City of the Lost (19 page)

“I’ll take it back to the station,” I say. “Her things are potential evidence. We can’t dispose of them.”

“You think she was…” She pushes her hands into her lab coat pockets, wincing as she brushes her cut finger. “Of course you do. I just can’t quite wrap my head around the idea that anyone in town would hurt her. But she was young and she was pretty and I guess, maybe, sometimes that’s enough, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes.”

“Eric blames himself. He thinks he didn’t try hard enough to keep her out of the forest. He’s wrong, though. The fact she disappeared into it is—for me—the best proof she was murdered. She wouldn’t have worried him like that. Eric was … Eric was special. To Abbygail. The handsome young sheriff who rescued her.”

“She had a crush on him.”

She smiles then, her eyes brightening. “A
huge
crush. Not a serious interest, though. Yes, she was twenty-one, but she knew he would never see her that way. So it was a schoolgirl crush. The kind she should have had
in
school, but for Abbygail, that wasn’t an option. She got to have it here, instead, with her white knight. She would argue with him and pretend to rebel against his rules, but it was like a twelve-year-old girl teasing the boy she likes.” She looks at me. “If he said stay out of the woods, she’d never have gone in without good reason. Never.”

Abbygail’s belongings. Almost everything seems to have been acquired post-arrival. There are books—romance novels and nursing texts. Clothing and toiletries, all generic. An equally generic stuffed animal, the kind you get at the fair in those “everyone’s a winner” games—a creature that could be a dog, a cat, or a bear. It’s tattered enough to suggest it was one thing she
did
bring from home. There’s a necklace around the animal’s neck. A tin heart with a makeshift inscription.
JP & AK 4ever
. It looks like the sort of thing a preteen boy would give a girl, and I wonder if it’s the same one who gave her the bear—a first love, long gone, relics of another life.

I think that’s all there is. Then paper crinkles in the lining of her old suitcase. I tug it out, hoping to see some secret clue to start me on my path.

It’s a photo. The old-style Polaroid kind. But it was taken here. There are decorations in the background, as if for a party. The girl in it must be Abbygail Kemp. Dark hair. Tan skin. Mixed-race background, and I won’t speculate what it is—I hate it when anyone does that with me. Her thin face is lit up in a grin as she mugs for the camera. She looks happy. That’s my first thought—
she’s so happy
—and I think that’s why she kept the photo and hid it, because she wanted to remember Rockton after she left.

Then I see the whole picture. There’s someone beside her. It’s Dalton. He’s not posing for the photo. Doesn’t even seem to know it’s being snapped, because he’s looking off to the side, in the middle of saying something to someone. Abbygail is making a face behind his back, fingers raised to give him bunny ears. This is why she kept it.
He’s
why she kept it. Squirrelled away in the lining of her bag. I see that photo, and my heart breaks a little for a girl I never knew. A girl who was happy here in Rockton. A girl with a cheap stuffed toy and tin necklace and a picture of a man she’d never have, but that’d been okay, because she just liked the feeling of having a crush. Of being a normal girl.

Abbygail wouldn’t want Dalton to see that photo. Wouldn’t want him to know she’d held on to it. I tuck it back under the lining. I’ll keep her secret for her.

I have interviews scheduled for that afternoon. Well, they’re on
my
schedule. That’s all that counts in Rockton, because I have complete freedom to interview anyone I want, whenever I want, wherever I want.

Dalton tags along for the first few, making sure everyone’s playing nice with the new detective. They are. Then he’s called off on a problem—something to do with resource management, which doesn’t exactly seem like law enforcement, but I get the feeling Dalton’s job description extends well beyond throwing drunks in the cell.

I’m interviewing a guy named Pierre Lang. Two days before Abbygail disappeared, he’d hassled her at the clinic when she refused to refill a prescription without Beth’s say-so. It turned out the refill was legit, but Abbygail had no way of knowing that—the script existed only in Beth’s perfect file cabinet of a brain. So Abbygail had been right to refuse, and the delay was only an hour or two, but Pierre had gone off on her loudly enough for Kenny and a couple of the other militia boys to hear from the street and come running to her rescue.

Now Lang—a tall, fussily tidy man with a goatee—sits in the living room of his apartment, telling me how everyone overreacted.

