“Yeah, the dog on the scent trail’s worth a try,” Vic said as though he’d read Gabe’s mind. “We could call in a K-9 unit, but time’s of the essence. We’ll just have to make sure you’re with the guy, step for step. But remember, he ain’t nothing but a hound dog, and we’ve got two leads right under our own noses. Number one, the abduction scene. Let’s see the gift shop storeroom, where Mike can start working, but then let’s you and me, Gabe, go pay a call on our ace in the hole, Teresa Lockwood.”
Gabe’s head snapped around. “She still has retrograde amnesia on the whole thing. Still delicate. I’ve been trying to establish a good relationship with her, but so far—”
“Then let’s see if we can take it farther than so far,” Vic said and spit a chewed-up toothpick into Gabe’s wastebasket.
Gabe stared the man down. “I think she’ll bolt if we press her.”
“You been trying another approach besides a frontal assault?” Vic challenged, coming closer. “You want one more try with her, using your method?” he said, raising one eyebrow. “If so, okay, but make it quick, before I go busting in. Ticktock, and you know it.”
“Tess came back from her abduction after almost eight months away, so I’m hoping the others have been kept alive—are still alive for all we know. Maybe someone just wants a little girl to raise.”
“Odds are against that, but maybe. Still, if the kidnapper’s local, where are the girls? And since you once told me you wished you’d have rescued Teresa when she was snatched, I don’t know if you’re still feeling guilty about her, handling her—so to speak—with kid gloves. Take a little time today to try again with her, okay? Just a suggestion, of course, ’cause we’re here to work with you, and you know the situation best.”
Gabe just nodded, though he got the undercurrent of what Vic had said. Maybe the man did read minds, did sense how protective he felt about Tess. “I’ll take you to the site, let you do your thing,” Gabe told them. “This is the twentieth anniversary of the day Tess was taken, and I wanted to see if she’s all right anyway.”
“You all right, Gabe?” Vic asked. “You got a lot at stake here for the community, your father’s memory, yourself—for Tess too, right?”
“Yes, I’m fine, just obsessed with solving these cases.”
“Good, ’cause once we get this prelim work done, I got some other info for you, but first go talk to vic number one, okay?”
* * *
Tess sat on the top of the old picnic table in the backyard and glared at the waving shocks of heavily laden corn. Trying to dispel the bogeyman of memories—or lack of them—was something she’d wanted to do for a while. Besides, the cornfield had always haunted her. Those dark green, deep and long, straight alleys between the blowing stalks... The way you could get lost in there, especially if you were small as she’d been back then. Any cornfield could be a maze to a child.
She nearly jumped off the table when a man’s voice spoke nearby.
“Tess?”
“Gabe! I didn’t hear you. Did you find her? Any news?”
“We’ve got help from the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation here—a forensics expert and an agent. The bureau’s a lot more sophisticated now than it was then. As a matter of fact,” he said as he came closer, “Victor Reingold, the same man who worked your case, is here.”
“Really? But he seemed old then!”
“Only to a young girl. Listen, I need to drive up to the falls to check on some graffiti there. It will only take an hour. I hear there’s something written there that may relate to this case. I wondered if you’d like to go along—to the falls. You could leave a for-sale poster for your house at the lodge there. I’ve got missing-child ones in the car that I’ll leave.”
“Oh, sure,” she said, scooting off the tabletop. “I always thought it was so pretty there. So, Agent Reingold’s here. I do remember him and things that came after—well, a while after I came back home. I should thank him for his help back then, even though it turned out I just came back on my own. If, that is, he understands I can’t recall things to help with this case, but wish I could.”
“Sure. I already told him that.”
“I’ll get my purse. Just a sec.”
She darted inside. The old, dried-out willow wand lay on the kitchen counter, almost as if it was a gift from Dad to her on this day. He’d often done that—left their birthday gifts somewhere and made them search for them, not just handed them over. But if she could recall things like that, why were other things so far out of reach? If only she could do what Kate had mentioned, which she figured was pretty impossible—use that old dowsing stick to find the missing girl.
7
After they walked out of the rustic Falls Park Lodge, where they left posters on the community bulletin board, Tess noticed the distant roar of the waterfall again. It was a constant, breathless hum, partly blocked by the colorful autumn trees, yet it seemed to her a looming, unseen presence. It was kind of like her memories, muted, hovering, steady. It made her remember the howl of the local train on the edge of town, farm machinery in the fields. Was there something special about those sounds she should recall?
“You okay?” Gabe asked as they approached the cruiser.
“As ever, yes and no,” she told him with a little shrug. “It’s so strange to have places evoke so many memories. We had family picnics here. Yet other things I’m desperate to recall just won’t come.”
He opened the passenger door for her to get in, closed it and walked around to the driver’s side. He closed that too but just sat there a moment, staring out through the windshield. “In the service, I commanded a squad that disrupted bombs—mostly erratic, homemade IEDs, at first in Afghanistan, mostly in Iraq. One went off when I was too close. The sound and shock waves stunned me, threw me twenty feet, whacked me out for a while. Most of my memories came back, but not when I was being hauled away by medics, then treated. And then in the hospital when I learned some of my guys had died—men I’d assigned to go defuse another bomb that same day in the Kirkuk marketplace—I kind of wished all the memories of sending them to their deaths were gone. They haunt me—their faces, that I called the shots that day.”
