Devil Smoke (19 page)

Burroughs shined his Maglite through the spare tire well once again, as well as the side compartment where the toolkit was housed, then gestured for the tech to move in. He motioned for Tommy to stand aside, then joined him. “There’s no tire iron in there anywhere.”

Tommy shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets, hiding fists of frustration. The cops wouldn’t be asking about a tire iron unless they already had a tire iron and wanted to tie it to him… which meant… “It was Charlotte, wasn’t it?”

“Like I said, we don’t know for certain.”

“But you think it’s her, right? Why are you asking about a tire iron? Is that how—” The ground felt uneven, and a wave of nausea forced Tommy to look away without finishing his question.

Before Burroughs could answer, the tech alerted. “Found something!”

Burroughs moved forward, Tommy looking over his shoulder at what the tech pointed to, tucked deep into the shadows, wedged behind where the spare tire sat. A silver charm bracelet.

Tommy’s legs swam out from under him and he steadied himself with a hand on the top of the car. His entire body flooded with ice water. He stretched a second hand out, gripping the luggage rack with what little strength he had left. Head sagging down, he focused on a crack in the driveway below him, a dandelion thrusting through it in an act of defiance. He hauled in one breath, then another, but couldn’t get his vision to focus past the tiny yellow flower.

“Dr. Worth?” Burroughs had his hand on Tommy’s arm. Tommy shook his head and his vision cleared. He raised his head. “Do you recognize this? Is it your wife’s? It seems to be missing a charm.”

“SARAH’S GONE.” TK
felt so foolish, calling Lucy to tell her. How could she have messed up so badly? All she’d done was take a shower, and she’d lost their client.

“What happened?” Lucy asked.

TK ran her fingers through her still dripping hair and reached for a towel before it stained any of Valencia’s antique furniture. She wished she’d stayed back at her own place; the gatehouse was simple, basically a studio apartment, but more than enough to serve TK’s needs. Unlike this sumptuous guest suite where Valencia had ensconced TK and Sarah last night.

“I’m not sure. We both stayed here at the house last night. She was fine when she went to bed. I checked on her this morning and she was still sleeping, so I jumped into the shower. And when I came out, she was gone.”

“Did she talk to anyone? Was anyone there?”

“No, but she left a note. Says she went to pick up her car from the shop and that she’d be fine. Says we should concentrate on helping Tommy.”

“You told her about the remains on the mountain.”

“She overheard last night at Tommy’s and asked, so yeah, I told her all about Charlotte.” She hesitated. Had that been a mistake? Usually she’d never have violated operational security, but Sarah had seemed more concerned about Tommy’s well-being than the facts of the case.

“Transportation?”

“Xander said she called a cab. Want me to go after her? I saw which repair shop her car’s at when Burroughs gave her the paperwork.”

“No. She’s a grown woman, can make up her own mind.”

“But her stalker—”

“
If
there is a stalker. Plus, if we don’t know where she’s going, odds are a stalker won’t either.”

Which could be exactly what Sarah had planned. Someone who traveled as light as she did was probably used to making fresh starts.

“I feel responsible,” TK admitted. “At least let me and Wash keep tracing her past. If we find anything helpful, Burroughs can track her down and let her know.” After all, Sarah had never asked them to babysit her, only to help her find her previous life.

“Go ahead,” Lucy said. “I’ll be in the field most of the day.”

“Are you with the staties? Did they find anything?”

“No, they wouldn’t let a civilian like me anywhere near the crime scene.” A wistful hint of regret shaded Lucy’s voice.

“Where are you going?”

“To walk in a dead woman’s shoes.”

<><><>

TOMMY STARED, MESMERIZED
by the tiny bracelet that sparkled in the sunlight. Then the crime scene tech turned away, taking Charlotte’s bracelet with him.

“I have no idea how that got there,” he stammered, acutely aware that he sounded like any stupid criminal from any reality police show. “Burroughs. What the hell is going on here?”

But the detective had turned aside to make a phone call. He pulled his phone away from his ear for a moment. “Wait for me inside, Dr. Worth. I’ll be with you in a moment.”

“No. I deserve to know—”

The detective walked away, his back to Tommy’s protests. Tommy raised his head to see that a small crowd had gathered where the news trucks were parked down the road. Lips tight as he held back his anger and frustration, he stalked back into the house.

