Текст книги "Winter Kill "

Автор книги: Josh lanyon

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Chapter Five

Of course. It was so damned obvious when you weren’t trying to find a logical reason for murder and robbery. Adam’s almost impatient certainty was annoying. So Rob said stolidly, “Yep. That’s one theory.”

As though reading his thoughts—right down to that flicker of childish You don’t know everything!—Adam smiled. It was a tiny smile, true, just a glimpse of those white and too pointy incisors. He said gravely, “Oh? What’s your other theory?”

“Simple theft. Like I said, these are valuable collector’s items.”

“Like you also said, why take one mask and not the others?” And now Adam was not bothering to hide his smile. He was full out grinning, full of confidence and superiority.

“No idea,” Rob said curtly. “Why take the card describing the mask, but not take that placard, if it’s related to the mask?”

“True.”

Only partially mollified, Rob turned away. “I want to show you where we think he found the actual murder weapon. Although maybe you’ll decide it was actually a tomahawk he took.”

Adam said nothing. In fact, his silence was so complete that Rob wished he had kept his mouth shut. The problem was the G-man thing was a little intimidating, and Rob was not used to feeling out of his league. He was also not used to running into a guy who could apparently take or leave him without a second thought. Because he had given Adam a second thought. And maybe a third and fourth too.

He stopped in front of another damaged case. This one contained iron knives of different sizes and shapes. Some had simple handles of bone or wood. Others were carved with more elaborate designs.

Adam said nothing, waiting for Rob to do the honors, apparently.

Rob said, “He didn’t break into every display case, so we believe that the cases he did break into held items he wanted.”

“That makes sense,” Adam said politely.

“Every one of these knives matches up to one of those descriptor cards. So either he didn’t take anything, or he took the card along with the knife.”

Adam nodded.

“For whatever reason, he doesn’t want us to know what he took, although he clearly wasn’t worried about hiding the fact that he took something.”

“It doesn’t seem like he was in any kind of a hurry either,” Adam said.

“Well, he wouldn’t be. There’s nobody for miles around. And Cynthia’s daughter was spending the weekend with friends.”

“How would he know that though?”

“Tiffany is a cheerleader for the basketball team, and Haney High is in the playoffs. The kids up here usually stay with friends in Klamath when there’s a Friday away game.”

Adam seemed surprised. “That would be common knowledge?”

“Yep.”

Adam smiled tentatively. “Small towns.”

Rob smiled back. “That’s the truth.”

Adam returned to studying the broken case. “Joseph must have kept a catalog of the museum’s contents and their provenance. We should be able to look at her files and see what’s missing.”

“Frankie’s working that angle. The last photos of the exhibits are outdated. Joseph sold a few artifacts a couple of years ago to come up with funding to keep the museum open. And items have been moved around. A lot of Cynthia’s notes are handwritten, and Frankie’s one of the only people who can decipher her handwriting.”

Adam started to say something, then seemed to think better of it. “It would be useful to check out Joseph’s home. I suppose we don’t have access yet?”

“Sure we do. We can walk over right now.”

It took about three minutes to walk the snowy and uneven expanse from the museum to the small white house at the edge of the forest. Adam appeared to be deep in thought, so Rob left him to it. The afternoon air was bitterly cold, and it turned Adam’s face pink and the tip of his nose red. Rob forgot his irritation. Maybe Adam was a know-it-all, but at least he wasn’t as big an ass as his partner.

Though the land between the museum and the house where the Josephs lived had been left wild, a neat square of lawn surrounded the house. Clumps of snow covered the flower beds. The flag pole in the center of the front lawn was bare.

“Cynthia’s NPS truck is still in the garage,” Rob said, unlocking the front door. “This door was left unlocked. There’s no indication her killer came inside. No mud or rain water on the floor, nothing out of place as far as we can tell.”

The house was dark and quiet, the only sound the rain on the roof and the clock ticking patiently away in the living room. The first room off the entry hall was the kitchen, dated but tidy.

