Chapter 6 #2
“Nothing new, I’m afraid. We’ve come up to speed.
We’ve assured the Bolton couple we’re doing everything in our power to find Jeremy; and, of course, they’ve heard about what happened at the Howell costume shop, about the kidnapping of Mrs. Howell and Sophie, and …
” Connie was the one who had spoken, and her voice trailed off as she looked miserably at her partner.
“We must find those kids.” She spun suddenly on Zach and Skye.
“Did you find out anything, anything at all?”
“We did, not the kids—but we know how Jeremy and Patricia were taken from the Bolton house. But we need help,” Skye explained.
Vince stared at them skeptically. “How on earth can you know—”
“Zach thought it possible that whoever had taken Patricia and Jeremy might have headed off through the woods. A massive forest starts right behind the house. Anyway,” she said, pausing to offer Zach a nod of admiration, “we took a look at the woods, found breakage in the branches that suggested someone had been through recently, and we decided to take a long walk. Along the way, we found this!”
She produced the little army character that she’d found in the brush.
“Uh, what exactly is it, and why exactly do you think it means something important?” Connie asked doubtfully.
“It’s a character from a kid’s army play set, one you’ll discover Jeremy Bolton possesses,” Zach explained.
“We found that and then a really tumbledown shack in the woods, but it looks as if someone had water or something in there. Whether they’re still there or not, Jeremy and Patricia were taken through the woods.
But the area is huge, and quite frankly, by the time we covered it all, someone in Jeremy’s generation could be president of the United States. ”
“Right, so … a bunch of detectives wasting time in the woods—” Vince began.
“No,” Zach told him.
“Then you speak with Bruns and get him to get some people out there,” Vince said flatly.
“No problem,” Zach assured him. With a nod, he strode toward Bruns’s office and knocked on the door.
Skye followed him.
Bruns immediately offered a hand, welcoming them in.
Zach explained the situation again.
“Our detectives don’t need to worry. I’ll call it in to the big brass, and we’ll get off-duty officers and forest rangers on it,” Lieutenant Bruns said.
“I’ll see that we’ll get the right people out there.
Skye, if you’ll give me the army man, I’ll make sure that his parents see it and verify that it’s something he owns. ”
Skye handed him the little character, but asked, “Could I hang on to this for now, Lieutenant?”
“Oh? Oh, sure, of course.”
“Thanks.”
“If it helps,” Bruns said, looking at the two of them.
They explained that it did.
“Okay, then, go. Keep in contact with the detectives.”
“Will do.” Zach glanced at Skye and shrugged. They headed back out to assure the detectives that Lieutenant Bruns would handle the searching through the woods.
“We’re heading back to the house to see if we can find something there,” Vince said.
“We have a forensic expert headed back with us—Jeannette Crane is the best. Maybe she can find something in the house or in the in-law quarters, where Mike Bolton was killed. There has to be a clue somewhere; every crook makes a mistake somewhere.”
Zach wasn’t sure that he believed that was true.
There were too many unsolved homicides among other crimes across the country.
But it was true that human beings made mistakes. The mistakes needed to be discovered for them to matter.
“All right. We’re heading out to find Patricia’s roommates,” Zach told them. “They just might know something—”
“We already talked to them,” Connie said.
“Right. But it never hurts—” Skye began.
“Waste of time. You’re the ones big on a forest hideout! You guys should get to crawl through the dirt some more!” Vince said lightly.
“Never hurts to have fresh eyes—or ears—on a problem,” Zach reminded them. “Like you said …”
“Yep. Something might be said that we didn’t hear,” Connie agreed. “You two take it in any direction you think will help.”
“Right. Fine. Keep us up,” Vince said.
“Will do, and we’ll ask you to do the same,” Zach told him.
“May we have a list of the roommates, please?” Skye asked.
Vince pulled out his phone. “Coming at you, email,” he told them.
“Okay, then. Drive-through lunch and onward,” Zach said pleasantly. He felt that Vince Cason and Connie Berkley watched them as they left.
And he sensed a little hostility. Maybe his imagination.
It wasn’t. In the car, Skye turned to him. “I think they resent the two of us being here,” she said.
He nodded. “Strange. I thought they were happy when we first met.”
“Well, there are places where the locals aren’t happy when the Feds come in.”
“What do we know about them?” he asked.
