The Vanishing Season Page 7

  Reed wondered whether Derek had lied to Bea, or Bea had lied to her parents. “Did you meet him?” he asked.

  Annie looked at her lap, and her hair fell, covering her face. “Not until the candlelight vigil,” she said softly. “We held it a week after she disappeared. The whole town turned out and the local news covered the event. We hoped … we hoped whoever took Bea might be watching and decide to let her go. Derek came with a few of his friends.”

  Dave’s jaw tightened with disapproval. “He showed up wearing leather pants and stinking of cigarettes.”

  “Bea was staying the weekend in the city with him at the time she disappeared. She was supposed to be back here on Sunday, but she texted us to say she would be late, don’t wait up. That was a little after seven P.M. and we never heard from her again.”

  “Records show her cell phone pinged last from the Worcester area, near the Mass Pike,” Dave added.

  Annie’s eyes welled with tears. “She was coming home.”

  Reed picked up one of the photos Annie had brought out, one that appeared to be a senior portrait. Bea’s dark hair gleamed with light, and her smile was confident and happy, like she knew she was going to embark on great adventure. “What do you think happened to her?” he asked the Nesbits.

  They exchanged a lingering look. “We used to think Derek was the one who took her,” Dave said, letting out a long breath. “But Ellie’s made us reconsider, after what’s happened with Shannon Blessing and Mark Roy.”

  “Is that why you’re here?” Annie asked, leaning forward. “Do you think she’s right that one person took Bea and the others?”

  Reed could feel Ellie’s eyes on him as he answered. “It’s a possibility we’re looking into,” he said. “Did Bea have any relationship with Shannon or Mark?”

  “We didn’t know Shannon at all,” answered Annie. “Mark was our mailman. The kids around here used to set up a lemonade stand in the summers, and Mark would always buy three cups and drink them all in a row. They loved him for it. We felt just awful when he lost his boy, Dylan. People used to say he wasn’t the same after that, but how can you be?” She picked fretfully at the edge of a damp paper napkin.

  Before they left, Reed asked if he could take a look at Bea’s room, and Annie led him upstairs to a tidy bedroom that had clearly belonged to girl in transition to adulthood. Smokey the cat lay curled up asleep atop the pink-and-gray bedspread. Reed stood in the doorway and took in the white lace curtains, the blue ribbons pinned on the wall, the drawings of dragons and kittens and snapshots of Bea with her high school friends. “They’ll all be graduating college this year,” Annie said tightly, following his gaze. Her voice was a hoarse whisper, raw and filled with pain. “You know what I keep thinking about?” She said it as if she were confessing a secret. “I think about her other mother, the one in China. We never knew much about her except the province she was in at the time Bea was born, but I wondered about her all the time. We wanted so much to have a child. I lost six babies to miscarriage before we finally gave up and decided to go for adoption.” She bit her lip, hard enough to turn it white. “I know it’s not the same thing, losing a baby that wasn’t born yet versus giving up your actual child, but sometimes I think I know how she must have felt, letting Bea go. I prayed all the time that God would tell her that Bea is happy, that we love her, that we would keep her safe.”

  Reed wondered briefly about his own mother, and whether she’d had the same wish. The woman who had birthed him died just a few months later, so if there had been any kind of prayer during Reed’s youth, maybe she was in heaven to receive it.

  At the door, the Nesbits shook his hand one more time, hanging on even as he edged out onto the porch. “We’re realistic at this stage,” Dave said, drawing himself up as they finally parted. “After three years, you don’t think it’s likely you’re going to get a happy ending. We just want to know what happened to her. We want to bring Bea home.”

  “We will keep you informed of any news,” Ellery assured them. “You have my word.”

  As they walked down the path from the Nesbits’ home, Ellery glanced back over her shoulder to where the couple was still watching them from the doorway. “They say they’re realistic,” she murmured to him, “but Annie sends me every news story of a missing person who reappears after a long absence, like maybe it was some cult leader who snatched Bea off the streets and he’s holding her in his compound somewhere.”

