by Claire Booth
Hank gave her a rundown of his search for Jenny Danzig and his morning at the high school. Her boss looked like he’d been used as a punching bag. His under-eyes were purple-ish shadows and his cheeks hollowed out and slack. She’d bet money he hadn’t slept at all since the crash. She kicked herself. She should have insisted they send someone else to interview the grieving high school kids. It looked like it’d been too much for him.
And now he was going on about the possibility that the sedan had been tampered with. That no one anticipated the son would take it. That maybe somebody had been after Jenny Danzig. She opened her mouth and then closed it with a deflating sigh. What he needed to hear, she couldn’t bring herself to say. They should figure out who Johnny Gall really was, yes, but that wasn’t going to change the fact of the accident. It wasn’t going to provide a reason for five other kids dying. It wasn’t going to take away his guilt.
She thought about it. Whatever way you looked at it – accident or conspiracy – Alex Danzig’s mother did need to be found. She suggested to Hank that he keep at that. She had a feeling he’d climb the walls if she stuck him behind a computer. So she’d track down the list of coffee patrons. Oh, and Emily Fitch.
He sat up out of his slouch and slapped the desk.
‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘What the hell is up with her? Every person I talked to about Hailee mentioned her sister, too.’
Sheila flipped to a new page in her notebook. ‘What’d they say?’
He repeated every rumor he’d heard, even the one about her being the girlfriend of a Colombian drug lord. Sheila snorted at that one.
‘Half of those sound ridiculous,’ she said. ‘And all of it sounds pretty heavy-duty for a kid who’s what, twenty? Twenty-one?’
Hank, who was sitting on the boss side of the desk, started banging at the computer’s keyboard.
‘Her DL says she’ll be twenty-one next month.’
More pounding. The force of his typing was going to send the whole computer through the desk. She held up her hand and when he didn’t see that, grabbed his wrist.
‘You go look for Jenny Danzig. I got the record searches.’ She eyed those sunken cheeks. ‘Have you eaten?’
‘When?’
What kind of a stupid question was … she chided herself, and let go of his arm. ‘At all. Today. Have you eaten anything?’
‘I had something at home this morning.’
She doubted it had been a well-balanced meal. Plus, it was now late afternoon.
‘You need to get something to eat. Something solid. You’re going to pass out otherwise.’
He stared at her for a minute. Processing her directions, she supposed. Finally, he nodded and left the room. The black cloud went with him, and Sheila moved around to the boss side of the desk and got to work.
TWENTY
Sam finished gassing up his Bronco and headed back to the Branson substation, where he was scheduled to meet Kurt Gatz, the crime scene tech. He was going to be late because his tank had been empty, which was only because the Chief had driven all over God’s green earth yesterday. At least he’d given Sam twenty bucks and an apology.
He stopped at a red light and looked at himself in the rearview mirror. He’d shaved his head again this morning and now it felt like he hadn’t gotten all of the hair rinsed off. He rubbed at the itchiness on the back of his scalp and sighed. The Chief was going to be pissed. He’d said Sam needed to keep at least a bit of stubble. ‘Otherwise you look like a skinhead, and that’s not the look we’re going for in this department,’ he’d said. He had a point. But today, Sam had had the clippers on the wrong setting and hadn’t realized it in time. So it was either all the way clean or half-and-half. He hoped that with everything going on, Hank just wouldn’t notice.
He pulled into the parking lot behind the building and saw Kurt circling the little white hatchback, taking pictures. He hadn’t started on the interior yet – the evidence tape was still intact.
An hour later, they had a fat lot of nothing. Some fingerprints that needed running, although they were probably the two dead boys’. And a library book that might be overdue. Oooh. Sam kicked a tire. This was nothing but busy work. He looked over at Kurt with all his gear.
‘Come on. I got an idea.’
Ten minutes later they were looking up at a steep hillside. They could hear the hum of traffic from several directions, but the Roark Creek Trail was calm and shaded, even right where Lauren Blenkinship had landed.
‘I think Branson PD already did this,’ Kurt said.
