Vanished in the Night (17 page)

“Plus she’s a cute little thing. Some kind of Asian something. I can’t keep ’em all straight. She looks young, too, younger even than she is. She’s done a heck of a job, though. Even the oldest of the good ole boys has had to admit that.” He grinned over at his wife.

“About Max Shelden, sir?” Zach prompted. It had taken three hours to drive up here, and as much as he wanted to hear what Stoffels had to say, he’d like to sleep in his own bed tonight.

“Oh, yes. I do remember the case. That school had its share of runaways, but we found most of them right away. Have you been up to the school?” Stoffels looked up at Zach.

Again, Zach shook his head. “No, sir. You’re our first stop.”

“Well, you should put that on your itinerary, too. The school is quite a few miles from the road and, to be honest, I’m using the word ‘road’ loosely. It’s
basically a dirt track that twists up into the woods, and those woods are thick. It’s easy to lose your way, especially in the dark. Especially if you’re a city boy who’s been dropped down into that place. Darn few of those boys had ever been out into the countryside.

“Most of the boys who tried to run didn’t get far. We’d find them, scared and lost, covered with scratches and bug bites, sometimes a turned ankle, happy to be found. But we never found that Max kid, and it wasn’t for lack of looking.”

“How many people did you have out looking for him?” Frank asked.

Stoffels rubbed his chin and thought. “At first, it was just me and some deputies. That’s usually all it took. After a day of not finding hide nor hair of him, we added the full search-and-rescue complement. People out here are fast to mobilize when someone’s lost out there, especially a kid.”

Zach knew how that went. Too many people got lost in the woods around here; campers and hikers and summer visitors didn’t seem able to grasp how easy it was to lose one’s way. Somehow they all forgot about the Donner party. This wasn’t country to be trifled with.

“I’d never seen the folks who ran that school more antsy, either. It’s as if they knew right from the start that we weren’t going to find him.” Stoffels’s brow creased. “Of course, the old man was already half out
of it. It was the younger set who were running things by that point.”

Zach cocked his head. That was an interesting tidbit. “The man who ran Sierra wasn’t all there?”

“Old Aaron Joiner had already started slipping by then. He still put on a good show most of the time, though. It wasn’t until you watched him real close that you knew something wasn’t right. That young man he had running things was a big help to him. They would have had to close the school down much sooner if it hadn’t been for him. He really propped the old man up.”

So much for interviewing Joiner, then. “Do you recall his name? The younger man who helped run the place?” Zach asked. Maybe the school officials would know something, although they should have shared that at the time of Max’s disappearance. People had all kinds of reasons for what they would and wouldn’t tell the cops, though. Sometimes distance helped a little.

“Oh, yeah. He’s made quite a name for himself, that young man. I saw him in the newspaper not too long ago. His name was Burton. Lyle Burton.”

The name rang a bell, but Zach couldn’t remember from where. He glanced over at Frank, who gave a slight shake of his head. They’d look into it when they got back to Sacramento.

Frank and Zach stood together. “Thank you, sir. I think we’ll go on up and check out the school grounds a little,” Zach said.

“You boys know your way up there?” Mrs. Stoffels asked from the kitchen.

“No, ma’am, but we have a map.” Zach patted his jacket pocket.

The Stoffels exchanged looks. “Why don’t you let us lead you up there? It’s not very well marked and we’d hate to have to call the search-and-rescue teams out for you two,” Mrs. Stoffels offered with a smile.

“We really don’t want to trouble you any more than we already have,” Zach said. “But if you have the time, that would be great.”

“Ray could use the fresh air,” his wife said. “I won’t take but a second to gather my things.”

True to her word, they were wheeling Ray down his system of ramps and out toward his custom van within moments.

“If I could be so bold,” Frank said as they approached the van, “how’d you end up in the chair?”

Zach shook his head. Frank asked people the most amazingly personal questions. Part of the amazingness was that people didn’t seem to take any offense. Maybe it was because Frank’s interest was so genuine. He just wanted to know.

