“To his next victim.”
“So what else is new?” he said. “He did manage to acquire a police record, but not the type that would get entered in NCIC or any other national file. Indecent exposure pled down to a misdemeanor trespassing in Vivian, Louisiana; bad checks settled by reimbursement, no jail time, in Keswick, Virginia; sexual assault in Carrol County, Georgia. That one was dismissed. Sheriff said he knew Andruson did it but the girl he was accused of seducing had cerebral palsy and could barely talk. They figured she wouldn’t make the grade as a witness, wanted to spare her the ordeal.”
“Moral of the story: go for the vulnerable.”
“I asked Sue to find what she could on that missing girl, Miranda. Gave her Olivia’s number. Talk about your meeting of the minds.”
Out of his jacket pocket came tinny music. No more Beethoven, some sort of Latin beat. He reached in and extricated his cell phone. It kept tangoing as he checked the caller’s number. He had reprogrammed the ring. I’d thought it was mostly kids who did that.
“Sturgis… yeah, hi. No, there’s no parking on the property. I’m sure, Sean. You’re positive you didn’t miss anything? Well, that definitely complicates things… hope not… yeah, yeah, check all that out, our E.T.A.’s fifteen, twenty, I’ll call you unless you learn something earth-shattering.”
“Both gone, separate cars,” I said.
“Maybe they went for doughnuts. Why don’t you drive a little faster?”
I sped over the canyon, raced through morning traffic, finally reached Vanowen just after eight. Milo got back on the phone and asked Binchy about the vehicle registrations. “No, keep going… no, no… hold on, repeat that one… interesting. Okay, stay there until we show up. Thanks mucho, lad.”
“Something come up?” I said.
“Cream-colored Cadillac DeVille parked right in front of the house,” he said. “And guess who pays the sticker fees.”
The Reverend Dr. Crandall Wascomb looked as if his faith had been tested and he wasn’t sure he’d passed.
He opened the gate within seconds of Milo ’s pounding, stepped back, stunned.
“Dr. Delaware?”
Milo ’s badge made his shoulders drop. Not dismay, relief. “Police. Thank goodness. Cherish called you, as well?”
“When did she call you, sir?” said Milo.
“Early this morning,” said Wascomb. “Just after six.”
His white hair floated above his brow and he had dressed haphazardly: heavy gray cardigan buttoned out of sequence so that it bunched mid-chest, white shirt with one bent collar point, maroon tie knotted well short of his neckline. Behind his black-framed glasses, his eyes were watery and uncertain.
“What did she want, Reverend?”
“She said she needed my help immediately. Mrs. Wascomb’s not well and I keep the phone in the hallway rather than at bedside so as not to wake her. The ring got me up, but at that hour I assumed it was a wrong number and didn’t get out of bed. When it rang again, I answered and it was Cherish, apologizing for disturbing me. She said something had come up, implored me to come to her house as soon as I could. I tried to get her to explain. She said there was no time, I simply needed to believe her, hadn’t she always been a faithful student.”
Wascomb blinked. “She had been.”
I said, “Was she distraught?”
“More like… anxious, but in an efficient way. As if she was faced with a sudden challenge and was rising to the occasion. I wondered if one of the children, or Drew, had taken ill. I asked her again what was wrong and she said she’d tell me when I showed up. If I’d come. I said I would and went to get dressed. Mrs. Wascomb had stirred and I told her I was having one of my insomnia episodes, she should go back to sleep. I instructed the housekeeper to keep an eye on her, got myself presentable, and drove over.”
His eyes compressed as they traveled from Milo to me. “When I arrived, the gate was open but no one was in the house. The front door had been left unlocked so I assumed Cherish wanted me to come straight in. The house was empty. I looked around, came back out. I was growing quite alarmed. Then a young woman came out of there.”
He cocked his head toward the pair of outbuildings. Converted garage painted pale blue to match the house. Off to the side, the odd-looking cement block cube.
The door to the cube was ajar.
“I left it open so the girls wouldn’t feel confined,” said Wascomb. “There’s only one window and it’s bolted shut. Two of them were in that other building, the blue one, but I assembled them all in one place until help arrived.”
“Have you called for help?” said Milo.
“I was thinking about who to call when you arrived. There doesn’t seem to be any crisis, other than Cherish and Drew not being here.” Another look at the block structure. “None of them appear to know what’s going on, but perhaps she didn’t want to worry them.”
“Them being the kids.”
“Yes, the flock.”
“The flock?”
“That’s how Cherish referred to them in the instructions.”
“What instructions?”
“Oh, dear,” said Wascomb. “I’m getting ahead of myself, this has all been so…” From a pocket of the cardigan he pulled two sheets of paper folded to postcard size.
Milo unfolded them, read, jutted his lower jaw. “Where’d you find this, sir?”
“When I looked around the house, I peeked into the bedroom and saw it on the desk.” Wascomb licked his lips. “I noticed it because it lay in the center of the desk, atop a piece of blotting paper. As if she wanted me to see it.”
“Was it folded?”
“No, flat. It really seemed as if she’d intended for me to read it.”
“Anything else on the desk?”
“Pens, pencils,” said Wascomb. “And a strongbox. The type banks use for safety deposit. That, of course, I didn’t touch.”
Milo handed the papers to me. Two pages of neat, forward-slanting cursive.
The Flock: Instructions for Daily Care
Milo said, “Looks like she’s been preparing to be gone for a while.”
Wascomb said, “Cherish was always an organized student. If she did leave for an extended period, I’m sure her reason was sound.”
“Such as?”
