“I have my own car and driver,” Valente said shortly, starting to step around him.
“Then you can take your car and lead the way, but Mrs. Manning rides with me.”
At his confrontational tone and manner, Valente’s chauffeur suddenly started forward. “Is there a problem here, Mr. Valente?”
“There is going to be,” O’Hara warned with a surprisingly sharp edge to his voice.
“Get the hell out of the way—” Valente said in a low, explosive voice.
“Please!” Leigh cried. “We’re wasting time.” She looked at Michael Valente, her eyes pleading. Her life had become a dark, dangerous, unknown sea that she had to navigate, and at the moment, O’Hara was the only slightly familiar person in it. She rather wanted him with her. “My husband told Mr. O’Hara to stay with me. I’d like to let him do that.”
To her surprised relief, Valente capitulated immediately, but the look he gave O’Hara was distinctly unpleasant. “Get in and drive,” he said shortly, holding the door himself for Leigh.
Chapter 14
* * *
Seated next to Valente’s pilot, wearing thick padded headphones to muffle the roar of the rotors, Leigh anxiously scanned the scene below. The state police had blocked off the mountain road, men were swarming over the steep snow-covered incline, and trucks with winches were backed up on the shoulder. Police cars from the NYPD and the state police lined both sides of the road, and several police helicopters were flying slow circles over the hills nearby, undoubtedly searching for the cabin that Leigh believed was near the site of her accident.
Valente’s voice came through her earphones, calm, matter-of-fact, and strangely reassuring. “They’ve found something in the water down there, and they’ve already got the winches connected to it.” To the pilot, he said, “Put us down on the road, behind the tow trucks.”
“It’s going to be tight, Mr. Valente. There’s a wider spot a half mile back where the trees aren’t so close to the road.”
“Mrs. Manning can’t walk that far. Put us down behind the trucks,” he ordered.
It occurred to Leigh that if the helicopter crashed because it got hung up in tree limbs, none of them were going to be able to walk anywhere for a very long time, but caution was not a priority of hers at that moment.
The helicopter rotors were still whipping snow into a white typhoon when Valente came around to her side and lifted her down. His eyes narrowed when she bent forward, clutching her midriff. “How bad are your ribs?”
“Not bad,” Leigh lied, trying to catch her breath. “Small fractures.” With O’Hara on her left and Valente on her right, Leigh looked around for the two New York City detectives. Detective Littleton was standing in the road, a phone pressed to one ear, her hand covering the other, her ponytail blowing in the wind. Shrader was on the shoulder of the road, opposite the tow trucks, talking to a New York City officer. He saw Leigh, ended his conversation, and started toward her. “Good morning, Mrs. Manning—” he said politely; then he recognized Valente, and Shrader’s expression turned positively hostile.
“Have your helicopters found any sign of the cabin yet?” Leigh asked.
“No,” Shrader said curtly, his gaze riveted on Michael Valente’s face. When he finally shifted his attention to Leigh, he looked at her with such icy contempt that she felt as if she’d committed a crime merely by being in Valente’s presence.
“Are you certain you’ve found my car?” she asked.
His gaze flicked to Valente. “At this moment,” he informed her sarcastically, “I’m not certain of anything.” Without another word, he turned on his heel and strode toward the tow trucks, but first he stopped to say something to the officer he’d been talking to earlier. The officer nodded and walked in the direction of Michael Valente’s helicopter.
Put off by Shrader’s attitude, Leigh stayed where she was, partially shielded from the wind by Joe O’Hara and Valente, while the winches on both trucks revolved slowly, haltingly, grinding almost to a stop, then moving abruptly again as they slowly dragged the dead weight of an unseen object through the trees and up the incline. Leigh thought of walking over to the edge of the road to get an early glimpse of what she knew was going to be her car, but she stayed where she was, reluctant to go near Shrader in his current mood. She watched the helicopters searching the ridges to her right; then she glanced to the left and saw the police officer in an intense conversation with Valente’s helicopter pilot. The pilot was retrieving books and documents from inside the plane and showing them to him. “What is he doing?” she asked Valente, motioning to the officer.
