Pamela Tracy: What Janie Saw

“Her name’s in his art book, and it’s worrying me. He wrote and drew pictures of her murder.”

Janie didn’t quite catch the interjection Patty muttered under her breath, but she could guess what it might have been. Patty scooted her chair to the left, lifted a manila folder and took a page from it. She scanned the words before handing it to Janie.

It was a campus email alerting faculty and staff that over the winter holiday an Adobe Hills Community College student had gone missing.

Brittney Lynn Travis.

* * *

SHERIFF RAFAEL SALAZAR didn’t need another thing to do this morning. He already had a full slate. He was due at the courthouse in a little over an hour and still had three phone calls to make before he could leave. None of them involved good news. His afternoon included a long drive to Phoenix and an overdue visit to a correctional facility.

So when his phone rang, Rafe wished he could ignore it.

“Salazar!” he barked into the phone. Maybe his tone would let the caller know what an inopportune time this was.

“Morning, Rafe.”

Suddenly, court dates, phone calls and the visit to the correctional facility seemed irrelevant.

Nathan Williamson was a detective and the director of the drug task force in nearby Adobe Hills, Arizona, located right outside of Tucson. Adobe Hills was not part of Laramie County, the area Rafe was in charge of. But occasionally their paths crossed, and usually the two departments worked well together.

Right now, Rafe and Nathan only had one case in common, and it was cold.

The Brittney Lynn Travis case.

She was from Rafe’s town, Scorpion Ridge, but she’d gone missing from Nathan’s town, Adobe Hills.

Nathan’s voice sounded terse, and in the background, Rafe could hear the sounds of other people, probably cops, doing their job.

“What’s going on?” Rafe asked, cop’s intuition telling him this wouldn’t be good news.

Nathan didn’t even pause. “What do you know about Janie Vincent?”

“Why do you want...?” Rafe started to answer but stopped when the door to his office flew open.

The woman in question stood in the doorway, looking tense. At her side was her big sister, Katie Rittenhouse, eight months pregnant and with an expression that said she was ready to take on the world.

“You have to talk to him,” Katie was telling Janie. “You can trust him. I promise.”

Janie didn’t appear convinced.

Behind them, his front-desk officer, Candy Riorden, hurried up. “I tried to tell—”

He halted Candy’s admonition, dismissed her with a wave of the hand, and motioned Janie and Katie toward the chairs facing his desk. Without missing a beat, he continued, “They’re here right now. But, to answer your question, Janie’s from Texas. Her sister and brother-in-law run BAA, Bridget’s Animal Adventure.”

“I need her to come here sometime today so we can question her.” Nathan didn’t sound interested in Janie’s connection to wildlife. “I’ve spent the last hour at Adobe Hills Community College, and I’ve got more questions than I have answers.”

“Questions about what? You haven’t exactly said why you want to speak with her.”

Janie was looking at the door as if she were ready to bolt.

“The kind that will help me solve a case!” Nathan snapped, bringing Rafe’s full attention back to the phone.

“Is it about—” Rafe started, but Nathan butted in.

“You’re aware she teaches at Adobe Hills Community College?” Nathan said quietly. “Well, Miss Vincent apparently read something in a kid’s art book last night, a kid by the name of Derek Chaney. I’ve spoken with the chair of the art department, Patricia Reynolds, but apparently your Miss Vincent is who I really need to speak with. Whatever she read might have been a murder confession about our missing coed.”

“Brittney Travis,” Rafe said slowly.

Across from him, Janie pressed her lips together and nodded.

Rafe gripped the phone, hard. He prayed—prayed that it was some kind of mistake, some kind of joke, that Brittney wasn’t dead, hadn’t suffered. He prayed that he could still save her.

This wasn’t the kind of closure Rafe had been hoping for.

“Yes.” Nathan’s voice was terse, guarded.

“Have you had time to—”

“We can’t do anything until we speak with Miss Vincent in person.”

“I’ll escort her myself,” Rafe promised. “I can free up my late afternoon.”

Katie reached across and took hold of one of Janie’s hands.

Nathan immediately snapped, “Late afternoon? I was hoping it would be sooner. And why do you have to escort her? You think she’s the type to skip?”

“No.” Rafe eyed Janie and Katie. “I don’t think that at all.” Katie couldn’t run, not in her condition, and while Janie was the type, she only ran when she felt no one was listening to her.

Well, if what she’d found was a true account of a murder, she’d have plenty of people willing to listen to her. Too bad it wasn’t Katie who’d read the art book. Solid, businesslike and driven, Katie would be the kind of witness cops dreamed about.

Janie, on the other hand, was flighty, whimsical and always believed the grass was greener on the other side. She acted and spoke without much forethought and a bit rashly.

Rafe said to Nathan, “I intend to be involved in every step of this new lead. So, along with you, I’m Janie’s new best friend.”

Janie raised one eyebrow and looked askance at her sister.

Actually, Rafe had a home-court advantage over Nathan. He might not be Janie’s best friend, but he knew her fairly well. He knew things like she only enjoyed coffee if she had French-vanilla creamer to add to it. That she could sit at a table at the Corner Diner and draw for an hour without being aware of anything that was going on about her. That if the very pregnant waitress happened to serve Janie, Janie tripled the tip.

His mother, Lucille, owned the diner and had noticed these traits first. She’d passed every observation on to Rafe, whether he wanted to hear it or not.

Mom had been playing matchmaker for Rafe over a decade now. She wasn’t very good at it, though admittedly, he’d always found both sisters intriguing. Katie Rittenhouse played with tigers. Janie Vincent painted them from a safe distance. Though the scar on the left side of her face indicated that hadn’t always been true.

“Is there something I should be aware of?” Nathan asked. “She ever been in trouble?”

Rafe had twice been called out to Bridget’s Animal Adventure, the animal habitat Janie’s big sister and husband managed, and where Janie spent much of her time. Once, he’d investigated the plight of two tiny bears, declawed and abandoned. On the second instance, he’d had to make sure the big cats were all accounted for, as there’d been a sighting in town. The cougars, leopards and mountain lions at BAA were all in their enclosures. Rafe never did find out whether it had been an actual sighting or whether someone in Scorpion Ridge owned a very large black domestic cat.

“No, she’s never caused me any trouble,” Rafe said.

It was a lie.

Janie Vincent had caused him trouble, but it was not the kind that made its way into a police report. No, it was the kind that messed with a man’s mind.

During the large-black-cat incident, he’d asked Janie out. He’d not been concerned about a conflict of interest because he’d been sure by then that the case was merely mistaken identity.

They’d gone out once, but he hadn’t called her for a second date.

It had been clear from the start that they were too different—she was a free spirit; he was rules and realistic.

He’d also very clearly gotten the sense that Janie didn’t have much use for cops, and that she’d only gone on the date to appease her sister.