Blood on Copperhead Trail (3 page)

She supposed that was true of most places, if you scratched deep enough beneath the surface of civilization, but here in the hills, there were plenty of places nobody cared to go, places where evil could thrive without the disinfectant of sunlight. It took a tough man to uphold the law in these parts.

It remained to be seen if Doyle Massey was tough enough.

“You want to wait?” she asked.

“No.” He gave a nod toward the trail. “You’re the native. Lead the way.”

Copperhead Ridge couldn’t compete with the higher ridges in the Smokies in terms of altitude, but it was far enough above sea level that the higher they climbed, the thinner the air became. Laney was used to it, but she could see that Doyle, who’d probably lived at sea level his whole life, was finding the going harder than he’d expected.

Reaching the first of a handful of public shelters through the trees ahead, she was glad for an excuse to stop. She’d grabbed some bottled waters from the diner when she and Ivy left, an old habit she’d formed years ago when heading into the mountains. She’d stowed them in the backpack she kept in her car and had brought with her up the mountain.

Now she dug the waters from the pack and handed a bottle to Doyle as they reached the shelter. He took the water gratefully, unscrewing the top and taking a long swig as he wandered over to the wooden pedestal supporting the box with the trail log.

She left him to it, walking around the side of the shelter to the open front.

What she saw inside stole her breath.

“Laney?” Doyle’s voice was barely audible through the thunder of her pulse in her ears.

The shelter was still occupied. A woman lay facedown over a rolled-up thermal sleeping bag, blood staining her down jacket and the flannel of the bag, as well as the leaves below. Laney recognized the sleeping bag. She’d given it to her sister for Christmas.

Janelle.

The paralysis in Laney’s limbs released, and she stumbled forward to where her sister lay, her heart hammering a cadence of dread.

Please be breathing please be breathing please be breathing.

She felt a slow but steady pulse when she touched her fingers to her sister’s bloodstained throat.

“Laney?” Doyle’s voice was in her ear, the warmth of his body enveloping her like a hug.

“It’s Janelle,” she said. “She’s still alive.”

“That’s a lot of blood,” Doyle said doubtfully. He reached out and checked her pulse himself, a puzzled look on his face.

“She’s been shot, hasn’t she?” Laney ran her hands lightly over her sister’s still body, looking for other injuries. But all the blood seemed to be coming from a long furrow that snaked a gory path across the back of her sister’s head.

“Not sure,” he answered succinctly, pulling out his cell phone.

“Can you get a signal?” she asked doubtfully, wondering how quickly she could run down the mountain for help.

“It’s low, but let’s give it a try.” He dialed 911. “If I get through, what should I tell the dispatcher?”

“Tell them it’s the first shelter on Copperhead Mountain on the southern end.” Laney’s hands shook a little as she gently pushed the hair away from her sister’s face. Janelle’s expression was peaceful, as if she were only sleeping. But even though she was still alive, there was a hell of a lot of damage a bullet could do to a brain. If even a piece of shrapnel made it through her skull—

“They’re on the way.” Doyle put his hand on her shoulder.

But they couldn’t be fast about it, Laney knew. Mountain rescues were tests of patience, and a victim’s endurance.

“Hang in there, Jannie.” She looked at Doyle. “Do you think it’s safe to move this bedroll out from under her? We need to cover her up. It’s freezing out here, and she could already be going into shock.”

She saw a brief flash of reluctance in Doyle’s expression before he nodded, helping her ease the roll out from beneath Janelle. She unzipped the roll, trying not to spill off any of the collected blood. The outside of the sleeping bag was water-resistant, so she didn’t have much luck.

“Sorry to ruin your crime scene,” she muttered.

“Life comes first.” He sounded distracted.

She looked up to find him peering at a corner of something sticking out from under the edge of the bedroll. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and grasped the corner, tugging the object free.

It was a photograph, Laney saw, partially stained by her sister’s blood. But what she could still see of the photograph sent ice rattling through her veins.

The photo showed Janelle and her two companions, lying right here in this very shelter, fast asleep.

Doyle turned the photograph over to the blank side. Only it wasn’t blank. There were three words written there in blocky marker.