The dishwasher was sealed, green light indicating dishes were clean. A small wood burned sign above the refrigerator read: A man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it.

“Happiness is found in your own backyard,” Adam said.

Rob gave him a puzzled look. Adam nodded at the sign.

“Maybe it’s true,” Rob said. “It depends on the backyard. Her bedroom is down the hall.”

The master bedroom faced the museum. One set of window blinds were tangled as though they had been opened in a hurry. The bed was unmade. A pair of slippers rested on the woven rug beside the bed. The shirt of a Park Ranger uniform was tossed on the floor.

Rob said, “It looks like she ran over there in her nightshirt, jeans, and her uniform jacket and boots. Her pistol is still in her holster, hanging over the chair at her dressing table.” He remembered Adam questioning him that first night about not carrying his weapon. He didn’t think he’d ever leave it at home again.

Adam said, “Again, indication that she didn’t fear the intruder.”

“She was a gutsy lady,” Rob said. “And if it was the same guy who tried to break in the first time, she’d scared him off by yelling. She may have thought that was all it would take.”

Adam asked, “Did she actually say the offender was male?”

“She wasn’t certain. She thought he was male. She didn’t see him close up. He ran the minute she started shouting.”

Adam nodded. “Were her clothes found?”

“In the Dumpster behind the building.”

“Interesting.”

“Or just weird.”

Adam shrugged. “Or just weird, yes. The girl’s room is on the other side of the house?”

“That’s right.” Rob led the way. “Anyway, you can see for yourself there’s no sign of any disturbance.”

As they walked through the small dining room, Adam stopped beside the oval table to sort through the small pile of mail. There was a summons for jury duty, a couple of credit card bills, and a number of newsletters from organizations like Modoc Nation– “The sole legitimate government of the Modoc People of Southern Oregon and Northern California.”

“She was politically active,” Adam’s tone was thoughtful.

“Not particularly.”

Adam glanced up. “You don’t think so? It looks to me like she was a regular subscriber.”

“Look,” Rob said. “Don’t go there. She’s the victim here, and her political beliefs are—were—her own business. She wasn’t an activist. She wasn’t a militant. She wasn’t a terrorist.”

Adam’s eyes narrowed. “Did I say she was?”

“You’ve got that ah ha! look on your face. Everybody knows the FBI’s mission changed after 9-11. You’re all about homeland security now.”

“Actually, Homeland Security is all about homeland security now,” Adam sounded uncharacteristically short. “I’m trying to understand who Cynthia Joseph was. You say she wasn’t a terrorist, and I believe you. Her interests indicate—and I don’t find it surprising or disturbing, by the way—that she had an inclination toward activism.”

“She wasn’t killed because she thought the Klamath Tribes got a raw deal in some of the disputes over water and our other natural resources. Believe it or not, a lot of people feel the same way.”

“You could be right. Then again, a couple of Native American artifacts were stolen out of a museum, so it’s not impossible that Joseph’s cultural heritage and political beliefs are a factor in her death.”

Rob couldn’t really argue with that. He didn’t buy it, but he couldn’t disprove that theory. “Fair enough,” he said. “Personally I think we’re wasting time.”

Adam’s brows rose. He laid aside the Modoc Nation bulletin. “It’s your investigation, Deputy.”

“So far, yeah. I think we’ll get further focusing closer to home.”

“Was she seeing anyone?” Adam asked. “Was she in a relationship?”

“No.”

“You seem pretty definite.”

“It’s a village,” Rob said. “Cynthia and Frankie both belonged to the Women’s Club. They both tried to set each other up—and they both got nowhere with their matchmaking.”

“They were friends a long time?”

“They both grew up in this town.”

Adam said, “A place where everybody knows your name? Tiffany’s room must be down this hall.” He moved past Rob.

The second bedroom had been done in candy box shades of pink, lavender, and mint green. There were a lot of pillows and stuffed animals. No posters of rock stars or TV actors. A backpack with school books leaned against a surprisingly tidy desk. Clothes spilled out of a gym bag on the neatly made bed.

