But when Gabe got back in the cruiser, he saw she was shaking. Her hands were gripped so hard in her lap that her fingers had gone white. And tears were coursing down her cheeks.

“You remember something bad about him?” Gabe asked. “You carried on like that so he wouldn’t know?”

She shook her head hard and sniffed twice sharply. “It’s just that I thought he might be the one, so I tried to jolt something loose in my brain. Maybe he or Marva loves kids and so they take them, I don’t know. He gave me the creeps, but I can’t recall one bad thing about him. Sorry, Gabe,” she said, wiping her wet nose with the back of her hand, “but I don’t think I’m going to be any help at all, when I want to so bad. But maybe the cornfield trip will work.”

He reached over to squeeze her shoulder. Then she got a tissue out of her purse and blew her nose. Tess’s handling of Dane impressed him. Here he’d thought she was timid and broken, but the way she’d just dealt with a potential suspect—what a gutsy girl! He’d joked about making her a deputy, but he needed her, now in more ways than one.

8

After he dropped Tess off, Gabe drove to the crime scene. He parked on the street because he’d put up police tape in the alley. He’d finally contacted Sam Jeffers, who was bringing his dog, Boo, to track Sandy’s scent—he glanced at his watch—in around ten minutes.

Going in the front door, he had to wade through a crowd of about a dozen people, two with news cameras on their shoulders, others thrusting cell phone recorders at him. He’d assigned Jace to do follow-ups on various vans that used the alley, food delivery for the Kwik Shop, the garbage collection truck, even the security vehicle that picked up money from the bank. Not that he thought they’d taken the girl, but what had they seen? A particular vehicle? Someone who didn’t belong?

As the small crowd started to pepper him with questions, he held up both hands. “We’re working on finding evidence and a suspect to lead us to the kidnapped girl. That’s my only statement right now. There will be a press conference tomorrow.”

“Anything different this time, since you’ve made no progress on finding the others? Is Teresa Lockwood back to help with your investigation?” a woman with horn-rimmed glasses, crimson lipstick and a pen stuck behind her ear demanded as she thrust her cell phone in his face.

Deciding not to give them a sound bite to broadcast, he said, “I promise a press statement at the conference tomorrow morning. Excuse me please.”

The questions didn’t stop. Gabe scanned the faces. It was common cop wisdom that some criminals loved to hang around the scene, fed off it, got high on it, but he didn’t see any locals. No, there was one woman, a good-looking redhead who held up a large poster that read Hug Your Kids More! She kept trying to move behind Gabe to get on camera. Her name was Erika something. She was the social director at the Lake Azure Community Lodge, who did a lot of activities for children there and was a friend of Marian Bell. He recalled that Erika drove in from Chillicothe every day.

“I know you don’t have any kids of your own, Sheriff,” she called to him. “So do you really think you can feel what the parents of the kidnapped girls are going through? Thanks to no progress on this string of abductions, people are starting to think Cold Creek is not a good place to raise children. The mayor’s concerned it will bring real estate prices down lower than they already are. Little Amanda Bell and now this child are both—”

“Both getting a lot of attention to locate them. Local law enforcement is working with the cooperation of the state Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation, so, as I said, if you’ll excuse me, we’ll get back to that.”

“Any new suspects this time—” a man’s voice pursued Gabe as he ducked under his police tape, went inside, closed and locked the shop door. Ducking the flying witches, he saw Vic was sitting at the sales counter going through receipts.

Without looking up, Vic called to Gabe, “I’m not above doing grunt work. Been going over the civilian tips coming into your office, including from some psychics, and those are usually off-the-wall, but got to weed them out. Right now I’m checking credit card names of recent shoppers who could have seen Sandy, going back a couple of weeks. Glad you got through running the gauntlet out there. Man, you’d think a rural place like this wouldn’t attract so many media vultures, but we’ll have the national big boys in here if we don’t turn something up fast. Get anything from Tess Lockwood?”

Gabe felt he’d gotten a lot from her, some professional, but a lot personal. “In about an hour, we’re going to reenact her abduction on-site, what led up to it, see if we can spring some memory loose. She’s all in to help. Your old friend Dane Thompson flagged down the cruiser and challenged me to lay off before I even went near him. He also insisted on saying hi to Tess, but she handled him great, even though she admitted he shook her up bad.”

Vic finally looked up from his pile of papers. “Shook up because she recalled something about him?”

“Because she didn’t.”

“I swear, I sometimes wonder if Dane and that taxidermist friend of his could be in cahoots—John Hillman. I used to picture them mounting dead girls and hiding their bodies in one of those animal graves.”

Gabe shuddered. “You should see Dane’s house and cemetery now. Lots of money poured in. State-of-the-art.”

“Oh, I will see it.”

Vic was shaking his head as he went back to skimming sales slips. “I remembered that taxidermist’s name because he was my number two like for Tess’s kidnapper. So give me an update on Dane Thompson, your dad’s top pick for the suspect.”

“He’s done really well since the Lake Azure community opened. Lots of pampered pets instead of outside-doghouse and barn cats to tend to, I guess. He’s built a new vet clinic, redone his house inside and out, bought a new van, takes Caribbean cruises in the winter.”

“That right?” Vic said, looking up again.

“About two years ago he asked his younger sister, Marva, to move in with him when she was widowed. She keeps his house, I suppose, but works at the spa uptown, which he might have money in too. She probably thinks she’s died and gone to heaven because she was married to a small-time farmer with an old house and a played-out piece of land, which hasn’t sold yet, by the way.”

“I’d completely forgotten about her. We also checked out her husband’s old barn and their house. I remember now sneaking around there after dark. Don’t know why that slipped my mind since we thought Dane might have stashed Teresa there. We nearly got caught—maybe that’s why I blocked it out.”

“So all of us have memory problems, right?” Gabe challenged.

“Yeah, well, just be careful walking through this crime scene if you’re meeting that tracker and his dog out back. Mike’s been taking prints all over the place. I’ll be out in a bit to take a look at Jeffers. Kids like dogs, trust people with dogs, you know—a real ploy to lure them away, then, zap.”

“You’re thinking Sam Jeffers could be involved?”

“Gabe,” he said, glaring up at him, “I know you’re part of this community, and that’s your strength as well as your weakness here. I think anyone could be involved. Trust no one, okay? You said you couldn’t reach Jeffers even on his phone right after Sandy disappeared, that he was out hunting in the woods somewhere. And he’s a loner, right? Hangs out who knows where?”

“I know where. You want to go, I’ll take you.”

Gabe and his father had known Sam for a long time. Vic must have looked into him years ago, because it sounded as though he knew the man had several camping spots and crude hunting cabins. Over the years, Gabe’s dad, Gabe and friends of his had been out hunting with Sam and he had always seemed like a stand-up guy. Gabe wanted to argue with Vic, but instead he stalked into the back room. He recalled now how Vic really annoyed his father sometimes. Hell, he might as well drag Pastor Snell in for questioning or longtime Mayor Owens, the little old librarian—his deputy or himself!