11
Saturday noon, 22 January
Jonna Bryant’s blue Honda was parked in a crowded junkyard at the edge of town. It had been found by two teenage brothers who were searching the lot for a door to match the one they’d smashed to hell and gone when they slid their Mustang into a waist-high concrete gatepost during Wednesday night’s snowfall.
When they finally located a Mustang with a viable door, it was jammed in between a 1972 Pinto and a late- model Accord. Both the Pinto and the Mustang were clearly banged and scarred, but the Accord looked pristine under its sheet of ice.
“We saw the shape of something weird in the front seat, but we couldn’t tell what it was,” said one of the brothers, “so we used a screwdriver to pry loose part of the ice on the driver’s side and oh, man! We ’bout near died ourselves.”
Beneath the red of their wind-chapped cheeks, both 10 boys were pale and shaky, but nervously excited, too, as they told it over and over again to anyone who would listen.
The owner of the junkyard was wary and belligerent, afraid he was going to be blamed for this. He claimed total ignorance as to how or when the Accord had been added to his inventory. And he certainly knew nothing about the dead woman slumped stiffly over the steering wheel, her left hand dangling free, a silver-plated antique gun on the floor as if it had slipped from her lifeless hand after she put the barrel to her head and pulled the trigger.
Dwight took one look and it was like a sucker punch to the heart.
“She’s wearing a red jacket,” he said.
Paul Radcliff nodded grimly and thumbed his radio.
“Jack? Start a Code Amber on Cal Bryant. Here’s his dad. He’ll give you the details and a description of the woman who took him.” Then, much as he hated to have to turn this over to the Virginia state police, he added,
“And when you’ve finished with that, call Captain Petrie and tell him I’m officially requesting their assistance to process a crime scene.”
Dwight looked up in protest, but Radcliff shook his head. “You know I’ve got to, pal. They have the re-sources. We don’t.”
Bone-chilling winds swept down from the snow-covered hills, straight through the open lot, and those lawmen too macho to wear gloves or hats jammed their hands into their pockets and hunched deeper into their heavy jackets.
While they stamped their feet on the frozen, dirty snow in an effort to stay warm until the crime scene van ar- rived, Futrell took pictures of the car from all angles, documenting what Dwight already knew. This car had not moved and its doors had not been opened since last night’s freezing rain cemented them in place. It was unlikely that Jonna was the woman in a blue parka who took Cal yesterday. Nor could she have been the one who was in the house last night, not with ice this thick all around the door.
His own brain felt cased in ice. How would Cal handle her death? Was the woman he went off with Jonna’s killer? If not, what was their connection? There had to be one. Otherwise, it would be one hell of a coincidence that his son was taken the same day his ex-wife was murdered. But why take the boy if they were going to kill the mother? Had Cal inadvertently seen something the killer was afraid he would tell?
He bent down again to peer through the hole that the teenagers had made. Half of the window’s ice had broken away in one sheet so that the interior could be clearly seen even on this dull gray morning.
His first thoughts were of the woman who lay there on the other side of the glass, stiff and frozen and beyond the warming touch of any human hand; the woman who had been his wife, who had given birth to their son, who had walked away from their marriage. And yeah, maybe that was because she knew he did not love her or maybe it was because she had never really loved him. The reason did not matter, had not mattered for years. The mutual lack of passion had made their divorce feel like the polite dissolution of a business arrangement that no longer paid dividends. She had cared too much about appearances for Dwight’s liking, but she was not a bad or stupid woman.
He had felt guilty for not trying harder to save their marriage for the sake of their son; yet, at the same time, he had been so grateful that she wanted out that he had not fought her over the terms of the settlement. And despite their growing struggle over Cal these last few years, he was filled with deep sorrow that she had ended like this.
Then his training took over. As he read the blood-spattered note that lay in her lap, his fears and regrets were displaced by a cold rage.
“See the note?” Radcliff asked in his ear.
“Yeah.”
The spiky letters wavered, but they were in Jonna’s handwriting:
“The bastard made her write her own phony suicide note,” Dwight said as he straightened up. “What did he say to her? Threaten to kill Cal? Where the hell
“We’ll find him,” Radcliff said. “I promise you we’ll find him.”
Yesterday’s canvassers had returned the pictures of Cal, so Dwight handed one of them back and Paul signaled for an officer to take it to the station and get it out on the Internet.
“I’ll ride along with him,” Dwight said. “Pick up my truck.”
“You don’t want to wait for the van?”
“What for? To watch your BCI techs try to find trace evidence that’ll take days to analyze?” He jerked his head toward the car. “You’re reading this phony setup same way I am, right? A shot to the left temple when she was