Good night, princesses.

Chapter Three

Doyle hated hospitals. He’d visited his share of them over the years, both as a cop and a patient. He hated the mysterious beeps and dings, the clatter of gurney wheels rolling across scuffed linoleum floors, the antiseptic smells and the haggard faces of both the sick and the waiting.

He hated how quickly everything could go to hell.

He sat a small distance from Laney Hanvey and her mother, Alice, a woman in her late fifties who, at the moment, looked a decade older. Mrs. Hanvey looked distraught and guilty as hell.

“I shouldn’t have let her go camping. It was so stupid of me.”

Laney squeezed her mother’s hand. “You don’t want to stifle her. Not when she’s made so much progress.”

Doyle looked at her with narrowed eyes, wondering what she meant. But before he’d had a chance to form a theory, the door to the waiting room opened and a man in green surgical scrubs entered, looking serious but not particularly grim.

“Mrs. Hanvey?” he greeted Laney’s mother, who had stood at his entrance. “I’m Dr. Bedford. I’ve been taking care of Janelle in the E.R. The good news is, she’s awake and relatively alert, but she’s sustained a concussion, and given her medical history, we’re going to want to be very careful with that.”

Doyle looked from the doctor’s face to Laney’s, more curious than before.

“So the bullet didn’t enter her brain?” Laney’s question made her mother visibly flinch.

“The titanium plate deflected the path of the bullet. It made a bit of a mess in the soft tissue at the base of her skull, but it missed anything vital. We did have to shave a long patch of her hair. She wasn’t very happy to hear that,” Dr. Bedford added with a rueful smile, making Laney and her mother smile, as well.

Doyle couldn’t keep silent any longer. “Does she remember what happened to her?”

The doctor looked startled by his question. “You are—?”

“Doyle Massey. Bitterwood chief of police. The attack on Ms. Hanvey took place in my jurisdiction.”

The doctor gave him a thoughtful look. “She remembers hiking, but beyond that, everything’s pretty fuzzy.” He turned back to Laney and her mother. “She keeps asking about her two friends, but all we could tell her is that they weren’t with her when she was brought in. Just be warned, she’s in the repetitive stage of a concussion, so she may ask you that question or another several times without remembering you’ve already answered her.”

“Were you able to retrieve a bullet?” Doyle asked.

“Actually, yes,” Dr. Bedford answered. “The TBI has already put in a request for it. They’re sending a courier.”

“How soon do you think she can go home?” Mrs. Hanvey asked.

“Because of her medical history and the trauma of being shot, I’d really like to keep her here at least a couple of days. Even beyond her concussion, the path of the bullet wound is pretty extensive and we’re going to work hard to prevent infection. We’ll see how her injuries respond to treatment and make a decision from there.”

“Can we see her?”

“She’s probably on her way up to her room. Ask the nurse at the desk—she’ll tell you where you can find her.”

Doyle followed Laney and her mother out of the waiting room behind the doctor, trying to stay back enough to avoid Laney’s attention.

He should have known better.

Laney whipped around to face him as her mother walked on to the nurse’s station. “You’re not seriously following us into her room?”

“I need to talk to her about what happened on the mountain.”

“You heard the doctor. She doesn’t remember.”

“Yet.”

Laney’s lips thinned with anger. “I know it’s important to talk to her. But can’t you give us a few minutes alone with her? When we came here this morning, we weren’t sure we were ever going to see her alive again.”

Old pain nudged at Doyle’s conscience. “I know. I’m sorry and I’m very happy and relieved that the news is good.”

Laney’s eyes softened. “Thank you.”

“But there’s still a girl unaccounted for. And anything your sister can remember may be important. Including what happened
before
they were attacked.”

Laney glanced back at her mother, who was still talking to the desk nurse. She lowered her voice. “I don’t think we’ll find Joy Adderly alive. Do you?”

He didn’t. But he hadn’t expected to find Janelle alive, either. Not after seeing Missy Adderly’s body in the leaves off the mountain trail.

“I think we have to proceed as if she’s still alive and needs our help,” he said finally. “Don’t you?”