Sam began to pace along the paved path. There had to be something they’d missed. Something he could find, and investigate. Something that would get the Chief to trust him again after Ted Pimental’s shooting, when Sam hadn’t been quick enough to stop the other deputy from getting shot and almost dying. Think.
The dirt at the edge of the path was all torn up and he could see vehicle tire tracks on the pavement that must’ve been left by the ambulance yesterday morning. She’d landed hard, that was for sure. But the theory that she’d jumped didn’t make any sense. There were plenty of cliffs around that you could fling yourself off if that’s how you wanted to kill yourself. Throwing yourself down a forested hill, where you’d just as well might end up with a skinned knee instead of fatal injuries … He started to climb.
‘Oh, man,’ Kurt said. ‘You didn’t say there’d be hiking. I think I’m just going to wait for you here.’
Sam kept going, staring down for any sign of footprints or a scuffle, and up for any sign of broken branches that would indicate this was the exact route Lauren had taken. The vegetation was just starting its autumn die-off, which helped. Things were starting to get more brittle, easier to track.
He hit a spot on the ascent that was clear of underbrush. He knelt, but the indentations were too muddled to tell him much. He carefully stepped five feet to the side and followed them farther up. He smiled and his breathing slowed. This he could do. This only he could do. There were lots of fishermen in the department, but not many hunters. Sheila was super observant (too much, sometimes, honestly) but she didn’t know how to track. And the Chief was a bulldozing menace in the woods.
It became clear that what he was seeing were two sets of tracks. Running. And not side-by-side for a friendly jog, either. One after the other, like a chase. One bigger, one smaller. He needed to go back and get Kurt, so he could photograph the tracks. But he couldn’t resist continuing forward. It was the first time in months that he felt like he knew what he was doing. He went over a little rise in the terrain and, on the other side, the weeds were patchy and many spots had bare dirt. Beautiful, loose dirt. Where he could see the heel of a tennis shoe. That was the bigger foot. The smaller runner … had no shoes. Just a set of toes, clearly captured in the Ozark soil as their owner pressed the ball of the foot into the ground.
He dug out his phone and dialed it.
‘Was she wearing shoes?’
‘What?’
‘Was she wearing shoes? When she was found? The overpass girl?’
‘I have no idea,’ Hank said. ‘Why?’
Sam explained where he was. The Chief’s end of the phone suddenly seemed to crackle with energy.
‘I’m on my way,’ he said. ‘Don’t leave that spot. I’ll call Kurt. We’ll meet you there.’
Sam decided not to mention that he’d commandeered Kurt without authorization, and the big guy was already out here. He volunteered to call Kurt himself and hung up with his boss. Kurt picked up his phone, sounded thrilled there might be some actual evidence, and said he’d move his truck to a better access point and be there shortly.
A half hour later, Sam walked back down to the creek trail to find the Chief and one really PO’d Branson detective.
‘… and tear my guys a new one. I can’t believe they didn’t find this.’
The Chief caught Sam’s eye and winked. He fought back a grin. He’d done good. He started to report, but Hank held up a hand.
&nbs
p; ‘First, Detective Raker has some information,’ he said, pointing at the Branson cop.
‘She wasn’t wearing shoes when she was found.’
‘Then they’ve got to be her tracks. Kurt’s taking footprint casts now,’ Sam said. ‘They start at the edge of the subdivision at the other side of this wooded section. Both participants were running. I think she had a pretty good head start, because the unknown person’s stride is significantly longer. If he’d been closer to her, he would have caught up, and the tracks would show that happening. Of course, I can’t tell what happened once the really steep section was reached, except that it’s clear that’s when she started crashing through the vegetation without being able to stop herself. That doesn’t mean she wasn’t pushed.’
Mr Raker swallowed hard and bowed his head. ‘Agreed. She didn’t jump.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose and looked like he was about to cry. Sam, not sure of what to do, kept his mouth shut.
Mr Raker finally spoke. ‘Are you sure it’s a he?’
‘Not completely, sir. But with the stride length and the size of the shoe, it’s pretty likely.’ He looked at the Chief, unsure if he should keep talking. He got an encouraging nod.
