“You got time to come in and set a spell?” Sam asked Gabe, as if she weren’t even there. At least that meant he had nothing to hide inside, didn’t it?

Gabe turned him down, saying he had to get Tess home. “Someone hit her utility pole last night and her place went dark,” Gabe said. “You old boys weren’t out on the road after drinking last night, were you?”

How Sam found that amusing, she wasn’t sure, but somehow Gabe conned his way into looking at the bumper of Sam’s beat-up old truck out in the doorless shed he used as a garage.

Glad the hound Boo didn’t show any interest in her, Tess didn’t go with them but walked closer to the house. A slant-door of an old-fashioned root cellar with a padlock on it caught her interest. In this refrigerator age, root cellars were outdated, and people never locked them.

Checking to be sure the men weren’t looking, Tess bent and knocked on the wood. The root cellar had been repaired with new boards, one with Mason’s Mill stamped on it. She knocked on the wood again. Nothing. No answer, but what did she expect? Sandy Kenton to scream out that she needed help?

“Now, Miss Lockwood,” Sam said when the men ambled back over, “I never would ’spect you trying to get to my best moonshine.”

Tess blushed. He’d seen her. She’d made a mess of this, probably was wrong to insist Gabe bring her.

“I thought it was another place for dogs,” she blurted, probably making herself look even more stupid.

“Bad dogs, you mean?” he said with a wink and a shake of his shaggy head. “Naw, it’s not really moonshine, Sheriff, but I don’t think you came lookin’ for that. Keeps my beer cool, though. Want one, I’ll bet, eh, Sheriff, but not when you’re on duty?”

There was more small talk, all between Gabe and Sam, followed by some back-slapping. Tess walked ahead and got in the cruiser.

“Sorry I screwed that up,” she said the minute Gabe got back in.

“Almost.”

“No marks or dents on his truck, right?”

“Nope.”

“Do you really think he uses that old root cellar for storing beer?”

“No way to know without a search warrant, and the Falls County judge I use would never give me one on what I know.”

“I promise to keep even quieter—that is, say next to nothing—at Hillman’s place.”

“Tess, you did fine. But didn’t you hear what Sam divulged about Dane? I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me before. The man uses veterinarian drugs. They not only cover pain, but could cause amnesia, I’ll bet. Somehow I’ve got to find out what Dane uses, check into that.”

He pulled out of the crooked driveway, and they started down the hill. “I see what you mean,” she said. “A long shot, but—”

“But I’m desperate. And maybe it’s not just that you were too young or traumatized so you didn’t recall details of your captivity. I had a friend who had a colonoscopy—he was dreading it—but they gave him an IV that didn’t knock him out so that he could follow orders, but it kept him from recalling the details of the unpleasant procedure afterward.”

“And those needle marks on my arms, like I was some kind of junkie.”

At the bottom of the hill, she almost thought she heard the barking of those dogs again. But there was some other sound, more muted and distant than her memory of the corn harvester, but—

She turned toward him, twisting in her seat belt.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“What’s what? That sound? It’s just a train. Coal trains come through here real regular, you know that. Why? You look upset.”

“Scared. I feel scared, and it’s just a distant train. Sounds really stick with me, even when I can’t get any visual memories. One of the books Miss Etta gave me about childhood traumas said smells or sounds could trigger a buried memory. Gabe, I think I remember the sounds of a train, and there’s no tracks in earshot of my house here or where I live in Michigan. But I don’t think the sounds from a train carry to Dane’s place either.”

“I’m starting to think we need a field trip to Chillicothe,” he said as they turned out onto a paved road. “I need to talk to the vet who gave Dane the initial alibi, because I remember my dad saying she lived near a train track. I could ask her about vet drugs without quizzing Dane. And I’ve got something else to check on there too, looking into someone’s past who has a record of molesting little girls.”

“Someone who lives here now?”

“Yeah. Let’s just save that until later. I don’t want you to go to Dane’s with me, Tess, but let’s go see what Hillman has to say about that stuffed dog in the backseat. Just don’t wander off if you see any buried rooms with padlocks and new wood, okay? Hearing the train narrows down where you might have been held around here to about fifty square miles instead of a hundred. Something’s going to break these cases loose. I only hope it’s not too late for the other girls.”

15

Tess was relieved to see that John Hillman’s driveway and house were a far cry from the creepiness of Sam’s. Everything looked well kept and newly painted. The driveway was a short, straight one off State Route 104 to Chillicothe. A neatly lettered sign read Hillman’s Taxidermy and had a stag’s head on it. She wondered if Mr. Hillman would sell the new stag’s head or keep it. Thoughts of mounted stag heads with those liquid eyes and that rack of pointed antlers made her uncomfortable.

But where had she seen mounted stag heads? She couldn’t recall anything specific.

“When you said I wouldn’t like this place—that it was a house of horrors—I pictured it back in the woods like Sam Jeffers’s house,” she told Gabe.

“I didn’t mean horrors linked to you. I just meant you might not like what you see inside, depending on what he’s working on. Even though he hangs around with some of the backwoods boys, Hillman’s a modern businessman. He advertises in the Chillicothe Gazette, and this location on a busy road helps promote his services too. People are in and out of here all the time.”

Gabe took the mounted pit bull out of the backseat, got rid of the plastic bag, then held the dog under his arm as they went up to the side door with another Taxidermy sign hanging over it. He rang the bell. Tess jumped when the sound of it was not a chime but an animal’s roar.

“Black bear recording,” Gabe said as John Hillman, wearing a leather apron and goggles shoved up on his forehead, opened the door.

“Hey, Sheriff. And, Ann—oh, sorry, guess not,” he said, squinting at Tess. “Hey—I was wondering what happened to that pit bull!” He reached out and stroked the dog’s head. “Some jerk stole that right off my back porch when I had it out so the glue could dry. Glad you got it back for me. Come on in, both of you.”

“John, this is Tess Lockwood,” Gabe said, and made formal introductions, though the man seemed more interested in the mounted dog than her. “Someone left this in her backyard.”

“That right?” he said, leading them into a large workroom. “It belongs to Jonas Simons, Ann’s brother. It’s one of his favorite dogs, named Sikkem, died real sudden.”

“Sic ’em, huh?” Gabe said. “I don’t see a mark on his fur. I’ll bet you did a good job patching him up. One of his fighting dogs?”

“Fighting dogs?” Hillman echoed, looking overly dramatic, Tess thought. “Don’t know a thing about that. But why would someone leave it in your yard, Tess?” he said, turning to her and narrowing his eyes.

“That’s what we’d like to find out,” she said, keeping her attention on him rather than looking around as she had done at first.

This place smelled strange, sharp, like turpentine, and the heads of dead animals peered down from all four walls. A large vat behind Hillman was making strange sounds, and he had a big, bloody pelt stretched out on the worktable behind him. Worse, a collection of what must be glass eyes stared at her from a clear vase on the table. Around the room, plastic carvings of different animals were displayed in great detail—including veins and muscle ridges—with various stages of their own hides pinned to them.