  “The thing with feathers,” Reed muttered.

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” He was eyeing the cruiser just turning the corner down the street. “Isn’t that your boss headed this way?”

  Ellery stifled a curse as the car rolled to a stop behind her truck and Chief Parker got out, his boots heavy on the hot sidewalk. He did not look pleased. Sweat beaded up the back of Reed’s neck, and his cotton shirt clung like a second skin. “Ellie,” Parker said as he approached. “I thought I told you to leave these poor people well enough alone.” He spoke through gritted teeth, a half smile plastered on his face because presumably the Nesbits were still watching.

  “They wanted to meet Agent Markham,” she replied. “They deserve to know what’s going on.”

  “Nothing’s going on!” The mask of pleasantness slipped and he turned his back to the Nesbits’ front door. “We don’t have anything new to offer them, and all you’re doing is stirring them up with crazy theories and terrible memories. They don’t need your kind of help.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t ‘but’ me. You call in outside investigators without consulting me, and then you deliberately disobey a direct order. I’ve half a mind to pull your shield right now.”

  “Go ahead, then. Do it.”

  Reed watched with interest as Parker worked his jaw back and forth, his nostrils flared with barely suppressed fury, but for some reason, the chief didn’t call her bluff. “I came out this way also to tell you that I won’t be giving you the rest of those files,” he said, enunciating every word slowly. “Tipton and I looked through them, and there’s nothing there that hasn’t been thoroughly investigated already.”

  “So then what’s the harm in letting Agent Markham look them over?”

  “The harm is you going around scaring people in the town with unsubstantiated rumors.”

  “They should be scared,” Ellery shot back. “Someone else is going to go missing soon, and we’ve done nothing to protect them.”

  “Yeah?” Parker spread his arms in angry defiance. “Tell me who. Who’s going missing? Tell me where and when to send my units, Ellie, and I’ll get right on it.” He waited a beat through her silence. “That’s right. You can’t tell me anything but the same old horseshit about the bogeyman hiding in the bushes. Well, until you have something—I mean a solid piece of evidence that these people are dead, or that the cases are definitely connected—I want you to drop it. You understand me? Drop it.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  Parker’s eyes darkened to the color of steel. “Then so help me, I will take your shield. I don’t care what the consequences are.” They stood there, glaring at each other, until Parker’s radio went off from inside his cruiser. He narrowed his gaze at Ellery. “I’ve got to get ready for the parade today,” he said. “I suggest you go get a lawn chair and take in the music. You seem like you could use the rest.” He turned to Reed, as if seeing him there for the first time. “You might want to bring your friend here too. I called down to Quantico, and they tell me he’s been under a lot of stress.”

  He bit out the last word and then turned on his heel to leave. Reed and Ellie stood on the sidewalk and watched the cruiser’s taillights disappear back around the corner. Reed cleared his throat. “Look, about what they said in Quantico—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she cut in swiftly, not looking at him. “I don’t need to know. You’re here to help, and that’s all that matters.”

  Reed looked down at the cracked sidewalk and shook his head. H
e wished like hell he had a drink, something cold and hard to fill the space where his certainty used to be. He was nobody’s hero, not really, and he feared what her reaction would be when she finally figured that out.

  “What do you want to do next?” she asked him as they climbed back into her truck. The dark leather seats practically singed his skin, and the color of Ellie’s face had turned to a bright, glowing pink. “You want to see Shannon’s apartment? I know the woman renting there. Or we could drive Mark’s mail route.”

  “I have a different idea,” Reed said carefully, watching her closely for a reaction. “I have a friend at the Massachusetts State Police Crime Laboratory. I called her this morning to see if she might be willing to run DNA analyses on the birthday cards you received, and she’s agreed to take a look.”

  Ellery raised her eyebrows at him as she turned on the engine. The roar of the air-conditioning sprang to life, but for the moment it blew only more hot air. “DNA analysis? On a holiday weekend? She must be some friend.”