“Hm!” Skye murmured, busily looking at her phone.
“Constance Berkley, thirty-two years old, started with the department right after college, worked her way up to detective, just tall enough, and by all accounts, good record, but she has only been with Detective Vincent Cason for about a year. Cason has been with the department fifteen years; he’s forty-five years old.
But he’s still below Lieutenant Bruns on the food chain—Bruns is up for another promotion he’ll probably get, according to what I’m reading. ”
“But it’s what we don’t read that might matter,” Zach said. He shrugged. “The night we met them, I thought they were glad that we were here. Today I wasn’t so sure.”
“Maybe they just don’t like the woods.”
“Right. But no one said they had to tramp through the woods. Just that someone needed to tramp through the woods. My money is on the rangers, as far as that goes,” he said thoughtfully.
“A ranger—or a cop who spent time hiking, hm!” she said.
He groaned. “It’s easy. And now you know that it’s easy to tell where branches were broken or where people recently walked through foliage.”
“Hey. A big bear could have walked through, too.”
“Bears don’t feel the need to follow or create trails,” he assured her. “Okay. So, what about our college roommates?” he asked her.
“University majors on our people,” Skye said thoughtfully.
“Holly Madsen, Judy McGrath, and Whitney Nottingham. All juniors, just like Patricia. Judy and Holly are in business and administration, and Whitney is majoring in chemistry. No historians among them, far as I can see. But all three are from the area.”
“Hey, I did some growing up in Boston, and it was impossible to not hear about the trials in Salem, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and so on. But I don’t see it.
I don’t see any of these girls being involved in what’s going on.
You don’t need to just know the area—you need to have studied people, timing … and forensics.”
“All of that information is available through any programming server out there!” she reminded him. “I had a co-worker who learned about all kinds of things by watching documentaries on YouTube.”
“True. What I’m hoping is they may know someone that Patricia knew well, maybe someone else who had kids she watched who proved to be a little crazy or a little too focused on … something. Or … was just plain crazy!” he said. “Let’s hope they’re in the room, out of class, studying, and not off—”
“We’re good. It’s almost five and none of them have classes that late. I just got a text from Lieutenant Bruns—he asked them to be there to talk to us.”
“Great. And they don’t mind—”
“Apparently, they’re all friends, and the three of them are sick about Patricia being missing. They’ve sworn that she’d die before she let anything happen to Jeremy.”
“I believe that. From, um, everything that I’ve seen,” Zach said.
“Me too. She sounds like a truly great person. And the way that she grew up was hard, so it sounds.”
“It could have made her hard; instead, it seems to have made her more compassionate toward others. None of us gets an excuse.”
“You grew up hard?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No. I grew up in Harpers Ferry and in Boston, mom a teacher, dad …”
“Dad?”
“A cop,” he told her.
“Ah, that explains a lot.”
“And you?”
She didn’t answer right away. Then she shrugged. “An ordinary life. My mother worked in retail—which meant we did get some great stuff on sale. And my dad was a cop, too, and …”
“Go on,” he urged quietly.
“My grandmother lived with us after my granddad died. And she would talk to my dad about his cases, and sometimes they would both disappear. When I was older and … acted weird, I guess … she told me about our talent. And I thought that my dad knew all about hers, because it seemed that she helped him on his cases. But she told him that she’d just taken all kinds of criminology and forensic classes and used a lot of magic.
So, to this day, my parents don’t know about this weird thing of seeing the past.”
“Hey, at least you had your grandmother!”
“Oh, no one in your family knew about you?”
Zach thought about his past and winced. “Kind of, in a way. I’m not sure what he believed, but I talked to my dad.
At least, he didn’t tell me I was crazy or insist that I have therapy.
Sometimes I thought that maybe he had a bit of whatever it is that Jackson and Angela said.
I’ve never seen anyone as convinced that we went on, that human beings had souls.
I still don’t know if he just sensed those around him, or …
” He left off with a shrug and looked at her quickly.
“My parents were great. So, no, I never knew what it was like to go from foster home to foster home, or even know what it was like to grow up with hardships. But in Boston, I worked with a guy who did get shoved from foster home to foster home—Drake Evans. Never knew his father and he didn’t think that his mother knew who the man might be—she died of a drug overdose when he was five.
But it didn’t make him bitter; instead, it made him a man determined to do good in the world, so … ”