Valente looked in the direction she indicated. “He’s hassling my pilot,” he replied flatly.
Based on his attitude, Leigh assumed that being hassled by the police was probably a regular routine for him. “Oh,” she said lamely.
“Mrs. Manning—” Shrader motioned for Leigh to join him. “Is that your vehicle?”
With inexplicable feelings of dread, Leigh walked slowly to the edge of the embankment and looked down at the tortured metal remains of what had once been her car. No longer oblong and shiny black, the Mercedes was burned to bare metal in places and mangled into a shape that vaguely resembled a squashed cube. “Yes,” she said. “That’s my car.”
Valente came up behind her and looked over the embankment. “Jesus Christ!” he said softly.
Tearing her gaze from the automobile that had nearly been her temporary casket, Leigh focused on the helicopters searching the distant skyline. “How long do you think it will be before they find the place I was supposed to meet my husband?”
“It’s hard to say. Could be any minute, or it might take hours or even longer.”
Before she could say anything, one of the officers shouted that Shrader had a radio call, and he turned his back on her and strode off. Praying that the call involved news of Logan, Leigh watched Shrader walk over to a patrol car, reach in through the open window, and take out the police radio. He listened for a moment; then he twisted around sharply and looked up at the horizon to the northeast. Leigh followed his gaze. One of the helicopters had narrowed its circle and was swooping lower and lower, flying in very tight circles. “They’ve found something!” she burst out, grabbing Valente’s arm in her excitement. “Look—over there, at the helicopter farthest away. He’s flying low, and the other helicopters have started over there toward him. They’ve found Logan. I think they’ve found Logan!”
Shrader finished talking on the radio and tossed it onto the front seat of the car; then he trotted over to her. “One of our pilots thinks he’s found the house. Small stone cabin with a light gray slate roof. He thinks he can make out a stone well, too—like a little ‘wishing well’ near the cabin. Did your husband mention anything about a wishing well?”
“Yes!” Leigh exclaimed. “Yes, he did. I’d forgotten about that!”
“Okay, then,” he said, turning to motion to Littleton. “Let’s go!” he shouted. He started toward their car, and Littleton trotted to it from the opposite direction, getting in on the driver’s side.
Leigh tried to run after him and nearly passed out on the third step from the streaks of pain in her ribs. “Wait,” she called, grasping her midriff. “I want to go with you.”
Shrader turned, frowning at the delay, as if he’d forgotten she had an intense personal interest in the search. “It would be better if you wait here.”
“I want to go with you,” Leigh repeated angrily.
He glanced around, saw the police officer who’d been “hassling” Valente’s pilot earlier, and motioned him over. After a brief conversation, Shrader continued toward his own car, and the police officer walked over to Leigh. The name tag on his jacket said he was “Officer Damon Harwell.”
“Detective Shrader said you can ride with me,” Harwell told her; then he turned a scathing look on Valente. “You’re finished here, Valente. Get that bird off the road before I impound it.”
Leigh was dimly embarras
sed by Harwell’s treatment of the man who had kindly flown her to the site, but all of her concentration was centered on Logan. Logan was close. He was near.
O’Hara’s interest was Leigh. “I’m going with Mrs. Manning,” he warned the officer. “I’m her bodyguard.”
“Fine,” Harwell said with a shrug, and turned away.
Leigh was in a desperate hurry to leave, but when she turned to thank Valente and tell him good-bye, she realized he was unmoved by Harwell’s threats. His next words confirmed that. “Would you like me to go with you?” he asked calmly.
The last thing Leigh wanted to do was to subject him to any more humiliation or cause him any trouble with the police. “I’ll be all right,” she said. “Thank you so much for everything.”
Ignoring both her gratitude and her statement that she’d be all right, he looked at her intently and repeated his question. “Would you like me to go with you?”
