Pitch Black (13 page)
H
EY, DUDE,” COLIN’S voice came through J.D.’s phone.
“Hey.” J.D. rolled over in bed, pulling the blanket higher. “What’s up?”
“It’s Friday night. Get your shit together ’cause we’re goin’ out.”
“I can’t, man, I’m sick.”
“Is that why you weren’t at the funeral?”
“Yeah.” J.D. was sorry he’d gone to bed last night wishing for some way to get out of going to the funeral today—it sure wasn’t worth having the pukin’ flu. Not that his mom gave a shit whether he went or not. But it’d look bad if he wasn’t there, especially now that they said it was murder . . . considering his brother’s record and all.
His mom had totally freaked when she’d heard Mr. McP had been murdered, saying they’d be coming after him just ’cause he lived on the wrong side of town. Just look at what they’d done to Jeffery, she’d said. J.D. didn’t think they’d arrest him, but it wasn’t worth doing anything to risk it. He sure hoped missing the funeral didn’t screw him.
“Get unsick,” Colin said. “You so don’t want to miss this. I got beer.”
“You’re shittin’ me. How’d you get beer?”
“Never mind how. I got it and we’re gonna drink it.”
“You got it at home? Your dad’s gonna kick your ass.”
“It’s not here with me,” Colin hedged. “I’m meetin’ somebody at seven-thirty.”
“Who?”
“You’ll see. He asked me to ask you. He’s bringing enough for both of us. Come on. Meet me out by the lumberyard.”
“I’m wicked sick, man . . . been pukin’ and shiverin’ all day. No way can I ride my bike clear out there—or suck down a beer.”
“Take somethin’.”
“What magic pill you got in mind?” The thought of beer made him want to barf again. Last time they’d gotten their hands on some alcohol, J.D. had been sick for two days.
“I don’t know. Pepto or somethin’.”
“Ugh. Gotta go.” He hung up and raced to the bathroom, making it to the toilet just in time.
MADISON GOT HOME
shortly after seven. The kitchen was dark and silent. She dropped her tote on the kitchen table and walked into the living room looking for Ethan. He was supposed to have the table set and a salad made. She’d been both dreading and anxiously anticipating their evening together. After his disappearing act at the funeral and his silent behavior afterward, she was getting to the bottom of this tonight. She just had to pick the right moment and the right angle of attack.
She went into the living room, ready to use teasing as opposed to letting loose her frustration that he hadn’t taken care of his tasks. Tonight she was picking her battles with particular care.
But Ethan wasn’t in the living room. It was dark, too.
She turned on a lamp. “Ethan?” She started up the stairs.
The upstairs consisted of four dormers, one for each of the three bedrooms and one for the bath. All of the doors opened off a small central hall at the top of the stairs. Madison kept a night-light burning all the time in the hall, for fear she’d take a misstep and tumble down the steps on her way to the bathroom one night.
Ethan’s door was closed. A yellow Post-it was stuck at eye level.
M
2 sick 2 eat C U in the morning.
She pulled off the note and crumpled it in her hand. Was this a ruse? Did he know the showdown was coming?
Knocking softly on the door, she tried the knob. It was locked.
“Ethan, you all right?”
An unintelligible muffled response came through the door.
“Ethan?”
She heard his feet thud on the floor, then shuffle toward the door. The lock clicked, and the door opened a crack. “Stay back. I might be contagious.”
She nudged the door open a little farther. “What’s wrong?”
“Barfed twice this afternoon.” He was wearing a T-shirt and boxers. The front of his hair was standing straight up. “I was finally getting to sleep when you knocked.”
“Oh.” She reached out, but he took another step back.
“Seriously,” he said, “you don’t want this.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“I just want to sleep.”
“Okay. Yell if you want anything.”
He closed the door. She heard the lock click and his feet shuffle back toward his bed.
She almost told him to unlock the door in case he got sick enough that he needed help. But she’d always tried to give him space when he needed it. He never liked being fussed over when he was ill. She went back downstairs, figuring she could open the flimsy door with a butter knife in the unlikely event that she’d need to.
AT THREE A.M
. Gabe finally gave up on sleep and got out of bed. He’d been tossing and turning since midnight. Visions of frightened teenage boys and bloodied camp chaperones kept flashing in his head. Every time he got those out of his mind, Kate McPherson’s tortured expression and pathetic sobs replaced them.
