Кей Хупер - Out of the Shadows

For my sister Linda and her brave new ventures both personal and professional.

Wednesday, January 5, 2000

Lynet Grainger had no real reason to feel afraid. Gladstone was a safe town, had always been a safe town. The rest of the world might be going nuts, with students shooting up their schools and disgruntled employees shooting up their workplaces, with cars being jacked and children being stolen, but in Gladstone none of that stuff ever happened.

Ever.

Of course, nothing much else happened either, at least not until recently.

Even before they'd built the new highway bypass last year — which had quite effectively bypassed Gladstone — the little town had been no more than a place where people stopped for gas and an occasional weary night at the Bluebird Lodge out on Main Street, pausing as briefly as possible in their journey through to Nashville. Otherwise, it was just a wide place in the road, not high enough in the mountains to offer skiing as a tourist attraction — though the Bluebird Lodge defiantly had as its logo a pair of crossed skis — and not far enough out of the mountains to boast much decent farming or pastureland.

It was just a little valley. The bedrock core of the local economy was a smelly paper mill out on the river where a healthy majority of the town's blue-collar workers toiled. And in town, there were a few small businesses, the sort of car dealerships and real estate offices and stores that dotted all small towns.

Thankfully, Gladstone wasn't so small that absolutely everybody knew the business of their neighbors — but nearly so. Gossip was second only to the video store downtown as a source of entertainment.

So when Kerry Ingram, barely fourteen, seemingly ran away from home a couple of months ago, it was big news. Lots of people were heard to say they'd expected as much, since Kerry's older brother had done the same thing several years before to try his luck as a singer in Nashville (and ended up trying to support a wife and two little kids on a mechanic's pay). It was that sort of family, the gossips said, not the kind to raise up kids loyal to the town.

But there had been uneasiness beneath the confidence even then, even before they found out what had really happened to Kerry, because at about the same time she disappeared there had been something creepy going on hardly more than a hundred miles away, in Concord. Lynet wasn't entirely sure of the details, but it was whispered that a horrible man had been stalking and raping women, and it had only been when a special FBI task force had been called in that he was caught.

Lynet would like to have seen a special FBI task force in action. She was interested in law enforcement, and since the sheriff had patiently answered her questions on Career Day back last spring, that interest had only grown. At least until Kerry Ingram's body had been found, and some of the details had gotten around.

Lynet had felt more than a little sick upon hearing those details. She'd told herself it was only because she had actually known Kerry that the whole thing had upset her, not because she had a weak stomach unsuited for the work of a police officer or, better yet, an FBI agent just like Scully.

No, it was only because she'd known Kerry, been just a year ahead of her in school and ridden on the same school bus. Because she remembered so vividly how Kerry had worn a bright ribbon in her hair every day, and smiled shyly whenever one of the boys tried to talk to her, and had been so proud of making the honor roll because math was difficult for her and she had to try really, really hard in that class. . . .

Lynet shook off the memories and glanced around warily as she walked briskly along the sidewalk. Just about all the stores downtown had closed early as usual on this Wednesday, and now at nine o'clock at night there was almost no traffic and virtually no one about.

Still, Lynet had no real reason to be afraid. The sheriff had said it was likely poor Kerry had slipped and fallen into that nasty ravine where people used to dump their trash and where her bruised body had been found. But Lynet had heard a few whispers about what might have been done to Kerry before she'd died, and even if it was just speculation, it was the kind to make a girl worried about being alone on the streets after dark.

She paused on the corner of Main and Trade streets and briefly considered taking the usual shortcut through the park. Very briefly. Much better, she thought, to stay on the sidewalk under the streetlights, even if it would take an extra fifteen minutes to get home.

So she walked on, wishing she hadn't lingered at the library so late, wishing her sixteenth birthday would come so she could drive her mom's battered Honda instead of having to hoof it everywhere.

"Lynet, what on earth are you doing out so late?"

She nearly jumped out of her skin, and actually put a hand to her breast in an unconsciously dramatic gesture of near heart failure. "Oh, it's you! God, don't scare me like that!"

"I'm sorry — but you shouldn't be out here so late. Why aren't you at home?"

"I had to use the computer at the library — you know I don't have one of my own yet."

"Well, next time have somebody drive you."

"I will." Lynet smiled winningly. "We can walk together as far as the next corner. You're going that way, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Great. Nobody would bother the two of us."

"No, nobody would bother the two of us."

"I'm surprised you're out here," Lynet said chattily. "Are you just walking? I know some people do, around town to get exercise, but I thought that was just in the summer."

"It's not cold tonight."

"You aren't cold? Oh, I am. Walking fast helps, though. If we hurry—" Lynet took another step, then stopped as she recognized what was being held out toward her. "Oh," she said numbly.

"Oh, no. You—"

"You know what this is. And what it can do."

"Yes," Lynet whispered.

"Then you'll come along with me and not make trouble, won't you, Lynet?"

"Don't hurt me. Please, don't—"

"I'm sorry, Lynet. I really am."

Thursday, January 6

The body had been exposed to the elements for at least two or three days. And before last night's heavy rain had washed them away, the tracks of dozens of paws and claws must have crisscrossed the clearing.

It was shaping up to be a long, cold winter, and the animals were hungry.

Deputy Alex Mayse shivered as he picked his way gingerly past the town's single forensics "expert," a young doctor who'd been elected coroner because nobody else had wanted the job. The doctor was crawling around the clearing on his hands and knees, his nose inches from the wet ground as he found and flagged the scattered bones and other bits the animals had left.

"You don't have to hum to yourself, Doc," Alex muttered sourly. "We all know how happy you are."

Remaining in his crouched position, Dr. Peter Shepherd said cheerfully, "If a murdered teenager made me happy, Alex, I'd be worse than a ghoul. I'm just fascinated by the puzzle, that's all."

Waiting patiently just a few steps behind the doctor, camera in hand as he waited to take pictures of each flagged spot, Deputy Brady Shaw rolled his eyes at Alex.

Alex grimaced in sympathy, but all he said to Shepherd was, "Yeah, yeah. Just find something helpful this time, will you?"

"Do my best," the doctor replied, studying what appeared to be a bleached twig.

Alex walked to the area where most of the body had been found, noticing with a certain amount of sympathy that Sandy Lynch was over behind a tree puking her guts out. She was having a lousy introduction to the job, poor kid. Not that the old hands were handling it any better, really. Carl Tierney had had the misfortune to find Adam Ramsay's mortal remains, and the ten-year veteran of the Sheriff's Department had promptly lost his morning Egg McMuffin.