by Kathi Daley
“Thanks, but I’ll wait for your dad.”
With that he walked away. Chances were Bradford hadn’t spoken to Sterling about the fact that he had already tried to get in contact with my dad. The transition between my grandfather and my father when it came time to hand down the reigns to Maggie’s Hideaway seemed to have been a smooth one, but I suspected the same was not true when it came time for Bradford to turn things over to Sterling.
Once Bradford had gone, I returned my attention to the tournament. By the time I finished my judging duties the sun had gone down. Kyle’s game had finished before mine, so he’d gone to get us both burgers. He was on his way back in my direction just as I started toward the house. “Those look so good. I can’t remember the last time I was this hungry.”
“I got several different kinds. I figured we could cut them up and share.”
Doc, Bookman, and Grandpa were all sitting on the front deck sharing a cold one when we arrived. Kyle and I sat down at the table on the front deck so we could brainstorm and eat at the same time. Normally, I would have joined the men in having a beer, but tonight I decided I was better off with coffee.
Kyle briefly caught everyone up with what had occurred and what we knew. Doc suggested that he call Roy or Kate to see if he could get more specific information relating to the findings in the autopsy. I just hoped Kate wouldn’t be so pigheaded as to not allow Doc to consult. Kate had pointed out that Kyle and I were civilians on more than one occasion and should therefore stay out of her way, but Doc had been a professional and was better at what he had done than almost anyone.
“The part I’m having the hardest time with is the sequence of events,” Bookman commented after Doc stepped inside to make his call. “Based on what you’ve described, Bristow was shot in the back, at which point it appears Gina, or whoever was driving her car, somehow got him into the vehicle; we assume to go for help. Why didn’t she call 911 instead of moving him?”
“Kyle and I thought about that and felt the danger might still have been present,” I responded. “Maybe whoever shot Bristow was a threat to her, so she couldn’t afford to wait around.”
“That works. For the sake of this conversation, let’s just say the driver of the vehicle was Gina even though we don’t know that for certain,” Bookman said.
We all agreed.
“So Gina somehow managed to get the wounded Bristow into her car,” Bookman continued. “It would make sense she’d head to the hospital. We don’t know where the shooting occurred, so we can’t know if the place where she ran off the road was between the location of the shooting and the hospital, but it’s pretty far out of town.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” Kyle said. “When Tj and I went to the crash site, we were followed. What if Gina was followed too and felt she needed to lose her tail, so she drove out of town.”
Bookman sat forward and steepled his fingers. “It still makes sense she would have gone straight to the emergency room. It’s unlikely she would have been accosted there because there are usually a lot of people around. However, if Gina had reason to think the shooter wanted her dead as well, I can see why she might have panicked and tried to lose him.”
The thought that whoever had kidnapped Gina might want her dead sent chills down my spine. “Roy thinks if whoever attacked Gina wanted her dead, they would have killed her at the accident site.”
“That’s a good point,” Bookman admitted. “Returning to the timeline, it appears something caused Gina to run off the road and hit the tree. It furthermore appears she was able to escape from the damaged car and head into the woods. We can assume she tried to hide, but whoever was after her followed and eventually caught up with her. It appears the assailant took her from the scene. My question is why?”
“Maybe the killer needs something from her,” I suggested.
“That would explain how it could have gone down another way,” Bookman said.
“Another way?” I asked.
“What if Bristow wasn’t shot by someone with a grudge against him? What if he was shot by someone who was after Gina all along?”
The room fell into silence. Since the moment Kate had told me that Bristow had been found dead in Gina’s car I had been operating under the assumption that it was Bristow the killer was after.
“Who would be after Gina?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s an idea that makes sense,” Bookman answered. He turned in his chair to more directly face me. “The kidnapper needs Gina for some reason. He tries to grab her, but Bristow intervenes, getting shot in the process. She manages to get the now-injured Bristow into the car and makes a run for it. She loses control of the car and ends up wrapped around a tree. She flees into the woods, but the person who tried to grab her in the first place is too quick and catches up with her.”
I sat back in my chair. “So in this scenario, it’s Bristow and not Gina who’s the innocent bystander who gets caught in the crossfire.”
“Basically.”
“But which is it?” I asked. “How do we know if we’re looking for someone in Gina’s life or someone in Bristow’s?”
“I don’t suppose we can know. Not without additional information.”
I glanced at Kyle, then back at Bookman. “A long-lost brother Gina doesn’t know showed up in her life last week. As it turns out, a DNA test has proven he isn’t related to her in any way. I’ve started to think his presence is linked to what happened in some way.”
“Okay,” Bookman said. “Let’s take a few minutes to work up a suspect list where Gina is the intended victim. We should be looking at individuals who might need her for some reason rather than who might just want to kill her.”
“Gina’s a gifted mathematician,” I began. “She has a doctorate in applied mathematics and worked in the private sector before coming to work at Serenity High School. I know very little about her past. It’s possible there could be some big secret she’s either protecting or trying to hide. And she took a leave last spring to work on some sort of secret project.”
