Cry Page 8

  Arnett followed, careful to step where she stepped. “Over there, in the mud—a partial footprint.”

  Jo pulled out her phone, zoomed her camera in, and shot pictures from several angles.

  Arnett pulled up a map on his phone. “I’m not seeing anything nearby, no houses, nothing. No reason someone would just happen to be out here tramping around.”

  Jo twisted to examine the surrounding area. “I agree. And there are several other spots of crushed vegetation leading upstream. But why would Oscar come here? He has to know where the crime scene is. So maybe it is Zoë out retracing her steps?”

  Arnett grimaced. “That still doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe she had something Oscar wanted, and dropped it when she slid down the slope, and he’s trying to find it again? Maybe that’s why he attacked her and her daughter in the first place?” Arnett said.

  “Interesting possibility. Either way, if we track them, we may be able to catch them.”

  Arnett scanned the area, hands on hips. “What do you think, follow the trail ourselves, or get a tracking dog up here?”

  “There’s too much underbrush and detritus. Unless they stuck right by the side of the creek, I’m not sure how far we’ll be able to track them, and we’ll just waste time.”

  “And contaminate the trail.”

  Jo pulled out her phone and made two calls. An hour later, an officer from Northampton PD dropped off the nightgown Zoë had been wearing at Sunset Gardens; a tracking dog arrived shortly after. Jo introduced herself and Arnett to Ivan Geary, the handler.

  Ivan introduced the white-and-tan pit bull, then exposed him to the nightgown. “Rocket, find it!”

  The dog picked up the trail immediately and took off up the creek a few hundred feet—but then made a right turn back in the direction of Taltingham, parallel to the dirt road. Confused, Jo followed Ivan until, half an hour later, Rocket stopped and sat in place.

  “This is the end of the trail,” Ivan told her.

  “The creek runs up the hill, this goes back to town. This should be the starting point, not the ending point. Is it possible we followed the trail in the wrong direction?”

  Ivan shook his head. “No way. She follows the intensity of the smell, the direction the scent was laid down, unless I tell her otherwise. Your target walked in this direction.”

  Was this a residual trail from when Zoë had originally walked into Taltingham? “Is it possible she continued on, but the trail just stopped here for some reason? Could something be interfering with it?”

  “No, ma’am. She stopped walking here.”

  Jo turned in place, surveying the area. “There—tire marks. Someone did a three-point turn here.”

  Ivan bent to inspect them. “That’d be why. Once the target gets in a car, Rocket can’t follow the scent anymore.”

  Jo crunched a few hundred yards back down to the parallel road and called Arnett. A few minutes later he pulled up, parked, and tramped back with her through the forest to where Ivan waited.

  “So we have confirmation she was here, at least,” Arnett said.

  “But she, or they, didn’t retrace her steps, they just found the creek and then drove off,” Jo said, brow creased.

  Arnett shrugged. “We weren’t planning on hiking up it, either, just following it back on a topographical map. No reason Oscar wouldn’t do the same, then drive close to where she woke up and hike from there. If they were searching for something, she’d already lost it before she woke up that next morning.”

  “Good point.” Jo stared back toward the creek. “So now that we know they’re out here, we approximate the starting point, head there, and hope we can run them down.” She grabbed her phone, and pulled up the app they’d consulted earlier. “Okay, if you look here, this is the road from Taltingham, and right here’s the creek. How long was she following it?”

  “We guessed about six to eight hours from her description, although we don’t know how long she walked before she found the creek. But, we’ll just have to radiate out from our best guess.”

  Jo checked the scale of the map, then measured. “That best guess would be somewhere right about here.” She touched the screen and a red teardrop appeared. “Two closest towns are Pelhaven and Redville.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  After updating Berkshire County SPDU with the new information and redirecting the search to radiate out from the target area, Jo and Arnett had spent the rest of the day canvassing campgrounds, beginning in the Redville area. By evening, they’d managed to talk to the employees and campers at the three southern-most sites, but nobody recognized Zoë’s picture, or reported any accidents or other unusual circumstances of any kind.

  As Jo climbed back into her car at HQ, frustrated and worried time was slipping away from them, a text from Matt appeared on her phone.

  Any news?

  She sent him an update, then backed out to her messaging page, where her eyes landed on Eric’s last text. She groaned. She’d promised herself she was going to call him tonight.

  But that was before the pregnancy test.

  She leaned back against the headrest and closed her eyes. She’d managed to shove the test results aside all day by directing her attention to searching for Zoë, but now, alone in her car, she had nothing to hide behind, and it all came crashing down on her.

  How had she let this happen? She was on the pill, and she used condoms. But condoms broke, and she’d been known to forget a pill or two when work kept her out until all hours. And what did it matter how it happened, anyway? It had happened, and that was that. What was she going to do about it?

  She opened her eyes and scanned the lot to be sure nobody was watching—HQ wasn’t a smart place to have a nervous breakdown. She flipped on the radio and found a talk show to distract herself, backed out, and headed for home. Ten minutes later she shut her front door behind her, shrugged off her blazer and kicked off her shoes, then plodded into the kitchen. She pulled down the calvados and poured her usual two fingers into a snifter.

