Chapter Sixty-Four
Quinn is feeling like he’s onto something.
It’s a foreign sensation, this potential investigative success in the Minnie Agbayani case.
He finally has a name: Keith Cratch. A man who wore glasses but had only one functioning eye, someone who could’ve had a non-prescription lens like the one found on the sidewalk where Minnie was last seen.
A man who’d served time, though Quinn doesn’t yet know for what.
A man attracted to children, according to a complaint made to the church.
Quinn needs to get back to the office, or at least to somewhere with cell reception, and get his team at Midwest Investigators and the Omaha police on this.
After wringing out every bit of information he could about Keith Cratch from the reverend and his wife, he pulls his car back onto the dirt road.
His mind is racing. And he has what feels like a giant stone in his gut at the prospect of this man taking Minnie.
He looks about the vast fields as he drives and can’t help but think they would make a perfect place to dispose of a body.
Quinn sees a vehicle coming his way on the narrow road. A yellow school bus. It’s after five, late for school, but in the rural communities the school could be miles away. The road isn’t big enough for both vehicles, so Quinn is forced to pull over onto the narrow grass shoulder.
The driver waves as the bus rumbles past, a trail of dirt in its wake.
Thoughts unfold. He recalled from his first interview that the Agnesses do not have children. Yet the school bus is obviously dropping a student off at the Agnesses’s farm. There are no other homes for miles.
Sure, it’s possible the Agnesses adopted a child in the years since Quinn interviewed them. Or maybe they’re babysitting or even raising a family member’s kid. That’s not unheard of. But something compels him to yank the car around in a U-turn and floor it, catching up to the bus.
When the bus pulls to a stop at the mouth of the long drive to the Agness farm, Quinn pulls over some distance away. Tugs out his binoculars from his P.I. kit.
The bus’s lights are flashing. The red STOP sign arm eventually folds back in, and the bus plows away down the dirt road. Quinn feels another surge of adrenaline wash through his system.
Through the lenses he has a feeling of disbelief and euphoria as the girl—she looks about nine or ten—makes her way up the driveway. She has an oversized backpack.
Quinn can’t see her face. But he can make out the girl’s brown skin.
And her hair, which is styled to make mouse ears.
Minnie Agbayani is alive.
It’s then that Quinn hears the explosion, feels the pebbles of windshield glass showering over him from the shotgun blast.