  Back in college, Danielle Wertz had once been a friend with benefits, nothing serious on either of their parts, but with enough remaining affection that she didn’t immediately hang up on him when he requested she do him an enormous favor on her day off. “What do you think?” he asked Ellery. “Fancy a trip to Maynard?”

  She seemed to hesitate for a fraction of a second. Maybe, as he feared, she had her own reasons for not wanting the cards analyzed by an outside party. “I’d have to drop off my dog with a friend first,” she said at length, “if we’re going to be away that long.”

  “By all means,” he agreed, settling back in as the cool air began to flow at last. She put on the radio, some ’80s pop tune he dimly recognized, and barreled down the road like she was driving into battle, body pitched forward, both hands on the wheel. The other guys in my unit think I’m crazy, she’d confessed to him last night, and it seemed possible that they were right. But Reed had been the lone voice in the wilderness once, following an evidence trail that no one else seemed to see, and now here she was alive as a result. For the moment, until he had proof it was foolish to do otherwise, he would continue to follow her lead.

  * * *

  Ellery’s dog turned out to be one of those long-eared, slobbery creatures that always looked to Reed like evolution had played some sort of practical joke, in which a long, sturdy animal was equipped with laughably small legs. The dog’s addition to the front seat of the truck made a close ride that much hotter, as the animal wiggled and dangled its enormous pink tongue all over the left side of Reed’s face. “Couldn’t he ride outside in the back?” Reed asked in desperation as the tongue came swinging at his ear for the third time.

  “Bump would love that, but the road grit is bad for his eyes.” She glanced over and gave him what was the first honest-to-goodness smile he had ever seen on her. “Besides, I think he likes you.”

  “I’ve had entire romantic relationships that did not involve this much tongue,” Reed replied as he wiped the slobber off his arm with a tissue.

  This made her laugh, a sound that somehow turned his ears hot. “Guess you’re going steady, then,” she said as she turned off the road into a parking lot marked Angelman Animal Shelter. “Come on, Bump. Let’s go find Brady.”

  The dog leapt from the vehicle with all the grace of a hippo performing a belly flop, and Reed trailed him and his mistress into the shelter. It smelled like antiseptic and fur, making his nose tingle. Ellie waved at some woman in the office and then wandered into the back like she owned the place, so Reed followed, down the hall, into a room with sad-looking animals in various sizes of metal cages. They all stirred at the arrival of new visitors, barking and yowling and sticking wet noses out as far as they would go. Reed hardly knew where to stand without getting a snout in his face.

  At the commotion, a young man in a gray lab coat turned from mopping the floor. “Hey, Ellie,” he said, pulling out his earbuds and silencing his music player. “What brings you by?”

  “Sorry for just dropping in like this. I was hoping Bump could hang out here with you today,” she said, reaching down to scratch the dog’s comically large ears. “I have to head across the state for work this afternoon, and I’m not sure exactly when I’ll be back.”

  “You know I love the Bumpmeister and he’s welcome anytime.” Bump was running around sniffing at the various cages, wagging his enthusiastic tail behind him. “What’s the fire today?”

  “Oh, the usual. You know.”

  The young man nodded. “Yeah, it’s July again.”

  Reed wondered if there was anyone in the town who had not heard Ellery’s theory of the missing persons cases. “Sam’s stonewalling me,” she was saying to the other guy. “He won’t give me full access to the case files.”

  “What more could you need at this point? You’ve been collecting stuff for years.”

  “The State Police have records on the Bea Nesbit investigation that I haven’t seen. For one thing, there’s surveillance video from the gas station she stopped at the night she disappeared. Jimmy Tipton said it’s useless, but I’d like to see for myself.”

  The guy looked surprised. “I’m pretty sure you can—if you’ve got a computer and a credit card.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ellery asked. Reed sidestepped Bump, who had become interested in running his nose all over Reed’s shoes.

  “Come on, I’ll show you.” He put aside the mop and wiped his hand on his jeans before extending it to Reed. “I’m Brady Archer.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Ellery said. “Brady, this is—”

  “Reed Markham,” Reed supplied. “I’m a friend of Ellery’s.”