Only to be confronted with Gloria and Peter. “What was all that about? What were they looking for?” Gloria asked.

“What did they find?” Peter added, his tone low and laced with a touch of menace.

“They asked to look at the cars, so I let them.” Tommy tried to make light of his apprehension. How the hell had that bracelet gotten there? And what did his tire iron have to do with anything?

Worst of all was Burroughs’ reaction. Forensic tests or not, the detective seemed certain it was Charlotte dead up on that mountain.

Tommy walked away from his in-laws, desperate to marshal his emotions. “I think… I don’t know, but I think… that body they found is Charlotte.”

Gloria’s sudden choked sob wrenched through him. She fled up the stairs, leaving Tommy alone with Peter.

“Tell me you had nothing to do with this.”

Tommy whirled to face Charlotte’s father. “What? No, Peter, I swear—”

“No. Say the words. I need to hear you say them.”

Tommy usually forgot that Peter was taller than him, and despite the older man’s sedentary occupation, he was in good shape. Now, with Peter leaning in, fists raised level with his heart, eyes blazing with pain, there was no mistaking who would win any physical encounter between the two of them.

Tommy met Peter’s stare head on. He was so sick and tired of people assuming the worst—and being helpless to disprove them. But he’d thought he was past it with Gloria and Peter. “I had nothing to do with Charlotte’s disappearance. I have no idea what happened to her.” He stepped forward, chin jutting up. “Does that satisfy you?”

Peter held his gaze for a long moment. “No. Not at all.”

The door opened. Burroughs. “Dr. Worth, we’re getting a search warrant for your vehicle. In the meantime, I’d appreciate it if you accompanied me to the station for an interview.”

With Burroughs on one side, blocking any escape, and Peter on the other, blocking access to the stairs and Nellie, a sudden wave of claustrophobia hit Tommy. Trapped. He was trapped, inside his own home.

“I didn’t do anything,” he protested. “Why would I let you search the cars if I had?”

His attempt at reason failed miserably. “What choice did you have with your in-laws right here, listening?” Burroughs countered. “And if you refused, it wouldn’t have mattered. Based on what we found at the scene, we would have sat on the car until I had enough probable cause for a warrant.”

“So then why—”

“More I see you in action, Dr. Worth, the more chance you have to trip up.”

Tommy was silent after that. Last time Tommy had gone through this, after days of interviews, Peter had insisted he get an attorney. And the attorney had told him he was a fool to answer any questions.

At least ten separate police officers, state police troopers, detectives, and investigators, and one FBI agent who had been called in to assist, had all questioned Tommy. And despite the attorney’s admonishments, he’d told them everything he knew—or didn’t know—certain that this was the best way to get them to take their focus off him and instead concentrate on the search for Charlotte.

Tommy noticed that this time Peter didn’t offer to provide an attorney. Instead, Charlotte’s father moved up the steps, calling to his wife. “Gloria, get Nellie’s things. We’re leaving. Now!”

Halfway up, he paused and turned back, looking down at Tommy. “We’re taking Nellie. You’ll stay here until this is cleared up. She’s better off not seeing you, not like this.”

“No,” Tommy said. “You can’t—”

“It might be the best way to protect her,” Burroughs said in a voice that sounded almost human.

Tommy closed his eyes, wishing he could open them again and he’d have his life back. No such luck.

“Let me say goodbye.” He turned to Burroughs. “Then I’ll go with you, tell you anything you want.” The sooner he finished with the police, the sooner he could rejoin Nellie.

He didn’t feel safe being away from her. Yes, Peter and Gloria would shield her from the reporters, but it wasn’t the same. They didn’t know how to quiet her night terrors or where they were in the book he was reading to her or which socks she liked to wear with which outfit. She needed him. Even more, he needed her. Needed to know she was safe.

Burroughs nodded his assent, and Tommy rushed up the steps, ignoring Peter’s glare. Nellie’s room was the first one at the top of the stairs and he barged through the door, startling Gloria, who stepped in front of Nellie as if to block Tommy’s access to his daughter. As if he might hurt Nellie. The thought stopped him dead—that and the obvious fear in Gloria’s eyes.