  Halfway to her mouth, her hand froze.

  “What the hell?” She set the snifter back on the counter and stared at it like it was a rattlesnake.

  Why did it matter if she drank the brandy? There was no way she was keeping the baby. But something had stopped her, and was stopping her still.

  Just drink it, she told herself. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  She slid down the cabinet and sat on the floor, head in her hands. Surely she wasn’t considering keeping the baby? She’d never wanted a child, and she didn’t want one now. When she thought about holding a sleeping baby in her arms, it sent waves of panic through her. How the hell was she supposed to take care of a child with the hours that she worked? She’d have to put it in day care all day and half the night, and what kind of life was that for a baby, never getting to be with its mother?

  But no way was she going to have the baby and give it up for adoption, either. No way would she abandon a child she brought into the world. If she gave birth to it, it was her responsibility. And that wouldn’t solve the interference of the pregnancy, anyway—as soon as the Assistant District Attorney found out she was pregnant, they’d pull her off of any hazardous duty, for liability reasons. She’d spend the next seven and a half months behind a desk.

  So if she wasn’t going to keep it, she wasn’t going to give it up for adoption, and she wasn’t going to abort it, then what the hell was she going to do?

  She considered calling Eva. Her best friend had been there for her through all of the major traumas in her life—especially the death of her fiancé, Jack. Despite their shared high-school proclamations that they’d never have children, she was the mother of two, so she’d surely have some relevant advice.

  But Jo rejected the possibility. She was so tired, she told herself, and it would be so difficult to explain it all. She just didn’t have the energy right now.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in the reflection of the glass oven door, hu
ddled on the floor, face petulant and afraid. She barked a sarcastic laugh—who was she kidding? The real reason she didn’t want to make that call was because as soon as she told someone about the baby, it would be real. Right now it was just a theoretical baby, an intellectual puzzle to be solved, and she could still convince herself she’d wake up tomorrow and this all would turn out to be a bad dream. And if she did decide to abort the baby, she didn’t want to have to explain that choice to anybody, didn’t want to deal with the judgmental looks she’d know mirrored her own soul—she’d rather just do it and pretend it never happened.

  And, if she was going to get put on desk duty, she sure as hell wasn’t going to allow that to happen until they’d found Zoë and her daughter.

  Her phone chimed the arrival of a text, and she reached up to the counter to retrieve it.

  Eric. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

  She’d resigned herself to the inevitable we-broke-up-and-I’m-good-with-that conversation, but what would that conversation look like now? If she kept the baby, didn’t he have the right to know he was the father? And if she needed to tell him that, it would be a helluva lot easier if they hadn’t had a nasty conversation the last time they’d talked.

  She dropped her head into her hands. She knew Eric well enough to know he’d propose to her if he knew she was pregnant. And he’d be pissed when she said no, and would insist on being in the child’s life. He loved children, had mentioned several times how he wanted them someday. That was one of the reasons she’d always known they had an expiration date, even if she changed her mind about having another long-term relationship at some point.

  She pushed herself up and trudged into the bathroom. She gave the shower knob a vicious twist and waited for the stream to warm up. She’d had a long, taxing day, and she wasn’t in a fit state to make decisions about anything at the moment, let alone something this important. She’d take a shower, go to sleep, and think about it later.

  But as the hot water rushed through her hair, an inconvenient truth pulled at her. She couldn’t afford to postpone her decision for long.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jo woke Monday morning nearly as exhausted as she’d been the night before, and as awareness of the pregnancy came flooding back, an oppressive weight sank onto her chest. She dragged herself out of bed, glad she’d showered the night before, and brewed two shots of espresso. She couldn’t bear the thought of food, so at least the coffee would hit her system quickly.

  Arnett met her at HQ with a large mocha from Hill of Beans. “I stopped for the best, since today’s most likely gonna be a long one.”

  She rubbed her eyes and sipped the coffee, grateful that chocolate and coffee soothed her stomach rather than aggravated her nausea. She pulled out the paper map they’d marked up the day before, and pointed to one of the red Xs. “Start here today?”

  “Sounds good.”

  They spent all morning and half the afternoon canvassing, with no results. As they finished up their third campground of the day, Aspen Ranch, the sense of dread Jo had woken with combined with a building frustration. This was futile, they were looking for a needle in a haystack, and she had to force herself not to picture Zoë lying dead by the side of a Berkshires road.

  “We saw her yesterday, right down the path over there.”

  Sure she must have heard wrong, she pushed the picture farther toward the pretty blonde woman who’d introduced herself as Kathy Miller. “Are you sure? You saw this woman?”

  “Absolutely. We ran into her yesterday when we first got here, when we were bringing everything in from the car. See, I told you something was weird about her, honey.” She threw an annoyed look at her husband Todd, then glanced out the filmy plastic window to where her children were playing in front of the cabin. “What has she done?”

  Jo followed her glance, adrenaline erasing her dark mood, and automatically pulled up a reliable half-truth. “Don’t worry, there’s no reason to be concerned. She was in an accident and she lost her memory. She wandered away from her care facility and we’re trying to find her.”

