Blood on Copperhead Trail (9 page)

Craig Bolen frowned at his friend. “Dave, Chief Massey has been out all night looking for Joy—”

“He’s not out there now, is he?” Adderly walked stiffly to a table nearby, sitting deliberately with his back to Doyle. Margo Adderly darted a troubled look at Doyle and joined her husband, laying her hand on his arm. He shrugged the touch away.

Bolen looked apologetic. “He and Margo had to pick out a casket for Missy this morning.”

“Understood.” Doyle waved his hand toward the table, giving Bolen leave to join the Adderlys. He returned to his own table, his appetite gone. When the waitress came for his order, he settled for a grilled cheese sandwich and water, and asked for them to go.

As he left with his food, he glanced across the dining room at the Adderlys. Dave Adderly had turned in his chair to stare at him, his expression hard to read. It wasn’t hostility, exactly, at least not the same blatant unfriendliness he’d displayed before. He almost looked as if he wanted to say something, but he finally turned back around and murmured something to his wife.

Doyle spent most of his walk back to the office trying to figure out what that brief confrontation with Adderly was all about.

“That was fast.” Ivy was still in his office when he returned, in the middle of jotting a note. “I was just leaving you a message.”

“Anything important?”

“The TBI called with the results of the ballistics test on the slugs from both Missy Adderly’s body and Janelle’s head wound. Both came from the same weapon, and they’re pretty sure it’s a pistol because of the polygonal rifling and the size of the slugs. If we find the weapon, they should be able to identify it.”

“
If
we find the weapon.” Doyle sank into the well-worn leather of his inherited desk chair and set his food and water on the desk. He eyed the brown paper bag without enthusiasm. “I ran into the Adderlys at Ledbetter’s Diner.”

Ivy shot him a sympathetic look. “How were they holding up?”

“What do we know about the relationship between Adderly and his daughters?” Doyle asked.

Ivy’s eyes widened. “You mean, should we be looking at him as a suspect rather than a grieving father?”

“Something about the way he responded to me this afternoon made me think he really,
really
doesn’t want to talk to me about the case. And if I were a father with one daughter dead and another missing, I don’t know that there’s anything else I would want to talk about besides the case and what the police were doing to find my missing child.” Doyle pushed the wooden letter opener lying on his blotter from one side of the desk to the other. “Ever been any rumors about that family?”

“You mean like sexual abuse? Never that I’ve heard.”

“Some families go to great lengths to cover up that kind of thing.”

Ivy shook her head. “Both girls were well-adjusted. No trouble in school, both good students and good kids. Definitely not typical of abuse victims.”

“No,” he conceded. “But I don’t think I’m wrong about Adderly. There’s something on his mind he does
not
want to talk about, especially with me.”

“It might have something to do with his job,” Ivy suggested. “He’ll be voting on whether or not the county will attempt to take over the police department and move it under the Ridge County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Adderly’s on the county commission?”

“You didn’t know that?” Ivy sounded as if he’d looked up at the sky and somehow failed to notice it was blue.

“I’m new.” He was only five days into the job. Surely he had a grace period before he’d be expected to know everybody’s business the way the natives did.

Ivy shot him a grin, as if reading his mind. “Maybe we should put together a study book for you. Map out the family trees, outline all the deep, dark secrets.”

“Yeah, you get right on that. After you go check on the progress of the search parties. They’re supposed to reconvene at the staging area around one to get some food and take a breather. I need someone to gather all the status reports and compile them for me.”

“I was going with Antoine to talk to some of Missy and Joy’s friends.”

“Antoine can grab one of the uniforms to go with him. Tell him to pick one who might be good as a detective. We still have a space to fill on the force, and I’m all for promoting from within.”

“I thought you’d have wanted to talk to the searchers yourself.”

“I would,” Doyle agreed, rising from his desk. “But I can’t be two places at the same time. So I need you to be my eyes and ears on the mountain.”

“Where are you going?” Ivy asked, following him out of his office.