They both sat silent a moment. She was stunned by what he had just shared. So he understood her memory loss, some of it anyway. But since he’d gotten his memories back, he probably expected her to do the same.
“I’m sorry, Gabe. But you were doing your job. You couldn’t know what would happen, but others telling you about it could fill in the blanks, even if that brought more pain. And here it’s not knowing that haunts me, especially now that Sandy Kenton’s missing and Jill Stillwell and Amanda Bell haven’t been found yet.”
He only nodded and started the cruiser, and they drove along the curving blacktopped road toward the falls, past picnic areas, a kiddie playground and open-sided shelters for cookouts. She heard him clear his throat. Was he going to confide more terrible war memories? And could she manage to comfort him when her own past tormented her?
“Since you feel that way, and we’re desperate,” he said, “could you be brave enough to reenact the day you were taken? I mean, with me there, right beside you instead of across the backyard, beside you when we go into the corn. I got the feeling you were staring down that cornfield today. We could walk through it together the way you must have been taken. You just never know what that might trigger, and like I said, I’m desperate for leads. Tess?”
He pulled over on the deserted road but kept the motor running. As he turned to her, their gazes held.
Talk about bombs going off, she thought. Though his plan was enough to shock her, something huge leaped between them that had nothing to do with anything they were talking about. Once she’d stuck a fork into a toaster to try to get a piece of bread out and took such a jolt that her hair stood on end. It was crazy, but s
he felt that way now, like nothing she’d ever known.
“So, what do you think?” he prompted.
“I’ll try. I trust you, and I want to help. Not only to save Sandy and Jill—maybe Amanda—but my own sanity, as well. Talk about your being haunted by regret about your fellow soldiers. I regret the fate of any abducted child who did not come back like I did.”
“Kind of like survivor’s guilt—like me.” He reached over and put his hand on her knee, then withdrew it as if she’d burned him. He put the car in gear and drove around the next turn. The thirty-foot waterfall appeared with its frame of surrounding gray rock and trees hanging on to tiered ledges for dear life.
“See how people ruin beautiful things?” he said, and pointed through the windshield.
The Falls falls, as locals jokingly called them, were still spectacular, but she saw what he meant. With orange spray paint someone had scrawled a message in very fat, outlined letters on the face of the stone next to the white-green water spewing over the cliff above. Tess sucked in a deep breath. GIVE BACK THOSE TOWNIE KIDS YOU PERV OR ELSE!!! Then off to the side, though in different paint and writing, was AZURE ROCKS!
“Well, Azure rocks is a good pun,” Gabe said. “Azure, referring to the new consolidated high school, not far from here. As for the threat about the ‘perv,’ a good thought, but delivered the wrong way.”
“And in a different, more arty script.”
They got out of the car and walked around the deep pool that was the source of Cold Creek and headed toward the cliffside path. The noise was so much louder outside the car that they had to raise their voices.
“I’d like to believe,” he went on, “that message was also done by some kid from the school, where the Lake Azure students don’t get along very well with the locals. I want to walk closer, see if I can find any discarded paint cans or something else to nail anyone. It’s going to take expensive, dangerous sandblasting to clear that off, so it will be a felony, not just a misdemeanor for defacing state property.”
“I heard that Sandy Kenton’s father is a park ranger, right? Maybe someone who knows him or his family did this to get even more attention paid to her being taken. And we can figure Marian Bell didn’t do this, because it only mentions townie kids and she and Amanda lived in the Lake Azure area.”
Gabe’s eyes widened at that as they started on the path around the pool toward the foot of the falls. “The mayor insists we can afford only one deputy, or I’d hire you,” he told her. “I think Amanda’s father, Win Kenton, comes through here a lot, so who knows what a desperate dad will do? And it didn’t hit me about Marian, but I’m putting nothing beyond her. Besides that, what’s been worrying me is whether it meant anything that this latest victim was taken from the building that used to be the police station—like a challenge to the police, namely me.”
The spray was drifting here but it felt good, cooling her flushed face. Just being with Gabe made her feel warmer than the climb did. She skidded on the path, cried out, and he reached back for her.
He grabbed her arm hard, held her steady, then leaned back against the rock face and pulled her against him. With her body pressed to his side, her head fit perfectly under his chin. His grip was strong around her, and she clasped his upper arms. His leather jacket was wet. She leaned her hip against his and lifted her head to say something as he turned his head.
They kissed. Tentative, gentle, then strong and sure, mutual. She felt his slight beard stubble, his warm flesh against her chin and cheeks as they moved their heads. She held to him, opening her lips. Was the entire cliff face moving?
“Aha,” he said when they finally broke the kiss. Lips still parted, both of them seemed to breathe in unison. In the noise of crashing water, she stared at his mouth to read his words. “I didn’t mean to do that, but...”
“I know. Me neither.”
It was like a dream. They still held to each other, not moving, not saying more, pressed back against the solid rock. Tess felt strangely content. She liked heights—at least you could see everything around you. She sighed but that too was swallowed by the crash of the falls.
