He went on through the house to the utility room and let Bandit out of his crate. The little dog barked sharply when he first saw Lewes, but then wagged his tail and approached for a friendly pat.
As Dwight opened the outer door to turn Bandit into the snow-covered yard, he glanced across the two driveways and saw Jonna’s neighbor, Leonard Carlton, at the window.
“Any news?” the old man called.
“Nothing,” Dwight called back. “You?”
“Sorry.”
“That the guy saw your son leave?” asked Lewes.
Dwight nodded. Before he could close the door, Bandit scooted back through his legs. Between the wet and the chill, he had finished his business in record time.
“And the dog didn’t bark last night?”
“Not that I heard. He sleeps at the foot of Cal’s bed and that room’s at the top of the stairs. If he came down when he heard the key, I’m pretty sure I’d’ve heard him bark.”
“Yeah, he’s got a shrill voice,” Lewes agreed. “And it’s not like you weren’t on edge about your son. I’m guessing you’d’ve rared up if they’d made any noise.”
“I slept through the door closing,” Dwight said bitterly.
They walked up the carpeted stairs and Lewes swung the door back and forth on its hinges with the tip of a gloved finger. It moved easily with no giveaway squeaks.
“You touch that knob this morning?”
“Not on this side, I didn’t.”
“Good. I’ll have it checked out.”
“I was careful about opening the medicine cabinet, too,” said Dwight.
“They took a chance coming up here. Must’ve been something they really wanted. Only how would they know? Your son on any special medication?”
“Not that I’m aware of. And I think Jonna would’ve said.”
“What about her?”
Dwight shook his head. “Maybe her mother would know.”
“Why don’t you ask her? And we’ll check out her doctor.”
Dwight heard the subtext of what Lewes was saying, and whether or not this was more good-cop tactics to soften him up, he was nevertheless grateful.
“Thanks.”
The other man shrugged. “Hell, I figure you’re gonna keep digging no matter what we say. I know I would. But you gotta share anything you find, okay?”
“Of course.”
Lewes looked at the football posters on Cal’s wall. He touched the small trophy on the bookcase and half- smiled at the old brown plush teddy bear squashed into the bottom shelf of Cal’s bookcase. “My kid’s ten,” he said.
C H A P T E R
15
Saturday afternoon, 22 January
With only a generic description of the woman who had taken Cal—Caucasian, five-six, slender build, wearing a blue quilted parka with black fur trim, and without even a car color much less a make to go on—the Amber Alert had produced no fruitful sightings. There had been one call from a supermarket in Shaysville itself, but when an officer checked it out, he knew both the boy and his mother. Four more calls came from a large shopping mall off the interstate that served the whole valley, and the responding officers sighted a surprising number of blue fur- trimmed parkas.
The women wearing them ranged from skinny teenagers to hefty matrons and the parkas covered the full spec-trum of blue, from pale aqua to dark navy. Two even had small boys in tow, and they were at first indignant at being stopped and asked to prove that the boys were their sons; but their indignation quickly melted into 14 compassion for the missing child when the officers explained.
“Oh, that poor woman,” said the first mother, putting a protective arm around her son’s shoulder.
The second, who moments earlier had scolded her son for losing his gloves and then spilling catsup on his jacket, decided abruptly that maybe she would get him that action figure he wanted after all.
After leaving Nick Lewes to go through Jonna’s papers while he waited for the evidence truck, Dwight was grimly amused to find no parking spaces near Mrs. Shay’s house. It was still small-town South here. Only three hours ago, he had told his former mother-in-law that Jonna was dead, yet word seemed to have spread through her circle so quickly that he suspected a highly efficient telephone tree. As he slid his truck into an empty space on the next block, more friends and neighbors hurried up her walk, umbrellas slanted against the slushy rain, bearing food and words of comfort. Like the U.S. Postal Service used to be, he thought—neither snow nor rain, nor heat of day nor gloom of night would deter them. Even though Jonna’s body was by now headed away from Shaysville for a
