Lone Witness

by Shirlee McCoy

  How much time would it take to clean the place up and replace the window?

  How long would Ernie’s have to be closed?

  Days? Weeks?

  How many employees would be late paying bills because of the fire? How many of them would suffer because of this?

  “How about we open the back door?” the chief suggested. “Try to get some of this smoke out of here.”

  Tessa ran to do as he’d asked, shoving open the door and letting cold winter air blow in. The cross ventilation seemed to work, as the haziness in the kitchen started to dissipate.

  Voices drifted in from the service area, and she assumed other officers had arrived. She braced herself for the questions she knew would come. Who? Why?

  She’d have to explain the prank call again.

  She’d have to talk about the knock on the back door.

  She’d have to convince herself that everything that had happened had everything to do with the kidnapper who was still on the loose.

  And maybe it did.

  Probably it did.

  She had no reason to believe Patrick had found her.

  She had no reason to think that he’d have bothered traveling across the country to taunt and terrify her.

  If he’d been interested in finding her, she was sure that he could have done it years ago. She’d purchased a new identity, but she hadn’t tried terribly hard to cover her tracks. She’d been too scared and too desperate to do much more than plan her escape and follow through on it. She had only used cash, of course. She’d pawned her jewelry in shops far away from California. But she’d also bought an old car off a lot close to the mall where she’d parked the one he’d given her.

  If Patrick had wanted to, he could have asked around and figured that out. He could have learned her new name. He could have searched databases, and eventually, he might have been able to track her down. He hadn’t. He’d started dating Sheila, his partner Ryan’s widow. He’d married her.

  He had a new life with a new woman, and according to the society section of the Napa Valley Times, he was living the same life of refined wealth as he always had.

  He hadn’t found Tessa, because he hadn’t wanted to.

  She’d been telling herself that for three years.

  She’d almost convinced herself it was true.

  She hoped it was, because she’d come a long way to become the person her grandmother had wanted her to be. She’d traveled thousands of miles. She’d taken hundreds of hours of classes at the community college. She’d worked nearly every day from the time she’d been given a chance at the diner until she’d been injured at the hospital.

  She was close to achieving her goals.

  She didn’t want to have to leave town and give up all of that.

  But lately, there had been a lot of whispering around town. She had heard the murmured conversations when she had attended church. She had noticed that people had stopped talking when she had walked into doctors’ offices. She understood that she had become a curiosity—that woman who had arrived in town one day without much of a story. The one who’d stopped a kidnapping. Who had been nearly murdered.

  The fire at the diner would bring more whispering and more curiosity.

  “Tessa, is everything okay back there?” Kayla called.

  “Yes,” she replied as she hurried back into the service area.

  It looked just as terrible as it had when she’d walked into the kitchen, the air a little clearer, but the soot and smoke-stained dining area even more noticeable. She reached for the pile of burned rags that sat on the floor near the brick and broken glass, anxious to put some order to the chaos and clear some of the mess.

  “Don’t touch anything,” Kayla barked, and Tessa jerked her hand back.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” Kayla glanced out the window. The chief was standing near his cruiser, talking to the fire marshal. “I’m just already in the hot seat because of the incident at the hospital.” Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. “If I mess this up, the chief will fire me.”

  “I doubt that. You’re good at your job, and he knows it.”

  “He’s my uncle. He doesn’t know anything except that he feels obligated and that he couldn’t deny the strength of my application or my experience.”

  “Your uncle?” That was something she hadn’t been aware of. In a town where everyone talked about everyone, she was surprised she hadn’t heard about the family connection.

  “It’s not common knowledge, but yes.”

  “Is there a reason why it isn’t?”

  “Like you, I try to keep my story to myself.”

  “I’m not keeping anything to myself.”

  “No? Then why doesn’t anyone know anything about you? Where you came from? Why you arrived in Provincetown one summer and stayed?”

  “I’m from California,” she offered.

  “That doesn’t tell me much of anything. Here’s what I do know. People don’t just decide and make homes on the cold beaches of Provincetown. Me? I came because my mother told me stories of meeting my father here. I came out of curiosity the year I turned eighteen. Eventually, I decided it would be a nice place to settle.”

  “Your father must be happy to have you here.”

  “I haven’t seen my father since I was six. He couldn’t care less where I am, and the feeling is mutual. I didn’t bother mentioning him or my relationship to him when I applied to work for the police department the first time.”

  “The first time?”

  “I applied three years in a row. The first year, the chief called me out. He’d done a background check, and he knew who my father was. He told me to go back to Boston and get a job there because he couldn’t have his town claiming nepotism. I applied the next year and the next.”

  “You’re persistent.”

  “I wanted the job. I like Provincetown. It felt like home the first day I visited, and it hasn’t stopped feeling that way. My third time applying, the chief must have decided I’d earned my stripes as a beat cop in Boston. He hired me, and here I am. Walking a thin line between having a job and not. So, if you’re keeping information from us, now would be a good time to tell me,” she said.