Peter and Burroughs crowded the doorway behind him while Nellie bounced off her bed and rushed into his arms. “Daddy, I don’t want to go. Can’t we stay here?”

Tommy crouched down to her level and bundled her tight, his face pressed against hers. “You need to go with Papa and Gramma now, sweetie. I’ll be along later.”

She shook her head violently, almost breaking free of his grasp. “No. I want to stay with you. Don’t make me go, Daddy!”

Her voice rose, not in the tantrum screeches she’d been using all too often lately, but in pure terror. She grasped his arm with both of her hands. “Stay with me, Daddy. I’m scared. I don’t want you to go. You need to stay with me.”

Gloria approached Nellie from behind and rested a palm on her shoulder. “Everything will be all right, Nellie. Your father just needs to help the policemen out. But we’ll go to the farm, play with the horses, roast marshmallows, and make s’mores. We’ll have fun.”

Nellie whirled on her grandmother. “No! You can’t make me. I won’t go. I want to stay with Daddy.”

What little control Tommy had left was fast escaping. “Eleanor Rose Worth,” he said sternly. “You do not speak to your grandmother like that. She loves you very much and only wants to take care of you.”

“But don’t you want to take care of me, Daddy? Or I can take care of you. Just please don’t go.” Her voice held a tremor that pierced his heart.

He stood and gently pulled her hands, one finger at a time, away from his arm. He nodded to Gloria, who rushed in to wrap her own arms around Nellie, giving Tommy space. “I love you, sweetheart.”

As Peter and Gloria fought in vain to comfort Nellie, her cries followed Tommy down the stairs until he and Burroughs closed the front door behind them.

He couldn’t help it; he glanced back at the house one last time. He couldn’t shake the feeling that nothing would ever be the same again.

LUCY DIDN’T BOTHER
driving all the way out to where Charlotte Worth’s vehicle had been found abandoned along the banks of the Youghiogheny. The police would have covered all the routes in and out of the secluded overlook using better tools than she had at hand. Instead, she drove to the last place Charlotte had been seen alive, the same convenience store where Sarah Brown had stopped the day before she went up Fiddler’s Knob and came down without her memory. No matter what anyone told her, it still felt like an unnatural coincidence.

As she parked her Subaru in front of the Sheetz, she had the weird tingling along her spine that her grandmother used to call coffin chills. Someone, somewhere, was walking over Lucy’s grave. At least that was the old wives’ tale her granny had teased her with.

She mixed a coffee at the well-equipped coffee bar and waited until the cashier, a twenty-something who had a nose stud and wispy goatee, had finished with the other customers. As he rang up her coffee, she explained who she was and why she was there.

“You mean the lady from last year?” he asked.

“Yes. I noticed your security cameras and thought—”

“Oh, the cops took all that. Huge manhunt, they looked through everything. Even searched our garbage.”

Given that the first case she’d worked with Burroughs involved a body stuffed into a drum for discarded fast food frying oil, she wasn’t surprised.

“Didn’t find nothing,” he continued. “Lady just vanished.”

“You know it happened again.” She leaned in and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial level. “Just Friday night a lady was in here, and Saturday morning she developed total amnesia.”

“No shit. Like she can’t remember her name, anything?”

“Exactly. We’re working to trace her steps, help her figure out who she is.” She showed him her copy of Sarah’s receipt.

“Friday? Like four days ago?” He shook his head. “Sorry, I wasn’t working.”

“Would you keep the security footage that long?”

His expression brightened. “Hell yeah. It’s all on computer, so it just keeps recording until the drive is full. I think it holds like a month or something. Hang on.” He gestured to a clerk who was mopping the floor near the restrooms. “Hey, take over for me, will you?”

As he escorted Lucy into the manager’s office, she asked, “You sure your manager won’t mind?”

He flashed her a smile. “Lady, I am the manager. Well, assistant day-shift manager. Which means I’m the boss until eleven when the day-shift manager arrives.” He sat down at a desk and began to type at the keyboard. “Do you think they were abducted by aliens or something? I mean, two ladies, one vanished without a trace and one with her mind wiped…” He leaned back and gestured for her to join him behind the desk. “Here we go. Friday. Same time as on the receipt.”