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Well, it was supposed to be a garage, but the building had never held a car as long as Tyler could remember. The previous owner had been on his way to an assisted living facility when he sold the house, and had left the garage stuffed with all the yard tools Tyler would ever need, plus some he didn’t even recognize.
The owner also left Tyler a dog, which now stood peering at him from the back porch, her front half outside the pet door, looking calm. The back half, however, gyrated so violently that the pet door bounced up and down on her back. Patty, a supremely obedient peekapoo named for the New England Patriots’ mascot, always waited for permission to welcome him home, but she jiggled, wagged, and whimpered until she seemed ready to split apart at the seams if he didn’t give it.
Tyler couldn’t help but grin. He got out of the car, and Patty’s increased excitement made the entire back door vibrate in its frame. He clucked his tongue and patted his thigh, and Patty launched herself off the porch, propelled by healthy muscles and pure love. When she got close, she bounced up on her hind legs, dancing a bit until he scratched her under the chin and praised her, their welcome-home routine. Then she whimpered with pleasure and pressed herself up against his leg briefly before prancing alongside him as he entered the house.
Tyler paused and let out a deep sigh as he closed the door and removed his gun and holster and placed them in a cabinet near the door. Home. It felt good. He’d waited so long to buy his own place that some folks thought he never would. But Tyler wanted just the right house, and he was patient. This former residence of a retired teacher and confirmed bachelor had been just the right house. Well-kept and already decorated in the dark greens, blues and browns that Tyler found comforting. He’d changed very little in the house, but it was still his space.
I wonder if Dee would like it. Images of the short brunette slipped in and out of Tyler’s mind as he prepared dinner—a scoop of dry food for Patty and a sandwich and chips for himself—then cleaned the kitchen and stretched out to watch one of the news channels for a bit. He liked Dee’s laugh, and he thought again of their great chats over lunch at the Federal Café. He found her questions about his life and his faith intelligent and curious without being intrusive. He’d encouraged her to look to God again, trying to give examples of perseverance and success from his own life as well as his friends’. She still resisted, even if her curiosity about his own faith never waned. Maybe, as she healed from her grief…. He sighed. “Special lady.”
Patty, who had parked herself by the couch within reach of his petting hand, perked up at his muttered words, tilting her head to one side, as if to ask, “Did you say ‘walk’?” She twisted in the other direction.
Tyler scratched her head. “Let me change, and we’ll go out. Maybe this will clear my head.”
Patty bounded up and over to the row of pegs behind the back door where her leash hung. He laughed, then went upstairs to the bedroom to change into shorts and a long-sleeved T-shirt. By the time he had his running shoes on, Patty had turned into a wriggling maniac, and he calmed her down, then snapped on the leash.
They started out with a slow walk, with Patty darting around him, sniffing every post, mailbox or clump of grass that hinted of a previous dog’s passing. They circled the block near his house, and he waved to any neighbors out for late evening chores or porch sits. Mrs. Adams, eighty-three and still a pistol, flagged him down to complain about a stray dog that had been digging in her yard. Tyler promised he’d speak to the county’s animal control folks and complimented her on her beds of spring flowers. The Beekers, transplants from Boston, asked about the spring arts festival, and he referred them to the gallery owner who organized it.
Eventually, he and Patty headed toward the city park at the edge of town. Dusk gave way to a pleasant darkness, with the moon already rising, turning open areas silver as the shadows became more stark and defined. The park had a graceful, steady slope to it, and many of its features—the bandstand, memorial fountain, and the cluster of benches that was his favorite prayer spot—faced Mercer, so that everything appeared to overlook the small vale where the town sat so peacefully.
Tyler jogged around the perimeter of the park once, checking out anything that might look suspicious, then circled it again in a fast jog. The last of the visitors—a couple he knew from church and a scattering of young boys squeezing as much out of the day as possible—wandered toward the park entrance. At the end of the second trip, the jog turned back into a walk, and he and Patty headed home.
He’d once clocked it at 4.6 miles, and Tyler claimed every foot. He didn’t like to run; he did it because he needed to stay in reasonable shape for the job. Having Patty along made it palatable, and he’d gotten asked out recently because of the dog. He grinned. Maybe he should introduce Dee to Patty.
Yet as he ran, his mind had started shifting from Dee Kelley to Carly Bradford. More than anything, he wanted to help them both. And he wondered if his reluctance to believe that the shoes had belonged to Carly indicated a lack of hope for Carly or a lack of confidence in Dee’s recovery.
Tyler’s pace slowed, and he looked down at Patty, who panted hard. “Neither, right? I can’t lose hope in either.”
