Gil stepped inside the well-lit shed where a weird, rusted contraption hung from the ceiling. “A giant rake? You didn’t call me to show me this, did you?”
“Yes. We haven’t used the rake in years, or so I thought until I saw this.” The chief pointed at a green sprig caught between the teeth of the rake. “The needles haven’t turned bristled or brown yet. It’s been used in the last few days.”
Confused and a tad irritated to have been pulled away from real work, Gil frowned. “Why exactly is this important?”
The maintenance chief glanced over his shoulder. “Years and years ago, before we bought the grooming machine, we used to attach this rake behind a snowmobile to groom the trails. The sheriff, my son, and I couldn’t figure out how the missing girl’s tracks just stopped suddenly in the middle of a trail. This is how. Someone must have borrowed it to erase her ski tracks. I should have remembered the rake, but it’d been so long that I forgot we had it until I came looking for something else.”
Morgan had suspected an inside job. The rake suggested he might have been right. “Who has access to this shed?”
“It’s usually locked. I keep the key in the maintenance bay near the electrical panel. Anyone on my staff could have borrowed it. It would have been harder for a stranger to sneak in without anyone noticing.”
“Did any of your employees act differently or suspiciously since the girl’s disappearance?”
“There are some strange characters working for me, Deputy. I can’t say anyone stood out more than ordinary.”
The initial check that he and Eve had run on the employees hadn’t revealed anything suspicious.
Time for a more thorough check, starting with the maintenance crew.
“If you see and think of anything else, River, call me right away. And please, do not try to apprehend anyone on your own. Whoever took Hope Craig may be armed and dangerous.”
***
A fire scorched Todd’s skull. He opened his eyes and cringed.
The dim light coming through the window exacerbated the pain. Reaching out with a trembling hand, he touched the side of his head. A warm, sticky substance matted his hair. He looked at his fingers.
Blood. Lots of blood.
Memories flooded back into his mind. A masked man had stood in the clearing and fired a gun in his direction. He remembered searing pain, then nothing.
Cautiously moving his head, Todd looked around. He was in the orange lodge, alone with two wooden benches and a garbage can. His attempts to pull himself in a sitting position met some difficulties. The floor rippled, the walls swayed, and his vision became blurry. In the hope to steady his surroundings, he closed his eyes and took deep breaths. The dizziness slowly subsided.
With both hands, he gently probed the head wound. It felt like a bullet had grazed his skin from the left temple to the top of his ear without penetrating the skull. He checked for more injuries. The sleeve of his jacket was ripped near the elbow, but underneath the fabric, his arm was intact. He was one lucky dude to still be alive.
The wind whistled at the frosty window and knocked on the door. He spotted something black underneath one of the benches. As he crawled toward the object, its form became clearer.
A gun.
While he wasn’t too familiar with types or calibers, Todd knew enough about guns to slide the safety pin, aim, and shoot. He tucked the weapon in his coat pocket.
Using the garbage can as a makeshift walker, he battled to stand up and stay up. He took a tentative step, then another one. With every inch he gained toward the window, his legs grew steadier, and his confidence returned.
Sheriff? Where are you?
There was no one outside that he could see. Gathering his courage, Todd drew the gun and edged the door open. Just enough to peek outside.
A wind gust slapped him in the face and pushed the door wide open. Fresh snow blanketed the landscape. No human or mechanical sound could be heard and no print could be seen in front of the lodge. Whoever shot him had vacated the vicinity, the rising storm covering his escape.
His snowmobile hadn’t moved. It was still parked beside the sheriff’s. Todd approached the vehicles. Both hoods were up. He brushed the snow from his engine, exposing pulled out wires and ripped hoses. To his dismay, the sheriff’s engine fared worse, and both emergency radios had been smashed. Whoever attacked him hadn’t intended for him to go anywhere or call for help.
“Sheriff Morgan!”
The shout was lost in the forest, unanswered. Todd didn’t know the sheriff personally, but he doubted the man would have abandoned him, unless Morgan pursued the attacker and left the gun to Todd so he could defend himself. But then, the weapon would have been on the bench, not hidden underneath, as if it’d been lost in a scuffle.
“Sheriff!”
Todd combed the clearing for any signs of activity, checking the outhouse and digging into any suspicious mounds of snow that could conceal a man.
