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He pondered the details he had learned from his interview with Megan Vance. “If someone knew the mother was a light sleeper and that she made it a habit to check on the children in the night—especially the boy with his medical condition—they might have been trying to buy a little more time.”
“How would a stranger know that?”
“Damn good question.” One he unfortunately couldn’t answer at this point in the investigation. “Where do things stand with the state crime scene unit?”
“They’re still working the boy’s room. Mrs. Vance just cleaned the room two days ago. Because the kid has allergies, too, she’s a pretty thorough housekeeper in there. Preliminary reports showed no sign of forced entry and no fingerprints but family members’. Megan’s and Cameron’s are the only ones we can find on the window or the windowsill. I think CSU is still working the scene if you want to hear the details from them.”
“I’ll do that. Thanks.”
At that moment, someone came out of the command center and called for the sheriff’s attention. Galvez sighed and turned away. “Let me know if you need any other information,” he said to Cale before he headed back the way he had come.
Cale paused for a moment, looking at the bustle of activity. Then on impulse, he walked around the house to check the perimeter of the building for more clues. He was pleased to find a state crime scene detective he had worked with before, Wilhelmina Carson, taking pictures of the outside of the two-story log home.
“Hey, Willy. What have you got out here?”
“Hang on,” she ordered in a distracted voice, still clicking away. After a few more shots, she dropped the camera and he saw surprise register in her eyes when she recognized him.
“Davis! I hadn’t heard you were back on the job.”
How long would it take before people stopped looking at him as if he were going to go freaking mental at any minute?
“You know me. I can’t stay away.”
She cleared her throat and he braced himself for what he knew was coming. “I’m really sorry about what happened to you, Cale,” she said quietly. “I worked the Decker scene. I know you did everything you could.”
He wasn’t sure he would ever be as convinced about that as everyone else seemed to be, but this wasn’t the place to argue the point. Instead, he gestured to the home’s exterior. “Have you seen any sign at all of forced entry?”
After a moment, she turned back to the case, though he could still see concern in her eyes. “Not much. The screen was in backward, with the tabs on the outside, indicating whoever put it back did it from out here. I don’t know if that’s significant at all.”
“No ladder impressions or anything like that?”
“Nothing. But keep in mind we had a solid rain for two hours between 3:00 and 5:00 a.m. That’s a sure way to screw up a crime scene.”
Which meant someone could have used a ladder or driven up to the house with a damn cherry picker, for all the evidence they could find.
He studied the exterior of the building. It was a straight shot from the boy’s second story window to the ground. He supposed it was possible Cameron could have jumped, but that was a mighty long way down for a nine-year-old kid.
When he was nine, he used to escape the hell of home by climbing out a conveniently situated tree out his bedroom window whenever he could. The only tree near Cameron Vance’s bedroom was a sycamore a dozen feet from the house. Though the trunk was thick and sturdy, no branches extended anywhere near the kid’s room.
He studied the distance. No way. The tree was too far from the house to provide any kind of useful escape route.
So how would he climb out the window to the ground if he were trying to sneak out in the night? If his shoulder didn’t have a bullet hole in it, he probably would extend out the window, grab hold of the roof line and move hand over hand to the corner of the house, where he could use the gutter spout to climb down, praying the whole way down it would hold his weight.
But he had two feet in height over the kid and years of climbing experience.
He looked at the log exterior of the house again and this time caught sight of something he’d missed before.
“Son of a bitch,” he exclaimed, moving closer for a better look.
Chapter 3
“What have you got?” Willy hurried toward him, her gaze sharp and intent.
He was always glad to work a case with the detective. She had a quick, analytical mind and always took a second or third look at the facts to make sure she wasn’t missing anything.
She wasn’t bad on the eyes, either, with tawny skin and the long-legged grace of a natural athlete. Not that he had ever spent much time noticing, but maybe he should. These last few weeks had made him painfully aware of the loneliness of his life outside of work. Somehow he had focused all his energy on the job, leaving nothing for a personal life.
When the job went wrong, he had been left with nothing.
Not that he wanted that kind of complication right now. But if he did, he ought to think about hooking up with someone tough-shelled and resilient, like Wilhelmina Carson.