The dog tipped her head up once to look at him, then returned her focus to the street in front of her.
But the shoes can’t be Carly’s! We went over that ground with a fine-tooth comb. There’s no way we missed something as important as her shoes! He stopped and bent over, bracing his hands on his knees and stretching his back and thighs. “Right?” he asked Patty again.
Patty decided a telephone pole was more interesting and tugged on her leash. He relented and as he waited ran his hand through his close-cropped hair, his deep-seated frustration rising again. His jogs normally pushed it away, but not today. He let out a long breath and resumed walking.
As he turned onto his street, a dark, nondescript sedan pulled up next to him, and the passenger window slid down. Fletcher leaned over and called to him. “Get in. We’ve been looking for you.”
Tyler opened the back door and motioned for Patty to get in, then he got in the front. “What’s going on?”
Fletcher turned the car toward downtown. “Wayne called the lodge when he couldn’t get you on the phone. Someone’s found Carly’s dress.”
FOUR
Thin bands of white moonlight brightened Dee’s room and fell in stripes across her face. She stirred and blinked, easing awake in the silent room, confused as to why the moon seemed to be in the wrong position. The bed, the night table, also wrong. She jerked up as a short burst of panic flared in her. Where am I? The jerk produced pain in her face, neck and shoulders, and it all flooded back again—the day, the attack, the fuzzy ride home from the hospital.
Oh. Right. The lodge house, not my cabin. Dee pressed her head against the pillow and closed her eyes, aware that the pain, dull and throbbing, must have awakened her. She touched her face gingerly, a bit surprised at how much even the lightest touch hurt. Twin tears slipped from the corner of each eye, moistening her temples and disappearing into her hair.
What was I thinking, why didn’t I just drop the sandals? Stupid! He could have killed me. Yet, even as she scolded herself, Dee knew why.
Carly. Whoever attacked her must have Carly. Dee now knew that fact as certainly as she knew her own name. No one else would know yet that she had found the shoes. No one else could know whether they were really Carly’s. No matter how crazy it sounded, it had to be true. They were Carly’s.
But would Tyler believe her? She’d seen the look in his eyes, and that doctor’s, when she’d told the story in the E.R. They thought she was crazy.
Still crazy. Tyler must think I’ve had a relapse. Maybe I have. Dee did know she couldn’t get Carly out of her head. She’d thought of almost nothing since she’d found the sandals. In and out of her grogginess at the hospital and, later, here, her mind had replayed every newspaper article she’d read, every television report she’d seen. Carly is eight, the same age Joshua was. We have to find her. We have to!
Dee knew that Carly now threatened to be lodged in her mind and spirit, almost in the same way Joshua had been. And Mickey. Even after they died. But Carly…Carly might still be alive. And that—person—knows. I know what I heard. I heard it. I didn’t make it up. He has to believe me.
“Tyler,” she whispered. Dee opened her eyes as she remembered the trip home, how he’d lifted her at the hospital, then again here. Lifted her as easily as if she were a child. He’d been so tender with her, as if she were fragile as well as injured. His chest and arms had been firm, radiating a comforting warmth, and he’d smelled like…. Dee closed her eyes again and inhaled, as if he were still next to her. He smelled like soap and freshly cut wood.
And there was something else…a whispered phrase. Even now she felt uncertain that she’d actually heard it.
Ride easy, Dixie Dee.
She smiled, which hurt, making her thoughts return to Carly. “You have to believe me.” Her words slipped away unheard as sleep took over again, and she drifted away with one last thought. I have to talk to the Bradfords.
“Where?” Tyler demanded as Fletcher put the car in gear.
“Downstream from where Dee found the shoes. That stream apparently runs behind a subdivision a few miles down—”
“Ryan’s Point. It’s one of the older neighborhoods in Mercer. Some of the houses date back to the nineteenth century.”
“A woman found it in her garbage bin. Said she’d noticed someone in her backyard earlier, but didn’t think anything about it at first. Then she went to take out the trash, opened the bin, and there it was. She knew it wasn’t hers and had seen enough of the news that she called the station. Wayne caught the call.”
“Is he at the scene now?”
Fletcher took another turn and speeded up. “On his way.” The older detective’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Said the woman told him she’d seen enough of those true crime TV shows that she knew not to touch anything. Maybe they are good for something.”
Tyler snorted. “Now if they’d stop convincing jurors that DNA is the answer to everything. Who’s the woman?”
Fletcher pulled a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and handed it to Tyler, who unfolded it. Directions to the house, scribbled in Fletcher’s bold, angular scrawl, cluttered most of the page. At the bottom, capital letters spelled out “Jenna Czock.” Tyler said the name.