“It’s not an interesting story,” Ray said as his wife
opened the van door and began to lower the wheelchair ramp. “Sometimes I think about making up a story where I was shot by a violent suspect. It’s just my damn MS, though. Started in my thirties and just kept getting worse.”

He rolled into the van and Zach and Frank went to get into their Crown Vic.

“What’s MS?” Frank asked.

“Multiple sclerosis.” Zach tried to hide a smile. Frank was the tiniest bit of a hypochondriac. Not that he ever missed work for any of his imaginary ailments, but in the past two years, he’d been convinced he had diabetes and mad cow disease. Zach didn’t mind; discussions of Frank’s symptoms were better than hearing about his wives.

“What do you suppose the symptoms are of that?” Frank asked as they rolled down the Stoffelses’ long driveway.

“I have no idea. You’ll have to look them up when we get home.” Zach kept his eyes on the road. It had already narrowed considerably. There was still room for two cars going in the opposite direction, but just barely.

“If we ever get home,” Frank said, looking out the window. “You don’t suppose the wheelchair thing is just an act and they’re actually luring us out into the woods?”

“To do what? You think that Mrs. Stoffels wants to have her wicked way with you, Frank?”

He shrugged. “I’m an appealing guy. I’ve heard of more far-out scenarios than that one. Besides, maybe it’s you she’s taken a fancy to. Or better yet, Mr. Stoffels has.”

“The inside of your brain is a very scary place, Frank.”

“You have no idea.” Frank tapped his forehead. “You should try living in here.”

Mrs. Stoffels pulled off onto a dirt track. There was no way Zach would have registered it as a road, and it’d be hell if they had to turn around. The Stoffels wound through the woods for a couple of miles that felt like more, since they had to slow down to ten miles per hour in some places.

“Do you like the woods, Zach? ’Cause I’m not a fan of them,” Frank observed as they kept winding through denser and denser trees.

“The woods are okay.” Zach actually didn’t mind them much. Nor did getting lost panic him. He always seemed to know in which direction he was facing. His mother said he had a compass inside his head, and it felt like that sometimes.

Frank grunted. The Stoffels took another turn onto an even narrower road. Zach noticed a mailbox lying on its side by the edge and decided this must be the
driveway to the old school. They drove another mile and a half and then pulled into a clearing.

“Whew,” Frank said. “At least I can breathe again. I felt like those trees were stealing all my oxygen.”

“You know they actually
make
oxygen, right?” Zach got out of the car and breathed in the tangy pine scent, so different from the air down in the valley.

“I didn’t say it was logical.” Frank stepped out as well.

Mrs. Stoffels opened the van door, but didn’t lower the ramp. “It’s a little too rough out here for the chair.”

The buildings had seen better days. Windows were broken and doors hung crookedly on broken hinges. Still, they were impressive. Most of them had bases of stone. Those would stand through anything. Zach turned in a slow circle trying to take it all in. The clumps of buildings, the overgrown paths between them, the encroaching woods.

Stoffels pointed to one building that stood apart from the others. “That’s the administration building. Over there would be schoolrooms, and then back there are the dormitories.” He identified the different clumps of buildings.

“The whole thing’s connected underground by a series of tunnels. The place was heated with steam heat for years. Shoveling the coal was one of the chores the boys had to do.”

“I can see why most of the boys didn’t get far.” Zach began to walk toward the edge of the grounds. He wished he knew what he was looking for; then he’d know where to start. This case had had him wandering in the wilderness from the start.

“They were beautiful buildings in their day,” Mrs. Stoffels said. “Most of the place was built during the Depression. Joiner’s father brought Hopi Indians up here from Arizona to build the place. They were amazing craftsmen. Their kids could go to school here for free while they worked. Back in those days, it was more of a private school and not so much a reform school.”

Zach nodded. It looked as if it had been built to last through anything. You didn’t see that much anymore.

“You think you boys can find your way back home from here?” Mrs. Stoffels asked. “Ray gets cranky if he doesn’t get a little rest in the afternoon.”

Zach smiled. “We’ll be fine. Thanks for leading us up here. You were right—I would never have found it.”

