stood, one hand still on Casey’s shoulder. “I’ll do the press conference, but I won’t allow them to talk to Casey. Fortunately, she won’t be able to hear their questions.”
“Let’s schedule the conference for one. That will give us time to meet with the victim advocate first.” He stepped back. “We’ll leave when you’re finished with your breakfast.”
Maya looked down at Casey’s mostly empty plate. “I think we’re done.” She put her hand on the girl’s cheek, capturing her attention. “Let’s go wash your face and you can brush your teeth, then we’re going to go with Deputy Walker for a while,” she signed and spoke.
Casey sniffed and scrubbed at her eyes, then climbed out of her chair and carefully pushed it back into the table. “I’ll wait by the door,” Gage said.
Maya nodded, breakfast sitting like a rock in her stomach. She knew Gage needed the information Casey could give them in order to find Angela and Greg’s murderers, but seeing the little girl upset tore her apart. She trusted Gage, but she didn’t think she could keep quiet if he did anything to hurt her niece.
Chapter Eleven
The three of them braved the gauntlet of reporters, Casey hiding her face against Maya’s shoulder and Gage walking with his arm around them both. He ignored the shouted questions and kept his focus forward. He realized they had jobs to do, but behind the feel-good story of a lost child who had been found lay a double murder and a lot of pain. He saw no need to put that suffering on display for the public.
Nobody said much of anything on the ride to the station. Though Gage hadn’t spent a lot of time around children, Casey struck him as too quiet for a five-year-old. She sat in the booster seat he’d borrowed from the department and stared listlessly out the window. Maya was quiet, too. He could feel tension radiating off her—and more than a little resentment at him, that he had brought the little girl to tears. Couldn’t she see he had a job to do? A job that required him to do ugly and yes, sometimes hurtful, things? He didn’t want to hurt a little girl, but the longer they waited to find out the information she could give him, the more time a killer or killers had to get away—and maybe even to kill again.
When the three of them entered the sheriff’s office—through the back door again—a silver-haired woman in a dark purple suit stepped forward to meet them. “I’m Darla Rivers,” she said, offering her hand. “I’m the victim advocate.” She shook hands with Maya, then smiled down at Casey. “Hello, Casey,” she signed as she spoke. “My name is Darla, and I hope we’re going to be friends.”
“You know ASL,” Maya said.
“Yes. Casey isn’t the first deaf child I’ve worked with.” She moved to the sofa in a small waiting area and sat down. “Casey, would you and your aunt come sit with me?” she asked.
Maya led Casey to the sofa, where the little girl settled between the two women. Talking and signing, Darla explained that her job as a victim advocate was to be Casey’s friend and to look after her interests and what was best for her—no matter what anyone else in the room thought. Casey listened intently, but Gage wondered how much a child that young could understand.
“Deputy Walker and the sheriff need to ask you some questions about what happened in the woods,” Darla continued, signing as she spoke. “I know it might be hard to answer some of their questions, but anything you can remember will help them to catch the bad people who did this. Are you ready to try to help us?”
Casey hesitated, then took Maya’s hand and nodded. Gage glanced at Travis.
Travis sat and pulled his chair closer to the sofa. Gage did the same. “We’re videotaping this interview,” Travis explained. “That allows us to capture all the sign language—Casey’s language—and we also may be able to use the tape as evidence in court, so that Casey doesn’t have to testify in person.”
“That’s good,” Maya said.
Travis turned to Casey. The little girl stared back at him. She didn’t look intimidated, but determined. In fact, her expression mirrored that of her aunt. Maya gripped the child with one hand and kept the other hand in a fist resting on her thigh.
Darla opened a large satchel and took out a drawing pad and some colored markers. She handed these to Casey. “I thought we would start by having you draw us a picture,” she explained. “Draw a picture of what happened in the woods, when the bad people came.”
Casey looked doubtful, and turned a purple marker over and over in her hand. “Go ahead,” Maya urged. “You’re very good at drawing.”
After a moment, Casey put aside the purple marker and chose a black one. She began to make marks on the paper—a tent. Trees. The campfire. She put a little stick figure in the tent, lying down. That would be Casey, Gage guessed. Then two stick figures by the fire, one with long hair—her mother and father? The marker hovered over the page, then Casey bent low, shielding her work with her body, the marker squeaking against the pad. A tear fell on the page, making the marker run, and then another. Casey dropped the marker and turned her head away.
Darla handed the child a tissue and rubbed her shoulder, then slipped the pad from her lap. She studied the drawing a moment, then handed it to Travis. Gage leaned over to look at the drawing. Casey had added two figures in black—larger than the others. One of the figures held what was clearly a gun, and the little girl had drawn dashed lines from the gun to both her parents. The starkness of the scene made Gage feel a little sick—and angry that a child had had to witness such a thing.
