Chapter 2
Darrell Manderley.
Angela didn’t even want to think of the man. She wasn’t a proponent of the death penalty—death was final. If a mistake was made, you couldn’t rectify a death penalty.
They had dealt with so many different cases, many which had seemed to have been shaded by the worse evil that could inhabit a human being.
They were often given cult cases—strange cases, often with a culprit believing he was a vampire or a werewolf or just playing off legends because, naturally, it made a killing spree more legendary.
Of course, they had their share of simple cases that could be attributed to greed, revenge, jealousy and more. Motives.
But Darrell Manderley . . .
There was no denying the man was smart, and he used his intelligence to become incredibly manipulating. Angela had to wonder about his victims, what it was in the human mind that could allow it to become so . . .
Not twisted. Susceptible.
Not that she didn’t have her own beliefs, and since they were able to speak with the dead—those who had remained and wished to communicate—she knew there was more beyond the mortal coil.
But how did a man convince people who should have had some sanity and intelligence that most of the world was wrong, that the fallen angel was the one who ruled all, and that sacrificing themselves—and even their children—was the road to bliss in eternity?
She shook her head. Of course, in their investigations, they had learned through the years, he had managed his communities or cults using various tricks of the mind, playing people as he saw they might most easily be played.
“There,” Jackson said.
She’d been so lost in her thoughts she’d barely realized they had arrived on the street where the older woman Sadie McFarlane had her home—a home she had stepped out of to disappear once she’d gone out to buy donuts.
“We’ll talk to her roommates quickly, get in the cars—” Jackson began.
“And into the woods?” Angela suggested.
He nodded. “Bruce already has agents out and rangers are searching the area as well. The thing is—the forest here is huge. Acres and acres, some part of the National Parks system, some privately owned. It’s not going to be easily or quickly investigated.”
Angela had forgotten the spirit of Trent Fielding was in the backseat until he spoke, telling them, “Trust me. I will look for help that others might not see in the woods as well. Hopefully, we’ll find more friends.
You know—my kind of friends,” he said lightly.
“Anyway, I’m slipping in. You two knock at the door. ”
Angela smiled. Trent was truly more of a help than he would ever know.
She and Jackson headed to the front door, knocking on it. A woman with silver gray hair, petite, and probably about sixty-five or so answered the door.
Jackson already had his badge out, not wanting to alarm her.
“We’re investigating—” Jackson began.
“Sadie! Oh, I’m so grateful. Grateful to everyone who is trying to help.
Sadie is the dearest human being in the world.
I’m Dorothy Glen, her roommate, and friends with her since I graduated high school—she was one of our history teachers.
Come in, come in, though the cops have been here, I don’t know what else to say. ”
She threw the door wide open for them, ushering them inside where they saw a dining room connected to a parlor and another woman was sitting at a table.
She was very attractive and appeared to be in her late sixties, but she had her hair artfully colored in shades of blue and pink and appeared to be into the idea that one’s looks could be fun at any age.
Trent Fielding’s spirit was already there, leaning against the wall. He gave them a nod, one that assured him the women were for real in their worry for their friend.
“This is Leona Bell, our roommate, too. We’re all such good friends, with Sadie being almost twenty years older.
And that was what the cop said—why did we have the truly elderly woman go out for donuts!
” Dorothy said indignantly. “What they don’t understand is that Sadie is like—wow, I mean, like Dick Van Dyke!
She’s still dancing away, active, she goes to the gym—she’s great at doing all the right things.
And that’s just it. She taught school for years and years and she’s up early and she loves to surprise us with special coffees and pastries in the morning. But today . . .”
“You know that she was going to buy coffee and pastries,” Angela said. “If you were sleeping—”
“She popped into my room to tell me!” Dorothy said.
“I fell back asleep, woke up an hour later . . . and she wasn’t back.
I called her cell; it just rang and rang.
Then I discovered she’d left it on her bedside table.
She usually has it, but she must have forgotten that it wasn’t in her purse—it was on the charger.
So, I went out and walked around. I walked to the coffee shop down the street, and they didn’t remember seeing her this morning .
