Kidnapped (29 page)

Luke opened the cabinet beneath the sink and got out the spray bottle of ammonia and lemon Caroline favored. He tore off paper towels and sprayed the counter. Someone would need to vacuum the carpet to pick up the crushed leaves that had been tracked in, and the garbage cans would need to be carried down to the roadside tomorrow. A couple days after that, the milk would need to be poured out and the bread thrown away. Luke scrubbed a stubborn spot on the stovetop. He didn't want to think about what would happen if Caroline was not home in a week, a month.

“I found it.”

“Good.” Luke gestured to the candy sticks. “Why don't you pick out one to take back to your mom?”

Benjamin studied the jars and eventually pulled out two cinnamon sticks.

“Find me a trash bag, would you?”

Benjamin opened the pantry as Luke pulled out and tied the bag in the kitchen trash can. Benjamin shook open the new bag and put it in the can.

“Where does she keep her trash cans?”

“Behind the garage.”

Luke carried the bag outside.

“Can I walk home on my own?”

Luke waved at Mark. “Your dad came over to meet you halfway. Tell him I'll be over in a few minutes after I lock up.”

“Okay.”

Luke waited until Benjamin joined his father before turning back to Caroline's house. He finished wiping down the kitchen counters and table, and then stored away the supplies. He turned off the lights and reset the alarm system.

The quietness of the day felt strange, given what was happening elsewhere.

Luke walked out the back door and took a seat on Caroline's patio, not ready yet to rejoin the search. He pulled out his billfold and retrieved the note Caroline had written him the night they had recovered Benjamin, before the ransom request for Sharon had arrived.

Luke—an easy life is fit for easy tasks; a hard life is fit for hard tasks . . . God knew every case you'd see, how hard it would be, and yet He set you on this course for a reason. He created a man who can keep going in the face of tremendous discouragement, in the face of emotional people and chaos and only scraps of information to work with. He made a man I needed . . . You are as ready for this task as God can make a man.

Luke read the words and sighed.
I wish I were that man, Caroline. I wish I were able to work a miracle and find you alive today.

He resisted the emotions that wanted to flow. This hurt too bad for just tears.

“If a day comes when you have to tell me Sharon is dead, it will be okay to just say it. I already know your heart.”

“Who breaks the news to me that you're dead, Caroline? Jackie? Mark? It's going to rip apart what's left of my heart.”

Luke refolded the letter. The last year had been wasted. Rather than let Caroline into his life while he'd had the chance, he tried to put a buffer around his job to protect her from it. In doing so he missed out on the one relationship that mattered. If he got a second chance, he wouldn't make that mistake again.

They could distribute flyers, do another press conference, try to get the national cable news stations to pick up the case. By this weekend, they would need that extra interest to sustain the search into a second week. Public interest and volunteer help would begin to fade after ten days as people had to return to their lives.

Who would take Caroline's fifth-grade class? Her kids mattered to her so much. Maybe he could stop by and talk with her class tomorrow. He wanted some way to connect with Caroline and didn't know how to do it.

“Luke.” Jackie jogged up the driveway to join him. “Taylor needs us at the county landfill.”

“What is it?”

“A bulldozer operator thinks he saw a body.”

Chapter Thirty-Seven

L
uke pushed garbage out of his way and waded farther into the landfill. Red flags on long metal poles shoved among the punctured garbage bags was not how he wanted to find his crime scene.

Taylor Marsh rose from his crouch near a towering mound of garbage that didn't look stable. “It's not Caroline,” he called over.

Luke felt a surge of relief that caused him to pause by a torn-open sofa cushion. “Who?”

“It's rough to get a solid ID, but it looks like Gary Gibson.”

Luke reached Marsh's side and looked down at the body, partially visible through the piled garbage. The odor of human decay overpowered that of decomposing garbage. He swallowed back the bile that rose in his throat. “I agree that's Gary.”

