Читать книгу Vanished - Elizabeth Heiter - Страница 13

Six

Tomas had never gone home last night, but he’d fallen asleep at his desk sometime after six. The call that had woken him less than two hours later had initially seemed like a crank call, a person who refused to give his name reporting “something suspicious” in the marsh. But when asked to explain the term suspicious, the person had said it looked like a body in a trash bag.

Brittany had been missing almost thirty-five hours now. The profiler had been on scene since yesterday and the CARD agents since the night before that. They’d given him the statistics, so he knew it was way too likely the caller was right.

The thought made him slow instinctively as he tracked through the marsh, and his foot sank into the goop at the bottom. Tomas yanked the top of his knee-high plastic boot until it popped free and pushed onward. Ahead of him, Jack Bullock moved forward with seeming ease.

And that was ironic. Except when taking a police call, Jack had probably never visited this part of Rose Bay. Tomas could actually see the house where he’d spent most of his formative years.

It was raised on wooden stilts at the back for when the marsh waters rose, and the exterior was stucco. When he was a boy, there had been a deck off the back, but it was gone now. His parents had finally moved once their last son left home, and since then, the house had gone through a series of owners. From this distance, it looked forlorn and neglected.

“Can you imagine?” Jack huffed, gesturing at a shack up ahead of them. “Who’d want to live there?”

Tomas kept quiet, deciding to assume Jack didn’t know he’d grown up a hundred yards away. As for the shack, it was unoccupied and had been for more than a year. “It’s empty. Let’s check it out when we’re finished here, make sure no one used it to hide Brittany.” More likely, they’d just find someone’s drug stash, but it was worth a shot.

Jack turned to say something else, then cursed as one of his feet slid out from underneath him. He caught himself before he was soaked, but still let out another stream of obscenities. “How far out into the marsh did the caller say it was?”

“It shouldn’t be much farther.”

“We should’ve taken the boat,” Jack groused, breathing hard in the heavy humidity.

“The water level’s too low.” It only came up to their knees in the early-morning tide, and Tomas knew it wouldn’t get much deeper where they had to search.

He’d spent enough time in the marshes as a child to know them. The spot he was now searching for a body had once been a favorite place for him and his brothers; it was where they’d row their dad’s old canoe, race through the marshes and out into the ocean. Back then, the main thing they’d had to worry about was their drunken neighbor, who liked to shoot at anything that moved with his hunting rifle. Tomas longed for that kind of simplicity now.

Since Brittany had been abducted and Evelyn Baine had come to town, Jack had been a bigger pain in his ass than usual, Walter Wiggins was threatening to sue the police department for not protecting him after he’d been threatened and the whole town was in an uproar over yesterday’s arrest of Brittany’s father. To make matters worse, Evelyn had brought him a suspect.

Despite presenting a profile that pegged the abductor as white, late last night she’d returned to the station with Jack and named Darnell Conway as her key suspect. And if Rose Bay learned that a black man was the prime suspect in the abductions of young white girls, the riot at the station the other day was going to look like a peaceful gathering. And he’d be in for a shitstorm he wasn’t sure his small police force could handle.

“How much farther?” Jack asked, sloshing ahead of him.

“We’re close.”

Being from the wrong side of the tracks wasn’t something Tomas liked to advertise about himself. But it gave him an advantage in his job. He’d grown up seeing Rose Bay from the other side. Instead of the perfect, safe community where the rich could feel secure leaving their doors unlocked and their children with nannies, Tomas had seen the dangers.

He’d been raised to respect the natural perils, from the undertow in the ocean to the speed of high tide when it poured in over the sand bars. He’d known to avoid the neighbor who always smelled like sour whiskey and not to let the man who claimed he was from the energy company into the house when his father wasn’t home.

Brittany’s parents, on the other hand, had felt secure in allowing their daughter to play alone in the front yard, lulled into complacency by Rose Bay’s seeming perfection. Nothing bad had ever touched them, so they thought nothing ever could. Until their daughter was taken from right under their noses.