“That’s Tiffany.” Rob indicated one of two photos tucked in the corner of a square mirror over the painted chest of drawers.

Portrait of a young girl. Tiffany was small and cute, like a kitten. Big dark eyes and straight dark hair. And at seventeen, very, very young.

Adam barely glanced at the photo, his attention on the other snapshot. It was old. That went without saying. These days kids used their phones to preserve the moment. This looked like it had been developed from one of those disposable cameras.

“Do you recognize either of the boys in this photograph?”

Rob frowned at the image. “The kid on the left is Terry Watterson. He drowned at Blue Rock Cove a few years ago. The kid on the right is Bill Constantine.”

“What kind of relationship did Tiffany have with Terry?”

“Nonexistent, I’d say. This picture is at least five years old. Tiffany would have been twelve. Terry and Bill would have been nineteen or twenty.”

“What kind of relationship does Tiffany have with Bill?”

Rob said dryly, “I don’t think there’s a relationship there.”

“Why not?”

“To start with, Bill’s too old for her. For another, he’s geeky and shy, and Tiffany is outgoing and popular. She’s an honor student. She’s a cheerleader.”

“She wouldn’t be the first popular girl who fell for an older man. Or a geek.”

“No.” Rob was positive. “No way.”

“She kept the photo for some reason.”

“Well, maybe she had a crush on Terry. I don’t know. As far as I’m aware she isn’t dating anyone. I don’t keep track of the social lives of teenaged girls.”

Adam looked unconvinced, though hopefully not about the part about not keeping track of teenaged girls. “This will be the en suite?” He headed for a small bathroom—also painted pink—off the bedroom. Pink and black tiles, white fixtures. The bathroom smelled of girly shampoo and soaps—and Adam’s expensive aftershave. A combination of fragrances that did not exist in nature.

There was a faint draft in the bathroom. It barely stirred the pink polka dot shower curtain.

Rob edged past Adam, distractedly noting that his initial impression had been wrong. Though tall, Adam was not really a big guy. Not a Ken doll at all, though he was strong and nicely built. Whipcord muscle and tensile strength. Rob could vouch for that. He gave off an aura of authority and power. That aura was at least fifty percent attitude—bolstered by ten percent blue and gold credentials. The rest of it…hard to say, but it was effective.

Rob checked the latch on the window by the toilet. The window wasn’t quite closed. And the latch…

Not locked.

Shit. He glanced at Adam who had stooped to feel a pink and white striped towel on the floor beneath the sink.

Adam looked at Rob. “This towel is still damp.”

“You leave them on the floor, they stay damp.” Rob was a guy who had a lot of experience in that branch of the sciences.

“She would have showered for school on Thursday morning. This is Saturday afternoon. Even with the heat turned down, that’s more than forty-eight hours later.”

Rob was only half listening, still thinking about the unlocked, not-tightly-closed window.

A horrible thought came to him. Book bag. “Wait a minute,” he said, and squeezed past Adam heading back to the bedroom. There must have been something in his voice because Adam followed, silently watching as Rob went to the desk.

Rob picked up Tiffany’s book bag.

They stared at each other.

“She came back,” Adam said.

This was the kind of thing that had made Rob decide to chuck Portland for the wide open spaces. But evil—and this was fucking evil, no question about it—was no respecter of city limits or county lines.

Rob said in a voice that didn’t sound like his own, “She could have seen everything. And the killer could have seen her.”

There was a white line around Adam’s mouth. Rob had never seen anyone lose color quite like that. When Adam spoke he sounded unemotional, almost cold. “There’s another possibility. Tiffany may be involved in her mother’s murder.”

Rob opened his mouth, but Adam was right. It wasn’t impossible. A kid in California had beheaded his mother only a few weeks earlier for nagging him about cleaning his room. The adolescent brain was a scary thing.