  She looked relieved. “Oh, thank goodness, I was about to pack up and leave.”

  “Was she with a man?” Jo asked.

  “No, she was walking alone.”

  Jo exchanged a glance with Arnett, then asked, “Did she say anything to you?”

  Todd Miller cleared his throat. “She said she was lost, and that she was looking for a different cabin and got confused. Then she went down the path toward cabin four. But when we got back to the car to get the rest of our stuff, we noticed the car closest to ours was gone.”

  Jo’s head turned from the playing children. “What sort of car?”

  “It was an SUV, I remember that for sure.” Todd’s brow furrowed. “Light color.”

  “A Suburban. I noticed because I’ve been wanting to get one for us,” Kathy said.

  “Did you notice if anyone else was in the car?”

  Kathy and Todd looked at each other, both shaking their heads. “But I wasn’t really paying attention to that,” Kathy said.

  “Do you remember what she was wearing?” Arnett asked.

  Kathy’s head bobbed. “Jeans and a dark jacket. Athletic shoes.”

  Jo and Arnett thanked the couple, and jogged back down the trail to their car. As they drove back to the registration building, Jo spoke. “Okay, so maybe you were right. Looks like she was here alone.”

  “Unless she was being coerced somehow.”

  They climbed out, and pushed through the Dutch door into the building. James Roy, the barely-out-of-high-school assistant manager they’d spoken to when they first arrived, looked up as they entered.

  “Mr. Roy? Sorry to disturb you again, but we think we may have a lead on our missing woman. Can you tell us who was registered in cabin six before the current occupants?”

  “I should be able to.” He ambled over to the computer on the counter, wafting a subtle draft of cannabis through the room. He typed a few commands into the computer, then pulled over a pad and pen. He jotted down the contact information, ripped off the sheet, and slid it across to them.

  “Pat Morita, 1345 Macchio Lane, Boston,” Jo read out, and laughed.

  Arnett dropped his head, and shook it. “Wax on, wax off. Well, I guess that proves we’re on the right track.”

  James Roy’s eyes flicked between them. “That who you were looking for?”

  “Sure, when I was seven and obsessed with karate.” When the man’s expression didn’t change, Jo continued. “It’s fake. Pat Morita’s a movie star, and so is Ralph Macchio. Both starred in The Karate Kid.”

  “I thought that starred Will Smith’s kid?”

  Jo opened her mouth to explain, then thought better of it. “When exactly did she stay here?”

  James looked back at the computer screen. “Says here they checked in Friday, April 5th. Paid in cash upfront for a week.”

  “Were you working that day? Do you remember anything about the person who checked in?” Arnett asked.

  He squinted at the wall. “Vaguely. I think it was a small dude, in a ski cap. I can’t be sure, though.”

  Jo wasn’t surprised—his memory probably hinged completely on how much weed he’d smoked just prior. “And there was just the one person, alone?”

  “If I’m thinking of the right guy.” He shrugged.

  “Can you describe him?” Jo asked.

  James tilted his head to the side. “Not really. I just remember the ski cap ’cause it had one of those ridonculous pompoms on the top. Older, I guess?”

  “Your dad old, or your grandpa old?” Arnett asked.

  “Closer to my dad, I think.”

  Jo pushed down her frustration at having to pull teeth. “Hair color? Eye color? Mustache, beard?”

  “Hair was under the cap, but I feel like the eyebrows were dark? No facial hair. No idea on the eyes.”

  “Are you even sure it was a man?”

  He stared at her vacantly. “Huh. Dunn
o. Maybe not. Chicks start to look like dudes when they get older, I guess.”

  Jo struggled to keep her face blank. “When did they check out?”

  “They didn’t. They just vacated.”

  Jo exchanged a glance with Arnett. “Is that normal?”

  James shrugged. “When people prepay, yeah. They don’t have to sign anything, and the cabins don’t need keys.”

  Arnett shot a questioning glance at Jo, who nodded. He turned to James. “So here’s the thing. We’re actually looking for two missing women, and one was likely the victim of a violent assault, possibly a homicide.” Arnett paused and watched James’ face go pale. “Which means we’re gonna need to take a close look at that cabin.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The Millers weren’t at all happy about being removed from their cabin, and still less happy about giving fingerprints and hair samples so they could be ruled out of whatever evidence Marzillo and her team collected—but they were apoplectic about having their belongings catalogued by strangers.

  “There was nothing here when we got here, not even a spider in the corner,” Todd Miller protested. “Can’t we just take our stuff into the other cabin?”

  “Think of this like an archaeological dig. We have to carefully go through the things that aren’t relevant and rule them out until we know what is.” Jo pointed to his pants. “Let’s say we find brown fibers in a groove on the floor. We need to know whether they came from you, or from something none of you have in your possession. I promise, we’ll be done before you know it.”

  Marzillo called out from the cabin. “Jo, Bob. Suit up and take a look at this.”

  Once they were inside, she switched on a black light. A corner of the cabin’s floor and walls lit up with glowing blue patches.

  “Blood,” Jo said, bending in for a closer look.

  “A shit-ton of blood,” Arnett said. “And from the swipe marks, it looks like someone tried to clean it up?”