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  Tried to call. What about tonight?

  What? Jade checked, and she saw no evidence that any calls had come in. Great. It looked like her phone had been damaged more than she’d realized.

  Phone is jacked, Jade wrote. See you at your house?

  K was the quick response.

  Awesome, she thought as her phone jangled in her hand. Another night with the crazy Stewart clan and her cell wasn’t working for shit.

  Tracking down the friend of Lars Blonski, one of Stewart’s Crossing’s illustrious ex-cons, wasn’t easy, and when Jay Aberdeen was finally brought into the station he, and his alibi, were as slippery as a proverbial eel. Bellisario talked to the guy in the interrogation room, but Aberdeen couldn’t keep his story straight.

  “Yeah, I was with Lars,” he said. He was seated on one end of a small table pressed against the wall, she on the other side, cameras rolling, microphones turned on, the sheriff himself on the opposite side of the “mirror” that allowed other people in the department to view the interview as it went down.

  “Where?”

  “At The Cavern. Y’ know.” He shrugged and reached into the pocket of his T-shirt for a nonexistent pack of cigarettes, then frowned at the realization there was no pack.

  “When did you get there?”

  “ ‘Bout eleven, maybe, eleven fifteen.”

  They were talking about the night Rosalie Jamison had disappeared.

  “You’re sure of the time?”

  “I didn’t check my watch, if that’s what you mean,” he said, with a bit of hostility.

  “And on this Friday, around five or six?”

  “Lars was with me. At my house.”

  “The apartment you share with your mother?” Bellisario said.

  “Yeah. But she wasn’t there.”

  Of course,

  “Where was she?”

  “I dunno. Out. Shoppin’, I think.” He pulled a face, his lips turning downward within his thin goatee. “You’d have to ask her.”

  “I will,” Bellisario promised and asked more questions that Aberdeen answered or dodged. She felt he was lying, but since he was of no help, she had to let him go.

  So far, the day had been fruitless. She and several deputies had interviewed all the members of Candice Fowler’s family, as well as Tiffany Monroe and her parents. As luck would have it, Tiffany’s father was a defense attorney and her mother was a psychologist who was often used as an expert witness for defendants in criminal trials, so they’d been cooperative, but suspicious, which hadn’t helped things. The brother had yet to be located, but Bellisario intended to talk with Seth Monroe. None of the neighbors had noticed anything out of the ordinary, and there were no surveillance cameras anywhere near the Monroes’ street.

  The FBI were now involved, and as much as Bellisario didn’t like anyone butting their noses into her case, she was relieved the feds, with their expertise, equipment, and extensive databases, were a part of the kidnapping investigation. Time was critical. If the girls were still alive, they needed to be freed before they were harmed. She didn’t want to think the girls, on the threshold of their adult lives, had been killed, but she knew that it was a distinct possibility, and if they were dead, finding their bodies could be hell. Not only was the river huge and deep—a perfect place to dump a body beneath the lowest dam, so it could be carried out to sea—but the forests and hills surrounding Stewart’s Crossing were dense, sometimes, in winter, nearly impossible to search.

  Her thoughts grim, she escorted Aberdeen out of the building, then stopped for a refill of coffee before making her way to her office. Now it seemed a slim possibility that Rosalie Jamison was a runaway. In a usually sleepy little town like Stewart’s Crossing, it was highly unlikely that two girls would run off separately within a week, and even though Candice’s father was convinced his daughter was just about perfect and unwilling to do anything but walk the straight and narrow, Bellisario didn’t believe it. She’d been fifteen before, a passable student, considered a “good” girl too by her family, but she’d had a wild side that she’d hidden from her parents. It was just human nature and a part of growing up.

  In the hallway to her office, she blew on her coffee and dodged a deputy walking a suspect in handcuffs in the other direction. Shackles too, she noticed, hearing them rattle as the would-be prisoner was led into the interrogation room she’d just vacated. With graying hair that reached his shoulders and a beard that hadn’t been near a pair of shears in a long while, he snarled, “You don’t have the right to do this, y’ know. I’m gettin’ me a lawyer.”