Finally, Gabe spoke, putting his lips close to her ear. “We’re almost where the person with the paint must have stood.”
“I can’t believe I slipped,” she said, almost shouting. Suddenly she had to fill the space between them with words, however loud the noise. “Where we grew up—after we left Ohio, I mean—in Jackson, Michigan, the big attraction was not a natural waterfall but a man-made one called the Cascades. Big, tall stairs, tumbling water, lit by colored lights,” she went on, gesturing grandly. “You could go all the way up on side stairs. My sisters and I often did. But you’d get the spray if the wind was wrong, and the steps would be slippery running up and down.”
“Tess,” he said, turning back to face her. “I’m not sorry it happened, though—the kiss.”
She nodded, maybe a bit too wildly. As he smiled, his features lifted, his eyebrows raised. His teeth were white and even.
She smiled back. For the first time in years, she felt good and—even standing on a slippery, lofty cliff path with thoughts about kids being kidnapped—almost safe.
* * *
After finding and bagging two discarded cans of spray paint and some wet cigarette butts, they headed back to town. Gabe didn’t want to drop Tess off and chided himself for acting as if this was some date when it was a kidnapping investigation. He’d kissed her. Kissed her! And wanted more. Was he nuts? Mad-dog Vic would have a fit.
“I’ll drop you off at your place,” he told her. “I’ll check with things at the station and crime scene, and then I’ll come back and we’ll walk through what we can recall from twenty years ago to see if anything hits you.”
“Don’t say it that way. But I know what you mean. Who is that honking?” she asked and looked out the back window. “Oh! I know that van. It’s Dane Thompson’s.”
“Right. I was going to talk to him later, and here he is.”
“It’s like he’s making a traffic stop on you.”
“Yeah. Sit tight.”
Gabe pulled over and got out. Maybe there was some emergency, but Dane was always a problem. The guy obviously believed the best defense was a good offense, but he evidently also liked being offensive. Ever since Gabe’s dad had Dane pegged as Tess’s most likely kidnapper, the guy had been on his case as much as the other way around.
Now Dane was yelling and shaking a fist at Gabe as they met partway between their vehicles.
“I hear that same state government agent’s back in town!” Dane shouted. His thin face was red clear to his hairline. Spittle flecked his lips. Didn’t he realize his demeanor made people dislike him? The man got along best with animals, maybe because he acted like one himself.
“Word travels fast to those who have a vested interest in a case,” Gabe said, fighting to keep calm, because, like Reese Owens, Dane always got him going.
“Of course I’m interested, and not only for some poor child. How about my own situation getting worse again? Police harassment. Local gossip. Slander that can hurt the business I’ve built. Years ago I should have gotten a restraining order on both Mr. Victor-BCI-agent and Sheriff McCord Senior! Now McCord Junior’s going to use the pick-on-Dane plan where they left off, I’ll bet!”
“If I had any proof—so far—that you were involved, you’d be in the holding cell in the police station.”
“So, have you got a suspect or a witness?” Dane demanded, squinting into the sun toward Gabe’s cruiser. “You pick on me again, and you’ll be sorry. Wait—is that Teresa Lockwood? My sister said that she was back.”
Dane started to walk closer. “Hold it right there,” Gabe said.
“What?” Dane rounded on him. “Like I’d hurt her now like I did before? Sheriff, if she got away from my place—which was search
ed, thoroughly, more than once in the months she was gone—would she have been found wandering a couple miles from town? No, she’d have been found closer. I just want to say hi, like my sister did. Teresa—I guess it’s Tess now—reciprocated with donuts, just the kind I like. Come on, she and I are cornfield neighbors again, Sheriff, and I don’t want any hard feelings, or wrong ones, between any of the three of us.”
As Gabe and Dane approached the cruiser, Gabe saw Tess had rolled the window halfway down on her side, maybe to hear what was being said.
“Hello, Dr. Thompson,” she said. She rolled the window the rest of the way down and stuck her hand out to shake his.
Looking surprised, Dane shook her hand and leaned down to talk while Gabe hovered. Something useful could come of this. Maybe Tess’s facing this guy would trigger something in her memory if Dane had anything to do with the initial crime years ago. He had to admire the firm front she was putting up when she’d seemed shaky to him at times.
“Teresa—I mean Tess—nice to have you back, even if it is to sell and move away for good,” Dane said.
“If you hear any of your clients—I won’t say patients, because my place isn’t ready to go to the dogs yet—would like an old house, let me know,” she told him.
“Oh, yeah, sure,” he said, evidently undecided whether to laugh at her little joke or not. “I’ll keep that in mind. I see you’re very well protected, but I just wanted you to know that you or the sheriff are welcome to visit our place anytime. Marva loves company. She never had children and lost her husband, so we’re getting on as best we can.”
“She’s been very kind.”
Gabe took it all in, amazed as Tess chatted about the fact that she didn’t have a husband or children either, but loved to be around kids, care for them and teach them. And about how good animals could be for little kids who were shy or afraid. She had calmed Dane down by the time he walked to his van and drove away.