He hated unanswered questions. They slid beneath his skin and irritated like splinters. Even worse, these particular questions would have to sit festering until Monday. There wasn’t a damn thing he could do to get closer to the answers before then.
The loudest and most persistent question in his restless mind was whether or not Steve McPherson had been knocking his stepson around. Between Ethan’s comments, Kate’s careful answers about the relationship between her husband and her son, Jordan’s current mental condition, and the obvious fact that Steve’s death had all of the markings of a very personal attack, it was looking like a real possibility.
Could that pale, frightened boy have struck out with such brutal force? Gabe had heard of situations where people had exceeded their own apparent physical limitations in a violent act. Rage was a wild and powerful thing.
He needed to ask the crime lab if they could narrow down the size of the attacker by the injuries. What were the chances that the forensics folk would say, “Yes, without a doubt, the murderer couldn’t have been over five-four and a hundred-and-ten pounds.”
Right. If only it worked like it did on television, his job would be a snap.
Since no action could be taken until Monday, he formulated a plan of attack. He needed to question Kate again; that would be a tricky one. She wasn’t likely to say she’d stood by while her husband relentlessly bullied her son.
And Todd—Gabe wanted to see if Todd could throw any light on his stepbrother’s frame of mind. Of course, he couldn’t see Todd admitting anything damning about his own father either. Still, he might shed a ray of light onto Jordan’s psyche.
At this point any sliver of vision Gabe could gain might help assemble a clear picture. He knew Judge Preston was all about individuals’ privacy; he wouldn’t issue a subpoena for Jordan’s medical records without a very strong case.
That thought spurred another idea. If there had been even the slightest suspicion of abuse by the medical teams who treated Jordan for his broken arm, they would have filed a report. As the McPherson family lived in town, the city police would have been involved. He’d check with Chief Davis of the city police and county child protective services first thing Monday morning.
Monday. Monday. Monday. Until then he just had to sit on his hands and wait.
God, as much as he hated for it to be true, an abused Jordan striking out at his abuser would make his life (both personal and professional) a hell of a lot easier.
If he could get this case off his back, he could return to wooing Maddie. The better he got to know her, the closer he longed to get. And that just wasn’t going to be happening until he could say with certainty that Ethan wasn’t a suspect in this case—not without a huge public outcry. Even Carter, his own deputy, had started dropping hints that Gabe might not be as objective as he should be.
He went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and pulled out a beer—a real beer, not that coffee-colored crap Maddie had been drinking tonight. As long as he couldn’t sleep, he might as well accomplish something. He gathered his tools and went to start on the most destructive job he had on his list, ripping the tile off the walls in the bathroom.
BY NOON ON SATURDAY
, Gabe had worked himself to exhaustion. He was covered in dust and sweat. The floor of the bathroom was a jagged debris field of broken salmon-colored tile. He’d left the floor tile and the tile in the tub surround, since he hadn’t actually planned this little demolition project and had no new tile to replace it. It was a hell of a mess, but he could live with mess, had since he’d moved in.
He went to the garage to get a box and the grain shovel that had come with the place. For the next hour, he scooped and carried until he once again recognized the gray, yellow, and salmon mosaic-tile floor.
Just as he stepped into the steaming shower, his cell phone rang. He considered ignoring it. All he wanted was to be clean and crawl into bed for the sleep that had evaded him last night.
With an exasperated sigh, he swatted aside the shower curtain and snatched the phone from the back of the toilet. “Sheriff Wyatt.”
“Sorry to bother you, boss,” Deputy Carter said, “but I thought you’d want to know. We’ve got a missing person. We’re working on setting up a coordinated effort with Chief Davis for a search right now.”
Fatigue forgotten, Gabe asked, “Who is it?”
“A kid, Colin Arbuckle. Parents said he was supposed to be at a friend’s house overnight—J.D. Henry’s. When they called this morning, Henry’s mom said she hadn’t seen him.”
“Did someone question J.D.?”
“Yeah, that’s how they found Colin’s bike. J.D. was home with the flu yesterday. Said that he talked to Colin around dinnertime. J.D. suggested we start looking at the lumberyard. The bike was there, but no Colin.”
“I’ll be at the lumberyard in ten minutes.”