“Gina had a file stored in her Cybersecurity account that was protected with very sophisticated encryption,” Kyle added. “I managed to get in, but the document I found is nothing more than a series of number sequences. I’ve got a program working on decoding it but haven’t had any luck so far.”
“So maybe Gina has some information someone wants,” Bookman said. “Something top secret that would be valuable to a number of people.”
“Poor Gina,” I whispered. “I hope they aren’t torturing her to try to get whatever it is they want from her.”
Everyone was silent for a moment. The idea was beyond terrifying. While the conversation was on pause, Doc returned to the room, and we all looked at him.
“Were you able to speak to Kate?” I asked.
“I was,” Doc confirmed. “She was actually very cooperative.”
“Well, at least we know she’s willing to speak to someone other than Roy,” I mumbled. “What did she say?”
“First, it appears Bristow bled out prior to the accident and therefore died from the gunshot wound before the vehicle hit the tree. The crime scene investigators believe Gina realized he was dead and tried to escape. Detective Baldwin still has no idea who was after her and no one has been able to pick up her trail after she left the woods for the road.”
“If Gina was accosted by someone looking for intel on the project she worked on, they could be long gone by now,” I said. “How will we ever find her?”
“What about the guy who isn’t her brother?” Kyle asked. “Maybe we should take a closer look at him.”
“Deputy Baldwin went by the house after receiving an anonymous 911 call regarding a prowler at the house on the night Gina went missing,” Doc informed us. “The place was empty and the clothes you reported seeing in the guest room closet are no longer there. It�
�s Deputy Baldwin’s opinion the man has left the area.”
“So what now?” I asked, a note of desperation clear in my voice.
“Let’s start by taking another look around Gina’s house,” Doc suggested. “If the man was involved—and it appears he was—maybe he left something behind that will tell us where they’ve taken Gina.”
“I still have the key,” I volunteered.
“We’ll all go,” Bookman said. “We can take my van.”
I wasn’t holding out a lot of hope that we’d be able to find a clue that would lead us to Gina, but Doc had been good at what he did and Bookman had a mind for crime. Maybe if we all looked around together with the idea of finding physical evidence left behind, we could figure things out in time to save Gina. The more time that passed without us finding her the more likely it was that she would be dead when we finally did find her. For all I knew, she was dead now. I tried not to think about that. The last thing I needed was emotion clouding my judgement. Gina needed me to be strong for her.
Bookman parked in the driveway. We all piled out and entered the house through the front door. We decided Doc, Grandpa, and I would look around upstairs while Bookman and Kyle took a look downstairs.
The first thing I noticed was that there was something tracked all over the floor that hadn’t been there when Kyle and I had been there on Thursday. At least, I didn’t think it had. We had the overhead lights on now, and when Kyle and I were here before we’d only used flashlights, so it was possible we just hadn’t noticed the brownish residue.
“What do you suppose this is?” I asked.
Grandpa bent over and took a closer look. “Appears to be sawdust.”
“I agree,” Doc said. “Maybe whoever took Gina has her stashed somewhere under construction.”
I groaned. “It’s summer in Paradise Lake. There’s a lot of construction going on.”
“Perhaps. It’s still a clue,” Doc said encouragingly. “You know, clues are like puzzle pieces that tell a story. Put enough together and a picture begins to emerge.”
I looked around. “It’s just that I’m beginning to feel desperate.”
“That’s completely understandable,” Grandpa said before wrapping me in a tight hug.
Gina’s bedroom didn’t look like it had been touched since we’d been there last, but we knew Fake Spencer had been in the guest room to retrieve his clothes, so we focused our attention there. It would have been nice to find a piece of paper with an address or phone number, but all that was there was sawdust and red mud. There were a few places in the basin where one could find red dirt, but it wasn’t at all common in town, so perhaps Gina was being held outside the developed area.
After we completed our search, we joined Kyle and Bookman downstairs. Bookman had found a leaf from a lilac bush. As far as I knew, Gina didn’t have a lilac bush in her yard. The leaf was flattened, as if it had been tracked in on the bottom of a shoe. It hadn’t rained in the past week but the mud we’d found upstairs and a leaf that had likely been stuck to a shoe seemed to indicate the ground had been wet.
“Okay, here’s what we have,” Doc began. “Sawdust, red mud, and a lilac leaf that appears to have been stuck to a shoe. What does that tell us?”
“New construction,” Bookman put forth.
“It does seem that a building under construction that isn’t currently being worked on would be a good place to stash someone,” Grandpa said.
“There’s that new warehouse out on the highway,” Bookman said. “The owner had funding issues, and as far as I know, the contractor has stopped working on the building until the problem has been resolved.”
“You would find sawdust there,” Grandpa piped in.
“But not red mud or a lilac bush,” I countered.
“A lot of people have lilac bushes in their yards,” Kyle pointed out. “The moisture necessary for the leaf to stick to a shoe could have come from a lawn after watering.”