‘Also, I can’t say for sure that she was barefoot at any point but that one section. That’s where the prints are clearest. Otherwise, they’re just flattened grass or leaves. I, um, I mean, she might have lost them during the chase. I’d suggest we get some folks and search nearer the subdivision for shoes.’
‘Oh, my men will be scouring these woods. Immediately,’ Raker said.
The detective pulled out his phone and turned away. Sam was glad not to be under his command at the moment. Especially when the guy he did work for slapped him on the back.
‘Sammy, you’re brilliant. Nobody else would have found this. And I’d still be arguing that this wasn’t some half-hearted suicide attempt. You might’ve just saved the whole investigation. We have to be able to link her to the crash and the murder, and now we’re a big step closer. Thank you.’
Hank squeezed his shoulder and asked him to show where the barefoot prints were. Sam hadn’t felt this good in months. He smiled and led the way back into the woods.
Things were looking up. Hank was much closer to showing that the car crash was linked to – and the result of – the criminal activity. He’d been proven right about Lauren Blenkinship not falling down the hill either by accident or suicidal tendency. As a result of Sammy’s tracking, there’d been a hunt for shoes in the subdivision high above the trail. Officers had found a pair of ballet flats that Mrs Blenkinship confirmed were her daughter’s, which made it almost certain that the barefoot prints being chased through the woods also belonged to Lauren. Sheila was closing in on the murder victim’s ID. And Johnny Gall was a fake.
And Dunc had actually made a decent enchilada. Nothing like what his mamá could do, but it was definitely better than any of his previous attempts. Hank polished off a third helping and sat back with a sigh.
‘I’m going to take that as a compliment,’ said his father-in-law. He turned toward his sister, who was sitting at the end of the table and pushing bits of half-eaten dinner around her plate. ‘You, on the other hand, are being a little impolite.’
Aunt Fin put down her fork and frowned at him. ‘Well, I wasn’t expecting to be served Mexican food by a man raised on beef brisket and mutton stew.’ She paused, and Hank noticed her chin tremble very slightly. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … I’m just not very hungry is all.’
Hank excused the kids from the table and waited until they’d clattered their dishes into the sink and scampered from the kitchen. He opened his mouth and got a swift kick in the shin before he could say a word.
‘Earlier today, Fin was telling me about how much construction there was on her drive down here,’ Dunc said. ‘Can you believe they’re building even more along that stretch north of Springfield?’
Hank didn’t care. He was interested in why Finella had shown up out of the blue. Apparently, he wasn’t allowed to ask. He resisted the urge to kick Dunc back and smiled benignly through a five-minute treatise on the perils of overdevelopment and the decline of rural Missouri. Then, since he clearly wasn’t going to be allowed to get any information directly from Fin, he got up and started doing the dishes. Guapo would hit the jackpot tonight – an almost untouched plate of enchiladas. He scraped it into the dog’s bowl and was rewarded with the frantic skittering of nails on linoleum as Guapo rounded the corner from the living room at full speed. He couldn’t stop and slid right into his water bowl, sloshing it everywhere as he reached for the food.
‘You’re supposed to make them sit before you allow them to eat,’ Fin said.
Hank turned toward his aunt-in-law and saw Dunc giving her the same flat stare he was.
‘We’ve. Tried.’ Dunc glowered. ‘Repeatedly.’
Guapo finished and contentedly flopped down onto Hank’s feet and his now-wet socks. Fin’s raised eyebrows indicated what she thought of that. The tips of Dunc’s ears were starting to turn red, which meant he was getting ready to erupt. Hank had learned a few things about him in the year they’d lived under the same roof, and that was definitely one of them. Another was that the older man’s relationship with his sister wasn’t always civil. He figured it was because they were so much alike. Stubborn, blunt, cantankerous Scots. It made him wish both that he’d met their parents before they passed away and glad that he hadn’t.
Which brought him back to the question just begging to be answered. What the hell was she doing here?
