Gone

CHAPTER 24

Tuesday, 8:26 p.m. PST

SHELLY ATKINS HATED COFFEE. This was not something one admitted in law enforcement. Stakeouts, long nights, early mornings, bitter, foul coffee was always the brew of choice. Frankly, it didn’t look the same when you whipped out your box of herbal tea.

Shelly couldn’t afford to look different. She was a woman commanding in a male-dominated world. In the good-news/bad-news department, at least she wasn’t pretty. She had broad shoulders, muscled arms, and stocky legs. She could plow a field, churn a vat of butter, and heft a calf. Around these parts, men respected that sort of thing.

She still wasn’t wife material, however. Or maybe she hadn’t met the right man. Who knew? But Shelly had given her youth to farming. Her adulthood, she was keeping for herself.

Now, she left the command center in the conference room, walking out into the main lobby. This time of night, the building was deserted, doors closed to the public, Fish and Wildlife officers done for the day. She moved into a corner dominated by a slab of tree trunk and a beautifully mounted rack of antlers. There, she fished around in her chest pocket for her packet of chamomile tea, then plunked it into her cup of hot water. She put the lid back on, ripped off the dangling tag from the tea bag, and no one was the wiser.

Everyone had their little secrets, Shelly thought wryly, then was somewhat saddened that this was as good as hers got. She was nearly fifty years old, for God’s sake. Sometime soon, she was going to have to run off to Paris and sleep with a painter, just to keep herself from being totally boring in old age. Maybe in Paris, she would be considered exotic. Their own women were so pale, wraithlike. Surely there was a painter somewhere on the Left Bank who would enjoy the challenge of painting the last of a dying breed-the quintessential American farm wife. She would strap a plow to her back. She would pose nude.

It would give her something to remember during all the sleepless nights to come. I, Shelly Atkins, once sipped from the cup of life. I, Shelly Atkins, for at least one moment, felt beautiful.

“Penny for your thoughts.”

Quincy’s voice came out of nowhere.

“Holy shit!” Shelly exclaimed. She jerked the cup of hot tea away from her body, so at least she only sprayed it on the floor. Her heart thundered in her chest. She had to take several deep breaths before her hands would stop shaking.

“Sorry,” Quincy said contritely. He moved into view and she realized he had followed her from the conference room. He looked better now than he had an hour ago. Composed again, some color infusing his cheeks, his posture erect. Hell, he looked downright handsome, which was not a thought Shelly wanted to be having right now.

Shelly knew more about Quincy than he’d want her to know. She was a bit of a true-crime junkie, and when she’d heard through the grapevine there was a genuine retired profiler in her community, naturally she’d dug up everything she could find on the man. Gruesome cases, fascinating stories. She’d spent the past few weeks trying to work up the courage to approach him. She would love to hear about his work, pick his brain on major cases. She didn’t know how to introduce herself, however, without coming off as some kind of FBI groupie. Which maybe she was.

Truthfully, Shelly didn’t really want to travel to Paris. But she’d sell her soul to attend the National Academy for police officers at Quantico. If only the Bakersville Sheriff’s Department had those kinds of resources…

Shelly sighed heavily. She was hopeless, and there would be no good stories for the old folks’ home after all.

“How are you feeling?” she asked roughly. Quincy was standing beside her now. Tall, lean, distinguished, with the silver streaking through his dark hair. He smelled of rain, mud, and fir trees, a walking advertisement for the great outdoors. She wished she’d stop noticing these things.

“Apparently not well enough for people to stop asking me that question,” Quincy answered dryly.

“You gave us a good scare. I’ve never seen a man collapse like that.”

“When did you arrive?”

“Just as you picked up the metal folding chair and simultaneously tried to rip Kincaid limb from limb.”

“It was sublimation. I’ve secretly been plotting to maim Sergeant Kincaid ever since he decided not to meet the first ransom demand. Going insane about my missing wife simply gave me the chance.”

“That young guy moves quick.”

“Mac? He’s a good man.”

“How long has he been with your daughter?”

“Couple of years.”

“Think this is the real thing?”

“I don’t know. Kimberly rarely talks of matters of the heart.” Quincy nodded thoughtfully. “But I wouldn’t object. Not that any father feels that any man is good enough for his daughter, but in this case…”

“Seems like he can handle her,” Shelly filled in for him.

“Something like that.”

“She’s beautiful,” Shelly said. “You must be very proud.”

“She’s beautiful, intelligent, and stubborn to a fault. I’m enormously proud. And yourself?”

“Never done it. No husband, no kids.” Shelly jerked her head toward the conference room. “I gotta keep all those yokels in line. That’s enough mothering for me.”