“That’s true,” Doc said. “I’m not sure the leaf is an important clue.”
“And there’s a lot of construction going on, so the sawdust could have come from anywhere,” Bookman added. “It seems the red mud might be the clue we should focus on.”
“Wait,” I said. “I remember seeing red mud on the floor of Gina’s office on the night of the accident. I thought it looked as if it had been tracked in recently because the rest of the office was spotless. And when I left the office I heard footsteps. Damn. I bet Fake Spencer is behind this. I bet he was at the school and in Gina’s house.”
“There are several places you can find red dirt in this area,” Grandpa told us. “Most are in higher elevations than the lake basin. If you combine the red mud with the sawdust, it seems we’re looking for new construction up on the mountain.”
“Maybe the Angel Mountain ski area. They’ve been undergoing a huge expansion over the past couple of years,” Kyle said.
“Perhaps,” Doc agreed. “But if Gina’s being held at some new construction, it has to be a project not currently underway, or the workers would have seen her. I doubt the construction at Angel Mountain has gone dormant at this time in the year. The building season here is short. Unless there’s a specific reason to halt construction, it would be worked on every day until it snows.”
“What if the sawdust isn’t from construction but maybe a lumber operation?” Bookman suggested.
“They’re thinning the forest on the west shore,” Ben provided.
“Lilac bushes don’t grow wild, so it seems we’re looking for a residence,” Doc said.
“Unless the sawdust and lilac leaf were dragged in at different times,” I said. “If we eliminate the lilac leaf and focus only on sawdust and red mud, there’s going to be a lot of territory to search.”
“It would seem we’re looking for a building of some sort,” Kyle pointed out.
“And a power source, if the men who kidnapped Gina are staying in the same area where they have her stashed,” Doc added.
“Maybe they have her in one of the old forest service cabins up on the mountain,” I suggested. “There’s red clay where the cabins are located, and the cabins are powered by generators for the most part. I don’t know about the sawdust, but I suppose the dust could even be a residue of chopping wood for a heat or cooking source.”
Everyone paused to consider that possibility.
“Those old cabins seem to be as good a guess as any,” Doc said at last. “There are quite a few, and they’re spread out over a large area. The roads to them are primitive though, so it would take quite a while to check them all.”
“We have to do something,” I said.
“It’s dark,” Bookman said. “Unless we have a specific location to check, it would probably be best to wait for morning.”
“Bookman is right,” Doc seconded. “There doesn’t seem to be much point in heading out now when lack of visibility is a factor.”
“What about the static Kate heard from the handheld radio?” I asked. “Might it provide an additional clue?”
“How?” Grandpa asked.
“Roy told me the radio they found had a range of two or three miles. Kate picked up static from the device when she was driving on County Road 47, near the old dam. If we use that spot as ground zero, we should be able to figure out the general area where it originated.”
Grandpa shrugged. “It’s a long shot.”
“True, but right now it’s all we have. If we can narrow down the search area and then apply the sawdust and red mud filters, we might be able to narrow things down considerably.”
“It’s worth a try,” Bookman agreed.
“Let’s head back to the resort,” Kyle suggested. “We’ll need a map.”
At the resort, Grandpa found a map of the area and laid it out on the dining table. Kyle put a red X on the spot where County Road 47 cros
sed the dam. Then he drew a giant circle with a three-mile radius.
“That’s a lot of territory to cover,” I said.
“Maybe, but the entire east side of the circle is lake level,” Grandpa pointed out. “As far as I know, all the red dirt in the area is at around seven thousand feet.”
Kyle drew lines through the part of the circle represented by an elevation below seven thousand feet.
“That helps, but it’s still a lot,” I said.
Grandpa pointed to the map. “This entire section over here is wilderness. If we assume whoever took Gina is holding her where there’s shelter and a power source, we can eliminate this area as well.”
Kyle drew lines through the area Grandpa indicated.
“It does seem this much smaller area should be our target.” Bookman pointed to the smaller section that was left.
“There are cabins off the dirt road that used to service the old sawmill,” Grandpa said. “If I were a betting man, I’d say we should start here. The cabins are rustic, powered by generators and wood burning stoves and heaters. None of them have plumbing. The cabins utilize outhouses and hand-dug wells. If I wanted to be close to town but still off the grid, this is where I’d hide out.”
I looked at Kyle. “Let’s check it out.”
“We’ll all go,” Bookman said once again.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “It could be dangerous.”
“Which is why we’ll be safer in a group.” Bookman looked at Grandpa. “You still have a couple of hunting rifles?”
“I do. Haven’t used them in years, but I suppose they might still be functional.”
Grandpa went for the rifles while Bookman used the gas pumps at the resort’s filling station to top off his tank. Once we were ready, Kyle and I climbed into the van with our troupe of geriatric sleuths. I hated to put the men in danger, but I knew they were clearheaded adults able to make up their own minds.