Marsh used a handle from a broken broom to push back more of the trash around the body. “I don't see a gunshot wound. It looks to me like a knife wound to the chest, hard and deep, was the killing blow. He's pretty much out of rigor, so time of death maybe twenty-four to forty-eight hours ago.” Marsh stepped back and wiped the back of his sleeve across his nose.

Luke studied the shirt and jacket on the body. The dried blood highlighted the tears in the fabric; the knife had sliced through with neat precision. “Four stab wounds, maybe five. The work of a man in a rage?”

“A reasonable guess.” Marsh poked around with the broom handle. “We've got industrial trash around him, not residential. There's no foodstuff or household trash; I'm seeing collapsed cardboard boxes, a lot of shredded paper, packing materials, tie wraps, several smashed lightbulbs, some glass tubing, and a lot of what, plastic molds?”

“A lighting repair shop maybe?” Luke asked.

“We might get lucky with a shipping label on one of these boxes.”

“It would help,” Luke agreed. “Okay. Gary gets killed and his body dumped into an industrial Dumpster. A 2 a.m. garbage pickup lifts the Dumpster and drops him into the garbage trunk. A few hours later, he gets spilled out here and buried by the next load. Without the sharp eyes of that dozer operator, it would have been months before this area was turned and the body was spotted. That makes this a throwaway dump; there was no desire to have the crime discovered.”

“I don't think it's a coincidence that the man who was watching Sharon and Caroline in the months before the kidnapping occurred is now dead,” Marsh said. “Was he involved?”

“That's the thousand-dollar question. If I'm right, that he saw the snatch and what happened afterward, then his death suggests he got too close to the people who did it.”

“Killing with a knife—it's a close and personal kill. He saw Gary watching them, so he grabbed and killed him?” Marsh speculated.

“I'm leaning that way. Does it look like any of his personal effects were dumped with the body?”

“What are you thinking might be out here?”

“His camera,” Luke replied, looking around at the debris. “He apparently has two pretty expensive ones, and neither one was recovered at his house. I think he also took several photos with him when he abandoned his house and ran.” Wind pushed the pungent odor into eye-watering intensity. Luke walked around to be upwind of the body. “Have you checked his pockets?”

“No.”

Luke crouched down. The fabric of the jacket had caked to the body with dried blood, and the way the body had been pushed around, the jacket was shoved up and twisted. Careful of the grime, Luke tugged the jacket free enough to get to the left pocket. The man was a hoarder. Luke set the first handful of items he pulled out onto a piece of newspaper: toothpicks still in individual wrappers, cough drops, fast-food receipts.

Luke checked the right pocket and had to tug to get items crammed into it to come free. He retrieved a spiral notebook, blue cover, and well-worn, and three folded photos, the edges sharp and stiff. Luke pried one of the folded photos open and stilled. “This is the campsite where Sharon was held.” He handed the photo up to Marsh and worked to get the other two folded photos opened. “This one looks like a photo of Ronald at what? A gas station food mart?”

“I think so.”

“He was definitely watching them,” Luke said. “Tracking them. Who knows, maybe hoping to be a hero.” He opened the third photo and turned it in his hand, trying to decide orientation. It looked like an accidental shot, a photograph of the ground.

“Why didn't Gary call us? Or at least call in an anonymous tip?”

“Maybe he did, Taylor. You know how many calls deemed less than credible are still being reviewed.” Luke stood and moved away from the body. “Gary drives an old pickup truck. If this is Frank's handiwork, that truck may be what Frank is driving now.”

“I'll get the information out to the patrols.”

Luke straightened bent corners and opened the notebook. The page had two words scrawled in pencil, nearly undecipherable. Luke turned pages. They were all that way. “He must have been jotting notes while he was driving; the text is bouncing all over the page. I'll take this back to the task force to see if they can figure it out. If Gary followed them to the campsite, maybe he also located the house they used. See if the crime scene guys can find any more of these photos or those cameras. I'm willing to bet Frank could care less whether they were found or not, he may have tossed them into the same Dumpster. If we get lucky, there may be enough here to lead us back to the guy who started this.”