“This is good,” Travis said, addressing Casey, even though she wasn’t looking at him. He turned to Darla. “Ask her if she can describe the shooters—were they male or female, tall, short, fat, thin? Did they have beards or wear glasses? Did they say anything? Did they argue with her parents and if so, what about? Did she see what kind of vehicle they were in?”
Darla nodded and began signing. Casey stared, wide-eyed, then began shaking her head back and forth, hair flying. Then she whimpered and turned away, and crawled into Maya’s lap, her sobbing the only sound.
Maya wrapped her arms around the child. “We have to stop,” she said. “This is too upsetting.”
Travis looked grim. “We need more information if we’re going to catch these two.”
“Let’s take a break and calm down,” Darla said. “Then we can try again.” She touched Maya’s shoulder. “Let me take her for a little bit. You go outside and get some fresh air.”
She nodded and left. Gage stared after her. “Maybe I should go talk to her,” he said.
“It’s your funeral,” Travis said.
Outside, Gage f
ound Maya leaning against the brick of the building, arms folded across her chest. She glanced at him when he came to stand beside her, but quickly looked away. “If you came out here to try to talk me into letting you bully Casey with your questions, you’re wasting your breath,” she said.
“I’m not bullying her and you know it.” He leaned against the brick also, so close their shoulders were almost touching. “Did you ever think that it might be good for her to talk about what happened? That talking might make it less scary for her?”
“So you’re a child psychologist now?” She turned on him. “A couple of nutcases destroyed her world and you want her to keep reliving that moment?”
“I want to find those two nutcases and stop them.” He took hold of her arm, as much because he wanted that physical contact as to stop her from storming away from him. “Did it occur to you that if the people who did this find out Casey saw them, they could come after her? We need to find them before they do that.”
All the color left her face and if not for his hand steadying her, he thought she might have fallen. “Come after her?” she whispered. “Gage, no—you can’t let that happen.”
“I don’t intend to. But I need to know what she knows. Every little thing she can tell us is more than we have to go on right now. I don’t want to hurt her, but more than that, I don’t want them to hurt her.”
She nodded and pulled away. He let her go. “If Darla thinks it’s okay, you can question Casey some more,” she said. “I’ll try not to let my own anxieties influence her.”
“I know it’s not easy for you,” he said. “But think of it this way—Casey survived two nights in the woods on her own. She’s a very tough little girl. A very brave one.”
“She is, isn’t she?” She no longer looked so pale, and some of the bleakness had receded from her eyes. “Thanks for reminding me of that.”
“Let’s give her a little more time to recover,” he said. “In the meantime, I need you to do something.”
“Oh?” She eyed him warily.
“I need you to look at Angela and Greg’s belongings and see if there’s anything out of place,” he said. “It can be disturbing, seeing things that belonged to someone you loved, laid out this way, tagged as evidence in a crime. But I need you to try to put aside the emotion and be as objective as possible. We can study these items all day and not see what you can see in a few minutes. We need to know if anything strikes you as out of place or not right or not characteristic of your sister and her husband.”
“All right,” Maya said. “If you think it will help.”
“I don’t know if it will help, but I’m determined to do everything I can to find their killers. They deserve that much.” He put his hand on her shoulder and looked her in the eye, hoping she would see the emotion behind his words. “You and Casey deserve that, too.”
* * *
GAGE’S WORDS—AND the look in his eyes—touched Maya. But the thought of doing what he asked, looking through objects that had been so close to Angela and Greg, hurt. She took a deep breath, fighting for a calm she didn’t feel. This was important. She couldn’t bring Angela back to life, but she could do this one thing to help Gage and his fellow officers find Angela and Greg’s killers. “I’m ready,” she said.
He led her back inside and into a standard conference room of beige walls and gray tile floor. Banks of fluorescent lighting cast a harsh white light over the items laid out on long tables in the center of the room. Maya scanned the collection and recognized a blue-and-white cooler that had held drinks at countless backyard barbecues and two blue plastic storage containers of the kind her sister used for storing everything from Christmas decorations to out-of-season clothing. Next to the storage containers, someone had arranged what she assumed was the contents of the containers—canned food, paper plates and plastic utensils, a blue tarp, first aid kit and rain gear. A camping stove, lantern, two camp chairs, a backpack, some books and Angela’s purse completed the collection of evidence.