He said—not arguing, just offering another possibility, “She could have witnessed the slaying and fled.”

Adam nodded. “Yes. Though it’s hard to understand why she hasn’t come forward, if that’s the case.”

“Maybe she can’t.”

“Meaning?”

Rob shrugged. “She’s injured?”

Adam opened his mouth to point out the obvious: there was nothing to indicate a second struggle. Rob headed him off. “Either way, we need to get back to the station.”

“Is her cell phone here? Laptop?”

They conducted a quick search. The laptop sat on Tiffany’s desk. There was no sign of her cell phone.

“If she’s carrying her cell, it gives us a starting point. If we can get a court order—and I’m sure we can in the case of a missing minor—the phone company can try pinging her. So long as her battery is charged—”

“That’s a great idea,” Rob interrupted. “But you may have noticed reception is sketchy out here. I don’t think we can put a lot of hope on that cell phone.”

Adam conceded this point reluctantly.

They left Tiffany’s bedroom and walked through the quiet rooms toward the front of the house. Adam didn’t say a word, and that was actually a relief. Not that Rob believed the world was all sunshine and lollypops. This wasn’t routine for him, and it wasn’t an academic equation. He knew these people. This was his community, his home. These were his friends and neighbors. At the very least they were his charge, his responsibility.

And he had failed to keep them safe.

The front door lock scraped, and the door inched open. A crack of wintry daylight framed the entrance. Rob reached for his weapon, unhappily aware that he should have unsnapped the flap, should have been ready to draw—he was distantly aware that Adam was doing the same, had already pulled his weapon.

“FBI,” shouted Adam with a ferocity that raised the hair on Rob’s neck. “Identify yourself.”

Jesus Christ, has he—? Yes, he had. Rob knew with absolute certainty that at some time in the past Adam had had to shoot to kill.

At the same time Rob yelled, “Sheriff’s deputy. Don’t move!” as the tall figure froze inside the entrance hall.

“Fuck!” Zeke’s shocked and angry voice floated through the gloom. “What the fuck are you doing, Haskell?”

Good question. Until that instant, Rob hadn’t recognized how uneasy he was, how on edge. Not just him. Adam too. In fact, Adam more so. Spooked. They had both been spooked, even though there was every likelihood that whoever was on the other side of the door was fellow law enforcement.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Rob retorted, lowering his weapon. He noticed Adam was a lot slower about standing down, and he was glad. Zeke deserved a good scare for this one.

“Looking for Tiffany,” Zeke said. The snow-scented breeze swirled through the hall. “Aggie finally got hold of the friend Tiffany was supposed to be spending the weekend with. Tiffany claimed she was coming down with some kind of stomach bug. Her mom drove down and picked her up Thursday night.”

“Why would no one at the school know that? How could there not be a record of that?” Rob asked.

“How the hell should I know? Because teenagers don’t always follow rules? And sometimes parents don’t either?”

Adam holstered his weapon. “You said that, according to Tiffany’s friend, Tiffany claimed she was feeling sick. Did the friend not believe her?”

Zeke said sourly, “She said this flu bug came on Tiffany suddenly. No, I don’t think she believed Tiffany was really sick.”

“I see.” Adam didn’t look at Rob.

“Let’s get back to base,” Rob said.

“There’s no sign of her here?” Zeke stared from Rob to Adam.

“There are signs she was here,” Rob said. “There’s no indication of what happened to her, or where she may have gone.”

“Maybe she’s our perp,” Zeke said.

Rob stared at him. Adam had suggested the same thing, but somehow hearing it from Zeke made Rob angry. “That’s the first thought that occurs to you? How do you figure a small girl like Tiffany overpowered a tall woman like Cynthia and then lifted her onto that burial display? And why would she do such a thing?”

“Kids are crazy. Look at that kid in California. Anyway, she’s a cheerleader, and everybody knows cheerleaders are all homicidal maniacs.” Zeke grinned looking maniacal himself.

