LEAP OF FAITH (23 page)

The Sheriff wasn’t likely to ask to search her cabin, but refusing him would only arouse suspicion. Certainly, no one would think to look there even if they did search. Once the bones were securely hidden and the hose reattached, Abby called Nick. The conversation with her brother didn’t take long. She briefly outlined the history of the missing women, Jack’s first arrest, and everything that had happened since their return. Nick asked her only one question. 
Did she think Jack was guilty?
 

Without hesitation, she told him no. 

That was all it took to convince Nick that Jack was innocent. He told her to stay strong and promised to be there early the next morning. With nothing to do, Abby decided to unload the jeep to occupy her mind. Once the suitcases had been unpacked and the dirty clothes tossed in the laundry room, she carried her laptop to the living room and made herself comfortable on the sofa. It seemed strange to be staying in her own cabin again, but the thought of sleeping in Jack’s bed alone was simply too depressing to contemplate. Refusing to waste any more time feeling sorry for herself when it was Jack whose life was in tatters, Abby booted up her computer.

“Research,” Jack had told her, “is the key to my success. You can’t apply fictitious characteristics to something that is real simply to accommodate your plot. Yes, it would be easier and less time consuming than learning everything you can about the subject, but it’s cheating your readers. Always remember, hedging on even the smallest detail can be the death of a good novel.” 

Unfortunately, the nightmarish events that had taken place that day were all too real, but the concept of thorough research in order to obtain the facts still held true. Abby was determined to learn every minute detail about the ghastly Mountain Man and his victims before Nick arrived even if it meant staying up all night to do it. She checked her watch.  It was only six o’clock. It seemed an eternity had passed since they’d walked into the police station. Jack would be allowed one phone call before nine o’clock and had promised to call her once she’d had time to get home and contact Nick. 
Stay busy
, she told herself. It was the only way to keep from going crazy.

Abby brought up the archives of the Parkersville Gazette and saved all the newspaper articles to her computer so she could recall them easier. Then she started reading and jotting down important details in her notebook. She wrote down everything; the names of the victims, where they had last been seen, their ages, and physical descriptions. She even took down the date of the publication, who wrote the article, the editor’s name, and who had posted it to the high school website.

Abby was meticulous; listing the names of anyone quoted in the articles and what they had said, along with any other articles that could even remotely be related to the missing women. It was painstaking work, but she wasn’t taking any chances of overlooking a miniscule detail that could very well be the key to solving the murders. It comforted her to think how proud Jack would be to see how patient and systematic she was being, and it never once occurred to her that the likelihood of discovering the killer’s identity was infinitesimal at best. 

She closed her eyes for a minute, picturing Jack locked up, having to sleep on the flat plastic-covered mattress, eating the tasteless meals that were served in jail. Jack; worried, scared, wondering whether she was going to abandon him. Her eyes snapped open again. 
Stop it
, she ordered herself. This was not the time to wallow in the emotions that were gnawing incessantly at her insides. Right now, she had to concentrate on what was really important.

After finishing the last article regarding the disappearance of Anya Sawyer and her subsequent escape, Abby browsed the rest of the website and discovered an archive for yearbooks dating back over twelve years. She located a picture of Sherri and saw she had been very pretty as a teen. Her friend, Willa Jenkins, who had been one of the more recent victims, was surprisingly plain.     

Abby scanned the pages of the yearbook, cross referencing the pictures with all the names of the people she had written down. Rubbing the back of her neck as she viewed photos of the suspected Mountain Man victims, she was plagued by a persistently nagging feeling that she was missing something vital. Returning to the first photo, she copied and pasted it to a blank page in her computer, repeating the task with pictures of the other women until they were all assembled on the same document.

Carefully scrutinizing their smiling faces brought her no closer to solving the mystery.  Why these particular women? Did they possess certain characteristics that made them more vulnerable? Did he choose his victims for a specific reason, or was it nothing more than a random encounter that led to a spontaneous attack; the misfortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time? There didn’t seem to be a pattern. The women fell into different age categories, had various eye and hair colors, some were thin, some were heavy; the only discernible common thread was that none of them was particularly pretty. 

Abby’s eyes moved over the page again, locking onto the image of first woman. Marietta Howard was twenty-six when she was abducted shortly after Jack had moved into the area, and it was her disappearance that had gotten him arrested as a suspect. She was an exceptionally attractive girl in high school with a bright smile and delicate features. Why had the killer chosen to take women who were so plain and nondescript when the first one had been beautiful and clearly possessed a vivacious nature that the others lacked?

Returning to one of the last yearbooks containing Marietta Howard’s picture, Abby scrolled through it page by page. What a shame the young woman’s life had been cut short when it seemed she had such a bright future ahead of her. It was apparent that Marietta had been very popular; she was a cheerleader and class president, as well as the valedictorian her senior year. Smart, pretty, popular. She must have had lots of boyfriends because she was very rarely pictured with the same boy. Abby searched the yearbook activity photos, and although Marietta managed to manipulate her way into most of them, no particular boy seemed to be at her side more than any other.

Abby paused to make a notation. Everett Mizzerach, the current editor of Parkersville Gazette, was the photographer for most of the pictures Marietta was in, which wasn’t unusual considering he was in the journalism club and on the yearbook committee, but she recorded the information anyway. She was in the middle of cross referencing Marietta’s name with all the newspaper archives to see if she was mentioned anywhere else when her phone rang. Abby had to bite back the tears when the operator announced the call was coming from a correctional institution. 

“Hey, sweetheart, how are you holding up?” There was an underlying trace of despondency in Jack’s voice that forced her to rein in the storm of emotions before she could reply without choking on her words.