“You know her?”
“I know everybody in Mercer.”
Fletcher’s mouth twisted. “Small-town cop. I need to get you into New York sometime. I meant more than by sight.”
“Nah, there are too many strangers in New York. Jenna runs the florist shop on Fourth, which she started after her divorce about twenty, twenty-five years ago, so my mother tells me. Jenna’s maybe mid-fifties, dark hair. I don’t know her well, but she sometimes eats lunch at Laurie’s the same time Dee and I do.”
Fletcher glanced sideways at his friend. “You and Dee eat lunch together?”
Tyler felt his cheeks burn. “I mean, we eat there at the same time. It’s not like—” He broke off, stumbling over the explanation and deciding to change the subject. He didn’t want to explain that he’d started timing his lunches so he’d be there when Dee arrived. “You need to turn here.” He pointed.
“Directions said—”
“This is faster.”
Fletcher followed Tyler’s instructions, letting a few seconds of silence pass. “You know, I can be distracted, but I don’t forget.”
“Take the next left. We need to focus on the case.”
In the silence that followed, Patty stuck her head between the front seats and Tyler scratched her chin. “OK. Go ahead and say it.”
Fletcher remained silent.
Tyler filled in the empty air. “This makes Dee’s claim a lot more credible.” He pointed at another street.
Fletcher turned the corner, still quiet.
“Do you have any idea when I’ll stop screwing up this case? I should have jumped on those shoes and got them to the lab last night.”
Fletcher glanced sideways again, then back to the road. “Don’t give yourself so much credit. You’re not screwing up anymore than the rest of us. This case is a jumbled mess and has been since Day One. You were right not to send the shoes last night. You know as well as I do how many false reports we’ve had about the shoes. It would be worse to jump the gun on these, especially given how fragile Nancy Bradford is right now. We need to find out if they are Carly’s before we stir anything else up.” Fletcher took a deep breath. “What I want to know is why pieces of Carly Bradford’s last known set of clothes are suddenly being scattered up and down the same stream of water.”
Tyler’s gut twisted. “She’s dead, and her killer is getting rid of evidence.”
“But if Dee is right, then the shoes were a mistake. They weren’t meant to be dropped. Her attacker was trying to get them back.”
A sliver of hope rose again in Tyler. “But…once they were found and turned over to us, we’d know Carly might still be in the area. We’d renew our search for her. This time maybe even more intensively.”
Fletcher turned the car into a subdivision and slowed, searching for the right street. “So the best way to keep us busy is to leave a trail leading in the wrong direction. A distraction.”
Tyler stared at his friend. “She’s going to be moved.”
Fletcher nodded. “Most likely. And if we’re not careful, it’ll happen while we’re peering into trash cans and following accident victims to the hospital.”
Tyler let out a long sigh as Fletcher parked the car behind Wayne’s cruiser. “Then we need to move on the shoes quickly. I’ll call Rick when we’re through here.”
“We’re definitely going to need his resources as well as any manpower he can spare.”
Tyler nodded and got out of the car. Rick Davis was the FBI special agent who had worked with them on the initial investigation. The FBI didn’t usually investigate local cases of missing children unless there was absolute proof of foul play or immediate danger to the child. There had been no Amber alert on Carly for the same reason. Children who disappear into the woods don’t usually have help doing so. They get lost; they have accidents. Tyler, however, put in a request for the FBI to help with the case as soon as he was convinced Carly hadn’t just wandered off. His officers, the FBI and the local press turned the town into a fortress. The square-foot-by-square-foot search of the town lasted ten days. As the time passed, hope drained from the town and the officers. Rick and his team had finally left when they found themselves sitting around the police station one day doing nothing but reviewing old files and going through the interview transcripts yet one more time. There wasn’t even enough evidence for a profile of a suspect. The case had simply come to an absolute dead end.
As if Carly had just vanished from the face of the earth. Until now.
Jenna Czock waited for them on the front stoop of her two-story Federal-style house. The boxlike home sat close to the road, but had a backyard comprising almost an acre of land. To the right of the house, a separate, more modern garage had a dark blue, mid-size sedan in front of it.
They pulled up behind it and got out, leaving the windows down for Patty. At Tyler’s strict “Stay!” the dog stretched out on the backseat. Jenna came down the steps to greet them, looking like someone who’d just gotten home from work, with her red oxford cloth shirt, charcoal-gray slacks, and the thick makeup some older women seemed to prefer. A fleeting smile creased a worried face, and she motioned for them to follow her around the side of the house. She used a flashlight to augment the flood lights that shone from beneath the eaves of the house.