Seeing the purse here hurt the most. The bag was light blue leather, with a silver butterfly charm dangling from the strap. Maya had been with Angela when she purchased the bag, both women crowing over the fact that it had been marked down 40 percent off at an end-of-season clearance sale. She approached the bag warily, cringing at the bright yellow Evidence tag attached next to the butterfly charm. “You can touch anything you want,” Gage said. He waited by the door, as if giving her room to process all of this.
She picked up the wallet—a red leather one their mother had sent for Christmas last year. Maya had one just like it. “Angela used to say she kept her whole life in her purse,” she said. She opened her wallet to reveal a driver’s license and half a dozen loyalty cards for grocery stores and a pharmacy, a single credit card and a library card. The money compartment held nine dollar bills and the change compartment was empty. “She never kept much cash. She preferred to use her credit card for everything.”
She set aside the wallet and considered the assortment of tissues, lipsticks, bandages, pens, makeup and a cell phone that made up the rest of the contents of the purse. She picked up the phone and debated turning it on. “We checked out the phone,” Gage said. “No calls after the one she made to you the day they arrived in Eagle Mountain.”
“She wanted to let me know she got here all right.” Her voice broke and she set the phone back on the table, fighting for composure. She couldn’t break down now—not yet. She had to keep it together, for Angela and Greg. Gage remained by the door, though she sensed him poised to spring into action, perhaps even to pull her out of the room if she started to go over the edge.
The idea strengthened her and she moved on to the backpack and its contents. Here was her brother-in-law, Greg—the always-prepared scientist, with his first aid kit, ordinance maps, binoculars, granola bars and books. She picked up the top volume on the small stack of reading material. “A History of Mines and Mining in Rayford County,” she read aloud. “That sounds like Greg.”
She set the book aside and stared at the rest of the items laid out on the table. Grief dragged at her, like one of those lead aprons the dental assistant draped over her before she took X-rays. She shook her head. “I don’t see anything unusual or out of place,” she said. “They were just two ordinary people. There was no reason for this to happen.” The last word came out in a sob she was unable to hold back. She bowed her head, then felt strong arms come around her. She turned into Gage and rested her head against the hard wall of his chest and sobbed, giving in to the grief and the opportunity to let someone else hold her up for a few moments.
By the time her tears were spent, his shirt was soaked and she was embarrassed, but still she kept her eyes closed and didn’t move. Here in his arms was so safe and warm, and as she rested there, she became aware of other sensations—his clean, masculine smell and the steady, strong rhythm of his heartbeat, the solid bulge of muscles in his arms, and the way her own body warmed to his appealing masculinity. Here was a reminder, in the midst of the worst time of her life, that she was still very much alive and grateful for all that entailed.
Gage eased her away from him, though he kept his hands on her upper arms. “Better?” he asked.
She nodded. “But your shirt...”
“I have another one in my locker.” He glanced toward the items on the table. “Thanks for taking a look. I know it was difficult.”
“I wish I had seen something that could help you. I feel so helpless.”
“You can’t see what isn’t there. And you are helping. You’re a living, breathing reminder of what we’re working for. Not that we wouldn’t give our best, regardless. But sometimes, seeing how what we do impacts real lives is the incentive we need to put in another hour or dig a little deeper. We won’t give up.”
Watching him as he spoke, the intensity in his eyes and the emotion behind his words, she believed him. She truste
d him. She had known Gage Walker less than two days, yet already she believed she could trust him with her life.
* * *
WHEN GAGE AND Maya rejoined Casey and Darla, they found the two coloring. They were working on a drawing that depicted all kinds of flowers—a much happier drawing than the all-black picture Casey had drawn for them. Gage took his seat across from them once more, and Maya perched on the end of the sofa. Travis joined them. “Did you see any flowers while you were in the woods?” Travis asked.
They waited while Darla conveyed his question in sign language. As the conversation continued, she served as translator.
Casey focused on filling in the petals of a large daisy with a pink marker, setting aside the color to sign. “I saw some yellow ones and purple ones,” she signed. She replaced the cap on the pink marker and chose a yellow one. “I ate some raspberries. They were really good.”
“That was smart of you, to find and eat the raspberries,” Gage said.
She shrugged. “I was hungry.”
“You said you saw me and your Aunt Maya by the little building,” Gage said. “What were you doing when you saw us?”
“I saw the buildings and thought there might be food there, or someplace warm to sleep. But all the doors I tried were locked, but then I saw you and Aunt Maya.”
“What happened then?” Travis asked.
“I was going to go to you, but then I saw the men talking. So I hid and watched. Then I saw it was one of the men—one of the bad men.” She pressed her lips tightly together.
“So you ran away,” Gage said, very gently.
She nodded and made a sign that Gage could clearly understand as going away—one finger drawn from one side to the other across her body. Then she began to sign more rapidly, and he was grateful for Darla’s translation.