“Over there,” Jack called, pointing, and Tomas could see it, too, floating at the far end of the marsh. An industrial-size black garbage bag, with something heavy weighing it down. Had it not gotten tangled in the reeds, it probably would have sunk.

“Shit.” The caller was right. It did look like it could be a body. A small body.

He’d come across enough dead bodies when he’d worked homicide in Atlanta—including a couple in the garbage. He’d taken the job in quiet Rose Bay, hoping to see fewer. And that was what had happened. But the child cases were always the hardest. If Brittany Douglas was in here, it would rank up there with the worse cases he’d handled.

Tomas wiped a hand across his forehead and it came back wet with perspiration from temperatures that were pushing ninety, at 8:00 a.m. He forced his feet to move faster, splashing through the murky water, until he reached the bag.

Jack got there ahead of him, but he waited, looking apprehensive. “Should we try dragging it out before we open it?”

In answer, Tomas pulled the switchblade from his pocket.

“What if it’s just the air in the bag keeping it afloat?” Jack asked, but it was too late, because Tomas had already run the knife through the top of the bag.

It deflated slightly, letting out a putrid smell. Jack adjusted his stance the way Tomas had seen him do dozens of times at crime scenes in preparation for something he didn’t want to see.

Tomas folded the knife and stuffed it back in his pocket, then slipped on a pair of plastic gloves. He tore the bag open wider with his hands and things started spilling out. A perfectly good basketball. A filthy old pillow. Some green slimy substance he couldn’t identify.

He braced his feet wide in the gunk on the marsh floor and stuck his gloved hand into the bag, feeling for anything that might have been a body. His fingers pushed through cans and tissue and a rubber ball, but nothing in the bag had ever been alive, other than the maggots feeding on old Chinese takeout.

“It’s nothing,” he told Jack, who rocked back on his heels with a relieved sigh.

“What a waste of time,” Jack complained, pivoting gracelessly and plodding back toward shore.

Tomas sighed, shoved the spilled trash into the bag and hefted it over his shoulder. It weighed far less than a body, but it felt a thousand times heavier as he followed Jack back toward a town demanding answers he didn’t have.

* * *

The tide raced greedily at Evelyn, soaking the bottom of her jeans as she walked toward the sand dunes shrouded by long grass. From the main part of the beach, the area was accessible only to the adventurous. To get here, Evelyn had clambered over an outcropping of rocks, fighting for purchase on the slick surface. Combined with the dunes to her right, this was an unlikely spot for beachcombers. For someone trying to hide a body, though, it might be appealing.

Evelyn pushed determinedly toward the dunes. The wind whipped sand around, like little needles dancing on her skin, and the waves crashed loudly into the rocks.

She’d chosen a spot away from the other searchers this morning, needing time alone to think. About Walter Wiggins and Darnell Conway. About the trickier aspects of her profile.

She hadn’t been to this spot since before Cassie had gone missing. It had been Cassie’s mom who’d shown them how to get here. Instead of risking the rocks, they’d come through the dunes. To a twelve-year-old, they’d seemed to go on forever, but then they’d arrived at this little stretch of beach, and it had been like their own private world.

She’d thought about it for the first time earlier today, and realized it had only been a month before Cassie’s abduction that they’d come here. Maybe he’d followed them. Maybe he’d made it his private world, too.

A shiver raced through her, as hard as the wind ripping strands of hair from her bun.

“Hey!”

The unexpected voice made Evelyn’s head snap up. Emerging from the dunes was Darnell Conway.

She felt a new sense of unease. Had he followed her out here?

Evelyn’s hand grazed her hip, where her SIG Sauer rested reassuringly. Her holster had rubbed the skin underneath it raw in the South Carolina sun, but she never went anywhere without it.

After leaving Darnell’s house yesterday, she’d done some more digging and learned he’d kicked his girlfriend, Kiki, out of his house two years ago. It was possible he’d stopped the abductions after Cassie eighteen years ago because Kiki had started to suspect. Now, if he had decided to go back to his old ways, there’d be no one around to notice anything.

