boat. Whatever happened on the other side, somebody doesn’t want us recalling it too clearly.”
“Not too surprising,” Barb said, leaning over to hug her. “I don’t really care. I’m just glad to have my Janea back.”
“I’m glad to be back, too,” Janea said, frowning. “And sad at the same time. Barb?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t make a habit of it or anything,” Janea said. “But…it’s okay if you call me Doris.”
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER ONE
“What do we got?”
Sonny Cribbs had been sheriff in Claiborne County since before the deputy he was addressing was born. On his return from two tours in Vietnam, he’d figured it was off to the mill for a life of cutting trees into lumber. But there was an opening in the sheriff’s department and he was a veteran in good standing. That and a poppa who’d been managing the sheriff’s campaigns for ten years was all it took.
Slim, dark and tanned, his wife still occasionally had to deal with nightmares of tunnels and bodies.
Back then there’d been nothing like “certification” for a deputy. You put on the badge and you got to work. By the time it’d come up, he’d been elected sheriff and nobody had asked about his credentials since.
Mostly his credentials were pushing forty years of seeing what man could and would do to man.
The single-wide trailer had seen better days. Probably decades ago. Set back in Mathis Hollow off Slate Creek Lane, its existence was marked only by a dirt road and a battered mailbox.
And now police tape.
“Two victims.” Deputy Sheriff Randell Smith was what Sheriff Cribbs could not avoid calling “The New Breed.” Five-seven and stocky even without his body armor, he looked like a Marine, which he had been. He’d been through all the right schools before applying to be a deputy. He came in knowing the lingo and all the right buzzwords. Good boy, but sometimes Sonny wondered if they permanently implanted a stick in officers’ asses in the Academy. On the other hand, maybe it was a Marine thing. “Male, thirty-eight, one Elvis Cowper. Female, age thirty-seven, one Amy Cowper, his spouse. Missing subject is Lora Cowper, age fourteen, daughter.”
“Damn,” Sheriff Cribbs said, spitting out a stream of tobacco juice. “Walk me through.”
“Nine-one-one received a call from the missing subject’s school when missing subject failed to make the bus,” the deputy said, occasionally glancing at his notes. “Phone calls to the residence were unanswered. A call to the mother’s work determined she had not shown up. At which point they called nine-one-one. Officer arrived on scene at eight forty-seven AM. Door was open. Officer entered and found subjects in state of rigor mortis. Officer called for investigation team.”
“And the officer was…?” Sonny asked.
“Myself, sir,” the deputy said, closing his book.
“See anything ain’t in that little book, son?” the sheriff asked.
“Lots, sir,” the deputy said, his face working. “And it’s not easy to describe. Which is why it’s not in the little book.”
“Let’s go,” Sonny said, sighing.
The interior of the trailer wasn’t neat, but Sonny had seen a lot worse. However, it was also obvious that there’d been some sort of a struggle. A table was overturned and a corner of a wall was busted.
“Looks like somebody was fighting,” the sheriff said.
“That’s what I thought, sir,” the deputy said. “But you might want to wait on that.”
Inside the “master bedroom” were the victims.
“We got us a sicko,” Sonny said, walking carefully to the bed.
The mother and father were spread-eagled on the bed. The mother’s nightdress was pulled up and she clearly had been violated. For that matter, the father’s pants were bloody. So were their mouths, and a ring of redness was around both victims’ ankles and wrists.
“Forensics still hasn’t gotten here,” the deputy said, swallowing. “But there’s a bunch of stuff strange about this.”
“Got that right,” Sonny said, bending over to look in the father’s mouth. “There’s blood in there. Like it’s all cut up. But I don’t see no cuts.”
“Yes, sir,” the deputy said.
“And what the hell’s that smell?” the sheriff asked, sniffing. He didn’t really have to, the whole trailer reeked of it. “It ain’t dead bodies. These ain’t been here long enough to smell that bad. But that’s what it smells like.”
“Yes, sir,” the deputy said, clearly relieved. “You see what I meant by this is stuff I couldn’t exactly note. I’m not sure how to. And there’s a couple of other things.”
The daughter’s room was obviously in transition from girl to teenager. There were still dolls piled on the floor, but there were more pictures of rock bands on the wall than “My Little Pony.” And the window was open. The screen was pushed out.
“She get away?” the sheriff asked.
“I don’t…think so, sir,” the deputy said. “There are marks on the door frame like somebody scratched at it. Like…”
“They were dragged out,” the sheriff said, sighing. “Real sicko.”
“Knock-knock,” a voice sounded from outside the trailer.
“I hate it when the FBI gets here before Forensics,” the sheriff said, his face turning to a snarl. “Randell, find out where the hell Forensics is!”
“Yes, sir,” the deputy said, carefully sidling out of the trailer.
“Outside,” the sheriff said when he got to the door. “God only knows what we’ve already fucked up.”
“As you say, Sheriff,” one of the agents said, nodding.
Once well away from the crime scene Sheriff Cribbs took the time to switch out his chew, then nodded at the agents.
“Sheriff Sonny Cribbs,” he said. “And you be?”
“Special Agent Clement Adams,” the first one said, nodding back. “And Special Agent Rain Diller.”
Adams was from the same block that created Randell. Medium height, light brown hair, stocky but not quite the lifter look. More like he’d wrassled in college. Diller was slimmer, with dark brown hair, but when he took off his glasses for a second, Sonny caught a look he hadn’t seen in a long time. It wasn’t the look that boys back from Iraq usually had. It was more like the Vietnam Thousand-Mile Stare. Diller might be an agent, but he was a killer at heart.
“Mother and father murdered, daughter appears to be a kidnap victim,” Sonny said. “The killer’s a real sicko. You’ll see what I mean. I don’t think we’re getting the girl back.”
“Any idea how long?” Adams asked.
“Now that my fucking forensics team has bothered to show up, maybe,” Sonny said as the he saw two of the forensics team hoofing it up the drive. “But it’s been at least six hours. Rigor mortis had set in when my officer found them just before nine.”
“Thirty hours and counting,” Diller said, looking around. If a victim of a kidnapping like this wasn’t recovered within thirty-six hours, they weren’t going to be.
“Amber alert’s out,” the sheriff replied. “What?”
