Unfinished Business (24 page)

“We’ll be there as soon as we can,” I said,
as Grimaldi pulled the car to a stop behind the diner. “I’m not
sure how much help we’ll be—” Me in my summer dress and sandals and
Grimaldi in her dark suit; it wasn’t like we could walk through the
woods in an area we didn’t know dressed like that, “but maybe
there’s something we can do.”

“Sam’s out looking,” Ginny said, and now I
could hear the exhaustion in her voice. “I’m waiting here, in case
he comes back.”

“Nobody heard or saw anything?”

“Nothing. They’re saying one of the bikes is
missing, but they’re not sure.”

David had run away once before, the day
after Dix and I had gone to Ginny and Sam’s house to tell them that
David was Elspeth’s heir. He’d been eavesdropping, and had gotten
an earful, some of which must have come as a shock to him. That was
the first time he heard that he was adopted, and wasn’t Sam and
Ginny’s biological son.

The next afternoon after school, he’d taken
off instead of going to sports practice. He’d made it to the bus
station in downtown Nashville, and from there had made it to
Columbia, and to Damascus, where Elspeth had grown up. He’d crept
into her house—his house by then, I guess—through a basement
window, and had looked around. And then he’d ‘borrowed’ her bicycle
to make his way to Sweetwater and the Bog, the trailer park where
Rafe had grown up. That’s where we’d found him, sleeping on the
floor in Rafe’s room, before dawn the next morning.

The missing bicycle sounded familiar.

“Sounds like maybe he just took off,” I
said, wishing I dared believe it. “Maybe I scared him when I told
him Rafe was missing, and he wanted to come home and see what he
could do to help.”

It was a nicer scenario than either of the
other two: stuck in a ravine with a broken leg, or tied to a chair
with Eugenio Hernandez making holes in him.

“Maybe.” But Ginny didn’t sound encouraged.
And I knew why. Even if David had taken off on his own, on a
borrowed bicycle, he’d started out hours from home, two counties
away, in the dark. It was anyone’s guess what might have happened
to him between Peaceful Pines and Nashville. Someone could have
grabbed him, someone entirely unrelated to Eugenio Hernandez; just
another creep who happened to like young boys. Or a car could have
hit him and he could be lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Or in a
hospital bed, on life support.

Or maybe he’d simply gotten lost.

It must have been twelve hours since he left
camp. Probably more. Would a trip that took an hour and a half by
car, take more than half a day by bike?

For a twelve-year-old boy, one who had to
stick to the secondary roads because bicycles aren’t allowed on the
interstates, it might. Then again, in the middle of the night, he
might risk the interstate, since it would be faster and nobody was
likely to see him anyway.

“Let me call Rafe,” I said. “He and four
other TBI agents are out in Wilson County. They’re closer to you
than we are. Maybe they can help search.”

Ginny didn’t say anything. Maybe she was
nodding, maybe not.

“And let me know what you find out.”

She said she would, and we hung up.

“Missing?” Grimaldi said.

I nodded. “It sounds like he left in the
middle of the night on a bike. But there’s a chance someone took
him. Or the bike could be a red herring, and he could be lost in
the wood.” Or dead, in the woods or elsewhere.

“The police are involved?”

“That’s what she said. And the local fire
department is out looking for him. I need to call Rafe.”

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

I looked at her, and she added, “He’s
injured. The last thing you want him to do, is crash through the
woods in his condition. And you know he’s going to want to do just
that.”

She was right about that. However— “David’s
his son,” I said. “He’s going to want to know. If I don’t tell him,
he’ll be very upset with me.”

Grimaldi nodded and reached for her door
handle. “You go ahead and update them. I’ll go talk to our friend
over there, and see if she can identify anyone.”

“I’ll be right there,” I said, dialing,
while Grimaldi opened the door and took her ream of paper
outside.

“Take your time.”

She closed the car door. I watched her in
the rearview mirror, making her way across the parking lot to where
the redheaded prostitute was standing, while I listened to
Wendell’s phone ring in my ear.

“Craig.”

“It’s me,” I said. “David’s gone.”

“Who?”