“Roger that.”
Gabe quickly soaped and rinsed, assuring himself that kids lied to their parents all the time. Colin was probably somewhere sleeping it off.
It was a thought that he clung to like a lifeline.
T
HE LUMBERYARD WAS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN, city police jurisdiction. Unfortunately the city force consisted of only six officers—not nearly enough for a search for a missing person. When Gabe pulled up, there were already several of his own deputies and a dozen volunteer firemen milling around, getting ready to search the rough woodlands that stretched for miles behind the lumberyard.
Colin’s parents stood nearby. Mrs. Arbuckle was staring at the bicycle lying beside the lumberyard fence, crying softly. Mr. Arbuckle had his arm around her looking grim and anxious. When one of the firefighters passed him, Mr. Arbuckle grabbed the man’s arm. “Why are we waiting around? Why aren’t we doing something?”
Gabe heard the beginning of the explanation of the need for organization to ensure an effective search before he got out of earshot.
He approached city police chief Davis with a nod. “Carter here yet?”
Davis shook his head.
“What can I do?” Gabe asked.
“Parents said they’ve checked with all of his friends. No one saw him last night. So we only have the bike and time last seen, which was when he left home just before seven last evening.”
“Any sign of a struggle?”
“No. I’ve called for search dogs, but it’ll be a while before they get here.”
“Did J.D. Henry say why he thought Colin might have been here?”
“Nope. Just said Colin had asked him to meet him here.”
“No reason why?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure there was a reason . . . but the Henry kid wasn’t giving up anything. You know where that leaves us.”
Gabe nodded and listed the most likely possibilities. “Drugs, alcohol, or vandalism.”
“No sign of anyone messing with the storage yard or the office building, so my guess is one of the first two.”
“Unless . . .”
Davis narrowed his eyes behind his glasses. “What are you thinking?”
“It’s not likely, and I don’t want to panic the family, but we could be looking at a kidnapping.”
Davis followed his thought. “I’ll have one of my officers check out the kid’s computer. See if he’d been chatting with anyone who might have had an ulterior motive.”
Just then, Carter’s cruiser pulled up beside them and the passenger window went down.
Gabe walked over and rested his hands on the door, leaning in.
“Call off the search. I found him,” Carter said.
From the grim look on his face Gabe didn’t have to ask. Colin Arbuckle was dead.
GABE, DAVIS, AND CARTER
stood on the narrow bridge looking down at the boy’s body.
Carter said, “I just had a hunch and decided to drive past here before I went to the lumberyard. We used to hang out here in high school.” He didn’t elaborate on what he and his buddies
did
while out here.
He pointed toward the embankment near the bridge abutment. “I noticed the beer cans first. The sun glinted off one, caught my eye. Then I saw this knit cap here.” The dark green cap was on the pavement near the bridge railing, not nearly dirty enough to have been lying there long. “Poor kid must have been drunk and fallen from here.”
Colin was lying half on a large rock, his legs and feet in the rushing creek thirty feet below. His head was at an unnatural angle to the rest of his body.
Davis said, “We’re in your backyard now, Wyatt. You need my people for anything?”
Gabe massaged his forehead with a thumb and forefinger. They’d managed to slip away from the search site without drawing Arbuckle’s parents’ attention. “If you’d take care of the family, I’d appreciate it. And send the rescue team on down to recover the body.” Then he turned to Carter. “Before you run the chief back to the lumberyard, give me the crime tape, camera, and evidence bags from your trunk.”
Once the handoff of equipment was made, Carter and Davis left Gabe alone to begin the preliminary work.
By the time Carter had made the short trip to the lumberyard and back, Gabe was standing in water up to his knees, finishing with the final photographs. He’d been in the creek just long enough for the deep ache to start in his ankles and calves from the cold and for the water to wick up to mid-thigh on his jeans.
He looked up as he started to rewind the film and saw the rescue truck pull up behind Carter.
He met Carter halfway up the embankment and asked him to bag the beer cans. Then Gabe went back to the small area on the bridge that he’d marked off with yellow police line tape, the spot where it appeared Colin had gone over the rail.
For a moment he stood there looking down as the rescue squad, all wearing hip waders, lifted the boy’s body off the rock and placed it on the litter. There were a couple of missteps on the rocky creek bottom that threatened to dump the body into the creek before they made it to the bank. When they started to put the boy in the black vinyl bag, Gabe turned away.