  Tessa wanted to speak into the sudden silence. She wanted to voice the truth, but—just like always—the words were stuck in her throat and refused to be released.

  Outside, an old Chevy truck bounced over the curb behind the chief’s cruiser. Tessa recognized the glossy blue paint and the shiny chrome rims. Ernie loved the truck. He wouldn’t love what had happened to the diner.

  He jumped out, racing toward the broken window, Betty just a few steps behind him.

  “It’s true!” he cried as he walked through the opening. “A bomb went off!”

  He looked around wildly, spotted Tessa and strode toward her.

  “Ernie, I’m so sor—” she began.

  He dragged her into his arms, wrapping her in a bear hug that threatened to crack her ribs. “You’re okay!”

  “Of course I am,” she mumbled against his scratchy flannel shirt. It smelled like pipe tobacco and peppermint, and she imagined that if she’d ever had a grandfather, his hugs would have smelled exactly like that.

  “You’re sure?” He backed up, his hands wrapped around her biceps.

  “I’m fine. But, the diner—”

  “Honey, the diner can be fixed.”

  “The window—”

  “Can be replaced. People can’t. Betty and I were eating breakfast when we heard about the explosion on the police scanner. All I could think about was you.” He stepped back, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and wiping his forehead with it. “I haven’t run that fast since I thought Danny Erickson was going to ask Betty to the seventh-grade dance before I had a chance to.”

  “You ran
pretty fast the other day when you thought Kendal Jameson was going to let her kids grab the last few pieces of apple pie at the church social,” Betty said as she hurried up behind him. “I’m so glad you’re okay, Tessa. We were worried sick. We tried to call the chief to ask if there’d been injuries, but he wasn’t answering his phone.” She eyed the shattered diner window, the soot-stained ceiling and smoke-marred interior. “Well, isn’t this a pretty sight.”

  “Pretty! It’s going to cost a fortune to replace the window and get the smoke out of the walls and off the tables,” Ernie grumbled, obviously back to his normal taciturn nature.

  “Insurance will cover it, and we’ll get a nice new, double-paned window out of the deal. I’m not going to say I’m sorry about it. This place costs a fortune to heat in the winter. Plus, we’ll get some new flooring—”

  “New flooring! There’s just a tiny black spot on the old one,” Ernie protested.

  “Tiny? It’s at least two feet of singed tiles. Which doesn’t make me sad. I never did like this floor,” Betty commented.

  “What’s wrong with the floor?” Ernie demanded.

  “It’s covering beautiful wood.”

  “Nicked wood that needed to be refinished. Putting tile over it was cheaper than paying someone to do that.”

  “We were broke when we bought this place. We barely scraped together enough money for the down payment. It’s nearly forty years later. The mortgage has been paid off for twenty years We’re not broke, and I’d like to update the place. Now is the perfect time to do it,” Betty said cheerfully.

  “Update what? This place is timeless,” Ernie responded.

  “You always say that, but I’m certain Tessa would agree—”

  The sound of a ringing phone stopped their conversation, Tessa hurried to the old-fashioned rotary phone that hung on the wall near the hostess station.

  “The place is closed. It’s a crime scene,” Kayla reminded her, as if the diner would have opened on time windowless and soot-stained and smelling like fire-extinguisher chemicals.

  She nodded as she grabbed the receiver.

  “Ernie’s Diner. I’m sorry, but we can’t take any reservations today.”

  “I don’t want reservations,” the same raspy-voiced person who’d called her cell phone said. “I want to know how scared you felt when those flames shot through the diner.”

  “Who is this?” she demanded.

  She must have shouted the question, because Kayla was suddenly beside her, pressing in close and trying to hear the conversation.

  Tessa shifted the phone, the taunting words seeping into the room. “It doesn’t matter.”

  Kayla nudged her and whispered, “Keep him talking,” while she ran outside and grabbed the chief’s arm.

  Hopefully, she was trying to get a trace on the call.

  “It matters to me,” she said.

  “It didn’t matter three years ago, did it?”

  She went cold with fear, her pulse sloshing in her ears. “Patrick?”

  A quiet click was the only answer.

  Kayla had returned, and she scowled. “Did he hang up?”

  “Yes,” she said, surprised she could speak past her terror.

  “Who is Patrick?”

  She’d obviously heard Tessa say the name. Denying the relationship would be foolish. “An old boyfriend.”

  “Is there some reason why he’d be calling you here?”

  “I...’m not sure.”

  “But you think that was him on the phone?” Kayla pressed.

  “I don’t know if it was him.”

  “Then, why did you say his name?”

  “He mentioned something about three years ago. That’s when we broke up.”

  “And, when you arrived here,” Kayla pointed out.

  “Yes.”

  “Does he know you work here?”

  “As far as I know, he doesn’t even know I’m in Provincetown.”

  “Does anyone in town know about him?”