“Will do. I'll call with whatever is found.”

* * *

Luke rolled down the squad car window, hoping to dissipate some of the smell hovering like a cloud around him.

“I think it's on your boots,” Jackie said.

“And clinging to my shirt and jeans and jacket,” Luke added. “I'm heading to Mark and Sharon's to change before we go to the sheriff's office.” He nodded to the notebook she held. “Anything in Gary's scribbles that looks promising?”

“I either can't read the page or it doesn't make sense. Some of this looks like bird-watching notes.”

“Let's hope someone on the task force can read it.”

“Do you plan to tell Sharon Gary is dead?”

“She'll hear about it in the next few days even if we don't tell her. Gary is apparently the stalker who was bothering Caroline last fall, and if we're right that he was also the one to send that bouquet of roses to Sharon's office—knowing he's dead just closes several nagging worries. What do you think about me showing Sharon those folded-up photos?”

“I wouldn't. Gary knew where she was at and didn't get her help, at least indirectly that makes him responsible for Caroline being missing now. Hating a dead man is an ugly emotion to have to wrestle with.” Jackie opened the photos. “The campsite photo confirms what we already know. The one of Ronald—it might help to know if Sharon recognizes him, but we could get that information with a formal photo lineup.”

“When asked, we'll tell her that the state police found Gary's body, but that it appears he was killed before Caroline was called and the switch was made.”

“I could live with that.” Jackie watched the countryside along the highway, studying the houses. “Sharon was held near here. Everything points back to Benton. And that makes me think the guy who hired Frank is a local.”

“Someone who wants money, who would have the contacts that could give him Frank's name . . . it's got to be a small universe of people.” Luke turned on the radio. “It's time I had a long talk with Mark. His family wasn't chosen at random, and they aren't close to being the wealthiest people around here. Someone selected them for a reason.”

* * *

“Luke, I've racked my brain for names,” Mark said, pacing his study. “I've had my secretary pulling client lists, searching for anyone disgruntled, anyone who makes me uneasy, or who has come back into our lives recently out of the blue. I'm hitting a blank wall.”

“Five million, then ten million, with incredibly short delivery deadlines—the ransom request itself suggests an awareness of how much cash you could make liquid quickly. Why not ask for twenty million?”

Mark shook his head. “I would have paid any amount, somehow.”

“Do you remember anything more about the first ransom call?”

“I was driving back to Benton; the setting sun was in my eyes, and I had just reached up to move the visor. I picked up the phone, and a garbled voice said, ‘I have your wife. I will kill her.' And then he told me where to take the money at midnight.”

“Why the old church?”

“I don't know.”

A tap on the door interrupted them. “Can I come in?”

Luke turned and smiled at Sharon. “Sure.” He hugged her because she looked so tired, so stressed. The nap she'd taken didn't look like it helped much.

“There's no word on Caroline?” she asked softly.

He simply shook his head.

“They found Gary Gibson,” Mark said, coming around the desk. “He was killed sometime in the last couple days.”

Sharon winced. “His death is somehow related to what has been happening?”

“We'll work the case assuming that it does. I don't like coincidences.”

She sank onto the couch and wrapped her arms around one of the big pillows. “I liked him, Luke. Despite everything you've told me about his watching us, calling and frightening Caroline—it's hard to put together with the man I knew. That man was nice. He'd bring fudge to my head nurse when he came by the clinic to have his blood work done. Caroline worked at the clinic part-time that summer, and I know she and Gary got to be friends while he waited for all the tests to be run. He cared about her students and would ask about them; he would bring cartoons from the newspaper he thought she'd like. I think he even asked Caroline out to lunch a couple times.”

“That interest turned into an obsession. I doubt he ever thought this was what his life would become.”

“Benjamin has been playing with the kittens you rescued, wanting to know how come Gary left them behind. What do you tell a child that makes sense of that? How do you tell him the man is now dead?”