Although he’d photographed this area already, he studied the concrete rail and the pavement. Not far from the hat was a metal button, like those on jeans and denim jackets. He bagged it. The he turned another plastic bag inside out and picked up the cap. He’d been avoiding doing it until this last minute, hoping his suspicion was wrong.
It wasn’t.
The side of the cap that was facedown bore a Philadelphia Eagles logo.
GABE HAD SERIOUS DOUBTS
that Colin Arbuckle had been out there drinking all by himself. His best hope of getting information was J.D. Henry. He headed straight to the Henry duplex without bothering to change his wet jeans.
Mrs. Henry was her usual charming self when she answered the door.
“What do you want?” She’d barely gotten the words out before she took a long drag on her cigarette. “They find that boy?” she asked after she blew smoke out through her nose.
“I’d like to speak to J.D.,” Gabe said quietly.
She opened the door. “Since the kid ain’t got no sense, I reckon there’s no reason for me to keep you out. He already talked to the police once today.” Turning her head toward the stairs, she yelled, “James Dean!”
J.D. came dragging down the stairs. His eyes were hooded and his face pale. Clearly his claim of illness yesterday was true. He croaked one word, “Colin?”
“Let’s sit down, son.”
Once Gabe revealed to J.D. that Colin was dead, he watched for the boy’s reaction. Stunned shock paled J.D.’s complexion further.
It took all of about twenty seconds to get him to admit that Colin had mentioned someone was meeting him with beer.
“Who?”
“I don’t know. I swear.” He swallowed dryly. “Colin was all hotshot, like he gets. He acted like it was this big secret deal and said I’d find out when I got there.”
“Did whoever it was know Colin was bringing you?”
“Yeah, I was invited. Colin said.” A sudden look of horror crossed J.D.’s face. “You think somebody just ran off after Colin fell—left him there?”
“Looks that way.” Gabe made one more stab at him. “Did Colin say anything that would give you any kind of idea who he was meeting? Someone old enough to buy beer? A high school kid? Someone you already knew?”
J.D. shook his head. He looked like he was about to break down and cry.
Leaning forward, using a tone of confidentiality, Gabe asked, “Is this something y’all have done before . . . the beer?” Was J.D. protecting their supplier?
“No.” Then J.D. looked at the floor and added quietly, “Once Colin snuck a bottle of whiskey out of his house. That’s all, I swear.”
Standing, Gabe said, “Okay, J.D. If any ideas pop into your head about who Colin might have been meeting, it’s important that you tell me. I’ll do my best to keep your name out of things as long as you’re honest with me.”
The boy’s hand came up to rub the tears from his eyes. His chin quivered. “I don’t know who it was. Swear to God. Why is all this crap happening?”
Gabe was wondering the same thing. Since he didn’t have an answer, he let it lie. “You’ll let me know if you get any ideas about it, right? You don’t have to be sure. Any idea is a help.”
J.D. gave a jerky nod.
Gabe let himself out the front door.
FOR A FEW SECONDS
Gabe sat in Maddie’s driveway, parked behind her Saab, steeling himself for what had to be done. His sour stomach churned in time with his throbbing head, the two combined like the rhythmic agitation of a washing machine. His itchy eyeballs even ached.
No sleep. A third dead body in his jurisdiction. Maddie’s imminent pain. His personal life headed for the rocks. No wonder his body was rebelling.
He wanted there to be a logical explanation for that cap being on the bridge. He wanted the circumstances around McPherson’s death to point miles away from Ethan. Hell, he wanted to wind the clock back a couple of weeks and start over—for all the good wanting did.
Worried that Maddie would look out and see him sitting here like a stalker, he got out and went to the front door.
A look of surprised questioning crossed her face when she answered. “Hi.” She was wearing glasses. He’d never seen her in glasses. She looked hot—in an academic sort of way. He hated the reason he was here even more.
“Can I come in?”
“Sure.” She stepped back and looked down at his dirty shoes and wet jeans. “What happened to you?”
No sense in beating around the bush. “Colin Arbuckle is dead.”
Her eyes widened and her hand went to her chest. “When? How?”
“Last night. Fell off a bridge.”