. . she just seemed to disappear into thin air.
And, of course, the cops said she might have gone somewhere else, or she had forgotten what she was doing.
But they don’t understand—her mind is sharper than the minds of most twenty-year-olds.
But they did put out a silver alert, so . . .”
“Would you like coffee?” Leona Bell asked them, rising and coming to stand by them as Dorothy was doing. “It isn’t from a shop—just our percolator.”
Angela smiled. “And I’ll bet you make great coffee. But we’re going to go off on the hunt for your friend right away. We have a lot of ground to cover—”
“She didn’t just wander into the woods, believe me.” Dorothy said.
“Nope.” Leona agreed.
“We’re afraid that someone might have forced her into the woods, perhaps just someone delighting in thinking he or she could fool the aged, or .
. . we don’t know. But trust me, we believe you.
We know many people who have aged with their full faculties, so please, understand.
We know that we’re looking for a bright and able woman. ”
“Thank you!” Dorothy said.
“Ditto!” Leona added earnestly.
They left the house with Trent following right behind them. “They are for real—they were talking about Sadie when I went in, praying that she’s all right, wondering what else they could do themselves to help find her.”
“And I do believe a woman her age can be as bright as anyone else,” Jackson said.
“So do I,” Angela agreed. “But something else is really bothering me.”
“What’s that?” Jackson asked her.
“The coffee shop,” she told him. “There was just something about that waitress or cashier we were speaking with. I don’t believe she had no peripheral vision at all—the distance down the counter to that hallway just isn’t that far.
And, okay! Sadie said she was going for donuts or pastries or whatever.
Where else would you walk for coffee and donuts around here?
I mean, honestly, I can see how the owner—behind a closed door—didn’t see anything and why he might not pay attention to footsteps or a door opening and closing, but that woman .
. . I don’t know, Jackson. There was just something cagey about her. ”
“Well, I hate taking more time, but I’m thinking maybe we should go back to the coffee shop and get the video from this morning again to see if Sadie did or didn’t go into the coffee shop. Here’s the picture we have of Sadie and . . .”
“Two women go into a coffee shop and don’t come out,” Angela said.
“We can go through all the footage of the front of the place again, but . . .” She paused, studying the picture Jackson was showing her.
Sadie McFarlane might be eighty, but she looked great.
She hadn’t gotten color-creative with her hair, but it was snow white and nicely coifed in a bun at her nape with a little dangle of bangs on her forehead and on the sides of her face.
Her eyes were a bright and beautiful blue; and in the picture, she was wearing a beautiful smile that seemed to take away at least twenty years of her age.
“You would have noticed her in the footage already seen,” Trent noted.
“I believe we would have, but . . .” Angela murmured. “We were looking for Arabella!”
“I’m going to call Bruce and have our techs get on it,” Jackson said.
“I want to see the discarded ambulance and the cars. Maybe not so much the ambulance—that was the vehicle stolen just to escape. He ditched it almost immediately. I want to get on the road and then go to the coffee shop again. I’m willing to bet he ditched the last stolen car near the coffee shop. ”
“To use to—” Angela began.
“To get there, and from then on, I’m willing to bet that .
. . that he went straight into the forest. If so, there’s got to be a trail.
We need to get dogs on the job, too, so they can follow whatever trail they might have left behind.
K-9s are much better at following scents than we are,” Jackson noted.
“Okay. Either deep, deep into the forest from there, or he went through the forest to get to another car. But if he kidnapped two women, they might not have been so easy to control,” Angela reminded him.
“Drugged,” Jackson said. “We know that Arabella was drugged.”
“True. I want a word with what’s her name—the waitress,” Angela said.
“Definitely! Cagey woman,” Trent noted.
“If we really want to tear that place apart, we’re going to need a warrant,” Angela said.
“And I’m willing to bet we can get one quickly,” Jackson told her. “So, we go. We order coffee for ourselves. We sit and drink it. And we’ll have the warrant!”
“And on the way, we’ll watch for the first abandoned car—maybe the cops have already found those which were reported stolen,” Angela said. “Wait, Jackson!”
“What?”