She looked at him, guilt in her clear blue eyes. “Yes. Of course.”

He immediately felt bad for pushing her. Her priority had to be her sister, not his case. “Look, I need to make some calls. I’ll give you and your mother some time alone with your sister if you’ll promise you’ll come get me in an hour to ask her a few questions. Just do me a favor, okay?”

“What’s that?”

“Try not to talk about what happened up on the mountain. Just talk about anything else. I don’t want to contaminate her memories before I get a chance to talk to her.”

“Okay.” She reached across the space between them, closing her hand over his forearm. “Thank you.”

He watched her walk to the elevator with her arm around her mother’s waist. As they entered and turned to face the doors, she graced him with a slight smile that made his chest tighten.

The doors closed, and he felt palpably alone.

Shaking it off, he walked back to the waiting room and called the police station first. His executive assistant was a tall reed of a woman with steel-gray hair and sharp blue eyes named Ellen Flatley. Apparently she’d been assistant to two chiefs of police before him and would probably outlast him, as well. She saw the police station as her own personal territory and had a tendency to guard it like a high-strung German shepherd.

“There are two teams of eight searchers each on the mountains, but it’s a lot of territory and slow going.” She answered his query in a tone of voice that suggested he should have known these facts already. “Plus, the sun will be going down soon, and they’ll have to stop the search. The coroner’s picked up poor Missy Adderly’s body, God rest her soul. He said he’s going to call in the state lab to handle the postmortem, like you asked.”

She didn’t sound as if she approved of that decision, either, but he couldn’t help that. Bitterwood had hired him to make those kinds of decisions. They’d hired Ellen to help him execute those decisions, not make them for him.

“Thank you, Ellen.”

Her frosty silence on the other end of the phone told him he’d apparently made another breach of police-department etiquette.

“Can you give me the cell numbers for Detectives Hawkins and Parsons?” he asked.

She rattled off the numbers quickly, and he punched them into the phone’s memory. “Will there be anything else, Chief Massey?”

“Yes, one more thing. Do you know if Bolen’s been able to reach the Adderly family with the news about Missy?”

“He hasn’t called in, but he headed over there about fifteen minutes ago, so I imagine he’s told them by now.” Her voice softened with her next question. “Chief, is there anything new on the other girl, Joy?”

“No, not yet. You’ll probably hear as soon as I do, if not sooner. If you do hear anything, please let me know at once.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Flatley, for your help.”

There was a hint of a smile in her voice when she answered. “Just doing my job. Do you want me to forward your calls to your cell?”

“No, just take messages, unless it’s urgent.”

He ended the call, then dialed Ivy Hawkins’s number.

She answered on the second ring, the connection spotty. “Hawkins.”

“This is Massey. Catch me up.”

“TBI crime-scene unit finally arrived. I sent some of them over to the trail shelter to get what they could find there, too. Parsons is with that crew. I’m sticking with the original scene, helping out with the grid search. But we’re running out of daylight.” Her voice tightened. “What’s the news on Janelle Hanvey?”

“Better than we had a right to hope for.” He outlined what the doctor had told them, keeping it vague in deference to the girl’s privacy rights. “She’s awake and the family’s with her.”

“I can be in Knoxville in about thirty minutes if you’d like me to question the girl.”

“I can handle it.”

There was a thick pause on the other end of the line, reminding him of the frosty reception he’d gotten from Ellen Flatley earlier. “Okay.”

“Is there a problem, Hawkins?”

“Permission to speak freely, sir?”

He grinned at the phone. “Please.”

“The job of chief of police is primarily a political position. You supervise, schmooze, shake hands with the town bigwigs and basically present a nice, trustworthy face for the public. Witness interviews, though—”

“We’re not a big city. We all have to wear different hats. The town council made that clear when they hired me. And how often do you get two violent-crime victims in one day?”

“Recently? More often than I like,” she answered drily. “But, understood, sir. We’re spread thin by this case already.”

“Call me at this number if you need me.” Ending the call, he looked at the round-faced clock on the waiting-room wall. After five already. But still thirty minutes before he could go to Janelle Hanvey’s hospital room and ask the questions drumming a restless rhythm in his brain.