“Well said.”

Shelly took a sip of her tea. The steam wafted out and Quincy inhaled the fragrance.

“Chamomile,” he commented.

“I’ll pay you fifty bucks not to tell.”

“Your deputies are morally opposed to herbal tea?”

She scowled. “Men. You know what it’s like.”

Quincy smiled. It lightened his face, bracketed his eyes. She felt his grin in her chest, which only made her twenty times a fool.

“Indeed I do,” he said.

Shelly turned away from him. She studied the antlers, the tree stump, the dust that was collecting around the edges of the displays. Hell, she was no good at these things, had never been any good at these things. This was the real reason Shelly was still single: honest to God, she only knew how to talk shop.

“I looked up Nathan Leopold,” she said.

“And?”

“Same as the others. Famous abduction case from the twenties. Leopold was a rich kid who saw himself as some sort of criminal mastermind. He convinced his friend Richard Loeb, also rich and spoiled, to kidnap and murder a fourteen-year-old young boy ‘for the experience.’ The two drafted a ransom note but, like the other cases, never planned on returning the boy alive. After the police discovered the body, Leopold inserted himself into the investigation. Didn’t take long for the cops to figure things out, however. For one thing, brilliant Nathan dropped his spectacles near the body. Turned out there were only three frames like them made in the whole United States. Ah, the good old days before everything was mass-produced from LensCrafters.”

“A partner crime,” Quincy mused softly, “with elements of a thrill kill.”

“Yeah, but Leopold was clearly the instigator, the alpha partner, no doubt about it. Similarities I see between the names given by our guy are that all are from infamous cases and none of the abductors ever planned on returning the hostage alive.” At the last minute, Shelly realized how blunt she sounded. “Sorry,” she murmured awkwardly, and hastily sipped more tea.

“You don’t have to apologize.”

“It’s just… She is your wife. I can’t even begin to imagine how hard this must be.”

“I doubt it’s ever easy.”

“You could go home, you know, get some sleep. We can handle this.”

“If you went home, Sheriff Atkins-”

“Shelly, call me Shelly.”

“If you went home, Shelly, would you sleep?”

“Probably not.”

“It’s easier to be here. It’s even easier to discuss theories on what kind of psychopath took my wife. At least that’s doing something. And maybe, if I keep busy now, I won’t go insane thinking of all the things I should have done earlier. The signs I ignored, the conversations I didn’t have, the symptoms I didn’t recognize. You know-all of the ways in which I probably failed my wife.”

“Coulda, woulda, shoulda,” murmured Shelly.

“Rainie’s an alcoholic,” Quincy said abruptly. “Yet in all the time I’ve known her, she’s never attended AA. If you asked her about it, she would say, ‘I was an alcoholic.’ It sounds very forthcoming, honest, and yet…”

“She’s using the past tense.”

“As if she’s magically cured, as if it’s no longer an issue in her life. Which of course-”

“Is denial of its own kind.”

“I never pushed her. I never asked her about it. Rainie always accused me of wanting to fix her. I disagreed, of course, but maybe that was my own version of denial. Because how else could I accept her statement so readily, as if she had been broken but was now repaired? The human psyche is not that simple. Addictions are not that kind.”

Shelly didn’t know what to say. She drank more tea.

“I’m sorry,” Quincy said abruptly.

“For what?” Shelly looked around, honestly confused.

“For talking so much. I didn’t intend to come out here to run off at the mouth. I’m sorry. You’re… you’re a very good listener.”

Shelly shrugged, sipped more tea. Yeah, that was her lot in life. To be a good listener.

“I’m supposed to be informing you that Sergeant Kincaid will be holding a briefing at nine p.m.,” Quincy said. “Please be prepared.”

“Briefing on what?” Shelly snorted. “That my deputies still haven’t found Dougie Jones? That we still don’t know who abducted your wife? Hell, I only wish I had something to prepare.”

“I don’t think the sergeant is planning on using the meeting to recap what we haven’t done.”

“Well, praise be and hallelujah.”

“I believe he’s going to use the meeting to discuss what will happen next.”

“And that would be?”

“The ten a.m. ransom drop. No more fooling around. We tried things Kincaid’s way. Now we’ll let the UNSUB call the shots.”

“Ahh shit,” Shelly said tiredly.

“Quote of the day.”

Shelly pulled herself together, belatedly trying to remember that this was the husband of the victim and he could use more from the local sheriff than profanity. “We’re working hard,” she rallied. “We’re going to find her. It’ll work out.”

Quincy merely smiled again.

“First rule of thumb in this business, Shelly,” he murmured quietly. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”