Chapter Two
“‘Don’t think you can break the law and go unpunished.’ Hah!
” Sergeant Gage Walker glared at the half sheet of notepaper in his hand, then continued reading.
“‘Your dog was running loose in the town park, in flagrant violation of the leash ordinance. Don’t think because you’re the sheriff’s brother you’re above the law. ’”
Gage transferred his glare to the man seated across from him—his brother, Sheriff Travis Walker.
The two shared the same dark hair and eyes, though Gage was taller, with broader shoulders.
“Major was not running loose. He saw Casey at the playground and was so excited he pulled the leash out of Maya’s hand.
He ran straight to Casey and Maya caught up to him right away. ”
“Now that you’ve confessed, I’ll have to write you a ticket.” Only the twitch at the corner of Travis’s unsmiling mouth gave away that he was teasing.
Gage laid the note on Travis’s desk. “If this is someone’s idea of a joke, I don’t appreciate it. Casey was in tears, thinking Major would have to go to dog jail or something.”
“I hope you told her we don’t have a dog jail.” Travis leaned forward and reread the note. “We’ve had several calls from people who have received similar notes in the last few days. There are probably more we don’t know about. People don’t want to report their rule-breaking to us.”
“Are all the letters like this?” Gage asked. “Petty stuff that could even be a matter of misinterpretation?”
“Let’s see.” Travis consulted a notepad on his uncluttered desk. “A woman’s trash cans left out over twenty-four hours after trash collection.”
“That’s not against the law,” Gage said.
“No, but apparently it violates her home owner’s association rules. Another letter was sent to a man who, the note claims, routinely speeds on Fern Valley Road.”
“Everyone speeds on Fern Valley Road,” Gage said. “Something about that long, straight stretch of road is irresistible to some people, no matter how many tickets we write.”
Travis nodded. “Larry Yarborough was pretty upset about receiving a note that accused him of stealing from his employer. He swears it isn’t true. His boss confirmed Larry had permission to take some leftover construction material to build a playhouse for his kids.”
“We need to find out who’s sending these notes and have a talk with them about minding their own business,” Gage said. “They could be charged with harassment.”
“It would be difficult to prove a person was responsible unless they confessed.” Travis pushed the note aside.
“We have bigger things to focus on. Someone tried to abduct an eleven-year-old boy yesterday evening, about eight o’clock.
Shane took the call. The boy’s okay, but pretty shaken up. ” He passed over the report.
Gage scanned Deputy Shane Ellis’s summary.
“Not a lot of details to go on,” he said.
“White SUV, slender person of medium height dressed all in black jumped out and tried to grab the kid.” He looked up.
“The boy isn’t even sure if it was a man or a woman.
They were wearing a hood and didn’t say anything, and fled when the boy fought back.
Do we think he’s telling the truth? A kid might say something like this to get attention. ”
“There were signs of a struggle where he said the attempt took place,” Travis said. “And Shane found a man who reported seeing a white car speeding one street over. The timing matches up. The boy has bruises on his arm with definite finger marks where someone grabbed him.”
Gage passed the report back over. “I’m glad the kid is okay. What was he doing out alone at that time of night?”
“He was walking home from a friend’s house at the end of the block. Before that, he and his friend were shooting hoops in the friend’s driveway. They both say they didn’t see anything suspicious.”
“This is the kind of thing that gives parents nightmares.” Gage thought of his oldest daughter, Casey.
At nine, she was used to roaming the neighborhood with her friends.
Even with his experience in law enforcement, he had been lulled into thinking their small town was safe. “Do we have anything else to go on?”
“We’re putting out a plea to the public on social media, warning parents to keep their kids close and asking for any information on the car or about anyone acting suspiciously,” Travis said.
“I sent Jamie out to talk to every house in the boy’s neighborhood.
We’re hoping someone will have seen something, or caught footage of the vehicle on their door cam. ”
An Eagle Mountain native, Deputy Jamie Douglas probably already knew most of the people she would talk to. Most wouldn’t hesitate to share any information they had with the affable young woman.
“There are a lot of white SUVs out there,” Gage said. He took out his phone. “I’m going to send a heads-up to Maya. Casey doesn’t usually walk home alone but I don’t want today to be the exception.”
“I sent a bulletin to all the schools this morning,” Travis said. He picked up Gage’s note. “I’ll add this to our files, in case we find out any more about our mystery harasser.”
“Our letter writer would do better to pay attention to a real lawbreaker like this than concerning themselves with imaginary crimes,” Gage said.
“Are you okay, Mira?” Shayla put her hand on Mira’s shoulder as she passed her in the teacher’s lounge. “You look like you don’t feel well.”
So much for thinking concealer could hide the effects of a sleepless night. “I’m okay,” Mira lied. “Just a little tired. How about you? Any more anonymous notes?” She managed to ask the question without her voice shaking.
“No. I went home and walked the dog, then played with the cats. Whoever wrote that nasty gram is a pitiful loser, as far as I’m concerned.”
Mira wished she could dismiss her own note as easily.
The door to the teachers’ lounge opened and she stepped aside to allow a man to enter.
“Hello, Mitch,” Shayla said. Mira didn’t miss the lilt in Shayla’s voice as she addressed their fellow teacher, or the heightened flush of color beneath her dark brown skin.
Shayla turned to Mira. “Have you met Mira Veronica? She’s the new Spanish teacher. Mira, this is Mitch Anders.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Mira.” Mitch nodded at her.