“Sheriff Morgan!”
The storm intensified and dusk settled over the clearing. If Todd stayed outside any longer, darkness would engulf him. He would lose the opportunity to return to the only shelter in which he stood a chance to survive the freezing night.
“I’m sorry, Sheriff.”
***
The countdown has begun.
Sly relished little pleasure in breaking his oath to do no harm, but it couldn’t be helped. The girl had to die. Someone had to pay for her father’s atrocities. The senator deserved to suffer as much as Sly suffered from Lexa’s death.
A knock on the door halted Sly’s mental preparedness. The fishing cabin he’d usurped belonged to an old Army buddy currently posted overseas. It stood near a frozen lake sixty miles west of Snowy Tip. In the summer, big fat trout populated the water. Catching one was as easy as throwing a line at dawn and reeling it in. Sly hadn’t gone fishing since before his tour in Afghanistan, and he missed the delicacy.
No one in his right mind ventured in these parts of the forest during winter. The secluded cabin offered the perfect hideout.
“Who’s there?” The girl being deaf, Sly wasn’t afraid to shout.
“Open up, Serpent. It’s Vince.”
The petty criminal wasn’t supposed to show his face here ever again. After kidnapping the girl, he and his friend had been more than adequately compensated for their services.
“Hold on.” Not impressed by the unannounced and unwelcomed visit, Sly yanked the door open. A strapping guy in a bloody uniform fell into his arms. “What the hell?”
“We have a problem.”
That has to be the understatement of the year.
Sly dumped the body on the floor before wiping his hands on his jeans. “What did you do?”
A ski mask covered Vince’s head. “I shot the sheriff.”
“You what?” Sly spat his frustration in the brainless thug’s direction. “Were you out of your mind?”
“He caught me with the brat’s gear.”
“You’d kept her equipment?” Anger swept through Sly. The thug was as dense as the forest. “You were supposed to get rid of everything the day you brought her to me. Not keep them as souvenirs.”
“I’d tossed them into an outhouse.” Vince balanced his rifle from one shoulder to the next. “Not my fault if the sheriff stumbled onto them. He had no business riding on the hiking trails in the winter.”
The presence of the sheriff in the area unsettled Sly.
Marvin, the other thug that Sly had hired, worked at the training center. The sheriff might have had reasons to suspect him—or Vince—in the girl’s disappearance, or he might have been following a random tip.
“Is the gear still in the outhouse?”
“No. I dumped everything under the Nowhere Bridge on my way here.”
The old bridge crossed Cherry Creek halfway between Snowy Tip and the fishing cabin. No one would find the evidence before the spring—if ever.
Why couldn’t the idiot think of tossing them there in the first place?
“Good. Now take the body, find another bridge, and dispose of him too.” The sheriff’s eyelids fluttered, startling Sly. “He’s alive? Were you crazy bringing him here?”
Leaving the sheriff to die in the woods would have solved all their problems.
“I have a record, Serpent. If his body is ever found, the bullet in his chest will send me to jail. I can’t take the risk.”
“That’s your problem. Not mine.” The brainless thug had become a liability. “Take him outside, cut him open, and take the bullet out.”
“Did you look outside? There’s a snowstorm. You can’t see a thing.” Vince walked into the living room and crashed onto the couch without bothering to remove his snowy boots or mask. “Besides, you didn’t pay me enough to kill a sheriff. I’m not going down for murder.”
The unpleasant situation spurred a new plan of action. “Get your ass off the couch and help me move him into the bedroom.”
Vince slung the strap of his rifle over his shoulder. “Isn’t the girl there?”
“Yes. She’s about to get her hands dirty.”
Killing the sheriff would shatter her spirits, making her more docile.
***
Alone in the sheriff’s office, Eve penned two names under the Dallas fashion show picture. Marianne Levine and Lexa Sheen.
Marianne was the brunette with short curly hair and dazzling smile standing on the left of Senator Norman. Lexa was on his right, her long wavy hair cascading on a shimmering red dress.
Both girls worked for the same agency in Baltimore.
While Eve waited to hear from the girls’ agent, she turned her attention on the next article. The opening of the cancer ward in Boston.
“I have a middle-aged woman in a suit and a bunch of smiling nurses.”
The article introduced the business woman as Chairperson Gloria Verdi, but it didn’t name any of the nurses.