  “Do that,” the deputy, Officer Mendoza, said in a bored tone. Santiago Mendoza had been with the department longer than Bellisario and had the attitude that he’d seen it all. Today was no exception. He shot Bellisario a “can you believe this guy?” look. “Let him explain why you need an arsenal of unregistered assault rifles.”

  “I hunt!”

  Mendoza said, “Herds of elephants apparently.”

  “It’s a damned free country!”

  “So they say,” Mendoza said, opening the door for the suspect to walk inside.

  The prisoner, eyes glittering, paused in the doorway. “Maybe you should listen to ‘them’ or go back to where you came from.”

  “L.A.?” Mendoza gave his head a quick little shake. “I thought you were against the government. Isn’t that what you and your friends are all about? Kind of like those guys from Ruby Ridge about twenty years ago. Some new kind of mountain men?”

  “Bastardo!” the suspect spat.

  “Hey, Bellisario, did you hear that?” Mendoza said, cracking a smile. “Mr. Dodds, here, is bilingual.”

  Bellisario nodded. “Perfecto,”

  What was it with the recent infusion of antigovernment types? Why here, why now? She had to leave that line of questioning to Mendoza.

  Back at her desk, she tried to find, once again, a connection between the two missing girls, but other than that they were female, teenagers, and lived in the area, they had little in common. Taking a sip of her coffee, she stared at her computer screen, now split, with two images showing—one, Rosalie Jamison’s driver’s license photograph, the other a picture of a smiling Candice Fowler that her parents had given the department.

  “Where are you?” Bellisario asked, as if the girls could hear her. Together? Probably. Or maybe not. There could be a copycat on the loose. Sick as it sounded, with all the publicity surrounding Rosalie Jamison’s disappearance, a new whack job might have had the sudden inspiration and opportunity to abduct Candice Fowler.

  But who?

  She glanced down at her desktop at an open file on Roger Anderson. He was a long shot, she thought, had no connection to either family. But he had grown up in Stewart’s Crossing and had spent some of his adult years in the area, as well as in prison. Now he’d submerged and was avoiding the law, in violation of his parole. And he had a history of violence against women.

  “Three strikes and you’re out, Roger,” she said, picking up the thick manila folder and skimming through several arrest and evidence reports. He was not exactly a stellar citizen, and part of a family that wasn’t the most stable, if local gossip were to be believed. He’d left his last known address and, according to his parole officer, hadn’t contacted any of his family; the officer had made calls, and Bellisario had followed up on them. So far, she hadn’t located him and would have assumed he was long gone except for the rumors floating around town that he was nearby.

  Yeah, Roger Anderson was certainly someone worth checking out again. Before another unlucky girl didn’t make it home.

  CHAPTER 27

  What’re you doing in here? You know you’re not supposed to come into this room, Not ever, Mom will kill you if she finds out,

  Sarah refused to listen to the nagging voice in her head. It sounded a lot like Dee Linn’s, and she knew that years before, her older sister had warned her about stepping across the threshold to her parents’ suite. She had go
ne into the room, of course, not only then, but recently when she’d first gone through the house room by room, taking note of the repairs that were to be made, and she’d told herself to get past all the rules and paranoia of her childhood. She was in charge. This was just a house, and she could go anywhere she damned well pleased.

  That proved more difficult than it sounded, however. Even now, walking through the bedroom, she felt as if her mother were watching, and she heard bits and pieces of old fights between her parents, harsh words that emanated through the closed doors.

  “. . . I mean it, Franklin, you touch her, and I’ll make sure it’s the last time you ever look at another woman!” Arlene had screamed, while, on the other side of the door, twelve-year-old Sarah had cringed and Dee Linn, walking past, had rolled her eyes.

  “What’s that all about?” Sarah had whispered.

  “Mom thinks Dad has a girlfriend.”

  “Does he?” Sarah hadn’t liked the thought of her father with anyone other than their mother.

  “What do you think? Mom . . . you know . . .” And Dee Linn, ushering Sarah back down the stairs, had rotated an index finger beside her head to indicate that their mother was crazy.

  “But maybe he does.”

