“No, I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yeah, well, here’s your daddy’s phone number out Oregon way if you’re so big on reunions,” he said, digging in his jacket pocket. “And speaking of that, here’s hoping that crazy Bright Star Monson doesn’t suck you into his cult like he did your cousins.”

Before she could tell him that he ought to find a way to get the Hear Ye community out of the area instead of her, he stopped shuffling toward her, cocked his head and backtracked.

“I hear the others coming and I want to know how they did,” he said, and hurried from the room.

Tess slumped back in her chair. How had that man been elected, over and over, for at least two decades? He was obnoxious and kind of creepy.

She picked up the small piece of lined paper the mayor had tossed on the table. The phone number had her father’s name, Jack Lockwood, scribbled in big, loopy writing.

Why did the mayor want her to call her father? Maybe her father wanted her to contact him because he was afraid to approach her after everything that had happened. Maybe he knew something that could help. But had the mayor suggested her father had done something wrong? Sins of the parents?

She heard muted voices down the hall and sat in her chair, waiting. Waiting for the scarecrow.

* * *

It was barely five minutes later when Gabe came into the room. He carried a large, clear plastic bag with him, but he kept it behind his hip. She gripped the edge of her chair seat and shifted back in it.

“Sorry if Mayor Owens bothered you. He says you were defiant and sassy—I like the sound of that.”

Tess looked at him instead of what he held. She knew he was teasing—was he flirting?—but she was too upset to respond to that.

“He did bother me,” she admitted. “I think he was implying my father knows more than has been said about the day I disappeared. He gave me his phone number.”

“I have it and may use it. But if the man hasn’t contacted any of you for years...”

“I just might let you call him, though I’ve thought of doing it myself many times. I’ll talk to my sister Char. She’s a social worker, good at those kinds of things...counseling and comforting. I meant to call her anyway.”

“Tess, Mike brought the scarecrow back. Want to have a look?”

“Not really. But it’s something important, I know it is. And I’m doing it for Sandy, Amanda, that second victim, Jill Stillwell too. It’s not just for me.”

“Okay,” he said. He closed the door behind him. Maybe he didn’t want the mayor or even Vic Reingold to hear her comments for some reason.

He came around the table and put the nearly two-foot-long bag down on it. Weren’t field scarecrows a lot bigger than that?

He smoothed the plastic to show the scarecrow clearly. He watched her face. She bucked back so hard her chair nearly tipped over. “It’s him! It’s him!” she shouted.

Gabe put a firm hand on her shoulder. “It’s who, Tess? Who?”

“Mr. Mean,” she said, and burst into tears. “See his face? See how awful he is? It’s not me that’s bad, it’s him!”

Gabe grabbed the thing, threw it facedown on the floor and kneeled beside her chair. He pulled her into his arms, and held her.

“It’s all right,” he said, rocking her as if she were a child. And that’s what she felt like. A frightened child. The face on that thing—glaring eyes, frowning face, teeth showing. But not huge teeth like on the green monster.

“Tell me more about Mr. Mean,” Gabe said, his voice gentle. “He’s the one who hit you?”

“Yes. Yes!”

“But who made him hit you?”

“I did. If I was bad.”

“Tess, are you sure it wasn’t your mother or father who had Mr. Mean?”

“No—ask Kate and Char.”

“Okay, okay. But tell me about Mr. Mean.” His voice was soothing, coaxing. “I won’t let him hurt you ever again.”

Suddenly, though she felt safe in his arms, she also felt silly. Exploding in tears like that. Almost using baby talk. Clinging to Gabe the way little Kelsey had clung to her at the Hear Ye compound earlier. She was acting like an idiot, when she had to keep control.

“Tess, are you seeing or hearing anything else? Did the scarecrow trigger any other memories?” Gabe asked.

She shook her head, then sniffed and sat up straight, wiping her wet cheeks with the palms of both hands. She wriggled out of his arms, and he helped her stand. Keeping her back to the thing on the floor, she moved a few steps away, fumbled in her purse for a tissue and blew her nose.

“Sorry I acted like a kid,” she said.

“I’ll bet you need to get back to that again to remember.”

“Like I said—it’s all I can recall.”

“Smackings and Mr. Mean. It’s a start. I know I’m asking you to go to a place you don’t want to face, Tess.”

“A place I can’t face, not from fear, but because I just can’t remember more. The helplessness, feeling abandoned by my family—I can’t get more than that. But why was that thing left when the kidnapper took Sandy? Surely not to scare or warn me.”

“I’d hate to think so. Maybe in hustling Sandy out the door, it was dropped, not deliberately,” he said. “I swear, we’ll go over this dirty, crude scarecrow with a fine-tooth comb.”

“I can’t believe I blurted that out—Mr. Mean,” she said, wiping under her eyes. “I don’t think it’s the monster from my dreams. That one is bigger, louder—more like that corn reaper.”

“How about you go with me to Aaron Kurtz’s to take a close-up look at his harvester?”

“But he’d get suspicious. What if he did see something, if those presents he sent all of us that next Christmas were because of guilt? Besides, I was thinking of seeing him on my own. You might spook him.”

“Tess, that’s not a good idea.”

“All I know right now,” she said, “is that I need to head home. I’m glad you’re going to take that scarecrow apart and maybe trace something.”

“About Aaron,” Gabe continued, “I usually have good instincts about people and I think he’s a good guy. Vic and my dad looked at him, interviewed him years ago.”

“Years ago...” she echoed as she headed for the door, giving the scarecrow a wide berth. “I’m going to get it all back, Gabe, whatever it costs.”

* * *

After Tess left the room, Gabe picked up the scarecrow and looked at it closely. He knew it might take days for the BCI lab to check this out, and he needed something now. Tess’s reaction when she saw the scarecrow had reminded him of soldiers with blast-induced trauma. In her cry, “It’s him! It’s him!” he’d heard shouts of “Incoming fire!”

The scarecrow had an orange, pointed cap. He might be crazy, but the stitching on it looked done by hand, not a machine. There was no tag on the cap. He squeezed the hemp-cloth head, tied with frayed cord at the neck. Nothing seemed to be secreted within except the stick it was on, spearing the body crotch to head. The hair was yellow yarn, the outfit black cotton, but even that color didn’t keep the dirt from showing. The thing looked really old. And it was far smaller than the scarecrows he’d seen used to keep birds out of a garden or field.

It had no resemblance to the friendly-looking scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz movie that ran on TV every year. Yeah, Mr. Mean did look scary, as if he was made specifically for Halloween, perfect for this time of year. Some of the straw from the stuffed body stuck out where the wrists and ankles would be. It had no arms or legs, only smaller pieces of gray wood to simulate limbs that must be nailed to its wooden backbone. Swung hard, it could definitely hurt a child, be used as a paddle or weapon.

Looking closely, he thought that the pieces of straw stuffing poking out of the body looked fresh. But the wooden stick backbone looked old.

And then he saw what he was looking for—anywhere to start a search, find a link.

Just showing under the cloth of the body was a price tag still stuck to the wood. The machine printing was smudged, and there was no bar code, so the purchase couldn’t be too recent. At the top of the tag, he could barely read the words. Mason’s Mill. The local lumber mill, owned by his friend Grant Mason, was just outside town.