The truth was that Leigh would have liked to take an army with her; the more able men to find Logan and get him out of there, the better. She cast an uneasy glance at Harwell, who’d gotten into his squad car and started the engine. “I don’t think that would be a very good idea.”
“I think it would be,” he said, guessing at the reason for her reluctance and overriding it.
Leigh decided he was right, and as she slid into the backseat of Officer Harwell’s car, she said as courteously as she could, “Officer Harwell, Commissioner Trumanti assured me I would have the full cooperation of everyone in the NYPD. And Mr. Valente is with me.”
Harwell said nothing until they were under way; then he flipped on the siren and glanced at Valente in the rearview mirror. “You must feel right at home back there, Valente,” he said with a malicious smile. “You’re usually in handcuffs, though, aren’t you?”
Too horrified to hide her reaction, Leigh glanced sharply at Valente. He was calmly phoning his pilot and giving him instructions, but his eyes were riveted on the back of Harwell’s head, and the expression on his face was lethal.
Chapter 15
* * *
One after another, police vehicles from the site of Leigh’s accident flew past them, light bars flashing and sirens blaring, en route to the cabin. Leigh leaned forward and angrily asked Harwell, “Did Detective Shrader tell you to go this slow, or are you doing it just to be unpleasant?”
“Detective Shrader’s orders, ma’am,” Harwell replied, but Leigh could see his smirking face in the rearview mirror, and she knew he was enjoying her frustration—probably because she’d forced him to take Michael Valente along.
“Why would he give you an order like that?”
“I really couldn’t say.”
“Take a guess!” O’Hara snapped.
“Okay. My guess is that Detective Shrader doesn’t know what he’s going to find, or if he’s going to find anything, and he wants a little extra time to look around and assess the scene. Family members and civilians get in the way.” As he spoke, he flipped on his turn indicators. “This is it.”
A mile after the turnoff, he pulled to a stop in the middle of a narrow mountain road crowded with police cars, including some from surrounding communities. The cabin was nowhere in sight, but a steep, narrow lane led from the road, down through the trees, and then disappeared around a bend.
Harwell got out of the car. “You stay here!” he ordered her, shouting to be heard above the roar of a hovering helicopter and the wailing siren of an approaching ambulance. “I’ll let you know what they’ve found.”
Police officers wading through the chest-high snow had created a passage of sorts with their bodies, and Leigh stood between O’Hara and Valente, watching Harwell make his way down the deep, slippery channel. More police officers arrived and trooped through the snow, but no one reappeared from around the bend below.
Leigh counted each second, waiting for someone to come up and tell her something, and when no one did, she began to feel as if she were going to explode into a million pieces.
Beside her, Valente was scowling down the lane; then he swore under his breath and looked at her. “How badly are you hurt?”
“What?”
“Your ribs?” he clarified. “Can you handle the pain if I lift you up and carry you down there?”
“Yes!” Leigh said. “But I don’t think you—”
Before she could finish, Valente put one arm beneath her knees, curved his other arm around her shoulders, and lifted her into his arms. He looked at O’Hara and nodded toward the steep path. “You go first, and I’ll walk in your footsteps. If I start to slip, try to brace me.”
The plan worked, and a few minutes later, Leigh finally had an unobstructed view of the entire scene. The picturesque stone cabin stood in a clearing at the end of the driveway, just as Logan had described it to Leigh. Fifty yards from the cabin, the land dropped off sharply, and a horde of policemen were working their way slowly downward through the trees.
Another officer was stationed on the cabin’s porch, peering inside through the open doorway. He turned in surprise as Valente put Leigh down behind him.
“You can’t go in there,” he informed her. “Detective Shrader’s orders.”
“I’m Mrs. Manning,” Leigh argued. “I want to know if my husband is inside!” She was prepared to try to push past him, but Detective Littleton appeared in the doorway and answered her question. “There’s no one here, Mrs. Manning. I’m sorry,” she added. “I was planning to go up to the road and tell you myself, as soon as we finished a preliminary search of the area.”