“Rafe’s son. Ginny and Sam Flannery’s kid.”
I explained where David was—or rather, where he had been, up until
the middle of the night—and what had happened since then. There was
no need to lay out the possibilities of what might have happened to
him. Wendell knew them, better than I did. “They’re combing the
woods for him,” I said. “The local police and the fire department
are out there. I’m sure the camp counselors and the other kids are
helping, too.”

“Sounds like they got it covered.”

“If you can convince him of that,” I said,
not bothering to specify who ‘he’ was, “I’d appreciate it.”

“Dunno about that, darlin’, but I’ll give it
a try. You said there’s a bike missing?”

“They think there is. I think maybe he
borrowed it and set out for home, because he was worried about Rafe
and wanted to help look for him. How is he?”

“Still asleep,” Wendell said. “Those are
some strong drugs they gave him. I’ll call the boys in, and then
we’ll wake him up and head out to this place and see what we can
do.”

“We’ll probably do the same.” Unless I could
convince Grimaldi to drive the back roads of Wilson and Smith
counties, on the off-chance that we’d run into him. “We’re back at
the truck stop with some pictures that we’ll be running by the
woman who’s been working here for the past four year. After that,
we’ll be headed out your way, too.”

“Keep me posted,” Wendell said, and hung up.
I did the same and exited the car.

By the time I reached them, Grimaldi and the
redhead were already busy looking at pictures. Grimaldi kept
showing them, and the redhead kept shaking her head. “No. Never saw
her. No. No. Wait.”

Grimaldi moved the page back. I craned my
neck and saw that it was one of the Hispanic Marias. The redhead
nodded. “That’s her.”

“Maria?”

The redhead nodded.

“The same Maria you saw getting into a car
with an unidentified Hispanic male four years ago.”

“That’s right.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.” The redhead tapped a finger on
the paper. The nail had once been painted coral, but was mostly
chipped now. “See this scar right here?” It was at the corner of
one eye. “She said she got it when she fell off a bike when she was
eight. Her eyebrow’s a touch higher on that side, see?”

Grimaldi nodded. So did I.

“Good,” Grimaldi said. “Anyone else you
recognize?”

She flipped through the rest of the
pictures, but the redhead didn’t pick anyone else out. Grimaldi
shuffled them to the bottom of the stack and began spreading the
pictures of the men across the hood of the nearest car. “Do any of
these guys look like the man you saw her leaving with?”

This time she kept the older picture of
Hernandez in the mix, and left the new one out.

The redhead pondered. I held my breath until
I couldn’t hold it anymore, and then tried to let it out as
unobtrusively as possible. It wasn’t unobtrusive enough, because
Grimaldi gave me a look.

“Sorry,” I said.

She shook her head and went back to watching
the redhead examine the pictures.

It must have taken close to two minutes,
which doesn’t sound like a long time, but which felt like an
eternity. Finally she lifted a finger. “Him.”

“You sure?”

“Looks like him. Don’t look like any of the
others.”

“Thank you,” Grimaldi said, and gathered the
pictures.

The redhead folded her arms, pushing already
impressive breasts up to impossible heights. “That the same guy
that killed Kelly?”

“We believe so,” Grimaldi said. “If you see
him, please let me know. And don’t get in the car with him.”

“Can I keep that?” The redhead nodded to the
papers in Grimaldi’s hand. “And share it with the others?”

Grimaldi hesitated, but in the end, I guess
she couldn’t see a downside to putting the women Hernandez would be
stalking on alert. It wasn’t like we couldn’t get another picture
of him if we wanted one, or like he thought we didn’t know who he
was. “Take this. It’s more recent.”

She handed over the release photo. The
redhead looked at it. “I’ll post it inside,” she said. “Make sure
everyone sees it. The waitresses and the truckers, too. If he comes
back here, we’ll get him.”

“You mean, you’ll detain him and call
me.”

The redhead looked at her for a second
before she spoke. “Yeah. That’s what I mean. We’ll call you. After
we detain him.”

Grimaldi nodded, satisfied. I think she knew
as well as I did that if Hernandez showed up here, the redhead’s
way of detaining him would be beating him with her purse until he
was unable to walk away, but it seemed fair. “Just keep him alive.
I need to ask him some questions.”

