He skimmed through his messages, trying to focus his eyes long enough to read. He was exhausted and his hand was throbbing. Two calls from the mayor and a note that the Dew Drop Inn had called to discuss the bill for Mark McCallum, the polygraph expert he had ordered for Lev Ward, didn’t help matters. Apparently, the young man liked room service.

Jeffrey rubbed his eyes, focusing on Buddy Conford’s name. The lawyer had been called into court but would come to the station as soon as he could for the talk with his stepdaughter. Jeffrey had forgotten for a moment about Patty O’Ryan. He set the note aside and continued sorting through the stack.

His heart stopped in his chest when he recognized the name at the top of the next-to-last message. Sara’s cousin, Dr. Hareton Earnshaw, had called. In the note section, Marla had written, “He says everything is fine,” then added her own question: “You okay?”

He picked up the phone, dialing Sara’s number at the clinic. After listening to several minutes of the Chipmunks singing classic rock while on hold, she came on the line.

“Hare called,” he told her. “Everything’s fine.”

She let out a soft sigh. “That’s good news.”

“Yeah.” He thought about the other night, the risk she took putting her mouth on him. A cold sweat came, followed by more relief than he had felt when he had first read Hare’s message. He had sort of reconciled himself to dealing with bad news, but thinking about the possibility of taking Sara down with him was too painful to even fathom. He had caused enough hurt in her life already.

She asked, “What did Esther say?”

He caught her up on the missing child and Esther’s fears. Sara was obviously skeptical. She asked, “She’s always come back?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t know that I would’ve even taken a report if not for the fact of Abby. I keep going back and forth between thinking she’s just hiding somewhere for the attention and thinking she’s hiding for a reason.”

“The reason being Rebecca knows what happened to Abby?” Sara asked.

“Or something else,” he said, still not sure what he believed. He voiced the thought he’d been trying to suppress since Esther’s call this morning. “She could be somewhere, Sara. Somewhere like Abby.”

Sara was quiet.

“I’ve got a team searching the forest. I’ve got Frank checking out jewelry stores. We’ve got a station full of ex-addicts and alcoholics from the farm, most of them smelling pretty ripe.” He stopped, thinking he’d be talking for another hour or two if he kept listing dead leads.

Out of the blue, she said, “I told Tess I’d go to church with her tonight.”

Jeffrey felt something in his gut squeeze. “I really wish you wouldn’t.”

“But you can’t tell me why.”

“No,” he admitted. “It’s a gut instinct, but I’ve got a pretty smart gut.”

“I need to do this for Tess,” she said. “And myself.”

“You turning religious on me?”

“There’s something I need to see for myself,” she told him. “I can’t talk about it now, but I’ll tell you later.”

He wondered if she was still mad at him for sleeping on the couch. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong- really. I just need to think some more before I can talk about it,” she said. “Listen, I’ve got a patient waiting.”

“All right.”

“I love you.”

Jeffrey felt his smile come back. “I’ll see you later.”

He slid the phone back on the hook, staring at the blinking lights. Somehow, he felt like he had gotten his second wind, and he thought now was as good a time as any to talk to Cole Connolly.

He found Lena in the hallway outside the bathroom. She was leaning against the wall, drinking a Coke, and she startled when he walked up, spilling soda down the front of her shirt.

“Shit,” she muttered, brushing the liquid from her blouse.

“Sorry,” he told her. “What’s going on?”

“I needed to get some air,” she said, and Jeffrey nodded. The Holy Grown workers had obviously spent the early hours of the morning toiling in the fields and had the body odor to prove it.

“Any progress?”

“Basically, all we’ve got is more of the same. She was a nice girl, praise the Lord. She did her best, Jesus loves you.”

Jeffrey didn’t acknowledge her sarcasm, though he wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment. He was beginning to see that Lena ’s calling them a cult hadn’t been that far off. They certainly acted as if they were brainwashed.

Lena sighed. “You know, actually, looking past all their bullshit, she seemed like a really nice girl.” She pressed her lips together, and he was surprised to see this side of her. As quickly as it had appeared, it passed, though, and Lena said, “Oh, well. She must have had something to hide. Everybody does.”

He caught a glint of guilt in her eye, but instead of asking about Terri Stanley and the police picnic, he told her, “Rebecca Bennett’s missing.”

Shock registered on her face. “Since when?”

“Last night.” Jeffrey handed her the note Esther had pressed into his hand outside the diner. “She left this.”

Lena read it, saying, “Something’s not right,” and he was glad that someone was taking this seriously. She asked, “Why would she run away this close to her sister dying? Even I wasn’t that selfish when I was fourteen. Her mother must be going nuts.”

“Her mother’s the one who told me,” Jeffrey said. “She called me at Sara’s this morning. Her brothers didn’t want her to report it.”

“Why?” Lena asked, handing back the note. “What harm could it do?”

“They don’t like the police involved.”

“Yeah,” Lena said. “Well, we’ll see how they don’t like the police involved when she doesn’t come back.” She asked, “Do you think she’s been taken?”

“Abby didn’t leave a note.”

“No,” she said, then, “I don’t like this. I don’t feel good about it.”

“I don’t either,” he agreed, tucking the note back into his pocket. “I want you to take the lead with Connolly. I don’t think he’ll like his questions coming from a woman.”

The smile on her face was brief, like a cat spotting a mouse. “You want me to piss him off?”

“Not on purpose.”

“What are we looking for?”

“I just want a sense of him,” he said. “Find out about his dealings with Abby. Float out Rebecca’s name. See if he bites.”

“All right.”

“I want to talk to Patty O’Ryan again, too. We need to find out if Chip was seeing anybody.”

“Anybody like Rebecca Bennett?”

Sometimes the way Lena ’s mind worked scared him. He just shrugged. “Buddy said he’d be here in a couple of hours.”

She tossed her Coke into the garbage as she headed toward the interrogation room. “Looking forward to that.”

Jeffrey opened the door for her and watched Lena transform into the cop he knew she could be. Her gait was heavy, like she had brass balls hanging between her legs. She pulled out a chair and sat across from Cole Connolly without a word, legs parted, her chair a few feet back from the table. She rested her arm along the back of the empty chair beside her.

She said, “Hey.”

Cole’s eyes flashed to Jeffrey, then back to Lena. “Hey.”

She reached into her back pocket, took out her notebook and slapped it on the table. “I’m detective Lena Adams. This is Chief Jeffrey Tolliver. Could you give us your full name?”

“Cletus Lester Connolly, ma’am.” There was a pen and a few pieces of paper in front of him alongside a well-worn Bible. Connolly straightened the papers as Jeffrey leaned against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. He was at least sixty-five if he was a day, but Connolly was still a fastidious man, his white T-shirt crisp and clean, sharp creases ironed into his jeans. His time in the fields had kept his body trim, his chest well developed, his biceps bulging from his sleeves. Wiry white hair jutted up all over his body, sticking out from the collar of his T-shirt, sprouting from his ears, carpeting his arms. He was pretty much covered in it on every place but for his bald head.