“Including you?” I ask.

“No, Ms. Butler, I did not.”

“It’s Detective Butler.”

He bristles. I get a vibe that says he doesn’t like women very much. Or maybe it’s not a vibe as much as an extrapolation, given what I read that morning.

Lang is in Dalton’s journal. He’s one of the confirmed cases. And having read what he did, I cannot forget it, as hard as I’m trying to remain neutral.

“I did not overreact, Detective Butler. I need that medication.”

“Fluvoxamine,” I say.

“How—?” He pulls himself taut with indignation. “My medical history is my private business.”

“Yep,” I say. “It was before you got here and, presumably, it will be when you leave. Did you read that waiver before you handed over your money, Mr. Lang? Or were you in too big a hurry to get up here?”

He glares at me. “Yes, I read it, but yes, I was in a hurry. If you’ve read my medical file, then I’m sure you’ve read the rest, too. If you want to mock me for it, go ahead and get it out of your system,
detective
.”

“Because you came here fleeing an abusive relationship? Why would I mock that?”

His mouth tightens. He means that he expects mockery because he’s a
man
fleeing abuse. Which makes no difference to me. Or it wouldn’t, if that’s what he was really here for.

“Do you really need the fluvoxamine up here?” I say. “I’d think Rockton would be the perfect solution to your problem. No little girls anywhere.”

“What?” he squeaks, indignation surging. “My
problem
is anxiety and depression.”

“Fluvoxamine is an SSRI. A selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor. Used to treat pedophiles by inhibiting sexual desire and fantasy.”

He loses it then. Rants and rages at me. It’s true that the drug is most commonly used for depression. But according to what Dalton found, my reason for the prescription is the right one.

Pierre Lang has a long history of minor convictions, pleading guilty to misdemeanours and getting wrist slaps. Then he kidnapped and raped a girl on the cusp of adolescence. While awaiting trial, he disappeared, apparently having bought his way into Rockton.

“I could be wrong,” I muse. “I’ll check with the doctor. I was pretty sure, though—”

“You
are
wrong. And I’m going to report you for … for slander.”

“Slander only counts in a public statement. In private, I can say what I like. Being a detective, it’s my job to speculate. Speaking purely as speculation, I can understand why they might allow a pedophile in, if he paid well enough. Like I said, there’s no temptation here. Well, not unless there’s a girl who looks young for her age, and that pedophile is desperate…”

“I’d like you to leave now,” Lang says.

“I’m sure you would,” says a voice behind me. Dalton walks in and plunks himself down on the sofa as Lang squawks.

“Door was unlocked,” Dalton says.

“Does it matter?”

“Guess not. I have the key.”

“That isn’t what I meant.” Lang settles for glaring and pulls himself in, like a bird hunkering down, wings wrapped around itself. He tries to shoot a glare at Dalton, but his gaze doesn’t rise above the sheriff’s collar.

“So…” Dalton sprawls on the sofa, legs out, arms stretched across the back. Establishing territory, taking as much as he can while Lang draws himself ever tighter. “You were saying, Detective Butler?”

I glance over. Dalton meets my gaze, expressionless, but I still catch the message. He overheard my accusation. He’s not stopping me, but he’s here to make sure I don’t give away anything more.

I ask Lang about Abbygail. When’s the last time he saw her? And the first time? And he balks at that one—how would he remember? But he does. I can see that in his eyes. I keep circling, prodding, poking. After about twenty minutes, I close the interview and we leave.

“How much did you hear?” I ask when we’re away from the house.

“Starting at the part about the meds.”

“I overstepped there, didn’t I?”

“Yep.”

As we walk, three people wave at Dalton. Two more call greetings. They don’t seem to even notice that he doesn’t wave or call back.

“I’m not sure how to put aside what I read,” I say. “Am I supposed to?”

Dalton scratches his chin. He walks another three steps. Then he says, “Depends on you, I guess. How you deal with it. How you compartmentalize.”

A woman greets him, and this time he replies, and that makes me look up and see one of the local chefs. In his book, she’s suspected of escaping charges related to befriending girls for a forced-prostitution ring.