“There used to be some signs, but they’re long gone.” Mrs. Stoffels looked around, too. “Like a lot of stuff.”

As the Stoffels bumped out of the clearing and down the driveway, Frank whistled the opening bars to “Dueling Banjos.”

“Very funny.” Zach turned around and started to walk toward the administration offices. The porch steps creaked as he walked up them.

“Watch your step up there,” Frank called after him. “I’m going to check out the classrooms.”

Zach grunted his assent. He tried the door, which was locked. He laughed. The door was half off its hinges, but the knob was not going to turn. He was debating whether to kick it open when Frank shouted, “Zach, you better come take a look at this.”

Zach headed back down the steps and strode toward the classrooms.

“I’m back here,” Frank called.

Zach detoured around the building and found Frank standing over an open pit. The edges of the dirt were raw. It hadn’t been dug all that long ago.

“I think I might have found where Max Shelden was buried the first time,” Frank said.

Janice Lam stood next to Zach, arms crossed over her chest, watching the crime-scene techs work the area. “I thought my worst problem up here was kids screwing and smoking,” she observed.

She was pretty much exactly the way Stoffelses had described her, a tiny Asian lady. Zach was guessing Vietnamese, but he could be wrong. Her long,
dark hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she was chewing a piece of gum with a contained fury that frightened him a little.

“It looks like there’s been plenty of that, too.” The crime-scene techs had found a wide variety of beer bottles, half-smoked roaches, and a lot of used condoms. “At least they seem to be having safe sex.”

“You’re a regular Pollyanna, McKnight.” She chomped a little harder.

Zach was starting to worry for her jaw. “I aim to please.”

She turned and favored him with a bright smile. “Well, you did spice up a boring day, but frankly, I like boring. I wouldn’t have left Modesto if I’d wanted things to stay exciting.”

Modesto wasn’t a big city with a lot of sexy crimes to investigate, but it did have a substantial gang problem. It would have been a tough place to police.

“In here!” someone yelled, and Zach and Janice hurried in that direction. One of the crime-scene techs was in a room in one of the outbuildings behind the administration building. The edges of the room were lined with metal racks that had been bolted to the walls.

“Yeah?” Lam asked. “What you got?”

“Just watch,” the crime-scene tech said. “I’ve sprayed the place with luminol.” Luminol was the stuff forensic investigators used to reveal latent blood
on surfaces. A lot of times criminals thought they’d cleaned up everything, that there would be no sign of blood. Not a chance of that with this stuff around.

The tech turned out the lights and the place went pitch black. He turned on his black light, and the entire room turned an eerie shade of blue.

The whole place was splashed with old blood. What the hell had gone on at this school?

The press had gotten hold of the George Osborne story. Lyle sat in the study of his house, a glass of whiskey in his hand, and stared at the television. No one was saying homicide yet, but they were bandying “foul play” about pretty fast and loose.

He gnawed on his thumbnail. What else might they have figured out by now? The television news reporter, Marianne Robar, had made the connection between Osborne and Shelden very clear. That meant the police were also not overlooking that fact. Of course, why would they? No one likes a coincidence like that. Lyle didn’t like it, either.

“Honey, dinner’s almost ready,” his wife called from the kitchen. Tommy, their eldest, would be home from soccer practice in a few minutes. He needed to pull himself together. He needed to put on a good face for the family.

“I’m going to wash up. Be there in a sec,” he called back, hoping his voice sounded normal, not ratcheted up to the twenty-seventh degree of tension he was feeling.

If the cops or the reporters made the connection between Shelden and Tennant,
that
would blow the thing wide open. Then he’d have a real mess on his hands.

If they didn’t figure it out, he’d still have to deal with the shriveled part of his soul, but he’d had lots of practice at that.

Something inside him had died the night Max Shelden died. Once you took someone’s life for no good reason, you lost part of your soul and never got it back. Susan Tennant wasn’t the only one who had carried a load of guilt and shame from what had happened up at that school that summer.

He had gone there with such good intentions. He’d gotten his degree in social work and he really had thought he was going to help people. A school for boys who were on the edge of getting in trouble? What better place for a young man to make a difference?