“Let’s see.”
A quick search indicated Mrs. Verdi, a widow, was fifty-nine years old.
“That would have made her fifty-four at the time. An unlikely candidate for unwanted pregnancy. That leaves me with five...” Eve gave the picture a closer look. The nurse at the back was cute, but there was definitely a five o’clock shadow on his chin. “Four nurses.”
The door opened as Eve searched for a hospital directory.
“You’re still here. Good.” Gil threw his jacket on the unoccupied desk. “We need to go through that list of employees again.”
Chapter Thirteen
Norman’s callous indifference toward anyone but himself incensed Amelia as much as the words written on the last email he hadn’t bothered to report. The only parts of her body that felt good were her bloody knuckles.
Nothing like a hot shower to lessen the tension from her shoulders and clear her head. As an additional bonus, the water also cleansed her hands.
Amelia rummaged through her suitcase for clean clothes. Her uniform was on the floor near the guest bed, sullied with the senator’s blood. As she slipped on a pair of fatigue pants, her phone rang.
“Colonel Matheson.”
“It’s Jackman, ma’am. Have you talked to Deputy Ford in the last twenty minutes?”
“No, but I was about to call her.” The prospect of a lead electrified Amelia. “What’s new?”
“I’ll let her brief you, ma’am. I just wanted you to know we identified the dead woman in Major Elliot’s cottage. Her name was Alexandra Sheen. Twenty-three. She was Elliot’s niece. The major raised her after her parents died in a car accident fourteen years ago. Miss Sheen worked for an agency in Baltimore. According to the coroner’s preliminary report, the victim underwent abdominal surgery shortly before her death. I should know more tomorrow.”
The doorbell rang.
“I have to go. Keep me posted.” Hoping it was Richmond who’d forgotten his keys, Amelia rushed to the door. The cold nipped at her bare feet. “Ford?”
The deputy stared with big dark eyes and her mouth wide open.
Had Amelia known the identity of her visitor, she would have donned a long sleeve shirt instead of a cami and stuck her hand into her fatigue. “While you stare, would you mind telling me why you’re here?”
“I...I didn’t mean...I saw your rental car in Morgan’s driveway.” The deputy rubbed her gloved hands together as her gaze wandered in the twilight. “I have news. I tried calling you, but you didn’t answer. I thought...I thought I’d drive home for a quick bite to eat.”
Ford’s attention should have been focused on the case, not derailed by Amelia’s appearance.
“Blistery fire, Ford. Just relax. Are you trying to give that poor baby an anxiety attack?” Taking pity on the flustered woman, Amelia softened her expression as she stepped aside. “Come in. My bark is worse than my bite.”
“You’re a better woman than I am, Colonel. If...if my baby girl were missing, I wouldn’t bark, I’d rip someone apart.” Ford unzipped her coat, but stayed on the rug in the lobby. “I’m sorry. It was rude of me to stare. I knew the Army was tough, but I wasn’t expecting the severity of your injuries. Makes me glad to be a simple deputy.”
The candid response was as refreshing as the deputy’s consternation was short-lived.
“Childhood fire, not battle scars.” Droplets from her wet hair dripped between Amelia’s shoulder blades. “What did you learn?”
“Wayne River discovered an artisanal grooming machine was used without authorization. We’re rechecking the maintenance employees. There are some interesting characters on that list.” Her face scrunched into a brief grimace. “Your people found some of Barry’s old files in Elliot’s clinic. One file was titled ‘Norman’s cases’. Jackman faxed it. It’s on my desk. Like the name suggests, it contains cases. Five cases. Germany Embassy, New York Ball, Cincinnati Ballet, Philadelphia Opera, and Boston Hospital. Each is dated roughly two months after the actual event described in Serpent’s clippings. No mention of Dallas.”
There shouldn’t be any mention of the Dallas fashion show. By then, Barry had already sold his clinic to Elliot—and located a more sordid place from which to operate on that girl. On the other hand, the two-month intervals were consistent with the time it would take the women to find out they were pregnant and for Norman to arrange for a solution. “Keep going.”
“Except for Germany, all the other cases contain the same short annotations.
Procedure completed, no complication, patient fine
. The case of the Embassy woman is different. On Sept 1
st
, Barry wrote
complication, patient sent to hospital, outcome unknown
.”