Lisa Gardner - Gone

A light mist still blanketed the county. The wet road unrolled before Kincaid like a shiny black ribbon, disappearing behind soaring fir trees. He couldn’t see the mountains on the horizon. Instead, the world had become a small gray space, where headlights seemed to appear out of nowhere, only to disappear back into the gloom.

Kincaid missed his wife. He missed his boy. Hell, he missed his dog.

And he was very sorry for what he was probably going to have to do next.

Arriving at Jenkins’s farm, he checked in with the officer standing outside the crime scene tape, formally adding his name to the murder log. Looking over the officer’s shoulder, he could see the list of investigators was long and only going to grow longer.

“Any news yet?” he asked the man.

The deputy just shrugged. “I’ve been standing here for the past twenty minutes. Haven’t heard a thing.”

Kincaid thanked him, then ducked beneath the tape.

Once on the grounds, the level of activity was astonishing. He saw three technicians meticulously piecing their way through a pile of rubbish, checking each discarded refrigerator and rusted-out stove. Four more investigators worked a trail of auto parts, cast-off engines, and metal shells of abandoned cars. Officers were crawling inside the home, outside the home, swarming the various outbuildings. It would take days to work a scene this involved. It would take months to have any definitive answers.

The DA appeared from around the back of the house. He spotted Kincaid and came over.

“Hoped it would end better,” Tom Perkins said by way of greeting. They shook hands.

“You have an ID?”

“Still working. ME just arrived, so we’re getting serious now. Come on. I’ll give you the grand tour.”

Kincaid followed Perkins around the house, past a fenced-in corral that was a sea of muck, into a fair-sized barn with a rusted metal roof that appeared to be sliding to the right. In its heyday, the barn had probably served as milking parlor for twenty or thirty head. Jenkins, however, had obviously never kept it up. Grain bins held nothing but mold. Milking equipment dangled uselessly, emitting a sour, fermented smell. Kincaid already had a handkerchief over his nose, and that was before he ever made it to the back.

There, six people, three of them in hazmat gear, were kneeling around a ten-foot-high pile of hay and cow shit. The smell nearly knocked Kincaid back a step. Not decay, but manure.

“Body was found in a pile of waste,” the DA reported. “Not a bad strategy. Would’ve thrown off the heat sensors, and probably the search dogs. He didn’t get it quite covered enough, though. One of the initial officers noticed something white, and on closer investigation, realized it was a hand.”

“Any idea of how long?”

“We don’t know anything, other than the fingers clearly appear female.”

“Rings?” Kincaid asked sharply.

“Not that we’ve seen.”

They made it to the clustered group. Very carefully, one technician was working manure off the pile, depositing small shovelfuls onto a blue tarp. A second person dusted each body part as it emerged. They were being meticulous, preserving as much evidence as possible.

It took fifteen minutes to find a face.

Even knowing what was coming, it hit Kincaid harder than he thought it would.

“Alane Grove,” he whispered. “OSP.”

The DA looked at him sharply. “You’re sure?”

“She’s my detective! Of course I’m sure.”

Perkins didn’t comment on his tone. Instead, the man merely sighed and rubbed his face. “All right,” he said at last.

“Any more graves?” Kincaid needed to know.

“Not yet, but give us time. Jenkins owns twenty acres.”

“Ahh shit.” Kincaid’s turn to sigh, rub his forehead. “I gotta make some calls. You’ll tell me the moment you know more?”

“We’d never dream of doing it otherwise.”

Kincaid left the barn, trying to find one patch of quiet in the middle of all the craziness, then flipping open his cell phone. He started with headquarters, notifying his lieutenant. Then he paged Lieutenant Mosley, who would need to prepare a statement. Then he called the task force center, one call, at least, where he was providing less than bad news.

Quincy, however, was no longer there.

Wednesday, 12:46 p.m. PST

KIMBERLY FELT LIKE A LUMBERING RHINO. Running down the closed access road, she hit a pothole, stumbled left, and felt the weight of twenty thousand dollars twist her body dangerously to one side. She righted herself, made it another hundred yards, then slid on the wet pavement and got to do some fancy footwork to keep herself from going splat. Finally, she spotted the dark tower rising out of the gloom. She plunged into the woods and dropped behind a boulder next to Shelly, who’d run ahead to do reconnaissance.

“I… gotta… work out… more,” Kimberly gasped.

Shelly looked at the FBI agent’s red, sweat-soaked face, then the duffel bag. “Or switch to a credit card.”

“Very… funny.”

Shelly gestured forward and Kimberly peered over the boulder to check out their target through the thick coastal mist.

The lighthouse teetered dangerously close to the edge of a rocky cliff, seeming to rise out of a sea of fog. It was a relatively simple structure: white-painted windowless base, forming an octagon that rose up nearly twenty feet to a metal-and-glass-enclosed tower that housed the fifteen-foot-high lens. True to the Parks Department report, however, the whole structure had seen better days. The paint was cracking and peeling on the lower level, while the glass panes appeared shattered in the upper tower. Upon closer study, Kimberly realized the entire structure tilted suspiciously to the left.

“Wood rot,” Shelly murmured. “Whole structure is riddled with it. Hence they shut it down.”

“Wonderful. A scenic little death trap. Who said kidnappers didn’t have a sense of humor?” Kimberly slipped her cell phone out of her pocket, hit Send. “Hear us?” she whispered into the speaker.

“Loud and clear,” Mac replied.

“We’re at the lighthouse. No sign of activity. You?”

“Got the GPS on screen. Staring patiently, or not so patiently, as the case may be.”

“Well, good news is, we only have ten minutes left, so something has to happen soon.”

Kimberly returned the phone to her pocket, leaving it on speakerphone so Mac could hear what was happening. She looked at Shelly, who was now studying the UNSUB’s map. “Looks like we place the money inside the lighthouse by the bottom of the stairs. I think. Guy really isn’t gonna win too many art contests.” Shelly turned the map this way and that, then lowered it with a sigh. She returned to staring pensively at the tilted structure. “Seems like he’s gotta be watching. If someone was bringing you twenty thousand dollars, wouldn’t you be watching?”

“I would. Do you suppose Rainie and Dougie might be in the area?”

Shelly considered it, then shook her head. “Would be risky. They might call out, even escape. Two people are hard to control.”

“So we pay the money, he retrieves it, and then what? We get a call?”

“Sounds like a newspaper reporter gets a call,” Shelly said drolly. “Or maybe there will be another letter to the editor. With a map.”

“Which, for all we know, will lead us straight to their bodies,” Kimberly muttered bitterly. “I don’t like this. We’re following all his orders, with no game plan of our own. It’s bad policing.”

“Got a better idea?”

“No.”

“Well then…” Shelly gestured toward the lighthouse.

Kimberly scowled, glanced at her watch, and hefted the duffel bag over her shoulder. But then, at the last minute, she did have an idea.