  “Who else would want him?” Dee Linn had wrinkled her nose. “Face it, Sarah, Mom and Dad are weirdos, and so they’re perfect for each other. And you”—she’d pointed a long finger at Sarah’s nose—“shouldn’t be hanging around closed doors and listening to private conversations.”

  “You heard it too,” Sarah had charged, knowing full well that Dee Linn was a master eavesdropper, learning secrets and using those secrets to her advantage.

  “But I wasn’t trying.”

  “Bullcrap, Dee!” Sarah had said and seen her sister’s eyes flare. For the briefest of seconds Sarah thought Dee Linn might actually slap her. Instead, Dee Linn had grabbed her by the upper arm, so hard that her fingernails had actually made deep impressions in Sarah’s skin.

  “Don’t,” Dee had warned through lips that had barely moved. “Don’t insinuate that you know what I’m doing because you don’t. You don’t know anything about me.”

  Now, as she stepped through the nearly vacant, darkened rooms, Sarah wondered about a lot of things in her family. There had been rumors of her father’s infidelity for years before his death. Women he’d met on business trips, women in town, women whom Sarah had never seen but who had haunted the hallways of Blue Peacock Manor, if only in Arlene’s twisted mind.

  And Dee Linn, a vindictive soul as a teenager, had mellowed with age and marriage to a man whom she’d let dominate her. Or had she changed all that much? Was it possible that Dee Linn’s nicey-nice, obedient wife persona was just an act? Who knew?

  Running her finger through the dust on her mother’s old vanity, she looked to the broad bay window, where one of the matching side tables still stood; the bed and other nightstand were now missing. The carpet showed a shadow of more vibrant colors where a bed had once stood, saving the fibers from fading. Sarah remembered her parents’ four-poster bed. More often than she wanted to recall, she’d heard the rhythmic creak of mattress springs and the accompaniment of low, almost anguished moans.

  Caught up in memories, Sarah searched the suite for the family Bible, in which she hoped to find answers to the past, but all she uncovered was the same disturbing feeling that had been a part of her childhood.

  Sarah had hoped that, upon returning to Stewart’s Crossing, she would finally be able to lay to rest the demons of her past. But on this gray afternoon, with a chill in the air and so many unanswered questions hiding within the walls of Blue Peacock Manor, she wasn’t sure those very same demons would ever let her out of their grasp.

  “I tell ya, I haven’t seen Anderson in a while,” Hardy Jones insisted from the chair at Bellisario’s desk. He was a twitchy man, always rubbing his faded jean pant legs or glancing furtively, his eyes a little on the wild side. Today he was nervous as hell—jumpier than Bellisario remembered, rubbing one arm with his opposing hand. “I avoid him.”

  “But he’s in Stewart’s Crossing?” Bellisario persisted, thinking that Jones, as one of Roger Anderson’s former cell mates, might be of help in locating the missing parolee. “People have reported seeing him around town.” But when pressured, no one so far could come up with solid information on Anderson. Bellisario hoped Hardy could change all that.

  Hardy glanced out the window to the gray day. “Maybe. Probably. The guy is weird.”

  This from the funny little guy across the desk. “Close to his family?”

  “Nah. Don’t think he talks to any of ’em.”

  “Not even his brothers?”

  “Beats me, but nah, don’t think so.”

  “Jacob Stewart didn’t visit him?” she asked and heard the fax machine down the hall click and clack to life. “Or his sister and her husband, Dee Linn and Walter Bigelow?”

  “Not that I know of.” Hardy shrugged. He was an affable guy, with a nervous tic under one eye.

  And he was lying. According to the prison records that had been e-mailed to her earlier in the day, Jacob Stewart had visited his brother twice; Dee Linn, once, with her hubby the dentist.

  “What about his cousins? Did they see him?”

  “Don’t know who they are.” Hardy’s suspicious gaze had returned from the window to focus on Bellisario again, as if he were sizing her up. “Hell, he could have had a million of ’em for all I know. There’s Stewarts and Andersons and whatever up and down this whole county, but I wouldn’t know ’em.”