He certainly wouldn’t be stupid enough to waste his time taking a second look at someone breakable like Megan Vance.
“Did I miss something?” Willy asked.
He put any thought of soft, fragile women out of his head, then slipped off his shoes and socks, gauging the wall carefully as he did. “I don’t know. See those holes up there?”
She looked baffled but studied where he pointed. “Those little things? I thought they were just screwholes or imperfections in the logs or something.”
“They’re a little too evenly spaced to be imperfections. Hang on.”
He stuck the index finger of his right hand in the lowest three-quarter-inch hole, then extended his left hand to the next highest. Pain radiated from his shoulder but he ignored it, as he’d been trying to do for two long weeks. As he suspected, the holes were about three feet apart, just about the width of a nine-year-old’s outstretched fingers.
“Damn. This kid is amazing.”
Ignoring the strident cry of protest from his shoulder, he pulled himself up the logs using the conveniently placed fingerholes, pausing about halfway between the ground and the boy’s window.
“You are frigging crazy, Davis!”
Below, he caught a clear view of Willy’s consternation. “You’re two weeks out of having your shoulder ripped open, you idiot. Let me find you a damn ladder.”
“I’m good. Just hang on.”
“Do I have to go find McKinnon to drag you down?”
Okay, this hadn’t been the smartest idea. His shoulder wasn’t anywhere near ready for this, especially when he was wearing a shirt and tie and his second-best summer weight slacks instead of Lycra and climbing shoes.
“I’m done.” He jumped the five feet to the ground. “You’re going to want to find that ladder now and dust those finger holes I didn’t use for prints.”
“You really think the boy climbed out on his own using those dinky finger holes?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time a kid climbed out an open window.”
“That took time and effort to drill those holes. This wasn’t something that happened overnight. Could someone else be involved?”
“Possibly, but I’m beginning to doubt it. Those holes are custom-set for a nine-year-old’s arm span. Did you notice how awkward they were for me to use, spaced so close together?”
Willy shook her head in disbelief. “All I saw was an agent with the Federal Bureau of Idiots trying to kill himself. Good grief, Davis. This kid is only nine years old! How the hell could he pull it off?”
“My guess is practice. The holes are already worn in spots.”
“That would explain why the boy’s fingerprints are the only ones I can find on the window ledge. Am I wasting my time looking for evidence somebody else was involved in the kid’s disappearance, then?”
His gut was telling him the boy escaped completely on his own, for reasons Cale didn’t yet understand.
He really hoped that was the case, for the mother’s sake, and that searchers would find him camped out in the mountains somewhere oblivious to all the trouble he had left behind.
“It’s never a waste of time to check out all the angles. I could be completely off base here.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“You didn’t hear it from me,” he answered. “Until we know otherwise with absolute certainty, the FBI will continue working this case as a possible abduction.”
And he would do his best not to spend more time than absolutely necessary dwelling on the missing boy’s mother, with her soft skin and her scared eyes.
12:25 p.m.
This wasn’t the right way, either.
In the fading light of his flashlight, Cameron saw a huge pile of rubble blocking the shaft he had been certain would take him back to familiar ground.
He turned off the flashlight to conserve whatever juice he had left and slumped to the ground, feeling worse than the time his soccer team back in San Diego had lost the championship game in the league playoffs by one stinking last-minute goal.
He pressed one hand to his whirly stomach and used the other to wipe away the hot tears burning his eyes. He had been so sure this way would lead him back to the tunnels he had explored, where he could follow his own chalk marks back to the entrance and go home.
Home.
He wanted so much to be there, safe in his own room with the pictures of his dad on the wall and his soccer trophies on a shelf by his bed.
He sniffled, wiping his nose on his shirt. Was anybody looking for him yet? He could bet his uncle and cousins were out there. But his stomach hurt even worse thinking about it. Nobody would have any idea where to look for him, and that was the scariest thing of all.
He knew a good Navy SEAL left no trace behind him, and Cam had been careful to wipe away his tracks leading into the shaft and to cover the entrance with a dead sagebrush.
If only he hadn’t been so careful, maybe someone would find the mine entrance and figure out he was in here.
He never knew dark could be so dark. It was heavy and scary—he couldn’t even see his own hand when he held it right up to his eyes.