Adam said, “If she’s not involved, she’s a potential victim. In any case, we need to find her.” His flat, unemotional voice recalled Rob to the job at hand.

“Agreed. Let’s get back to the office and bring Frankie up to speed.”

“What did you find?” Zeke asked.

“Exactly what I said. Proof Tiffany was here.”

Zeke hesitated, and then preceded Adam and Rob outside.

* * * * *

Rob was preoccupied with his own thoughts, so he was only vaguely aware that Adam was even quieter than usual on the drive back to town. They reached the station only a few minutes before Agent Russell phoned in his report.

“Tell him he better not try driving back up here tonight,” Frankie told Adam, breaking off the debate on whether or not to activate an Amber Alert. “We get black ice on these mountain roads this time of year.”

“I’ll tell him.” Adam left the room to phone Russell back. They could hear snatches of a short and businesslike conversation as Russell reported the ME’s preliminary findings. Adam returned to Frankie’s office to relay the news that Cynthia Joseph had probably died just before midnight Thursday evening.

“That early?” Frankie sounded shocked.

Adam nodded. “The blow to her head wouldn’t have killed her, but she was likely unconscious for everything that followed.”

Rob recognized that Adam was trying to be tactful, conscious of what he would consider small town sensibilities. He asked, “What did follow?”

Adam flicked him a look. “Her throat was cut with a not very sharp and not very clean knife. It took a couple of tries.”

“Well, at least she won’t get tetanus,” Zeke muttered.

They all ignored that. Adam said, “She was not sexually assaulted.”

“Thank God for that.” Frankie muttered thanks as Aggie refilled her coffee cup.

Rob said, “Just before midnight. Which means Tiffany could very well have still been up and moving around the house.”

“She should have been in bed if she was so sick,” Zeke said.

“The State crime scene team needs to get back here and process Joseph’s residence,” Adam set his coffee cup aside, untouched. “Among other things, we need to find out who their cell phone carrier is so we can try to track Tiffany’s phone.”

Frankie groaned. “Let me summarize. We’ve got a murdering nutcase on the loose and a missing girl. Does that sound about right?”

“And they may be one and the same,” Zeke said cheerfully.

Frankie glared at him.

Unworried, Zeke sipped his coffee. He made a face. “Aggie, you know I take sugar!”

“Get it yourself!” Aggie called back from the front desk.

Frankie said, “At least it’s not tourist season. Thank God for small miracles.” And to Adam, “In my opinion there are too many question marks here to justify activating an Amber Alert. If I’m wrong, I’ve got to live with it.”

Adam replied, “I don’t believe this is an abduction. If it is, I don’t believe the girl has been taken out of the area. So either way—”

Rob finished, “We’ve got to organize a search for Tiffany while there’s still daylight.”

Nobody had to say aloud what they all knew. If Tiffany had been abducted, the chances of her safe return were dwindling with every hour. The fact that this was a rural and isolated setting only upped the odds against an innocent victim. Frankie turned to look out the window with its gray and unencouraging vista, and then bellowed, “Aggie, get me the State Police. And then get me Sheriff Clark in Klamath Falls!”

“On it,” Aggie called back.

“Sure as hell, it’s going to snow tonight.” That was Zeke.

Rob glanced at Adam. He was surprised at how bleak he looked. Adam sounded unemotional as he said, “If the girl is involved, there’s a strong possibility that she had help. Which means there’s a good chance she’ll have food and shelter tonight.”

Rob said, “And if she isn’t involved, there’s a good chance she’s going to freeze to death.”

Frankie said, “You don’t have kids do you, Agent Darling?”

“No,” Adam said.

“I didn’t think so. There’s no way in hell that girl had anything to do with her mother’s death. I’d stake my badge on it.”

Adam seemed strangely at a loss for words, and Rob surprised himself by saying, “In the interests of accuracy, you don’t have kids either, Frankie. So nobody better stake their badge on anything till we find Tiffany and hear what she has to say.”