He shrugged on his jacket. “I’m going to go watch the back of a stubborn public integrity officer without her knowing it.”

* * *

“L
ANEY
.” J
ANELLE
’
S
VOICE
was a soft singsong in Laney’s ear. She opened her eyes to see the spring-green curtains of her sister’s bedroom. Janelle sat on the bed beside her, writing in a bright blue spiral-bound notebook.

Laney lifted her face from the pillow, feeling cotton-headed. “I must have dozed off.”

“That’s what I thought, too. But then I realized I was just fooling myself.” Janelle looked up briefly from her notebook and gave Laney a pitying look. “You’ll have to come to the understanding yourself, though. I can’t do it for you.”

Laney cocked her head, confused. “What are you saying?”

“People don’t get shot in the head and survive.”

“Of course they do. You did. The bullet hit the plate in your head—”

“And people don’t get shot at in the woods without getting hit.” Janelle turned to look at the bright sunshine pouring through the bedroom window, revealing the gory mess where the back of her head should have been.

Laney’s stomach lurched, and she clapped her hand over her mouth. When she pulled her hand away, it was coated with blood. She looked down and saw blood drenching her white blouse, still seeping from a large hole in her chest.

Fear seized her, flooding her emptying veins with panic.

“Laney. Sleepyhead.” Janelle’s voice filled her ears like a taunt.

Her body gave a jerk, and she was suddenly awake, really awake, staring up at her smiling sister. Gone was the bright bedroom, replaced by the muted glow of the light over Janelle’s hospital bed. Laney pushed herself up to a sitting position, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands.

“Wow, you were dead to the world,” Janelle said with a chuckle.

Laney shuddered at her sister’s turn of phrase. “What time is it?”

“About one.”

The last thing Laney remembered was the food-services aide bringing Janelle her lunch. Alice had taken advantage of Laney’s presence to run home for a shower and a nap. Laney had taken over the chair by Janelle’s bed and...that was the last thing she remembered.

“You should have awakened me earlier.”

“Why? You looked tired. I wanted to watch TV anyway, so, win-win.” Janelle grinned at her.

“Has the doctor come by yet?”

“Nope. I asked the nurse about it, and she said that if he hadn’t come by to release me at this point, it probably meant he wanted to keep me one more day.” Janelle grimaced. “I’m getting sick of this place.”

“I know, sweetie, but you don’t want to take chances with a head wound.” The creepy sensation left over from Laney’s strange dream began to dissipate. “And here, you’ve got an armed guard watching out for you.”

“You mean Delilah?” Janelle asked. “She’s not here anymore. She left about fifteen minutes ago.”

Chapter Nine

Laney frowned. “Delilah left? Are you sure?”

Janelle nodded. “She came in while you were napping. Said she had gotten called back to the office and that there’d be someone taking her place in a little while. But nobody ever did.”

Laney dug in her pocket for her phone, checking to see if there were any messages. Maybe there had been a break in the case and Doyle no longer thought there was any need for a guard. But she had no messages. “Did she say who called her?”

“She just said the chief wanted to meet with his detectives so she had to go.”

Doyle had made sure Laney entered his cell number in her phone before they parted company that morning. She dialed it now.

Doyle answered on the first ring. “Massey.”

“This is Laney. Did you call Delilah away from the hospital?”

There was a long pause. “No,” he answered. “She’s not there?”

“She told Janelle she’d gotten word you wanted her back at headquarters. She’s been gone about fifteen minutes.”

“Are you and Janelle okay?”

“We’re fine. But I’d like to know who called Delilah.”

There was a tap on the hospital-room door. Laney heard Doyle’s voice both on the phone and just outside the door. “I’m just outside. Can I come in?”

Relief jolted through her. “Please.”

He was smiling when he entered, but Laney saw the weariness and concern hidden behind the smile. “Hi there, Janelle. How’re you feeling?”

Janelle’s dimples made an appearance, making Laney smile. “I’m much better. I hear you and Laney had an interesting night.”