“I’m fine, except…I miss you so much, Jack!”

“I miss you too, honey,” he said softly.

Abby squeezed her eyes shut.
Don’t let him know how bad it hurts. He needs you to be strong.
Drawing in a jagged breath, she told him about her call to Nick. “He’s going to be here first thing tomorrow and will try to arrange for bail on Wednesday when you go before the Judge. Nick said to let you know he would stop by to see you after he talks to me. Jack, I…I put everything away when I got home.”

There was a short pause before he croaked out a strained, “Thank you.”

“I’m going to get you out of there, Jack.” A recorded voice interrupted to inform them the call would automatically terminated in one minute. “Nick is going see if he can arrange for me to visit you tomorrow,” she rushed her words. 
So much to say, so little time
.

“Is Nick going to stay with you, honey? I would feel a lot better if I knew you weren’t up there alone.”

“He promised to stay until you’re out. God, I hate this. I love you so much, Jack.”

“I love you too, honey. Be…”

“Jack?” Abby clutched the phone to her ear. “Jack?” 

Desperately fighting back the tears, she set the phone down, fervently praying that Jack would be free soon. As much as she hated to admit it, the probability of that happening wasn’t good. The Sheriff suspected Anya Sawyer’s abductor had been riding a motorcycle, and he also knew Jack had the tires changed on his bike. Even more incriminating was the fact that Jack had been in town the day the girl disappeared,
and
they found a shovel with fresh dirt on it, suspiciously located several feet into the woods. 

On top of that, the Sawyer girl was found on their side of the mountain, all but hammering the nails in Jack’s coffin by saying his name before going silent. Thank God, they didn’t know about the hand bones Digger had brought back from the woods. If Abby wasn’t so sure of Jack’s innocence, she would probably be looking at him in the same skeptical manner the people at Lou Lou’s had done. Regardless of the overwhelming evidence against him, Abby’s faith was unshakeable.  

With a weary sigh, she set her research aside and trudged down the hall to the bathroom. Barely nine o’clock and already so tired she could hardly keep her eyes open, Abby decided a shower would do wonders to revive her. It would also give her some time to absorb the information she had gathered so far. As the warm water eased the tension from her body, she let her mind wander to Digger and the gruesome prize he’d carried home. How far down had the dog burrowed before he found it? And why hadn’t he led Jack back to the spot in the days and weeks that followed?

Abby rinsed the shampoo from her hair, absently thinking about the German Shepherd they’d had when she was growing up. Duke was a retired police dog her dad had bought as protection for her mom. By the time all the Travis kids were born, Duke was getting on in years. Playing fetch consisted of little more than a few tosses before the game was over, so Gage and Scott devised a new game they thought would be less tiring for the dog. 

Abby turned the water off and climbed out of the shower, patting herself dry with a towel before knotting it around her chest. She ran the brush through her hair with a poignant smile. Her brothers had been right about one thing; their game was certainly less tiring for old Duke. The plan was to show Duke a chew bone and then bury it beneath a mound of loose dirt in the yard. They made no attempt to prevent him from seeing where they buried it; in fact, they led him right to it once they were done. 

The dog pounced on the pile of dirt, enthusiastically digging up the buried treasure, at which point Gage wasted no time in wrestling the bone away and burying it again. But Duke, who looked up at Gage and then promptly plopped down for an afternoon snooze, had apparently grown bored after the first round. It wasn’t until much later when they spied him sneaking the bone to his favorite hiding spot beneath the porch that they realized he’d only been waiting for them to go away so he could dig it up and get down to the business of devouring it. 

Abby’s hand froze. Of course! That’s why Jack’s dog refused to lead him back to the place where he’d found the hand bone. What happened to his treasure when he brought it home and presented it to Jack? It had been taken away just as they had done to Duke’s chew bone. If she was right, and Abby was confident that she was, then it was entirely possible Digger had discovered more skeletal remains and buried them in the woods near the cabins. Of course, there was a possibility the Sheriff would try to use it against Jack if they unearthed more bones, but she didn’t think Mason Crane would believe Jack was stupid enough to incriminate himself that way.

Abby dropped her brush by the sink and pulled on her robe as she hurried to the bedroom. It was a long shot, but at this point she was willing to grab at anything to prove Jack's innocence. A small glimmer of hope began to blossom as she retrieved her phone and punched in her brother’s number.

“Gage, I need your help.”

***

It took her brothers a little longer to get there than anticipated. It seems the pilot refused to allow their special guest on board and they had argued for quite some time before Nick called their father and handed the phone to the pilot, exchanging a knowing smirk with Gage. Even from where they were standing they could hear their father’s booming voice and noted with smug satisfaction that the pilot’s face remained extremely somber during the call. His end of the conversation consisted of an occasional contrite ‘
Yes, sir’
, and concluded with a mumbled apology. 

“We’ll leave as soon as everyone is on board,” he said, politely handing the phone back to Nick. 

Abby met them at the airport, hugging each of them before greeting the extra passenger that had caused their delay; a police dog with a very special talent that Gage had borrowed from his precinct. She squatted down in front of the huge German Shepherd and stroked his muzzle. 

“What’s his name?”

“Prince,” Gage told her. He reached over and scratched behind the dog’s ears. “He’s worth a lot of money and I was threatened with bodily injury if anything happened to him.”

“Police dogs are expensive?” Abby glanced up at her brother.

“Not expensive – valuable. As I told you on the phone, Prince isn’t just a police dog, he’s a cadaver dog. He sniffs out dead people.”

She looked back at the beautiful animal. “Not a very fun job, is it, boy?”

“He’s given a lot of people the chance to bury their loved ones properly.”