Ridley Pearson - In Harm's Way

“Excuse me?”

“He was found on the fourteenth, and we bagged him on the fourteenth. But Royal couldn’t give us a predictable time of death. Temperature drops too much each night. He was guessing he’d been there at least a day, and that seemed supported by the degradation-the predation to the face and limbs. So, let’s say he went lights-out the twelfth or thirteenth.”

“O… k… a… y?” she said cautiously, accustomed to being his sounding board and knowing to stay out of his way.

“Which is why I asked for the twelfth,” he said, shaking the sheet of paper. “But it’s a midnight start. It’s a true day, and if Gale was killed-”

“Late night the twelfth,” she said, unable to help herself.

“Exactly. Then we should be looking at the thirteenth, not the twelfth.”

“I’ll call.”

Impatience got the better of him over the next twenty minutes. He would try answering an e-mail, only to find himself holding down the backspace key and starting over. He looked over his “hot list” of follow-ups to accomplish before the press conference, but felt stymied.

His computer rang a tone. He saw notice of an e-mail from Boldt and read it. The detective had managed to contact a man in the Louisiana Attorney General’s office, a deputy A.G. by the name of Robert “Buddy” Cornell. Cornell believed he could scare up at least the e-mail addresses for those people on the Gale list server, and hoped to have it to Boldt by Monday morning.

Walt pounded out a thank-you and sent it off.

Nancy was standing in his doorway holding another sheet of paper. She looked different, like she’d tasted something funny. Gone was the playful Dr. Watson who’d sparred with him twenty minutes earlier.

“You need some food or something,” he said. “You want to go home, I can handle it from here.”

She said nothing as she stepped forward and slid the piece of paper across his desk, the St. Luke’s Wood River Medical Center banner across the top.

“That’s better,” he said, noting right away that there had been ten-no, eleven!-emergency room admissions on the thirteenth.

He glanced up from the emergency room report at Nancy, who stood staring down at him, still as pale as a sheet.

“I’m telling you,” he said, “you do not look well.”

“Second from the bottom,” she said, watching as his eyes found the printed line.

His stubby finger traced across the page. He looked up at Nancy, back to the page, back to Nancy.

“Head injury,” he said.

She nodded.

Despite his concern, he wasn’t ready to make that call.

Recognizing the caller ID as the sheriff’s office central number, Fiona answered her mobile phone, expecting to hear Walt’s voice. She was disappointed to discover it was Nancy, his secretary. Standing in the cottage’s small galley kitchen, she glanced out the window over the sink into the stand of aspen trees and the blinding shock of lilies mixing with the white bark.

“Nancy?”

“I need a little clarification on something. We just got the GPS coordinates for the pickup truck you requested-”

“Oh, thank God.”

“Thing is, the coordinates have it on the Engleton property.”

“What?”

“There’s like a five-yard possibility of error or something, so… I’m not exactly sure how to proceed with this. You want me to send a dep-”

“No, no!” she said, hurrying to the far side of the living room and looking toward the main house. “I can’t believe this. I’m so sorry. Let me look around and get back to you. Does it show where on the property? Does it get that detailed?”

“There’s a hybrid view: satellite image laid on top of the mapping software. It shows the truck as in the main house. Like the living room. But there’s that margin of error.”

“I’ll look.”

“Call me back, would you, please?”

“Promise. Give me five minutes.” She disconnected the call and slipped the phone into a pocket absentmindedly. She crossed the driveway, oblivious to the chittering of tree squirrels and a red-sailed para-glider working the thermals above a northern ridge. To her there was only the garage. The closer she drew to it, the more trepidation.

Maybe the device had been removed from the truck and left in the garage, and if so, what did that say about the truck’s disappearance? She and Walt had checked the garage, had stood in the empty bay.

She rose to tiptoe and peered through the garage door’s glass pane, looking in on the truck bed. Parked right where it belonged. She felt foolish and embarrassed to have put Walt up to the GPS search. Kira had obviously taken the truck and returned it, and Fiona found herself overcome with anger, furious at the girl for putting her through the worry and concern.

She marched to the front door of the home and found it locked. She knocked loudly, pounding on the door. Kira didn’t answer. She tried the handle again, and stormed back across to the cottage to get her key. Returning, she opened the door and barged inside.

“Kira! Kira?” She marched room to room, growing madder by the minute. “Kira!” Hit the stairs running. Up a flight, two doors to the right. Threw open the door.

Empty. No sign of Kira, no different than the room had appeared the last time she’d checked. A twinge of fright ran through her. It hadn’t occurred to her someone other than Kira might have returned the truck. Someone other than Kira might be inside. The mountain man, for instance-was he the one she’d apparently mentioned while under hypnosis? The one who’d given her the concussion?

She moved stealthily, creeping along the hallway toward the elegant stairway leading to the ground-level living room. Clinging to the handrail, she took each step carefully, turning her head side to side to take in everything around her. Her “damn you, Kira” attitude had reversed, and she was now once again concerned for the missing girl’s well-being, panicked over her own situation, wondering how she’d allowed her emotions to dictate. Nancy would have sent a deputy had she asked; in her determination to protect Kira and the Engletons, she’d acted hastily and stupidly.

She hesitated at the bottom of the stairs. She heard the low hum of the twin Sub-Zero refrigerators, the ticking of the ship’s clock on the mantel. Ringing in her ears, and the thump of her own blood coursing past her eardrums. The house was enormous, multiple levels with several wings, a wine cellar, a sauna, a workout gym. On the one hand, she felt terrified; on the other, if Kira had returned the truck, she wanted to talk to her before the sheriff’s office did.

The front door called to her. She would feel safer once outside. Instead, she rounded the bottom of the unsupported, curving cherrywood staircase, and moved down a hallway lined with closets and family photos to a back stairwell that she followed lower to the split level. She searched the weight room, the his/her bathrooms, and the sauna. Two guest bedrooms. A utility/storage area. The laundry. She returned upstairs and made her way into the south wing, a guest wing consisting of a pair of two-bedroom suites. Checked all the closets and all four bathrooms.

As she returned to the living room, she was filled with an added sense of dread, the feeling of being watched. She snatched up a leaded crystal cube-a philanthropic award given to Michael and Leslie by a California hospital-clutching it like a baseball, but wielding it as a weapon carried high at her shoulder.

“I know you’re in here,” she said softly, knowing no such thing. “I can feel you.” Feeling too much to know what she felt.

She eyed the wide hallway leading to the garage. It stretched out beyond her, suddenly much longer. More closets and a pantry lined it-a person could hide behind any of the doors, waiting. She tried to slow her breathing, to calm herself, but it was useless. She pressed her back to the wall and edged toward the first of the doors, jumped across the hall and backed up to the opposing wall. She kept the glass cube held high, visualized herself smashing it into a stranger’s face. She tacked her way down the hall, wall to wall, ever alert. Reached the garage door and threw it open.