Mariah Stewart - Last Look

“It’s being taken care of.” Andrew extended his hand and she took it and squeezed it. “We thank you for your time, and for the list of contacts.”

“You just find out what happened to my girl, Agent Shields. We’ll be burying her probably by the end of the week. We’d like to know why before we put her in the ground.”

“We’ll do our best,” he promised, then opened the front door and followed Dorsey out after she’d said her good-byes to Mrs. Randall.

Andrew stood on the porch, holding the screen door open, when he turned to Mrs. Randall and said, “There is one more thing I need to ask. At any time over the past twenty-four years, did you receive any contact that could have been from Shannon? Can you think of anything at all, no matter how insignificant it might have seemed at the time, that could have made you think, even for a second, she might be alive?”

The warmth she’d offered in her handshake disappeared before their eyes. Judith Randall leveled a stony gaze, and in the coldest voice imaginable, told him, “If I’d had any cause to think my girl was still alive-if there’d been anything, anything at all that would have had me thinking she was out there someplace-by God, I’d have found her, and I’d have brought her back home where she belonged, and this evil thing never would have happened.”

With one last hostile glance in his direction, Judith Randall slammed the door in his face.

“Wow, who’d have figured you to be so smooth,” Dorsey muttered as they walked back to the car. “Way to turn off the witness.”

“I had to ask. I knew there was a chance I might piss her off, but I had to get her thinking.” Andrew stuck his hand in his pocket for the car keys and unlocked the doors with the remote. “I had to make her start looking back. Maybe there was something she didn’t totally understand at the time.”

“She’s thinking, all right,” Dorsey told him. “She’s thinking she never should have opened the door in the first place.”

“Look, if you’d been Shannon, you’ve been away from your home for God knows what reason or how you got there-let’s put the whys and the hows aside for a moment. Wouldn’t there be some point when you’d at least try to contact your mother? Wouldn’t you want to hear her voice again? No matter the circumstances, wouldn’t you at some point miss her so much that you had to hear her voice just one more time?”

“Probably.” Dorsey nodded. “Yeah, I probably would.”

“So maybe Shannon did. Maybe her mother just didn’t realize it at the time. Maybe it will come back to her.”

“You could be right. Maybe she will remember something. And with any luck, she’ll even tell us about it.” Dorsey rolled the window down to let out the steamy summer air before she fastened her seat belt. “Where first?”

“I think maybe we’ll start by working our way through the sisters.” He started the car and handed the list of names and phone numbers to Dorsey.

“Well, we know Paula Rose is still here in Hatton.” She glanced down the list that Judith Randall had prepared. “Just three blocks away.”

Andrew put the car in gear and made a U-turn in the middle of the street. “We’ll stop there first, but before we leave town today, we’ll pay a call on Granny Randall. She was the last person to see Shannon that night.”

“The last person who admitted to seeing her, anyway, other than Eric Beale.” Dorsey looked up from the sheet of notebook paper. “The three friends are all still living in Hatton. It’s tempting to stop by to see them while we’re here, but I’m thinking we should probably keep this within the family for as long as we can.”

“Which probably won’t be more than another twenty-four hours. I still can’t believe the story isn’t out there, locally, anyway. At the very least, I’d expect the cops to be discussing it.”

“Maybe this Chief Bowden that Mrs. Randall mentioned hasn’t spread the word through the troops yet.”

“Well, that’s all going to end the minute word gets out that Shannon Randall’s body has arrived at the local funeral home,” he reminded her. “Let’s get what we can before the media storm hits Hatton.”

“ Third Street is right up there.” She pointed off to the left.

“He’s really bitter,” Andrew said as he turned the corner. He didn’t have to tell her who he meant.

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“Yeah. I’m sure that bitter would be the very least of it. And he sure didn’t talk like any preacher I ever met.”

“The man’s been through a lot. His faith has been tested. He lost his daughter, believed she’d been murdered. Then the accident, that not only took his legs, his mobility, but cost him his position in his church as well. You can see why he’d be pissed off. And now this…this has to have been a bombshell for him,” Dorsey said.

“And toss into all that the fact that his wife said he feels guilty about not having saved Shannon, and you have one very unhappy man. You have to wonder how much more he can take.”

“I would have liked to have asked him a few questions, but I figured that would have gotten us tossed out even sooner.”

“He sure wasn’t in a friendly frame of mind,” Andrew said, as he parked the car. “Listen, the comments he made about your dad-”

She stopped him with a wave of her hand.

“I have to expect that. Actually, I expected to hear a lot worse.”

“And you well may, before we’re finished.”

She shrugged. “There are going to be a lot of people who blame my father for the way things turned out, and they’ll probably be right. He’s my dad and I love him, but he obviously screwed up big time and a lot of good and innocent people were hurt very badly because of it. Why the investigation went the way it did…I don’t know. But he was in charge of it, and things went horribly wrong. People’s lives were destroyed.”

“Still, it has to be hard for you to hear it.”

“He has a lot to answer for.” She unfastened her seat belt.

Andrew merely nodded and got out from behind the wheel. He knew all too well how heavy the burden of someone else’s sins could be. He’d been carrying plenty of weight this past year. Time to change the subject.

“Nice, they painted the manse to match the church,” he observed.

They stood in the center of a wide driveway that divided the church property in half. On one side stood the church, a modest structure with little embellishment other than the bell tower above, and the beds of brightly colored flowers spread out in front. A sign stood among the flower beds.

THE CHURCH OF THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE REVEREND PAULA ROSE RANDALL WELCOMES YOU

On the other side stood the clapboard house that, like the church was painted a light gray. Black shutters framed the windows and red impatiens in white pots hung from the porch roof. Four white rocking chairs stood on the porch and a wreath of flowers hung on the front door. Next to the front steps, a sign announced WELCOME in dark blue letters on a pale blue background.

“Pretty.” Dorsey nodded. “Welcoming, like the signs say.”

“Well, let’s see if that welcome extends to us,” Andrew said as they walked up the porch steps. A pile of mail held together with a thick rubber band sat on the top step. Andrew picked it up, then rang the doorbell.

Moments later, the door was opened by a young woman wearing a white blouse and a tailored black skirt. Her brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail gathered low on the nape of her neck, and tortoise-shell glasses sat atop her head. She was of medium height, and seemed to carry most of her weight between her hips and her knees. Carefully applied makeup gave her face interest, but her features were too uneven to be called pretty, the nose too sharp, the pale brown eyes too small and set too close together to highlight her face. Nothing, Dorsey thought, distinguished her in any way. She appeared…average.