Adam threw him a strange look, and Rob wished he was better at reading emotion in another guy’s eyes because he had no idea what that dark, almost uncertain glance meant. It gave him a funny feeling in his solar plexus.

Adam had already turned his attention to Frankie. “Why are you so sure the Joseph girl isn’t involved?”

“A cop’s instinct. I just am.”

“No,” Adam said slowly. “It’s more than that. Why did you feel that you needed the FBI’s support for a simple homicide?”

“It’s a homicide on federal land, for one thing.”

“That’s not the reason though,” Adam said. Patient and persistent. He was probably very good at his job. The thought hadn’t occurred to Rob before. Maybe because it hadn’t mattered to him before.

Though he still couldn’t decipher Adam’s expression, he knew Frankie well enough to know when she was lying. Well, prevaricating, she’d have said.

“Why us?” Adam pressed.

Frankie seemed to struggle internally before bursting out, “Because I don’t think she’s the first.”

“Not this again,” Zeke groaned. It was all Rob could do not to echo the sentiment. When it came to this, he and Zeke were in total agreement.

“The first what?” Adam asked.

Zeke was shaking his head. Frankie looked at Rob.

Adam said, “Somebody ought to bring me up to speed.”

Once again Frankie nodded to Rob, only more forcefully.

Rob sighed. “Back in December, a college student staying with friends at one of the forest ski chalets claimed that a man tried to abduct her.”

“Abduct or assault?”

“Abduct.”

“You don’t sound convinced,” Adam said.

“It was a house party. These were kids on winter break. They were all drinking. A lot. I think it’s possible one of the guys took a joke too far.”

“A joke?” There it was, that look of disapproval.

“Or maybe it was a genuine attempt at sexual assault. It’s impossible to know for sure. The girl was frightened but unharmed. And largely incoherent.”

Adam said, “You checked the alibi of everyone in the house for the time of the alleged abduction?”

“Gee, I never thought of that,” Rob drawled. “Too bad you weren’t here.”

Adam’s face tightened.

“Haskell,” Frankie said in warning. If she was using his last name, she was genuinely irked. So was he. Maybe they weren’t the FBI, but they did understand basic police work.

“Yes,” Rob said. “We checked the alibi of everyone in the house. And since everyone in the house was blitzed, it doesn’t mean a whole hell of a lot.”

“And in January?” Frankie prompted.

Rob sighed and said, “And on New Year’s Eve a couple of girls walking back to their lake cabin claimed that a man jumped out of the trees and tried to grab them. Or one of them. Again, alcohol was involved.”

“If you get over one hundred thousand people here during vacation season, sexual assault can’t be a rarity.”

“Well, as a matter of fact, it is a rarity,” Frankie said. “Between us, the park rangers, and the state police, we do a good job of keeping our community safe and secure.”

They did. Still, in the interests of fairness, Rob felt compelled to say, “Yeah, we do deal with the occasional assault, sexual and otherwise. We’ve even had to handle an attempted murder. These two incidents were maybe different.”

Zeke groaned.

“How so?” Adam asked.

Frankie was watching him with that go on! look. Rob said reluctantly, “In both cases the girls described their assailant as wearing war paint.”

In the silence that followed he could hear the fax machine spitting out paper in the next room, and Aggie’s muted voice still speaking on the phone.

Adam said at last, “Is it possible these women mistook mud or an attempt at disguise for something else?”

“Camo face paint,” Rob agreed. “I thought that was one possibility.” And he had a most likely suspect in mind too. He hadn’t been able to prove anything against Gibbs Sandy—and in any case, he’d never been convinced that the girls were reliable witnesses.

“In both cases those girls described Indian war paint,” Frankie said. “Those were their exact words. Indian war paint.”

Adam raised his brows. Maybe at the political incorrectness of the word “Indian.”

Zeke said, “Three drunk-off-their-asses chicks, two who, we know for a fact, had been to the museum—”

“Two possible attempted abductions during the past two months,” Adam said thoughtfully. “And now the Joseph girl is missing.”