“I hated to bother you, and I’m hoping this isn’t what I think…that it’s just trash. I usually check the can just to see if there’s room for another bag, and this was on top, just lying there. I’ve been following the case and listening to what the folks are saying around town. Everyone’s still talking about that precious little girl.”
They reached the back of the house, and Jenna pointed at a latticework cage set back from the house about forty feet. “The cans stay back there. I had that built for the garbage and the firewood. Cuts down on the raccoons in the garbage and the snow on the firewood.”
Raccoons, indeed, thought Tyler. This backyard must be a haven for them. Towering old trees dotted the richly green and well-tended lawn, many of them surrounded by flowerbeds ripe with new spring flowers. The cage, with its slanted roof, had vines of clematis and morning glories running up its sides, allowing it to blend into the landscape. The yard had a gentle but steady slope from the house to the stream at the back of the property. Yellow dots of fireflies danced among the bushes at the edge of the water.
“People walk their dogs along the stream almost every day.” Jenna pointed to a well-worn path that edged the water. “Even after dark like this. And there are two hiking trails on the other side that run close.” She shrugged and hugged herself as she followed them toward the cage, where Wayne had set up a bright spotlight on a tall mount. “It’s just not unusual to see people in my backyard, but I should have realized this one was up closer than most. I just didn’t dream someone would get into my garbage.”
“Man or woman?”
Jenna shrugged. “Not sure. It was already pretty dark. It looked as if they were wearing a cap, maybe sweats. Somewhere between my height and yours, I guess.”
“So about five-nine, five-ten.”
Jenna nodded. “I’m five-eight, so yes.”
They rounded the edge of the lattice, to find Wayne bent over next to the cage’s opening, peering at the ground illuminated by the white light of the quartz spot he had set up. He spoke without greeting. “Only one set of prints, but it’s been pretty dry the last couple of days. Doesn’t match either of the sets in the woods.”
Tyler cleared his throat, and Wayne looked up at Tyler, puzzled, then his gaze darted to Jenna and back to his boss.
Jenna perked up. “In the woods?” She grabbed Tyler’s elbow. “Does this have anything to do with Dee being attacked this morning?”
Fletcher let out a long sigh and squatted next to Wayne. “Small town.”
Before Tyler could respond, Jenna bolted on. “Phil, down at the convenience store, had the scanner on this morning, heard it and called his sister, she works at the hospital, saw Dee in the E.R. Is she OK?”
Tyler patted her hand. “She’ll be fine. Just a few scratches.”
“Is she back at the retreat?”
Tyler nodded. “But—”
“I should send her some flowers. Roses, do you think?”
“Maybe—”
“Or tulips. I think she said one time in the café that she likes tulips. You know, she talked about how she used to grow tulips and—”
Fletcher straightened and cut off Jenna’s rapid words. “Ms. Czock, would you mind if I got a glass of water?”
Jenna paused in her flower review and smiled. “Certainly. Follow me, and I’ll show you where the glasses are.” She took his arm, and they turned for the house.
Once they were out of earshot, Wayne also rose. “Sorry,” he muttered.
Tyler waved away the apology. “I shouldn’t have let her follow us down here. The whole town will know about the connection today.” He reached to adjust his hat, then realized he didn’t have it on. “What do you have?”
Wayne pointed a gloved hand at the open Dumpster-type receptacle. “The dress is spread out as if it’s on display.”
Tyler looked. The blue gingham dress lay draped across two plastic garbage bags, one of which had been ripped open, so that paper, eggshells and days-old milk had leaked out into the can and over the dress. Tyler winced at the odor. “So the kidnapper intended for it to be found.”
“I think so. If he had wanted to hide it or just dispose of it, it would have been simpler just to shove it down in the can beneath the bags.”
“A message. But why here? Why not leave it on a bench in town or some other place like that?”
“My guess is that it would be too risky. Someone might see it, or the dress could be picked up. Here it’s protected, yet it’s doused in a forensic soup. No way we’re going to get an uncontaminated clue out of this. Since Jenna’s the florist, her hours and routine are easy to determine. And he knew that Jenna would be following the case and would spot it right away.”
Both men stood silent for a moment, then Wayne cleared his throat. “I’ve finished processing everything I could. I’m ready to bag it.”
Tyler nodded and stepped back, watching as Wayne eased the dress out of the garbage with a pair of tongs and slipped it into a brown paper bag. “Any blood?”
Wayne shook his head. “Not that I could see. You know it’ll take weeks to process this at the lab.”
“I’d rather they be thorough than quick. We’ve made enough mistakes already in this case.”