“Oh, how awful.” Her hand lingered at the base of her throat. “How on earth did he fall off a bridge?”
“Good question.”
She didn’t react to his abrupt answer. Instead, she asked, “Do you want some coffee? You must be cold.”
He wanted to say yes. He wanted to pretend they could sit down and she could help him sift through this bizarre rash of mysterious deaths. But this wasn’t Gabe visiting Maddie. This wasn’t even the sheriff discussing events with the editor of the newspaper. This was the sheriff here to question Maddie’s son in a death investigation; best to treat it that way.
“No thanks. Is Ethan here?”
Wariness bloomed in her eyes. “Yes. He’s in bed sick.” She added pointedly, “Has been since yesterday afternoon.”
“Would you get him? I only have a few quick questions.”
She hesitated, only a beat but it was there. “All right. Have a seat.”
A couple of minutes later, Ethan came down the stairs with Maddie following like a shadow.
He came and stood in the middle of the living room. Maddie sat on the fireplace hearth, far from where Gabe sat on the sofa. He felt her gaze on his skin like the faint pull of static electricity.
“M said something happened to Colin,” Ethan said, shifting his weight from one bare foot to the other.
Gabe nodded. “He’s dead.” He kept his gaze on Ethan, gauging his reaction and assessing his state of health. The kid definitely looked tired . . . but
sick
and tired? He wasn’t as drained of color as J.D. had been.
Ethan’s brow creased and the corners of his mouth pulled down. After a moment, he asked, “What happened?”
“Maddie didn’t tell you?” Gabe’s gaze cut briefly to Maddie. Her distrusting stare didn’t waver.
“No,” Ethan said. “Just that something happened to him.”
“He fell off a bridge and broke his neck.”
Ethan’s mouth fell open for a second, then he closed it. “How’d he manage that?”
“He was supposed to meet someone at the lumberyard last night, someone who was bringing beer. Do you know anything about that?”
“How would I? I barely know Colin. We don’t hang out.”
“You hear anything around school about who might be able to get their hands on beer?”
“I’m not exactly on the in, if you know what I mean.”
Gabe reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out the ziplock bag that contained the knit cap. “Do you recognize this?”
Ethan took a step closer, but didn’t reach for the bag. “It’s a hat.”
“Ethan.” Maddie spoke for the first time in several minutes. Her voice trembled.
“It looks like my hat. I had it up on the mountain, but it wasn’t in my stuff when I picked it up. I figured it got lost.”
Gabe locked gazes with Ethan. “It was on the bridge where Colin fell.”
Ethan didn’t flinch, his gaze didn’t shy away. “I suppose it could have gotten thrown in with Colin’s stuff.”
Maddie stood up and put a hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “That’s enough. Ethan’s sick and doesn’t need any more stress.” To Ethan, she said, “Go back to bed. I’ll see the sheriff out.”
“M!” Ethan protested. “He thinks I—”
“Go!” She pointed toward the stairs.
Once Gabe heard a door close upstairs, he said, “You didn’t tell him Colin was dead? Why?”
She raised her chin ever so slightly. “Because I wanted you to see his reaction when he heard it.”
“Maddie, listen, I know this is hard—”
“Did you even ask Colin’s parents if he was wearing that hat last night?” She jabbed a finger toward the bag in his hand. “Or did you see the logo and immediately jump to the
wrong
conclusion? I know that hat went up the mountain; I packed it. And I haven’t seen it since.”
“Did you unpack his stuff?”
“No. I didn’t.” She crossed her arms. “Ethan was in bed with the flu last night. He didn’t go anywhere.”
“Can you say that with certainty?” He had to keep his head on the job, but each word nearly dragged his heart right up and out his throat.
“Yes,” she said, her eyes flashing with resentment. He could see her pulling up the drawbridge. He was no longer welcome in the castle.
“How?” he asked.
“Good God! I saw him in bed at seven. He locked the door. I was up until midnight. When I got up at six, he was still in there asleep.”
“So he could have left the house between midnight and six.”
“How? He was sick. He certainly didn’t walk all the way out to the lumberyard and back.”
“He wouldn’t have had to walk.”
“What?”
“He took your car without your knowledge before.”
She drew a sharp breath and recoiled. “You can’t be serious. Why are you leaping to all of these ridiculous conclusions?”
“I’m just asking questions. It’s my job.”