The redhead nodded. “Yes, ma’am. We’ll keep
him alive. We’ll just make him wish he was dead.”

No doubt.

“I need to get to Peaceful Pines,” I told Grimaldi when we were
back in the car. “If you don’t want to go, you can drop me off at
home and I’ll drive myself out there.”

Grimaldi nodded. “It isn’t that I don’t want
to go, but I have a homicide to deal with. The brass doesn’t like
me to put off solving it.”

I wasn’t surprised.

“And I haven’t notified next of kin yet,
because I prioritized getting the information Naomi had, and then
making sure she was safe. I need to do that.”

Yes, she did. Kelly’s mother deserved to
know that her daughter was dead, even if she had kicked her out of
the house.

“I can’t believe a mother would do that,” I
said. “I mean, here’s Ginny Flannery, who isn’t even David’s
biological mother, losing her mind because he’s missing.” And Rafe,
who hadn’t known David existed a year ago, doing the same. Not to
mention me, who was neither biological nor adopted mother, going
crazy, as well. “And there’s Kelly’s mother, throwing her daughter
out of the house. And over a man!”

A man who, whether he’d come on to Kelly or
she had come on to him, was slime either way, if he’d touched
her.

Grimaldi shrugged. “It takes all kinds.”

Yes, it did. And I should know better. As
I’ve matured, and grown out of the insular bubble I was raised in,
I’ve realized I’m one of the lucky ones. Not everyone grew up as
privileged as me—and I’m not using the word ‘privileged’ in the
economic sense, although I was that, too. My mother might be a bit
of a pill, especially when it came to my boyfriend, but she’d never
kick me out of the house. I’ve never doubted that she loves me,
even if she shows that love in mysterious ways sometimes.

“Sorry,” I said. “I just... Mother irritates
me, and I forget how lucky I am to have had parents who loved me
and took care of me.”

Grimaldi nodded, but a shadow crossed her
face, and I remembered, a second too late, that she was one of the
unlucky ones, as well. She hadn’t been neglected or unloved, not
that I knew about, but her mother had died when she was young, so
her childhood after that might not have been a bed of roses,
either.

But apologizing, or saying anything about
it, would just make it worse, so I simply told her, “Yes, please.
You can drop me off at home and I’ll drive myself to Peaceful
Pines. That way you can get busy on your case.”

Grimaldi nodded, but kept niggling at it.
“If you think there’s something I can do...”

“I don’t.” I shook my head. “I don’t think
there’s anything I can do, either. I think everything anyone can
do, is being done. I just have to be there.”

To give moral support. And to keep Rafe from
deciding to take matters into his own hands. The last thing I
wanted was for him to get it into his head that he could find David
when no one else could. He was in no condition to go hiking across
the Cumberland Plateau.

And anyway, I suspected they wouldn’t find
David by searching the woods. I knew they had to try; I just didn’t
think he was there.

“Would you mind if I work this out while we
drive?” I asked Grimaldi, who shook her head. “Whatever happened to
David—or whatever David did—happened in the middle of the night.
Ginny said they went to bed, and when they woke up, he was
gone.”

Grimaldi nodded.

“They’re children between ten and sixteen—at
least that’s what they looked like when I was at Peaceful Pines
yesterday—so chances are they had a curfew no later than
midnight.”

Grimaldi nodded.

“Naomi said it was after midnight when
Hernandez came to the truck stop and picked up Kelly. At midnight,
he might still have been working on Rafe.”

Grimaldi glanced at me. I continued.
“Although he probably wasn’t. The cabin would be at least thirty
minutes away, wouldn’t you think?”

She nodded. “Most likely. Not much less.
Could be more.”

“It would have taken Rafe at least a few
minutes to get free and out of there after Hernandez left him. I
imagine that knife was driven pretty hard into the table, and it
must have hurt pulling it up. I don’t think it would have been a
matter of seconds.”

Grimaldi shook her head.

“And then he had to pull it out of his arm—”
With his teeth.
Gah!
“—and use it to cut the ropes on his
other arm, and probably his feet. That would have taken more time.
And then he said he walked twenty or thirty minutes before he found
the truck.”