The two times he had sneaked into the tunnels before, he hadn’t stayed very long and he had always had plenty of light. It had been more exciting than scary, like exploring a whole new planet somewhere that nobody else knew about.
It was exciting then. Now the dark was so heavy and sometimes he couldn’t even tell whether his eyes were open or closed.
He had two more sets of batteries and a spare flashlight, but he didn’t know how long he was going to be in here. He didn’t want to use all his light and then be left with nothing.
He didn’t want to die in the dark somewhere, alone and scared. He wiped his nose again, wondering what he should do. He had turned so many corners in the mine that he didn’t have the first idea which way would lead him out.
Overwhelmed by his fear and at the thought of dying, he couldn’t keep in a sob. He cried for a minute, then tried to stop. He wasn’t making any progress sitting here like a big baby and bawling his eyes out. Every minute he wasted was another minute he had to stay in the dark.
His breath came in little baby gasps, but he managed to quit bawling after another minute or two. He would say a prayer, he decided. That’s what his mom told him to do whenever he was worried or scared or hurting.
Though he whispered the words, they sounded loud and echoing in the total quiet of the tunnel.
“Help me out of here, please. I promise if You do, I’ll never sneak out at night again, even when I’m a teenager, and I won’t yell at my sister when she touches my stuff. I’ll share my Play Station with her and I won’t talk back to my mom, even in my head.”
He paused, not sure what else to say. “You know,” he said after a minute, “I could really use my dad’s help in here. If he’s not busy, could You send him down to help me out? Amen.”
He felt a little better after he prayed, though he had to admit to some disappointment when the way out of the mine shaft didn’t suddenly glow in front of him in big flashing lights.
After a minute, when nothing supermiraculous happened, such as his dad’s angel suddenly showing up, he sighed and pulled the water bottle out of his pack, allowing himself just a tiny sip.
He was so thirsty he wanted to suck down the whole thing, but he knew that would be a bad idea. He might need some later.
He would just go back the way he had come this time and try a different route. Sooner or later, he would find his way out.
He stood up, then remembered something else and raised his eyes to the ceiling of the chamber. “One more thing,” he prayed out loud. “Can You please help my mom not to be so mad at me?”
1:30 p.m.
She was suffocating under the weight of all the solicitude being piled on her.
Just now it was her big sister adding another layer.
“Honey, you can’t stay here all day,” Molly entreated, her green eyes dark and worried. “Why don’t you come on back to our place where things are a little more quiet and rest for a while?”
“I can’t leave right now,” she said firmly.
“Our house is just down the road. You know Daniel will let us know the minute they find him.”
She deeply appreciated her sister’s stubborn optimism, but she still wasn’t willing to leave the house. Not until Cam was found.
“You go, Mol,” she replied. “I know you’re exhausted from that press conference.”
Megan couldn’t help thinking Molly was the one who looked as if she needed to rest. Her pretty soccer mom of a sister looked ravaged, totally wiped out by the stress of this ordeal.
Guilt pinched at her. Had she asked too much of Molly to put her in front of the cameras?
“I’m fine,” Molly answered. “I only hope whatever I said to the media will somehow help us find Cam.”
“It will.”
She hugged her sister, thinking how much she owed her. Molly had been there any time Megan needed her, a quiet, steady source of strength and support.
Megan had been twelve, Molly nineteen—a freshman in college—when the cancer that had ravaged their mother for more than a year ultimately took Carol Kincaid’s life. Megan could never forget that her sister had left school and returned home to Boston to care for her and Kevin, their brother who had been fourteen at the time.
When other girls her age were busy with boyfriends and algebra finals and trips to Cancun for spring break, Molly had been home with them doing laundry, fixing lunches, helping with homework. She never complained, but Megan knew it couldn’t have been easy on her.
A year later, they were all barely beginning to find their way through the grief over their mother’s death when the unthinkable happened—their police officer father was struck and killed by a drunk driver while he was standing on the side of the road giving a routine traffic ticket.
With patience and love, Molly had pulled her and Kevin through the devastating pain. Completely on her own, her twenty-year-old sister had kept their little family together for three years until Kevin left for college.