Patience, he feared, was not one of his virtues.

* * *

“W
HAT
ABOUT
M
ISSY
and Joy? Where are they?”

Laney squeezed her sister’s hand gently. “I don’t know, sweetie.” She kept herself from exchanging looks with her mother, knowing that Janelle was bright enough to see the tension between them, even in her concussed state. “How about you? Head still hurting?”

Janelle smiled a loopy smile. “Not so much. The doctor said they stuck me with a local anesthetic, so the wound won’t be bothering me for a while.”

“Good.”

Janelle drifted off for a few minutes, just long enough for Laney to give her mother a look of relief. Then she stirred again and asked, for the third time since Laney had entered the room, “Laney, where are Missy and Joy?”

She squeezed Janelle’s hand again and repeated, “I don’t know, sweetie.”

There was a knock on the hospital-room door. Laney’s mother went to answer it. She came back and touched Laney’s shoulder. “Chief Massey would like to talk to you outside.”

She traded places with her mother and opened the hospital-room door to find Doyle Massey leaning against the corridor wall. He didn’t change position when he saw her, just turned his head and flashed her a toothy smile. “How’s your sister doin’?”

Damn, but he could turn on the charm when he wanted to. “As well as can be expected, I think. She’s still repeating herself a lot, but the doctor said that should pass soon.”

“Has she said anything about what happened up there?”

Laney shook her head. “But she keeps asking about her friends. All we’ve told her so far is that we don’t know where they are.”

Doyle pushed away from the wall, turning to face her. He touched her arm lightly. “The coroner’s picked up Missy Adderly’s body and called in the state lab to conduct the postmortem.”

“Has the family been contacted?”

“My assistant said Craig Bolen left to meet with them about forty-five minutes ago. So I’m sure they know by now.”

She shook her head, feeling sick. “Those poor people.”

His gaze slid toward the door of her sister’s hospital room. “She has a plate in her head?”

“Car accident when she was ten. It was bad.” Laney tugged her sweater more tightly around her, as if she could ward off the memories as easily as she could thwart a chill. But she couldn’t, of course. The memories of those terrible days would never go away. “The accident killed our brother.” She released a long sigh.

“I’m sorry.”

She looked up at him, seeing real sympathy in his eyes, not just the perfunctory kind. “I was a sophomore in college. I skipped a couple of semesters so I could come back home and help my mom deal with everything. Our dad had passed away from cancer only a year earlier. And then, so suddenly, Bradley was dead and Jannie was just hanging on by a thread—”

“Bradley was your brother?”

She nodded. “He was seventeen. Jannie had a softball game and Mama was working, so Bradley said he’d take her. He was a good driver. The police say there wasn’t anything he could have done. The other driver was wasted, slammed right through an intersection and T-boned Bradley’s truck. He was killed instantly, and Jannie had a depressed skull fracture. She had to relearn everything. Put her behind in school.”

“How far behind?”

“Three years. Jannie’s twenty. But she’s only seventeen in terms of her maturity and mental age. There were a few years when we didn’t think she’d ever get that far, but the doctors say she should develop normally enough from here on.” She glanced back at the closed door. “Unless this sets her back even more.”

“How does she seem?”

“Like herself,” Laney admitted. “A little disoriented, but normal enough.”

Doyle touched her arm again. It seemed to be a habit with him, a way to connect to the person he was talking to. Unfortunately, it seemed to be having a completely disarming effect on her. She’d just told him more about her family than she’d told anyone in ages, including the people she’d worked with now for almost five years.

Maybe he was a better cop than she had realized.

“You think it’s okay for me to go in there and talk to your sister now?” His hand made one more light sweep down her arm before dropping to his side.

“I think so. They’re not giving her anything like a sedative—they don’t want her to sleep much while they’re observing her for the concussion.”

He looked toward the door. “Did the doctors tell you whether or not it would be okay to tell her the truth about Missy Adderly?”

Laney recoiled at the thought. “They didn’t say, but—”

“I know you want to protect her, especially now. And if we didn’t have a missing girl out there somewhere—”