Karin Slaughter - Faithless

“Shit,” Jeffrey cursed, thinking Ward really was jerking his chain. Not only was his absence wasting time, but it meant Mark McCallum, the polygraph expert the GBI had sent, would be spending another night in town courtesy of the Grant County Police Department.

Jeffrey took out his notepad and wrote down Rebecca Bennett’s name and description. He slid a photograph out of his pocket, handing it to Frank. “Abby’s sister,” he said. “Put her details on the wire. She’s been missing since ten o’clock last night.”

“Shit.”

“She’s run away before,” Jeffrey qualified, “but I don’t like this coming so close to her sister’s death.”

“You think she knows something?”

“I think she’s running away for a reason.”

“Did you call Two-Bit?”

Jeffrey scowled. He had called Ed Pelham on his way back to the station. As predicted, the neighboring sheriff had pretty much laughed in his face. Jeffrey couldn’t blame the man- the girl had a history of running away- but he had thought that Ed would take it more seriously, considering what had happened to Abigail Bennett.

He asked Frank, “Is Brad still searching the area around the lake?” Frank nodded. “Tell him to go home and get his backpack or camping gear or whatever. Get him and Hemming to go into the Catoogah state forest and start looking around. If anyone stops them, for God’s sake, tell him to say they’re out camping.”

“All right.”

Frank turned to leave but Jeffrey stopped him. “Update the APB on Donner to include the possibility he might be with a girl.” Anticipating Frank’s next question, he shrugged, saying, “Throw it at the wall and see what sticks.”

“Will do,” he said. “I put Connolly in interrogation one. You gonna get to him next?”

“I want him to stew,” Jeffrey answered. “How long do you think it’ll take to get through the rest of these interviews?”

“Five, maybe six hours.”

“Anything interesting so far?”

“Not unless you count Lena threatening to backhand one of them if he didn’t shut up about Jesus being Lord.” He added, “I think this is wasting our fucking time.”

“Have to agree with you,” Jeffrey said. “I want you to go ahead and talk to the people on your list who bought cyanide salts from the dealer in Atlanta.”

“I’ll leave right after I talk to Brad and update the APB.”

Jeffrey went to his office and picked up the phone before he even sat down. He called Lev Ward’s number at Holy Grown and navigated his way through the switchboard. As he was on hold, Marla walked in and put a stack of messages on his desk. He thanked her just as Lev Ward’s voice mail picked up.

“This is Chief Tolliver,” he said. “I need you to call me as soon as possible.” Jeffrey left his cell phone number, not wanting to give Lev the easy out of leaving a message. He rang off and picked up his notes from last night, unable to make any sense of the long lists he had made. There were questions for each family member, but in the cold light of day he realized that asking any one of them would get Paul Ward in the room so fast that his head would spin.

Legally, none of them had to talk to the police. He had no cause to force them to come in and he doubted very seriously if Lev Ward would deliver on his promise to take the lie detector test. Running their names through the computer hadn’t brought up much information. Jeffrey had tried Cole Connolly’s name, but without a middle initial or something more specific like a birth date or previous address, the search had returned about six hundred Cole Connollys in the southern United States. Opening it up to Coleman Connolly had added another three hundred.

Jeffrey looked at his hand, where the bandage had started to come off. Esther had gripped his hand before she left this morning, begging him again to find her daughter. He was convinced that if she knew anything, she’d be spilling her guts right now, doing whatever she could to get her only living child back in her home. She had defied her brothers and her husband by even talking to him, and when he had asked her if she was going to tell them whether or not they had spoken, she had cryptically answered, “If they ask me, I will tell them the truth.” Jeffrey wondered if the men would even consider the possibility that Esther had done something on her own without their permission. The risk she had taken was indication enough that she was desperate for the truth. The problem was, Jeffrey didn’t know where to begin to find it. The case was like a huge circle, and all he could do was keep going round and round until somebody made a mistake.

He skimmed through his messages, trying to focus his eyes long enough to read. He was exhausted and his hand was throbbing. Two calls from the mayor and a note that the Dew Drop Inn had called to discuss the bill for Mark McCallum, the polygraph expert he had ordered for Lev Ward, didn’t help matters. Apparently, the young man liked room service.

Jeffrey rubbed his eyes, focusing on Buddy Conford’s name. The lawyer had been called into court but would come to the station as soon as he could for the talk with his stepdaughter. Jeffrey had forgotten for a moment about Patty O’Ryan. He set the note aside and continued sorting through the stack.

His heart stopped in his chest when he recognized the name at the top of the next-to-last message. Sara’s cousin, Dr. Hareton Earnshaw, had called. In the note section, Marla had written, “He says everything is fine,” then added her own question: “You okay?”

He picked up the phone, dialing Sara’s number at the clinic. After listening to several minutes of the Chipmunks singing classic rock while on hold, she came on the line.

“Hare called,” he told her. “Everything’s fine.”

She let out a soft sigh. “That’s good news.”

“Yeah.” He thought about the other night, the risk she took putting her mouth on him. A cold sweat came, followed by more relief than he had felt when he had first read Hare’s message. He had sort of reconciled himself to dealing with bad news, but thinking about the possibility of taking Sara down with him was too painful to even fathom. He had caused enough hurt in her life already.

She asked, “What did Esther say?”

He caught her up on the missing child and Esther’s fears. Sara was obviously skeptical. She asked, “She’s always come back?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t know that I would’ve even taken a report if not for the fact of Abby. I keep going back and forth between thinking she’s just hiding somewhere for the attention and thinking she’s hiding for a reason.”

“The reason being Rebecca knows what happened to Abby?” Sara asked.

“Or something else,” he said, still not sure what he believed. He voiced the thought he’d been trying to suppress since Esther’s call this morning. “She could be somewhere, Sara. Somewhere like Abby.”

Sara was quiet.

“I’ve got a team searching the forest. I’ve got Frank checking out jewelry stores. We’ve got a station full of ex-addicts and alcoholics from the farm, most of them smelling pretty ripe.” He stopped, thinking he’d be talking for another hour or two if he kept listing dead leads.

Out of the blue, she said, “I told Tess I’d go to church with her tonight.”

Jeffrey felt something in his gut squeeze. “I really wish you wouldn’t.”

“But you can’t tell me why.”

“No,” he admitted. “It’s a gut instinct, but I’ve got a pretty smart gut.”

“I need to do this for Tess,” she said. “And myself.”

“You turning religious on me?”

“There’s something I need to see for myself,” she told him. “I can’t talk about it now, but I’ll tell you later.”