As Darnell walked toward her, an almost lazy swagger to his stride, Evelyn watched his hands for any sign of a weapon. But they swung loosely at his sides, empty.

“It’s Evelyn Baine, from the FBI, right?” Darnell asked, an artfully blank expression on his face.

“What are you doing here?”

A hint of a smile curved one corner of his mouth, and a predatory gleam flickered in his eyes. “Well, after you and that officer told me about the missing girl, how could I not help with the search?”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“I’m sure you know I work in sales. From home. I can set my own schedule.”

He stepped closer and Evelyn continued walking, careful to keep him in her line of sight. “Why here?”

“The dunes?”

“Yeah. The cops were assigning searchers to groups.”

“You’re not in a group,” Darnell said, lengthening his stride and moving close enough to give her a whiff of his aftershave. “Should you be out here all alone?”

His tone was neutral, but his words were calculated, intended to intimidate.

Evelyn felt her jaw tighten as she strode up the first sand dune instead of heading back toward the rocks. She’d need both hands for that climb, and with Darnell next to her, she was keeping her gun hand free.

Either he wanted to flaunt his guilt, thinking he’d never be caught, or he was just one of those guys who got off on being aggressive, got power out of trying to bully others.

“Should you?” she tossed back, wanting him to know he didn’t scare her.

Darnell kept pace with her, his expression shifting in a way that told her he liked the challenge. “What’s the point of searching with the group? The more area we cover, the more likely someone is to find this little girl, right?”

Or the easier it would be to hide a body, with the convenient excuse of being out searching. Some killers liked to be the ones to “discover” their victims. And if Darnell had, in fact, killed his girlfriend’s daughter twenty years ago, he was one of them.

A sick feeling roiled in her stomach. Was she going to find Brittany in these dunes? Was Cassie here somewhere, too?

She clenched her fists and intentionally slowed, so Darnell could pick the route. If he wanted to lead her to the bodies, pretend to find them, she’d go along with it.

His eyes narrowed slightly as she allowed him to get in front of her. It was as though he could read her. As though he knew exactly what she was doing.

She half expected him to call her on it, but instead he suggested, “Let’s go this way,” and led her deeper into the dunes.

Almost immediately, he started moving faster. He probably had ten inches on her, so his strides were much longer.

Was he trying to wear her out, make her easier to overpower once he got her deep into the dunes?

She kept a careful distance between them as they crested one dune after the next. Darnell was breathing heavily, his T-shirt soaked through and stuck to him, outlining biceps bigger than her thighs.

“Kinda sick, isn’t it?” Darnell wheezed after ten minutes of silence.

“What?” Evelyn asked. She was sweating and thirsty, and the sun was beating down, no cloud cover in sight. The salty, humid air felt thick in her lungs. And the thought that Cassie could be buried under one of the dunes she was trudging over made chills dance across her sweat-drenched skin.

Because if Darnell was the Nursery Rhyme Killer, maybe she was right and he wanted to “discover” the bodies. Or maybe he was simply getting a thrill out of having her—an intended victim who was now investigating him—walk over them.

Of course, if he was worried that after eighteen years someone suspected him again, he could also be desperate. And desperate meant dangerous.

Darnell slowed down, eased in next to her. “Well, come on. No one wants to say it, but everyone knows. None of those girls were found eighteen years ago. The same guy is back now.” He raised his eyebrows meaningfully.

When she didn’t respond, he pressed, “They lure you into these search parties with the idea that you could help rescue this poor little girl. But let’s be honest. We’re looking for her body.”

An image flashed through Evelyn’s mind, and the shock made her slide partway down the dune. An image of a girl with blond ringlets bouncing in pigtails, sky-blue eyes dancing with happiness, a quick smile for everyone she met. Cassie.

The last time Evelyn had seen her, they’d played hide-and-seek in Cassie’s backyard. Evelyn had felt so free, felt she’d finally fit in somewhere, like she had a real home, a friendship that would last a lifetime. Instead, that day marked the last time she’d really been a child.