Devastated, Leigh sagged against the doorframe. “This must be the wrong place. . . .”
“I don’t think so. There are some things inside that may belong to your husband. I’d like you to tell me if you can identify anything.” As she stepped aside to allow Leigh past, she looked at Valente and politely said, “You’ll have to wait out here, sir.”
Inside, the empty little cabin was as bone-chillingly cold as the interior of a freezer, and almost as dark. Dampness had permeated the stone floors and walls, and the only available light came through a small, grimy window on her right. Leigh blinked, trying to adjust from the dazzling brightness outside to the gloom within.
To her left, two doorways off the main room opened into a kitchen and bathroom respectively, and opposite her, a third doorway, in the corner, opened into a room Leigh assumed was a bedroom. Adjoining that doorway, to the right, and occupying most of the wall directly in front of her, was a fireplace, its stones blackened with decades of accumulated soot. Lying on the floor in front of it, Leigh saw a dark green sleeping bag, still rolled up and neatly tied. She rushed over to it and bent down to see it better; then she looked over her shoulder at Littleton and Shrader, who were standing side by side. “This looks like one of ours!”
“Are you certain it’s yours?” Shrader asked.
Sleeping bags all looked pretty much alike to Leigh and she hadn’t actually seen this one for years. “I think so. I’m not positive.”
“Do you and your husband own more than one sleeping bag?”
“Yes, we have two of them. They’re identical.”
Looking for something more identifiable, she stood up and walked into the empty bedroom; then she glanced into the bathroom, which was also empty. Unaware of how closely she was being observed, Leigh went into the kitchen next. A big, old-fashioned porcelain sink on steel legs stood against the far wall, an open paper bag on the floor beneath it. Spread out on the drain board were items Logan had bought for the day. Leigh felt a lump in her throat as she looked at the boxes of Logan’s favorite crackers, an open package of cheese, and a deli sandwich still wrapped in plastic wrap. In addition to the bottled water Leigh had asked for, he’d also brought a bottle of champagne and a bottle of chardonnay. Because he’d wanted to celebrate the occasion with her that night. . . .
Lined up on the windowsill above the sink was a roll of paper towels, a bottle of liquid detergent, a box of wooden matches, and a can
of insecticide. A new broom with the price tag still attached was propped against the wall near the back door.
Everything Leigh saw reminded her poignantly of Logan and their conversation the morning he left, but until she stepped closer and looked into the sink, she had clung to the frail hope that this was the wrong place, that Logan was still safe and snug in some other cabin. Two Baccarat crystal wineglasses in the sink robbed her of her last comforting fantasy.
She turned to Shrader and Littleton, her eyes filled with anguish. “The glasses are ours.” Driven by a sudden, overpowering urge to search for Logan and rescue him herself, she brushed past the two detectives and returned to the bedroom. She was reaching for the closet door when Shrader barked, “Don’t touch anything, Mrs. Manning!”
Leigh jerked her hand back. “Did you look in the closet? Maybe Logan is—”
“Your husband isn’t in there,” Detective Littleton assured her.
“No, of course not,” Leigh said, but she was rambling now, talking to stop herself from thinking about the unthinkable. “Why would Logan hide in a closet? He was obviously here, though, and he—” She broke off as a sudden realization gave her momentary hope. “But his car isn’t here. He must have gone somewhere else—”
Shrader ruthlessly demolished her logic and her hope. “Your husband was driving a white Jeep, wasn’t he?” When Leigh nodded, he shrugged and said in a matter-of-fact voice, “Well, when I stand in the doorway over there and look out, all I see are a whole lot of white hills. A white Jeep, covered in a few inches of snow, could look just like one of those.”
That was the last thing Leigh wanted to hear anyone say. She wrapped her arms around herself and concentrated on not losing her grip on her emotions. In the living room, she went over to the window and watched the police searching the wooded hillside. They weren’t really looking for Logan down there, she realized. Logan had disappeared almost six days ago. They were looking for his body.