  “How about Clark Valente?” she asked. Valente, who was close to Anderson’s age, was one of the few people who had visited Anderson during his latest incarceration.

  “It wasn’t like I was overseein’ his fuckin’ social calendar.” Glowering at her, he slouched lower in his chair.

  “So you don’t know if Valente visited?”

  “He could’ve had the fuckin’ president come and I wouldn’t have known it. But nah, I never heard of . . . what’d you say his name was?”

  “Clark Valente.”

  “Nah.”

  Another lie. Hardy was racking them up.

  She glanced at the computer screen. One other name had come up as a visitor: Cameron Collins, a father of four who owned the feed store in town.

  “What about Anderson’s friends?”

  Pretending to mull that one over, Hardy shook his head slowly. “He didn’t have any.”

  “Not even Cameron Collins?”

  “Who?” Hardy said, then stopped short. “He the religious nut who came in with his Bible and quoted verses or something? Owns a store in town.”

  Possibly. Bellisario made a mental note to check that out. “Don’t know.”

  “That guy came by once or twice.”

  But his tone made her think he wasn’t sure. This was getting them nowhere and becoming a big waste of time, when time was of the essence if they were to find the two girls unharmed. As if to reinforce her own thoughts, her cell phone vibrated on the desk, and she saw Rosalie Jamison’s mother’s phone number flash onto the display. Because of their loose connection—Lucy’s sister was in the same class as Rosalie—Sharon wasn’t afraid to call Bellisario’s cell at any time, day or night.

  She switched her phone off and tried another tack with Roger Anderson’s ex-cell mate. “You know, Hardy, it strikes me as strange, this lack of knowledge you profess. Here you share a cell for what? Two, two and a half years?”

  “Twenty-three months,” he replied. “Time off. Good behavior.”

  “Yet you don’t know one person your cell mate was close to, don’t remember anyone who visited him. Is that what you’re telling me?” She stared at him hard, then leaned back in her chair as a phone rang in a nearby office and the furnace hummed. “So, tell me, what have you been up to lately? You know, aside from keeping the cutlery spotless down at The Cavern.”

  “What’d’ya mean?” Suspicion crawled into h
is voice.

  “You’re keeping your nose clean, I assume.”

  Hardy ran a hand through his unruly hair.

  “So, what can you tell me about the missing girls?”

  “The what?”

  “You’ve heard the news. Seen the flyers. Rosalie Jamison and Candice Fowler have disappeared.”

  “What’s that got to do with me?” He stared down at the pictures on the desk, then back at Bellisario. Finally, she’d caught his attention. “You know that’s not my thing. Roger, yeah, he got in some trouble with the ladies, but me, no. Not my deal.”

  Which was true. Hardy’s crimes had all revolved around drugs and check fraud. He wasn’t much good at either—hence, his rather lengthy rap sheet. “If I called your parole officer, I’d get a stellar report, right?” Actually she’d already phoned the guy. Hardy was clean.

  “What the hell do you want from me?” He seemed worried now, and blinked rapidly.

  “Any and all information about Roger Anderson.”

  “There ain’t any. I mean, I don’t have none. Anderson’s a loner, okay? And weird as a three-dollar bill. Always goin’ on and on about his sister, the one that took off. Theresa, that was her name. I heard about her over and over, about how he loved her.”

  “Loved her?” she repeated.

  “Yeah, and I’m not talkin’ about brotherly love here, if ya know what I mean.” He slid Bellisario a sly look. “He loved her. Felt it was his fault or somethin’ that she took off. Always talkin’ about the big house, how great it was and how weird his mother was. It was fucked up, the way he was about his family,” he said, and for the first time since the interview started, Bellisario sensed some truth was flowing past Hardy Jones’s lips. “You know what he did? Do you? Anderson and her?”

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “They hung out in some fuckin’ graveyard on the Stewart place, that fuckin’ Blue Parrot or whatever it’s called.”

  “Peacock.”

  “They’d spend time alone up by a damned crypt or something. Him and Theresa.” Hardy was smiling now, finding some sick humor in the situation, but all the while shaking his head. “It was fucked up, I tell ya.”