Charlaine Harris - An Ice cold Grave

"You haven't had any luck finding someone who saw him around town?"

"No luck. But we thought he might have tried to find you, to finish what he'd started. Or to apologize. With a kid that messed up, who knows what he was going to do."

Deputy Rob Tidmarsh came in, stomping his feet just like the sheriff had done. "Didn't see nothing, Sheriff," he said.

So she'd been distracting us while her minion checked out the property. Well, there was nothing to find, and there was no point getting angry about it. She'd done what she had to do.

"We might need to call our lawyer," I said.

"I've got him on speed dial," Tolliver said.

"Or maybe," Rockwell said, overriding our voices, "you found Chuck and decided to punch him back." She was looking at Tolliver as she said this, as if I were accustomed to sending Tolliver to do my punching.

"We were here all night," Tolliver said. "We got a phone call at—what time did Manfred call us, Harper?"

"Oh, about three," I said.

"What evidence is a phone call on a cell phone?" Rockwell asked. "And did Manfred talk to you?" She was looking at Tolliver with no friendly face.

"He talked to me, but Tolliver was here."

"He won't say he talked to Tolliver, then."

"Well, he may have heard him in the background. But he didn't talk to him directly, no." Calling our lawyer in Atlanta was beginning to seem like a possibility we should bear in mind. Art Barfield had made a mint off us lately, and I was sure he wouldn't mind making a little more.

"I'm not in the habit of abducting boys," Tolliver said. "But of course there's someone here in town who is. Why are you looking at me instead of trying to find out who took all the other boys? Isn't it far more likely that that's who's got Chuck Almand? And if that's so, isn't the boy running out of time?"

I figured Sheriff Rockwell was grinding her teeth together in frustration, from the tensed look of her face.

"Do you think we're not looking?" she said, almost biting the words out. "Now that he doesn't have the use of his usual killing ground, where would he have taken the boy? We're searching every shed and barn in the county, but we have to check out all other possibilities. You were one of them, and a pretty likely one at that."

I didn't think we were so damn likely, but then, we'd had the run-in with Chuck and his dad. There was something more I could tell the law.

"He told me he was sorry," I said to the sheriff.

"What?"

"The boy said he was sorry. For hitting me. He told me to find him later."

"Why? Why do you think that was? What sense does that make?" The tall deputy was looking over Rockwell's shoulder at me as though I'd started barking.

"At the time I just thought—I have to say, I thought it was just some kind of mental illness talking. He looked so strange when he said it."

"And what do you think now?"

"I think…I don't know what I think."

"That's not a hell of a lot of help."

"I'm not a psychologist, or a profiler, or any kind of law enforcement person," I said. "I just find dead people." I just find dead people. Chuck knew that. And he'd said, "Come find me."

"Then we should get you out searching, too," Sandra Rockwell was saying.

I was sitting there in the grip of a horrible idea, wondering how I could have possibly thought only a day ago that the world might be better if someone took Chuck Almand out right now. That was before I'd seen his secret face, the face he wore when he told me he had to hit me.

Tolliver started to say something, stopped. I looked at him. It wasn't the time to remind them that I got paid for this work. His instinct to hold in his words had been a good one. No, I wasn't reading his mind. We just know each other very well.

"Where do you want me to look?" I asked, and my voice was coming from far away.

That stumped her for a moment. "You'd know if the body was new, right?" she said.

"Yeah."

"Then we'll just take you everywhere we can think of," she said.

I thought of Manfred sitting at the hospital, or in his hotel room, hoping we'd show up. I thought of the road out of town, out of this situation. But weighing that against the life of a boy, what could I say? Which Rockwell knew, of course.

"You're ready to go, right? We'll swing back later and pick up Mr. Lang here," the sheriff said.

"No, I think not," I said right back. "I'm not going anywhere without him." Though it would be better if Tolliver went to help Manfred, if we had to be separated. But then…no. It was better if we stayed together. I was going to be selfish about this.

Tolliver vanished into the little bathroom while I made the sheriff useful by asking her to help me with my shoes. Tidmarsh tried not to snort, but he didn't quite succeed. Sheriff Rockwell was game, and my hiking boots were laced up and tied in a neat bow in no time. I took my pills for the day and picked up the cabin a bit while we waited. I tried to bank the fire so it could be revived. The electricity might be back on, but there was certainly a chance it would go off again. The fireplace was still essential. I had a gloomy feeling we'd be spending another night here.

Manfred would be better than I at solving this problem. Maybe if he went to the house, or to the barn where we'd last seen Chuck, he could trace the boy somehow. On the other hand, it would be inhumane to ask Manfred to work just now. And he might not be up to it. He'd told me several times his psychic sense was weaker than his grandmother's. I thought he was wrong, but that was what he believed.

I called him, since we were waiting, anyway. Manfred sounded sad but collected. I explained the situation to him, and he said that he'd heard from his mother again, that she was making better time now that the roads were clearing up. "We'll see you later," I said. "You hang in there, Manfred."

"I don't trust anyone here," he said. "I don't trust the doctor, I don't trust the nurses, I don't think the hospital guy is on the level. Even the minister gives me the creeps. You think I'm being paranoid? You think there's really something wrong here?"

"That's hard to answer at this point," I said.

"Oh, right, the sheriff's there," Manfred said dismally. "I just can't throw the feeling off, Harper. Something's really wrong here."

"In Doraville? Or specifically at the hospital?"

"I'm just not sharp enough to say," he said after a long pause. "I don't have the gift like my grandmother did."

"I think you're wrong. I think all you need is some experience," I said. "I think you do have it in you."

"You don't know how much that means to me," he said. "Listen, I've got to go now. I've got an idea."

That didn't sound good. That sounded like he was about to do something on his own. Young men on their own in Doraville didn't fare well. I tried to call him back right away.

He did pick up, finally. "Where are you going?" I asked. Tolliver had come out of the bathroom, finally, clean and dressed. He stood frozen in place by the anxiety in my voice, his dirty clothes in his hands.

"I'm going to look for the boy," Manfred said.

"No, don't go without someone with you," I said. "Tell us where you're going."

"You might get in trouble again."

"Hey, we've got the sheriff, remember? Where you going?"

"I'm going to that barn again. That's where I have to go."

"No, wait for us, okay? Manfred?"

"I'll meet you there."

But it would take us a lot longer to get there, since we were starting from the lake.

I told the sheriff what the situation was, and she went ballistic. "We've searched the barn," she said. "We've gone over and over it. That dirt floor is empty, the stalls are empty, there's no loft. It's an empty wooden building with walls so thin there couldn't be a hidden space in there. There aren't even any more dead animals, I'm almost a hundred percent sure, and you told us yourself there aren't any bodies there."