Stranded

“Right. That’s exactly what I was thinking when I walked in here.” She said it as she waved her hand around the room like Va

He knew he wouldn’t win this argument. She was right. He was drinking too much, but he tried to defend himself anyway.

“I only drink on weekends.”

“It’s Tuesday.”

“Are you sure?” He rubbed at his eyes. That couldn’t be right. How could he lose a whole day?

She shook her head at him.

“I just took an assignment for you. Some bodies dug up in Iowa. Might be more buried.”

“Maybe you can send Felix.”

“Felix is on vacation.”

“I thought he wasn’t going until the eighteenth.”

“Yesterday was the eighteenth. You sure you’re okay?”

The sarcasm was gone. Now she sounded concerned. That wasn’t good. Ryder would rather take the sarcasm.

She continued when he didn’t respond. “This has been a bad stretch for you, Rye. I’m starting to get worried.”

The truth was he wanted to tell her she was right. He wanted to tell her he couldn’t do another search. Not this soon. The last one had drained the life from him. The high hopes and then the crashing low that followed nearly broke him. He couldn’t stomach the smell of another rotting corpse while his adrenaline pumped and his expectations soared. Each time with each dead body he kept thinking, “Will this one be her?” Would he finally find his little sister?

This last body had been that of a child, approximately the same age Brodie was when she disappeared. But even when the bodies were those of adult females it didn’t rule Brodie out. Just because she disappeared at eleven years old didn’t mean she had died then. There was always the possibility that she had lived on for any part of the fifteen years she had been missing. So each child, each teenager, each young woman, each unidentified female corpse, held promise and misery. And each time a body was identified as someone else, Creed felt a sickening combination of relief and sadness. Relief because she might still be alive. Sadness because if she was, it could be a life of hell on earth.

He looked up at Ha

He stood and the room swirled. He caught himself and glanced at Ha

“Don’t worry, okay?” he told her and this time he was serious. When that didn’t seem to convince her, he added, “I promise I’ll let you know when it’s time to get worried.”

CHAPTER 10

Maggie would rather be back in the mud instead of being stuck inside to watch from the window.

The mobile crime lab had just arrived. She saw Tully stop them in the driveway. He directed them to the site where the garbage bag waited. She knew he would make them outline their plan of how they’d remove the body before he allowed them to start.

He’d been on his cell phone since he’d left the farmhouse in between questioning the property’s executor, Howard Elliott, and ordering around Sheriff Uniss and his deputies. In the past, Tully always seemed pleased to hand off jurisdiction to the local authorities. A play-by-the-rules guy, he understood and accepted his role as outside consultant. So Maggie was pleased but, again, surprised to see him taking over with such relish. Perhaps he was simply happy not to be stuck in the house with a half-naked Lily.

Maggie felt like she had gotten the short straw. For ten years she had fought to be treated no different than her male colleagues. And for the most part she was successful. One look into Tully’s eyes had reminded her that dealing with Lily was a job for a woman. No discussion. No doubt about it. Which made little sense to Maggie because, despite their shared gender, there was absolutely nothing else she had in common with this woman.

She glanced back at Lily, who still hadn’t put on any additional clothes, claiming it was way too hot and she needed to cool off.

“Damned bugs are crawling all over the place,” she had told Maggie as she picked at the scabs already on her arms. “They’re in my clothes, too.”

Maggie hadn’t seen any evidence of bugs in the house and wondered if they were hallucinations caused by the drugs. The house was, in fact, remarkably clean for a place that had been vacated ten years ago. Someone had been taking care of it and it certainly wasn’t Lily.

Taking a break from her bug and skin-picking obsession, the woman had found a half-eaten candy bar among the scattered empty wrappers. She was now nibbling around the peanuts and nougat. She took cautious bites at the side of her mouth. Her teeth were in worse shape than Maggie had originally thought. Despite the discomfort, it sounded like the woman was grinding her teeth in between bites.

As Maggie looked around the bedroom again, she wondered if Lily had flushed her entire stash and, if so, what she’d do when she realized it.

“She was really good to me,” Lily said suddenly without prompting.

It took Maggie a couple of seconds to realize she meant the farmstead’s owner.

“How long did you live here?”

“I don’t remember,” she said, as all the nervous motion of her body lessened.

Lily’s eyes darted around for the answer. Her leg stopped jerking and her fingers stopped picking. Even her teeth stopped grinding. Maggie couldn’t help thinking how much her movements, her reactions, looked like those of an emaciated animal.

“Why did you leave?” Maggie asked, but when Lily’s eyes met hers, Maggie realized that wasn’t any easier of a question.

The woman finally shrugged her bony shoulders and said, “Everybody has to leave sometime.”

“Do you come back often?” She tried to make it sound like she was only making conversation, even looking back outside the window like she couldn’t care less if Lily answered.

“As long as the key’s where she left it, I figure it’s okay.”

She was still on defense. That wasn’t what Maggie wanted.

“Some strange stuff must have happened,” Maggie said, waiting for Lily’s eyes and then nodding out the window to emphasize she meant out in the backyard.

Another shrug. Not defensive but simply not interested.

“When you’ve stayed here before,” Maggie tried again, “did you ever notice anything weird?”

“Weird?”

“Did you ever see anyone else on the property?”

“Just the construction guys.”

“How about at night? Any vehicles? Any lights?”

“Oh yeah, there was one night I saw lights.”

Maggie kept calm. This was what she suspected. Had Lily been here when the killer dumped the body in the garbage bag? Or when he dumped any other bodies? Did she see him? Could she have watched while he pulled a body from his trunk? While he dug the grave?

But Lily was silent.

“You saw headlights?”

“No, the lights were up higher.”

They had long suspected the killer could be a long-haul truck driver.

“Like on the cab of an eighteen-wheeler?” she asked when it was obvious Lily needed some help remembering.

“No, higher.”

“Spotlights? Floodlights?”

The woman stopped again to give this some thought and Maggie found herself on edge, patience wearing thin. If Lily had been here and saw something. Saw someone …

“Out of the sky,” she said. “Bright like stars. Dozens of them.”

Then she swatted at her leg.

“Damn bugs,” she said, scratching at a scab until it started to bleed. “Sons of bitches are under my skin now.”

And Maggie realized that if Lily had seen the killer, the woman probably wouldn’t even remember.

CHAPTER 11