“Hold up,” Rob protested. “We were both agreed that there were no signs of struggle at the Joseph house.” He thought of the unlocked window. “Maybe she saw something and fled. There’s no indication that Tiffany was abducted. She may not have even been on the premises when her mother was attacked. For all we know, she skipped out on one friend for a ski weekend with another. Kids do that stuff. But even if that’s not what happened, even if Tiffany’s disappearance is related to Cynthia’s death, it’s still a stretch to claim that this is part of a larger pattern of half-assed attempts at abduction.”

“True,” Adam said to his surprise. “The house needs to be processed. Until any—”

“Sheriff Clark on line one!” hollered Aggie.

Frankie gestured to them to be quiet and picked up the phone. “John? You heard? Well, I need some help.”

Rob looked at Adam. Adam offered an odd, self-conscious half smile.

“Was that all Agent Russell had to say?” Rob asked, for lack of any better topic.

“It was all he had to say pertinent to the investigation.”

There were unspoken volumes behind those precise, clipped syllables, and Rob repressed a snort.

In the background, Frankie was crisp and to the point. When she disconnected nine minutes later, she said, “Here comes the cavalry. And there goes any chance of keeping the media out of this.”

“There was never any chance of keeping them out,” Adam said. “Anyway, we can use the media to our advantage.”

Zeke said, “Yeah? Then you can be our press secretary.”

“State Police!” screeched Aggie. “Line two.”

Frankie reached for the phone, pausing to say, “Rob, you and Zeke need to round up every available body to help with this search. We don’t have time to wait for reinforcements. Anyway, what we really need are locals, people who know the area. We don’t have many hours of daylight left.”

“Roger,” Rob said.

“We’ll do what we can tonight and, if we don’t find her, we’ll start all over in the morning. But let’s find her.” Frankie reached again for the phone.

* * * * *

They did not find her.

They did not find any trace of Tiffany Joseph.

It wasn’t for lack of trying. Everybody who could walk was out searching for the girl even before the state police and Klamath Falls reinforcements arrived.

Bert Berkle brought his dogs and began to work the woods around the museum and the Joseph house. There was a lot of snuffling and baying and running in circles, however, the dogs did not pick up a hot track. They did not pick up any track at all.

“Too much rain,” Bert told Rob. “Too much rain, too much snow, and too much time.”

“Hey, you tried,” Rob said.

Bert looked more dour than ever.

If there was anything good about a situation like this, it was the way a closely knit community came together in times of crisis.

Rob noticed the Constantine men speaking to Zeke, and he remembered Adam’s theory that Bill and Tiffany had some kind of relationship.

He studied Bill. He wasn’t a bad looking kid. Actually he wasn’t a kid. He had to be about twenty-five or twenty-six now. He looked young for his age, still as tall and gawky as he’d been as an adolescent. He was like an awkward version of his older brother Dan. Now Dan was a handsome guy, and if Tiffany had stuck a photo of Dan on her mirror, nobody would have questioned it. Like his old man before him, Dan had been a heartbreaker—although these days he did his heartbreaking in Springfield. But Bill?

If they didn’t find Tiffany soon, they would need to interview him. That was going to be an awkward conversation. Rob was still hoping they’d find her. How far could a teenaged girl get in this terrain and in this weather? Then again, she was physically fit, and her parents had both been park rangers, which gave her certain advantages.

Rob glanced over at Adam who was practically vibrating with nervous tension. He reminded Rob of Bert Berkle’s sleek, eager hunting dogs in the seconds before Bert turned them loose.

He grimaced. It bothered him how aware he was of Adam. He noticed things about Adam he’d never noticed of another man before. The stubborn, sun-streaked wave in his stylishly cropped hair. That discreet loop of silver around his wrist. What was the story there? He’d thought it might be a medic alert bracelet. It wasn’t; he’d checked that night they’d spent together. Adam’s cheekbones, for God’s sake! Since when did he notice another man’s cheekbones?