Anger swelled in her. Had this man taken that away from her? Taken Cassie?

The glare of the sun over the crystal-brown sand dimmed as Evelyn’s hand instinctively jerked toward her weapon.

When she spun around, Darnell was right there, so close that if she breathed too deeply they’d be touching. She recognized the look in his eyes because she’d seen it before, usually in interrogation rooms. His words were meant to get a reaction.

His lips twitched, something wanting to break free. A snarl? A smile? But he held it back, staring her down, triumph in his eyes.

And she realized what she’d done. She’d gotten distracted, thinking of Cassie. She’d let him get too close.

She was armed, yes, but in the time it took to clear her weapon from its holster, he could take her down with sheer bulk. She could run, but which way? She was at the base of two dunes, with no idea how to get out.

Triumph showed on Darnell’s face, telling her he could sense her fear.

And damn it, that infuriated her. It ignited all the anger she’d buried under mountains of survivor’s guilt and mourning.

So, he had a hundred pounds on her, all of it muscle. She had hand-to-hand training from the FBI. And she wasn’t going down without a fight.

She leaned her head back so he could see it in her eyes.

He was taken aback, like most bullies, when he realized sheer intimidation wouldn’t do it. A flash of surprise, of panic, appeared in Darnell’s eyes. He hid it fast and lifted his hand.

Evelyn instinctively jumped backward, her hands coming up fisted.

“Move back now!”

Evelyn identified the deep baritone instantly, and Darnell reacted to the order by calmly raking his hand through his hair. Then he took his time stepping away from her.

Finally Evelyn looked up, over the top of the dune, and right at Kyle, who was walking toward them, his weapon sighted on Darnell.

“Evelyn and I were just helping with the search,” Darnell said, sounding way too calm for someone who had a weapon aimed at his head. “You always this trigger-happy, man?”

Not lowering his weapon or taking his gaze off Darnell, Kyle held his hand out for her.

Evelyn took it, and he tugged her up the dune next to him as if she weighed nothing, barely even adjusting his weight. Only then did Kyle holster his weapon.

But his hand still lingered close to it, and Evelyn recognized the battle-hardened look in Kyle’s eyes as his “mission face.” For someone who usually seemed laid-back and approachable, right now Kyle looked exactly like the trained operator he was.

Darnell clearly saw it, because he kept his movements slow and his hands away from his pockets as Kyle indicated that he should move in front of them.

“You need to sign in with the rest of the searchers,” Kyle said as the three of them started walking out of the dunes.

“How do you know I didn’t?” Darnell parried.

“Because when I asked around about where Evelyn was, I heard I wasn’t the only one looking for her.”

Darnell had told people he wanted to find her? That meant he probably hadn’t intended to harm her, just to intimidate.

As her adrenaline level decreased, Evelyn cursed herself for screwing this up. If she’d stayed focused, she might have gotten him to slip up.

Darnell shrugged, glancing back at Kyle. “Evelyn was the one who told me about the girl’s abduction. She mentioned the search, so I figured I’d join her.”

As they stepped out of the dunes and onto the high grass alongside a parking lot full of beachgoers, Evelyn put her hand on Kyle’s arm. When he turned to her, she gave a quick shake of her head. A silent request not to warn Darnell to stay away from her.

She’d trained in psychology for years before arriving at BAU, which was its own specialized course in how the most dangerous minds worked. And every bit of her training was telling her that Darnell would seek her out again.

Next time, she’d be prepared. She wouldn’t let him catch her alone and off guard. Next time, he wouldn’t be the only one playing mind games.

Because he might have spent his whole life fooling people, but her job was to get into his head and make him give her the truth. And her job was the biggest part of her life.

She knew Kyle didn’t like it, but he kept quiet as Darnell glanced between them, obviously expecting a threat.

When none came, amusement glimmered in his eyes. “I’ll be back to help some more later. Can’t let this guy get away with it.”

He sauntered away, then called over his shoulder, “See you soon, Evelyn.”