Rita Herron - Cold Case at Carlton's Canyon

“You found her?” Mr. Lambert asked in a broken voice.

Kelly’s fiancé, Raymond Fisher, paled. “Please, God, no...”

Amanda tensed and glanced at Sergeant Thorpe. “Mr. Lambert, Mr. Fisher, this is Sergeant Thorpe with the Texas Rangers. Sergeant Thorpe?”

Justin motioned with his hands as if to calm the panic in the men’s eyes. “We haven’t identified the young woman yet, but it’s not Kelly. The ME thinks this woman has been dead a couple of months.”

Relief mingled with horror on the father’s face. “But you think this woman’s death is related to Kelly’s disappearance?”

The fiancé stumbled forward and sank into a wooden chair near the desk. He leaned his head on his hands, a sob escaping. “You think she’s dead, don’t you?”

Amanda’s mind raced to the missing-persons file on her desk. Carly Edgewater and Tina Grimes were recent names on the list. It could be one of them.

But compassion for the fiancé and Kelly’s father forced her to keep her thoughts to herself. She was a professional. Her job was to find answers.

She also needed to keep these men calm. If Kelly had been abducted, they might know something to help track down the kidnapper.

“It’s too early to tell that,” Amanda said as she patted Fisher’s shoulder. “Right now all we know is that Kelly didn’t show up for her bridal shower and hasn’t contacted you. Maybe Sergeant Thorpe is right and Kelly just needed some time alone. She could have ducked out to think things over before the wedding.”

“No,” Fisher said with a firm shake of his head. “Kelly wouldn’t run out on me. She loved me, and I loved her. She was excited about the wedding.”

“He’s right,” Lambert said. “Kelly wasn’t the kind of girl to run out on anyone. She was dependable, smart, had a good head on her shoulders.” He fumbled with his phone and angled it toward Amanda. “Even if she did want some time, she would have told one of us. I’ve called her at least fifty times in the last few hours, and she hasn’t answered or returned my calls.”

“I’ve called her, too,” Fisher said, pulling out his phone. “I’ve sent dozens of texts, too, but she hasn’t responded. I even drove by her place, but her car wasn’t there and neither was she.”

“What kind of car does she drive?” Amanda asked.

“A red Toyota.”

“Do you know the license plate?”

He jotted it on a sticky note from her desk.

Sergeant Thorpe exhaled. “I understand your concern,” he said in a gruff voice. “Sheriff Blair and I will do everything we can to find your daughter.”

Amanda’s lungs squeezed for air as she stepped aside to call her deputy, Joe Morgan. She quickly explained the situation.

“Drive around and see if you can find Kelly’s car. She drives a red Toyota.” She gave him the license plate and hung up. Maybe if they located Kelly’s car, they’d find a clue as to what had happened to her.

She just hoped they found her alive.

* * *

JUSTIN CONSIDERED THE circumstances and knew he had to remain objective and treat this woman’s disappearance like he would any other case. To assume Kelly had been abducted by the same person who’d killed the woman in the creek—and possibly a half dozen others who still hadn’t been located—was too presumptuous.

Making assumptions was dangerous. It could lead him to miss important details and send him on a wild goose chase.

After all, it was possible that Kelly’s fiancé was lying. He and Kelly could have had a major blow-up and she could have run off. She might need time to compose herself before contacting her father. Or hell, she might be off planning some sort of surprise for her fiancé.

But his gut instincts told him they were dealing with a serial criminal who’d been kidnapping female victims for nearly a decade and would continue until he was stopped.

But he wouldn’t be doing his job if he didn’t explore every option. With the publicity surrounding the ongoing missing-persons case, someone could use the disappearances as a smoke screen to cover up a more personal murder.

Like a fiancé getting rid of his girlfriend if she decided to call off the wedding...

“Sheriff, why don’t you take Mr. Lambert back for coffee while I talk to Mr. Fisher for a few minutes?”

Amanda’s gaze met his, questions looming, but separating victims or suspects was customary, so she nodded.

“Come on, Mr. Lambert. I’ll start the paperwork for the missing-persons report.” She glanced at Justin and Fisher. “Would you guys like coffee?”

Fisher shook his head no. “I don’t think my stomach could handle it right now.”

“Coffee would be good,” Justin said. “Black.”

Her brows rose a second as if to say that she wasn’t his maid, and his mouth quirked. After all, she had offered.

She led Lambert back through the door to the back and returned a moment later with a bottle of water for Fisher and a cup of coffee for him.

“Thanks,” he said with a small smile.

A zing of something like attraction hit him when her hand brushed his as she gave him the mug. Her mouth twisted into a frown as if she’d noticed it, too, and she jerked her hand away and rushed back to talk to Lambert.

Sweat trickled down Fisher’s forehead. Was he simply upset about Kelly’s disappearance or was he nervous because he was hiding something?

Justin took a sip of coffee, surprised at the taste. Most law enforcement workers could handle a gun but didn’t know a flying fig about how to brew decent coffee.

Amanda Blair could do both. Intriguing.

“Mr. Fisher, how long have you and Kelly been together?” Justin asked.

Fisher gripped the water bottle with white-knuckled hands. “We knew each other in high school but didn’t date until our senior year. We got engaged last Christmas. Kelly took some time after high school to do some mission trips, then decided to get her teaching degree. She just graduated with a masters in education and is looking for a teaching job.”

“What do you do?”

Fisher shrugged. “I’m a financial consultant. I just started with a new company in Austin. We were moving there after the wedding.”

“Any problems between you and Kelly lately?”

Fisher shook his head, his leg bouncing up and down. “No.”

“No recent fights? Arguments over where you’d live? Money?”

“Not really. We get along great.”

“Do you and Kelly live together?”

Fisher nodded. “We moved in together our senior year of college.”

“What did her father think about that?”

“At first he wasn’t too happy,” Fisher admitted. “But eventually he realized it made sense. And when a student was raped on campus, he said he was actually relieved she was living with me.” Emotions made his voice warble. “He felt like she was...safe.”

Justin heard the guilt in Fisher’s tone. He understood that kind of guilt. “Do Kelly and her father get along?”

Fisher frowned up at him. “Yeah, why?”

“Anything you tell us about Kelly might help us find her,” Justin hedged. “So they get along?”

Fisher nodded. “Kelly’s mother died a while back and they went through a rough patch. That was before we started dating. But they were both grieving and adjusting. She said the last two years they’ve been close.”

“How did her mother die?”

“Cancer. She was sick a long time.”

So no skeletons that might suggest Lambert had hurt her. “What did Mr. Lambert think about the upcoming marriage?”

Fisher sipped his water again. “He was cool with it.”

“But?”

Fisher shifted in the seat. “At first he wanted her to wait until we saved more money. But Kelly assured him we’d be okay.”