Criss Cross

Chapter 27

Mahoney pulled himself up to his full height and rushed right at her, saying, “Move. Now. Back up your perimeter. This is a crime scene, and I want it sealed immediately!”

The reporters retreated as the young woman said, “We have a right to answers.”

“No, you have the right to ask questions,” Mahoney said, getting right in her face. “I decide whether I’ll answer them. And I’m more likely to answer them if you give me a little slack to take care of a dangerous, fluid situation. Okay?”

Her jaw relaxed, and she nodded. “Okay. Lisa Sutton. Channel Six News. We’ll move back, but I’m assuming my questions have answers.”

Mahoney threw up his hands. “Assume all you want, Ms. Sutton. Just get away from my crime scene. Now!”

The reporters backed off a few more steps, and Mahoney got on his phone to notify the local sheriff and get a forensics team dispatched.

I went to the car and looked at the finger and at the head of the Asian woman. Who was she? Why put gummy bears in her mouth?

And what the hell was it with M and the damned gummy bears?

My thoughts raced backward twelve years to the first time I’d gotten a message from M.

I suddenly saw myself and John Sampson climbing out of an unmarked car south of tiny Rupert, West Virginia.

We’d pulled off a muddy road and parked up against a chain across an overgrown gravel drive that led into thick woods. There was a no trespassing sign hanging from the chain. A faded for sale sign dangled from a pine tree.

“What’s with the damn bugs?” Sampson grumbled, waving his hands at the clouds of blackflies and mosquitoes that swarmed around our heads.

“Cheaper than guard dogs,” I said, swatting the back of my neck.

“Doesn’t look promising, does it?”

I gazed beyond the chain and saw no tire tracks or footprints of any kind.

Sampson said, “We could have asked West Virginia State Police to take a look around before we drove for four hours to get here.”

“I don’t like other people doing my work,” I said, and I stepped over the chain.

Sampson hesitated. “We don’t have warrants.”

“Since when have you leaned Boy Scout?” I asked and then gestured at the for sale sign. “We’re thinking of buying a fishing camp to retire to in our old age.”

“I’m a little too young for retirement.”

“Don’t you watch those financial-adviser commercials?” I said. “It’s never too early to think about retirement.”

Sampson pursed his lips, shrugged, and then stepped over the chain. Cicadas buzzed from thickets on both sides of the two-track, and somewhere ahead crows were squawking.

I kept studying the mud, hoping to see some indication that a vehicle had come in here recently. But there’d been thunder-storms in the area for the past three days, and other than our own prints, the wet ground appeared undisturbed.

“Doesn’t exactly feel like a setting for romance,” Sampson said.

“Different strokes,” I said.

We were there looking for a missing thirty-seven-year-old woman named Arlene Duffy. Duffy ran a successful chain of day-care centers and worked ferociously hard. She always had a jar of gummy bears on her desk.

Although single and, according to her staff, not dating anyone, Duffy had left work early the day of her disappearance and bought a merry widow corset at a Victoria’s Secret at a mall in Falls Church. Her car was still parked there eight days later.

Security tapes from the mall revealed Ms. Duffy getting into a black Chevy Tahoe. The windows were tinted. The license plates were doctored.

But using computer-image enhancement programs, we’d been able to make out the sticker on the bumper of the vehicle. It said spellman’s live bait and tackle.

Sampson and I came to an overgrown clearing with a lake beyond it. There were several boarded-up cottages in the tangle of thorny vines that choked the place.

Sampson pointed to the biggest building, which had a caved-in front porch roof. Hanging by a single nail, a rusty sign said spellman’s live bait and tackle.

We walked down to the water.

“Place is hardly developed at all,” I said. “Just a few cabins way over there.”

“You’re saying this could be a retirement investment?” Sampson asked as crows began to quarrel somewhere in the woods.

“Gorgeous spot,” I said, seeing a crow dive-bomb into the weeds on the far side of the old fishing shop. Another one came screaming in behind it, and then they both came out angry over something.

I walked that way, found a game trail, followed it for fifteen yards. Then I stopped and called out to Sampson.

He came over quickly and peered at the colorful mound in the trail in front of me. “Gummy bears?”