He was in his early thirties, with sandy hair, only a couple of inches taller than Mira’s five foot eight inches, with a lean build.
Nice-looking, in a very clean-cut way. Shayla smoothed her hair and beamed at him.
Maybe there was more than one reason she had parked near Mitch’s truck.
“It’s nice to meet you, too,” Mira said.
“Mitch, did you see anyone near my car when you left yesterday afternoon?” Shayla asked. “I was parked a couple of spots down from you.”
He considered the question for a few seconds. “No. I don’t remember seeing anyone. That part of the parking lot is usually pretty deserted. Why? Did someone do something to your car?”
“No.” She waved off the question. “It’s nothing.”
“Did you two hear about the message the sheriff’s department sent over this morning?” he asked.
“What message?” Mira’s heart pounded. Had someone called the sheriff and accused her of having something to do with David Ketchum’s disappearance?
“Someone tried to snatch a kid last night,” Mitch said. “I guess the boy got away, but the sheriff wants everyone to be on the lookout for anyone acting suspicious around the kids.”
“That’s horrible,” Shayla said. “Who was the boy?”
“I don’t know,” Mitch said. “And apparently, he wasn’t able to give much of a description of the person who tried to grab him. The bulletin from the sheriff’s office mentions a white car, but that’s about it.”
“Lots of people drive white cars,” Shayla said. “Mira has a white car. So does Principal Martin. So do you.”
“I think it’s one of the most common car colors,” Mitch said. “So that’s not going to help the cops much.”
“I hope they find whoever it was before some child gets hurt,” Shayla said.
The bell rang, signaling classes would begin in ten minutes. “We’d better go,” Shayla said.
“You ladies have a good day,” Mitch said.
Mira followed Shayla out of the teachers’ lounge and made her way to her classroom.
She nodded to students and fellow teachers who greeted her, even as her mind raced with her memories of David Ketchum’s disappearance three years ago.
The nine-year-old boy had been snatched off the street and found dead several days later.
The crime had dominated news headlines in Santa Fe for weeks, but the killer had never been found.
That someone would think Mira had anything to do with such a horrible thing shook her badly.
The news that someone had tried to abduct a child here in Eagle Mountain was too eerie a coincidence.
The two incidents had no connection, surely, but it unsettled her.
Once in her classroom, she booted up her laptop and pulled up a search engine.
Her first period was open. She was supposed to use it for meetings with students who needed extra help, or working on the day’s lessons, but she had no appointments today.
Instead, she searched for information about David Ketchum.
Mira had been a second-year teacher at the time.
David had been one of her youngest students, in a Spanish-language class for elementary school students.
Mira traveled from the high school two days a week to play language games with third and fourth graders.
The emphasis was on conversational Spanish and she tried to make the classes fun.
David was a charming boy with beautiful brown eyes and a sweet disposition.
He disappeared two weeks before school let out for the summer.
The news that he had vanished on his way home from school shook everyone.
Mira had joined her fellow teachers in searching for him.
As she scanned online accounts of those days she was startled to come upon a photo of herself, standing with other teachers in a field just outside of town.
The caption said they were a group preparing to search for the missing student.
Three days after he disappeared, David’s body was found in a shallow grave on public land a mile from town.
He had been strangled. Mira felt sick all over again as she read the news accounts.
David’s murderer had never been found, though the police questioned hundreds of people.
As far as she could tell, there had never even been a suspect.
So why had someone suddenly decided that she was to blame?
She was still reading through the news stories when students began arriving for her second-period class.
Hastily, she shut down the laptop and focused on the day’s lesson.
By the time class ended, she was feeling calmer.
By the end of the day, she had decided to chalk the letter up as someone’s idea of a sick joke.
She would ignore them, they would see they couldn’t get a rise out of her, and eventually she would forget this had ever happened.
She maintained this positive attitude until she unlocked her car door and stared at a folded sheet of paper lying on the front seat.
She had left the front windows rolled down a scant half inch to keep the interior of the car from getting so hot and someone must have slipped the note through the gap.
She picked it up and sat, staring at the blank side of the paper, afraid to unfold it and read the message.
She told herself she was being silly, and opened the note.
You can try to ignore what you did, but I won’t. David’s ghost cries out for justice.
She glanced around. Someone—Mitch Anders—was walking toward her.
She looked down the row of cars. There was Mitch’s SUV, three vehicles down from hers.
She couldn’t let him see her like this. With shaking hands, she fastened her seat belt, then started the car and pulled out of her spot.
Mitch lifted a hand in greeting as she passed and she forced a smile to her lips. Nothing to see here. Everything’s fine.
She didn’t drive home. She was too terrified she would find another note there. Instead, she turned onto the highway out of town—the road that led up into the mountains. The soaring peaks, rushing waterfalls and crystalline sky never failed to lift her spirits.
Except today she had a tough time focusing on the scenery.
Her mind kept replaying the messages in those notes, alongside the details of David’s disappearance and death.
How could anyone believe she had anything to do with that horrible crime?
And why focus on her now, almost three years later? None of it made sense.
Her heart raced, and with it, her car. She didn’t realize she was driving too fast until she skidded around a curve.
Heart in her throat, she stomped on the brake, but that only made things worse.
Her car slid, then fishtailed. She wrestled with the steering wheel, trying to bring the vehicle under control, but found herself helpless as the car careened off the road.
The world tilted and she swallowed a scream as the car rolled onto its side, the seat belt choking her.