“You’re on the money. She needed to make a statement, spend some time being herself. I bet she plays that recording over and over.”
Frustrated, disgusted, he dropped onto a stool at the kitchen peninsula. “But she’s still covering her tracks, and goddamn well. She leaves McMullen’s body in the cabin, calculating it won’t be found for a few days—and she’s right. Meanwhile, she takes McMullen’s car west into New Hampshire, changed the plates along the way, dumps it in the airport lot in Concord—her favorite ploy—and she’s in the wind again. They’ll backtrack her with the sighting in Louisville, and the murder in West Virginia, but we started looking west. Why come all the way back here, drive McMullen west, take the car west, if she was going to double back south?”
“Kentucky’s still west of Maine,” Simone pointed out.
“Yeah, we factored that in. Looking for a reason for her crossing into New Hampshire, then with the sighting, looking at the southwest. So I’m looking at this guy who moved to Arkansas a couple of years ago, another in Texas, and didn’t give West Virginia or Tracey much of a thought.”
“If you take one fraction of one degree of blame over this, I’ll be seriously pissed off at you.”
“Not blame, but … I don’t know the word for it. She doubled back again, and none of us saw it coming.”
“You’ll go over it with Essie later tonight. I’ll go home with CiCi.” She held up a hand before he objected. “From what I’ve seen of Hank, he’ll keep Dylan occupied. We’re all going to get out of the way, and you can go over it with Essie.”
He slid off the stool, drew her off hers, rested his forehead to hers. “You’re right. Let’s go walk on the beach.” He kissed her. “With friends and dogs and a wild and crazy kid.”
Simone went with him. She didn’t know where Elkins might be, but felt certain if she traced a northeast route on the map from Louisville, she’d find it.
*
Despite the pall of another murder, Reed saw Essie and her family off on the ferry early Monday morning after a good, happy weekend.
They glided away, waving, in a steady rain that had held off until just before dawn. He appreciated the timing—and now that he had lupines and tulips and other unidentified things popping up around his house, he appreciated the rain, too.
He and Essie had spent time in his office, the old partner rhythm still there. They agreed, unless she veered off course, her next area of interest should be the D.C. area.
They had a congressional aide, a victim’s advocate lawyer, a political reporter, and a couple who ran a women’s shelter—all within a fifty-mile radius.
Reed intended to pass their theories, conclusions, and newest list to Jacoby when he got to the station.
At his side, Barney whined as the ferry drifted away.
“They’ll be back. You did okay, pal. You even took a biscuit from the scary bearded man, even if you did run away from him afterward. Progress. Let’s go to work.”
He got in early, made coffee, sent the report he and Essie put together to Jacoby, settled down with the memos and incident reports on his desk.
A drunk and disorderly—Saturday night, off-islander, cited, sobered up, and fined. Somebody TP’d the Dobson house, also Saturday night. So much action!
As Richard Dobson taught math at the high school, and wasn’t known for the warm fuzzies or grading on a curve, the investigating officers—Matty and Cecil—suspected a student, possibly a student in danger of failing his class.
Marking period was nearly over, Reed calculated. He agreed with his officers’ conclusions.
A complaint about loud music and noise, also during the island madness of Saturday night. Responding officers—again Matty and Cecil—broke up a party comprised of a group of teenagers taking advantage of parents away for the weekend.
Underage drinking discovered.
Reed noted the party poopers arrived at twenty-two-thirty. And Dobson saw no sign of TP dripping from his trees when he let his dog out for a last tour at twenty-three hundred.
Dobson discovered same when he woke just before two hundred hours, answering his own call of nature, and glanced out the bathroom window.
Reed looked at Barney. “I deduce, my young apprentice, certain partygoers aren’t doing so well in algebra or trig—and I sympathize. I suspect some gathered again after the raid, got their supplies, and exacted their revenge.”
Normally, he’d let it go. It was just toilet paper, but he noted Dobson called in twice on Sunday demanding pursuit of the vandals. A memo informed him, Dobson had also complained to the mayor and wanted a response personally from the chief of police.
“Okay then.”
He noted from the schedule that Matty and Cecil were off, but the clarity of their report meant he didn’t need a sit-down.
He got up when he heard Donna come in.
“Morning, Donna.”
“Chief. Nice weekend?”
“Yeah. You?”
“The rain held off, so that’s good enough.”
“I hear you. Donna, how much of a hard-ass is Dobson—the math teacher?”
“Ass as stony as his heart. My grandson’s studying his brain out of his ears, and barely making it in geometry. Dobson won’t accept extra credit, no retests, no nothing. This is about them rolling his yard?”
“It is.”
“I’d have bought the TP for them, that’s how I feel about it.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. I have to go talk to him.”
“Good luck with that,” Donna said, bitterly. “He won’t be satisfied until whoever did it is slapped in stocks.”
“We have stocks?”
“He probably has some in his garage. It wouldn’t surprise me.”
“Was your grandson at the party at the Walkers’ Saturday night?”
She pokered up. “Maybe.”
“Donna.” He gestured to her chair, took one of his own. “Nobody’s going to be put in stocks, drawn or quartered, tarred or feathered. Nobody’s going to be arrested. I’m damn sure not going to screw around with kids over something like this. But it’d help if I knew who was involved, so I could talk to them. I’ll handle Dobson.”
“I’m not ratting out my own flesh and blood.”
“Do you want me to take an oath he won’t get in trouble, and neither will anybody else?”
She yanked open a drawer, pulled out a King James Bible.
“You’re serious?”
“Right hand on it, and swear.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Don’t you take the name of the Lord in vain when I’m holding the Bible.”
“Sorry.” He put his right hand on it. “I swear I’ll keep your grandson and the rest of them out of trouble regarding this matter.”
She nodded, put the book away. “He’s a good boy. He’s getting all A’s and B’s except for that one class. He’s already grounded for the party, and he deserved it.”
“He did. There was drinking.”
She pointed at him. “Are you going to sit there and tell me when you were coming up on eighteen or already hit it, fixing to graduate high school in a few weeks, you didn’t drink a beer or two?”
She yanked the drawer open again.
“Don’t bring that out here again. I’m not going to deny it. I bet he listens to you.”
“Everybody listens to me if they know what’s good for them.”
“Then you back me up with this. You have a talk with him later, tell him to avoid the drinking and the … mischief, to steer clear of Dobson outside of class, and Dobson’s house altogether.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Good. Who’s his best pal?”
“Damn it, Reed!”
“I took an oath, on the Bible.”
“Cecil’s brother, Mathias, and Jamie Walker.”
“Jamie Walker of the infamous party?”
“That’s right.”
“Okay then. Let’s go, Barney.”
“Don’t you let me down, Chief.”
“I won’t.”
As he and Barney walked to the school, Reed thought it good to be back to work.
He caught Dobson as the math teacher—briefcase in hand, sour expression in place—strode toward the main doors of the high school section of the building that also housed the middle and elementary.
At the moment, grouping the three levels, and the one-room kindergarten class, two hundred and twenty-seven students attended the Tranquility Island Education Complex.