  “No. Why?”

  “The guys who were hired to pull off the hit at the hospital are locals. Their families have lived in this town for generations.”

  “I hadn’t realized that.”

  “Why would you have? They don’t make a habit of eating breakfast at family establishments like this one. Plus, they’re in and out of town, in and out of trouble and in and out of jail so much we almost never see them.” Kayla shrugged. “I thought maybe one of them knew about your ex and gave the information to the kidnapper. But, maybe the kidnapper figured it out on his own. The internet makes it easy to find information about people.”

  “Why would he want information about my past?”

  “Maybe he wanted to use it to get under your skin? To keep you off balance? Maybe to send you running? Because, if you run, you can’t testify once he’s caught?”

  “Maybe.” And, maybe Kayla was right. Maybe the kidnapper had figured out who she was, dug up information about Patrick and made the phone call.

  Maybe.

  But, Tessa knew she’d never mentioned Patrick to anyone. She hadn’t kept any written record of their relationship. Even if someone had dug into her background, nothing about Patrick would have popped up, because she’d lived under a different name and had a different identity when she’d been with him.

  Knowing that scared her.

  If the information about the relationship was as difficult to find as she thought it would be, how had the kidnapper obtained it.

  And, if he hadn’t?

  Who had made the call?

  Patrick?

  The thought filled her with cold fear.

  She almost told Kayla her concern. She almost told her everything. It would have been a relief to get it out in the open, to tell the truth and see what happened. But, the chief reentered the diner, the fire marshal beside him, and the opportunity was lost in the volley of questions that were lobbed her way.

  * * *

  Henry chased the perp through the business district and into a more residential section of town. The guy was skinny and quick, hopping over fences and scrambling around cars, darting behind anything that he could find and ignoring Henry’s demands that he stop.

  That was fine.

  Henry could run, too. He’d raced cross country in college, and he’d continued to run after he’d become an FBI agent. It kept him in shape and cleared his head.

  He sprinted around a small boat parked in someone’s driveway and followed the perp into a copse of trees. The sun had risen behind thick clouds, and the air was heavy with moisture.

  He felt the first drop of rain as he clambered over a fallen log. Another drop splattered on his cheek. Up ahead, the perp was crashing through brambles, obviously not making any effort to be quiet. He was probably trying to reach the road. Maybe he had a ride waiting. If so, he and the driver would both be under arrest. Henry had already called in their coordinates and the direction they were heading. He had no doubt the chief would have officers lining the road, waiting for the perp to appear.

  Maybe the guy realized the road wasn’t the smartest option. He veered south, his pace flagging, his energy obviously waning. He was slowing.

  Henry had no intention of doing the same.

  He could see the guy’s dark clothes through the winter-sparse trees. He called out one last time, and then he sprang forward, tackling the guy and pinning him to the ground. He yanked a skinny arm up behind a scrawny back and realized the person he’d been chasing was a kid. Sixteen or seventeen, with a gangly body and a baby-smooth face. Not someone from the mid-twenties to early forties, as Henry had been expecting. Certainly not anyone who fit the criminal profile of the kidnapper. This kid looked terrified, his dark eyes rimmed with fatigue and filled with fear.

  “Do you have any weapons on you?” Henr
y asked, easing up just enough so the kid could breathe.

  “No. My dad tried to give me a gun, but I told him I wasn’t bringing it,” the teen said. Not a hint of rebellion in his voice. If anything, he seemed subdued. Even, Henry thought, a little relieved.

  “Your dad?” Henry patted worn jeans and a hole-filled jacket. No sign of a weapon. No wallet. No ID.

  “Yes.”

  “What you’re telling me is that your father asked you to bring a gun to town and blow up a restaurant?”

  “Yes,” the young man repeated.

  “Where is your father?”

  “I don’t know. He drove me to the diner and said he’d park at the end of the street and wait until I...finished, but he drove away as soon as I did.”

  “Your father orchestrated this?” Henry asked, because he couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that this quiet, scrawny teenager had been pulled into a crime by the man who was supposed to be raising him.

  “Yes.”

  It was one of the most bizarre stories Henry had ever heard, and he’d heard a lot of them. For some reason, coming from the teen’s mouth, it sounded like the truth.

  Henry pulled him to his feet. “What’s your name?”

  “Saige Banning.”

  “Your age?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “You live around here?” he asked as he forced the boy to start walking toward the road.

  “I’m from Wareham.”

  “That’s two hours away. Not an easy commute for someone who can’t drive.”

  “I have my learner’s permit, and I told you, my dad drove me here.”

  “That’s a difficult story to believe.”

  “Because, you don’t know my father,” Saige muttered, not trying to fight the forward momentum, not asking who Henry was, not demanding identification or protesting his capture.

  Relieved.

  That was the word Henry would put to Saige’s expression.

  “What’s your father’s name?”

  “Tom.”

  “Same surname?”

  “Unfortunately.”