Christopher Golden - Lost Ones

But she had to earn money to live, and maybe a return to Atlanta and her friends and her routine would help to stave off her sorrow.

Before she went, however, she had asked Sheriff Norris to arrange a meeting for her.

He signaled for a left and then took the turn, following driving regulations without even thinking about it. The heater whirred, though it wasn’t very effective, and Sara huddled deeper into her thick winter coat. The trip to Freeport had been one of many distractions she had engineered in the past two months. None of them had been terribly effective.

Sting stopped singing and an ad for the local television news came on. The DJ hadn’t identified the song. Sara could remember when they had always told you what song you had heard and never could understand why they stopped doing that. If you liked it and wanted to go buy the CD-or if you wanted to download it-how were you supposed to know what it was called?

Sheriff Norris pulled into the driveway of a beautiful home, the kind of place she always wished she could live but knew she never would. Sara made an excellent living as a photographer. Maybe one day she’d even have enough money to think she was rich. But she didn’t think she was destined for a place like this.

The car went silent. She blinked and looked over to see the sheriff taking the key from the ignition.

“You all right?” he asked.

Sara smiled. “If we wait for that, I’ll be sitting in this car the rest of my life.”

She popped open the door, shut it behind her, and led the way up the walk toward the front door. The sheriff had to hurry to catch up. On the steps, Sara reached out to ring the doorbell, but before she could, the door opened.

The woman who stood inside had been beautiful once. In some ways, she still was. But despite the elegance of her clothes-a counterpoint to the blue jeans, boots, and bone-white turtleneck Sara wore under her coat-she looked faded, like dried flowers or antique furniture. Her lips were folded in a tight line, so that when she blinked and smiled, she looked as though the act pained her.

“You must be Sara,” Mrs. Whitney said. “Please, come in. You too, Jackson. It’s freezing out there, and I’ve made hot cocoa.”

“Thank you,” Sara replied, stepping inside. “That sounds perfect for a day like today.”

The sheriff followed her in and, while Mrs. Whitney closed the door behind them, they took off their coats. She hung them in a closet so as not to mar the immaculate house. It looked more like a museum than anything else.

“I’m afraid that my husband was called away at the last moment to meet with a client,” the woman said. “So it will just be the three of us.”

Sara glanced at the sheriff, who didn’t seem at all surprised. It was Saturday morning. She suspected that Julianna Whitney’s father simply didn’t want to talk to a stranger about his vanished daughter. Though Sara did not like the pretense this forced on Mrs. Whitney-the poor woman shouldn’t have to lie for her husband-she understood.

“That’s all right. We won’t take up too much of your time, anyway,” Sheriff Norris said.

“Oh, please,” Mrs. Whitney said, waving away his concern. “Time is all I have, these days.”

She brought out a tray with a pot of cocoa and a plate of shortbread cookies. Sara had never tasted better hot chocolate. It had to have been made from scratch and she let it warm her. Very little could.

When they had all sipped at the cocoa for a few minutes and the sheriff was on his third shortbread cookie-this strange pantomime of civilized behavior a soothing mask over their grief-Mrs. Whitney fixed Sara with her gaze.

“I’m glad of the company,” she said. “But I think perhaps it’s time for you to tell me what it was you wanted to talk about.”

Sara managed a smile as she set down her cup. “More than anything, I just wanted to meet you. I’m…well, I’m making plans to go back to Atlanta soon. That’s where I live. I don’t think there’s anything else I can do here, and I have responsibilities.”

“Of course you do,” Mrs. Whitney said kindly, but there was a kind of sad envy in her expression, as though she wished that she too had responsibilities that would take her away from this place and the specter of her daughter’s disappearance.

As she tried to continue, Sara’s breath hitched and she paused, fighting not to cry.

Mrs. Whitney reached out and laid a hand over hers. Whatever differences were between them-age, social status-none of it mattered. As of last December, they were now far more alike than they were different.

Sara nodded, though the woman had said nothing.

“I just thought maybe you could tell me a little about Julianna,” she said, studying Mrs. Whitney. She gnawed her bottom lip a moment, then shrugged and gave a soft laugh. “I guess I thought if I knew her, knew who she was, I mean, then I’d feel like maybe my dad wasn’t out there alone. Wherever he is.”

Julianna’s mother put a hand across her heart. Her eyes were moist.

“I think that’s a lovely idea.”

Jackson Norris sat and sipped cocoa and ate shortbread cookies while the two women talked. They shared stories about Julianna, and about Sara’s father, and before they knew it more than an hour had passed.

Sara saw the clock and sighed.

“We should go. I really wanted the sheriff here to introduce us, but I hate to have taken so much of your time, and his.”

“Oh, Jackson doesn’t mind,” Mrs. Whitney said. “Do you, sheriff?”

“Not at all,” he said. But Sara knew that the man had other things to do. There were politics involved in his position, but there was police work as well.

“Still, we should go.”

Mrs. Whitney stood up with them and fetched their coats. As the sheriff put his on, the woman’s hands fidgeted.

“I presume there’s nothing new, Jackson?” she said.

Sheriff Norris zipped his coat. “It’s on my mind every day, Margaret. And it will be until I find them.”

The woman nodded, and then a frown creased her brow.

Sara noticed. “What is it, Mrs. Whitney?”

One hand fluttered in front of her. “Nothing, I’m sure. It’s just that I’ve been thinking lately about Friedle.”

“Who?” Sara asked, turning to the sheriff.

“Marc Friedle,” he replied. “He was the Bascombes’ household manager; basically, the butler, valet, driver, and everything else in one. He hired and fired gardeners, cooks, painters, that sort of thing.”

The sheriff looked at Mrs. Whitney. “Margaret, you know I looked into Friedle. We have no reason to suspect him of anything. His fingerprints were everywhere, but he practically lived in the house. There’s no evidence he had anything to do with Max Bascombe’s death or the disappearances of Max’s kids.”

The woman nodded. “I’m sure you’re right. But more and more, lately, I’ve been thinking about him, and about how odd it seems to me that he rushed out of Kitteridge so quickly when Max Bascombe was killed. Oliver and Collette had vanished, and everyone was searching for them frantically. But Friedle was the manager of the house. It was his responsibility, and he left so fast it was almost like he was the one person who never expected them to come back.”

Sara turned toward Sheriff Norris. A dark twist of suspicion began to tighten in her chest and she knew the moment she saw the sheriff’s brows knit together that he had the very same feeling.

It seemed her return to Atlanta might be delayed after all.

Halliwell felt the anger burning inside the Sandman. The creature had no veins through which poison might flow, but the anger churned in him just the same. It was part of the storm of his essence, just as Halliwell himself had become part of the Sandman. He was integral to the creeping, murderous thing, and its iniquity stained his soul. The Dustman was still there as well, a grave voice rising up from within Halliwell’s own mind like an echo down a canyon or a conscience long subdued.