‘Kids,’ Hank called, ‘come in here. Why don’t you and Aunt Fin play a game?’
Dunc grinned. ‘That’s a great idea.’
Benny dragged Fin into the living room as Maribel ran for their current favorite game, which both men knew was Chutes and Ladders.
‘They’ll be playing that horrible game for hours. Good thinking,’ Dunc said as he carried the last dishes to the sink and then gave Guapo the signal for ‘walk.’
‘Oh, no.’ Hank shook the dishrag at him. ‘I didn’t do that so that you could get off scot-free.’
Dunc snorted with laughter.
‘OK. Bad phrasing,’ Hank said. ‘But you’re not going anywhere until you tell me why the hell she’s here.’
Dunc sighed and gestured for Hank to follow him through the mud room and into the garage. Hank leaned against the minivan and crossed his arms, swearing as the dishrag he’d forgotten he was holding spread soapy water all over his shirt. He really was exhausted. And he really wished Maggie was home. She had to know what was going on, but he hadn’t seen her since the omelet breakfast yesterday. He tried to focus his bleary eyes on Dunc.
‘She didn’t know where else to go,’ Dunc said. ‘She can’t go to her in-laws.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it’s about them. Well, it’s about him. About Lew.’
Ah, yes. ‘Mark-down’ Lew. He owned a small chain of closeout merchandise outlets. Hank had only seen him a few times, including at his wedding, when the guy managed to corner his dad and talk about clearance sales for an hour. Dad had only gotten away when Hank’s abuela had dragged him out on the dance floor.
‘She thinks he’s having an affair.’
Hank’s jaw dropped. Lew with the too-shiny loafers and too-loud laugh? That Lew?
‘I know.’ Dunc nodded. ‘That’s what I think, too. Not really plausible. Especially now. Finella’s seventy-eight, which means he’s eighty-one.’
‘Why bother?’
Dunc bristled. ‘That wasn’t what I meant. We don’t turn that part off just because we hit seventy, you know.’
Hank decided no response was the best response.
‘I meant,’ Dunc continued, ‘that why would he start now? They’ve been married for twenty years. And there’s been no hint of that kind of thing.’
‘That you know of,’ Hank said.
‘That’s just your suspicious mind talking.’
; ‘So she’s here, what, for time to figure out whether she’s going to divorce him?’
‘I think so. We haven’t really gotten much further than that. She’s pretty upset about it. So if you could not bring anything up, well, I’d appreciate it.’
‘Of course. Although, next time, it’d be great if you’d warn me beforehand, instead of kicking me under the table. I’ve got enough injuries right now.’
‘Oh, yeah. Sorry.’ He looked at Hank’s hands. ‘How’re they healing? You know, I heard they’ve scheduled the first of the funerals for those kids. It’s just such a tragedy.’
Hank’s lungs felt like they were shrinking. His breath caught. Dunc peered up at him. He still didn’t know the whole story. But he looked like he knew enough about Hank to stop talking. Instead, he took the dishrag, patted his son-in-law on the shoulder and left him alone in the quiet garage.
TWENTY-ONE
‘You should see their facilities, man. They got some nice, new stuff.’ Kurt Gatz settled his bulk into the chair across from Hank’s desk. ‘And they got windows.’
Hank chuckled. The sheriff’s department forensic lab was famous for its similarity to a closet. A sufficiently equipped but nothing-to-write-home-about, smelled-funky-in-hot-weather closet.
‘Yeah, well, they’ve got a pretty good tax base,’ Hank said. ‘All the shows and all the stores are in the city limits. All we’ve got is back roads, and forests, and little towns. We’re the regional provider, but they still have more officers than we do.’
Kurt nodded. ‘They’ve been annexing all new developments since long before you got here. I don’t expect that’ll end anytime soon, either.’
Kurt pulled what looked like Xeroxes of shoe tread out of a file he’d carried in and held them against his chest. He’d taken the footprint casts from the Blenkinship scene straight to the PD, he explained. Where he’d run into Brian Handlesman, the BPD crime scene tech, who had some evidence of his own, it turned out. So for kicks, they compared.