  “He’s FBI,” Ellery said flatly as they followed Brady deeper into the bowels of the shelter.

  “FBI.” Brady let out a low whistle that carried back down the dark hallway. “It’s good to have friends in high places.” They reached a lighted nook at the end of the hall. “Welcome to my abode. I’d offer you a chair, but there aren’t any.”

  The three of them squeezed into the small, windowless room that appeared to act as Brady’s office. It featured concrete walls covered with various animal pictures, some of them pen-and-ink sketches done by an individual with actual artistic talent. Brady had captured the impish gleam in the kitten’s eye and the baleful, lonely gaze of the mongrel mutt. There was also a battered old metal desk and a stool whose stuffing was coming out on one side. The desk was piled high with empty cans of Mountain Dew, and stacks of different-colored forms littered the rest. Brady opened his laptop and bent over it. “There’s a group of people online who follow unsolved cases, collecting information and exchanging theories. I guess they all think they’re Sherlock Holmes or something. Anyway, a few of them are interested in Bea Nesbit.”

  “How did you find out about this?” Ellery asked, plainly surprised. Reed wondered how the magic of the Internet seemed to have passed her by.

  “I looked her up one day out of curiosity, after she disappeared,” Brady said with a shrug. He looked a little embarrassed. “She came in here with her mom once when they adopted a cat. Seemed like a nice enough girl.”

  So this guy knew Bea Nesbit too, Reed observed. He imagined trying to map the connections of everyone in Woodbury, and envisioned the result looking like a spider’s web.

  “Here.” Brady pointed at the screen. “This guy posted a link and a PayPal account for someone calling himself ‘Oil Can Boy.’ Oil Can will supposedly sell you the video from the gas station the night Bea disappeared for twenty bucks. But if you read through the thread, it seems like the posters agree with the cops on this one—the video isn’t helpful.”

  Ellery was frowning. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I assumed you knew. Googling your victim and your suspects—isn’t that, like, Police one oh one?”

  Ellery’s face turned pink, and Reed realized then that she might have good reason to avoid any sort of true crime message boards or chat ro
oms—any space loaded with curious, prying people who had a lot of time on their hands and imagined themselves to be professional investigators. Reed ended the awkward silence by pulling out his wallet. “Well, I have a credit card,” he said. “May I?”

  “Be my guest,” Brady said, backing out of the way so Reed could request a copy of the video. As he entered the information, Reed heard Brady and Ellery talking quietly behind him.

  “How are the kittens?”

  “Armed and dangerous. Check out my palms.”

  “I don’t even see a Band-Aid. I think somehow you’ll live.”

  Reed straightened up as his request went through. “There,” he said, “I guess now we shall await a return missive from Mr. Can.”

  “We’ve got to go,” Ellery said, touching Brady’s arm. “Thanks again for looking after Bump today.”

  “My pleasure, Officer,” he replied, giving her a grin and a mock salute. Then he grew serious. “And, listen, I’m sorry if I messed up by not telling you…”

  “No, no,” Ellery assured him quickly. “You didn’t mess up.” She turned with Reed to exit, but at the door, she hesitated, so Reed stopped too. “What do they say about who killed Bea?” she asked Brady. “The people on the Internet?”

  Brady’s dark eyes were wide and guileless. “I haven’t looked in a long time. Last I saw, they still believed her boyfriend did it.”

  * * *

  The Massachusetts State Police Forensic and Technology Center was located in the sleepy suburb of Maynard, right in the midst of a residential area, although it looked more like a prison than a modern science laboratory. The foreboding concrete face had long narrow windows and a few shrubs around its base. Reed phoned Danielle Wertz, who met them at the lobby. He noted that her long, flowing blond hair had been replaced by a tousled bob that bore flecks of gray, but she still had the same intelligent blue eyes and warm hug that he remembered from years ago. “It’s been too long,” she said as she pulled away. “How are you? How are Sarit and Tula doing?”

  Reed coughed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Good. They’re, uh, good. How’s…” He tried to call up the name of her long-term boyfriend. “Scott?”