I understand what he’s saying. That if I read his journal, I have to compartmentalize. Look at this woman who cooks my meals and forget what she’s been accused of, unless, like Lang, it plays into an investigation.

“Lang did notice Abbygail,” Dalton says as we continue walking. “There was a…” He tilts his head, searching for a word. “Frustration there. Not really an interest. A frustration.”

“Because she was the closest thing here to what he likes. Yet she was an adult woman, which he does
not
seem to like.”

He nods. “I saw it. Monitored it. Warned Abbygail as best I could. Maybe not enough…” He drifts off for a moment, then comes back with, “She seemed to understand.”

“She would have,” I say. “Being from the streets, she’d have been able to sniff a predator and steer clear.”

“He’s still a suspect,” Dalton says. “I’ve been watching him since she disappeared.”

“Nothing?”

“Yeah.”

He slows, and when I look up, we’re behind the station, at the shed where they store the ATVs.

“Border run?” I say, trying not to betray a spark of excitement. My day could really use this.

“Nah, taking you out visiting. Time to talk to a guy in a cave.”

I figure the “guy in a cave” thing is a local joke, like saying you need to speak to a man about a dog. Dalton certainly doesn’t elaborate. We go into the drive shed, and I get a much more in-depth ATV lesson than I did when I arrived.

Dalton may grumble that he doesn’t like explaining things, but he’s a natural teacher. He’s patient and … I won’t say “enthusiastic,” which implies a level of emotion I don’t think our sheriff is capable of, but it’s like when we discussed the hostiles in the forest, and I mentioned primates and there was a spark of genuine interest there. A hound catching a scent. Except, for Dalton, that intriguing scent isn’t prey—it’s knowledge.

When he finishes the safety lesson, he starts to explain how the throttle works, and then checks himself, as if realizing this is more than I need to drive it. But it’s not more than I
want
, and when I ask questions, he pairs the driving lesson with one on basic mechanics, so I can understand how an ATV operates.

Dalton’s not the only hound who likes to pursue a trail of knowledge. When we’re riding and he slows to give me directions or point out an obstacle, I always have a question—
what’s that animal that scurried across the path?
or
what are those trees with the berries?
At first he suspects I’m sucking up, and his eyes narrow as he carefully responds. But I genuinely want to know, and he must see that in my face, because soon he’s giving the answers freely.

When we stop and get off the ATV, I don’t ask why. I get the feeling that’s
not
the kind of question Dalton likes to answer. Instead, as we walk into a clearing off the path, I notice what looks like a campfire ring.

I point to it. “One of yours? Someone from the town, I mean?”

He hunkers down beside the ring. “We have our bonfires in the town square. If we light one out here, it’s usually on hunting trips, when you’re a lot farther from town than this. We’ll also build them at the logging area or the fishing ponds, when it gets cold. This is from settlers.”

“People who live outside the town but aren’t actually hostile.”

“Not
actively
hostile. If you stumble on them and point your gun, yeah, expect trouble. What you have here looks like a hunting party. Maybe trapping. You can tell it’s settlers because they use stones for the firepit. The fire’s also a little too large. Hostiles are more careful. They’re also a little less…” He purses his lips, considering his word choice. “Structured.”

“They aren’t going to fuss with hauling in firepit stones and a log to sit on.”

“Yeah.”

“And you can tell it’s a hunting or trapping party because…?”

He points. “Decaying offal pile over there. Scavengers dragged away the better parts. There’s a broken arrow here, which suggests hunting, but trapping is still a possibility.”

Even when he points, I can’t see what he’s indicating until I go over and have to crouch to make out the signs he picked up in a casual sweep.

“If you’re out on patrol, you need to write anything like this in the logs,” he says. “Your notes will tell me how fast I need to get out here to assess.”

“Is there a guide for what things mean?”

He gives me a look like I’m asking for an app for my phone. Then he taps the side of his head.

“It’s all up there,” I say. “It would be more helpful if you wrote it down.”

“Tried. No one read it. Either they don’t give a shit or they don’t have an eye for reading signs.” He pushes aside a branch. “Mostly the latter. Like Will. Fucking worst tracker ever. Once reported grizzly tracks that turned out to be boot prints.
His
boot prints.”