Doyle glanced at Laney, as if wondering how much she’d told her sister. “We did,” he answered carefully.

“I told her about being snowed in,” Laney said, flashing him a warning look. “Did you go in to the office?”

“Yeah. I had things to do.”

“Should we worry about Delilah getting called away?” she asked.

“Might have been a mix-up on our end. I did ask for all the detectives to come in for a meeting, but I didn’t mean Hammond.” He walked to the side of the room and pulled out his phone, while Laney turned back to her sister, whose smile had faded into a look of worry.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” she asked Laney.

“We’re just a little on edge because we still haven’t found Joy or been able to figure out who shot you and Missy. I won’t really be able to relax until we do.”

“It’s so crazy,” Janelle said, wincing as she shook her head. “Ow. Pulled my stitches.”

Laney helped her lie back against the pillows in a more comfortable position. “I know it’s crazy. But there are a lot of folks out there looking for Joy.”

“It was so cold last night up on the mountain. I don’t know how Joy could have survived it if she’s out there hurt and alone.”

“Maybe she found shelter somewhere and all we have to do is find her.” Laney tried to sound hopeful, but she knew the odds of finding Joy alive decreased exponentially as the hours passed without any sign of her.

Doyle crossed back to Janelle’s bedside. “I caught Hammond on her cell and told her to go on home and get some rest, since she was here all night. I’m going to stick around until I find someone to cover the evening shift.”

“You really think I’m in danger?” Janelle asked.

“We’re just taking precautions.”

The nurse arrived to check Janelle’s vitals, giving Laney a chance to pull Doyle aside. “Who pulled Delilah off guard duty?” she asked in a low tone.

“Don’t know yet. Antoine’s looking into it. Hammond said she didn’t recognize the voice, but she’s pretty new on the force and doesn’t know all the dispatchers by voice. The number was blocked, but all the numbers from headquarters are blocked, apparently. A policy of the old chief. I’m going to have to look at his reasons for doing that and see if I concur.”

“So it could have been anybody.”

“Hammond says no. Dispatchers have to be able to give a clearance code on demand when they contact personnel on cell phones rather than the radio—so officers know they’re not being hoaxed. Hammond said the caller gave the correct clearance code when she asked for it.”

“Strange.”

“Maybe it really was a miscommunication.” Doyle put his hand on her arm, the now-familiar gesture making her stifle a smile. “Let’s not borrow trouble when we have enough already.”

The nurse finished with Janelle and left the room. Laney found her sister frowning fiercely at the IV cannula in the back of her hand. “My temp was one hundred. There’s no way the doctor is going to let me go home today.”

Laney brushed the hair away from her sister’s forehead. “If you’re running a fever, this is where you need to be anyway, right? Where the doctors and nurses can make sure you get better instead of worse.”

“I’m just tired of being here.” Tears welled in Janelle’s blue eyes. “I’d feel so much better in my own bed.”

“I know.” Laney glanced at Doyle, wondering if he was thinking the same thing she was. As much as she sympathized with Janelle’s frustration at having to stay in the hospital another day, she felt relieved in a way. The extra layers of security the hospital afforded made it that much easier to keep Janelle safe. If she returned home to her mother’s small house in the middle of Piney Woods, keeping her safe might become a more difficult proposition.

Doyle produced a deck of cards from the pocket of his coat and laid it on the rolling tray table at the foot of Janelle’s bed. “Lucky for you, I came prepared.”

Janelle gave the deck of cards a raised eyebrow. “What, you’re going to do card tricks? I’m not twelve.”

Doyle grinned. “I wouldn’t let a twelve-year-old play this game.” He pushed the tray table closer and sat on the end of the bed across from Janelle. “I have a friend—used to work with her, matter of fact. Anyway, she got married a while back and invited me to the wedding. She married into this big family—her husband has six brothers and sisters. And the night before the wedding, I got suckered into playing this game they play called Popsmack.”

“Popsmack?” Laney mimicked her sister’s earlier look of skepticism.

“The groom’s twin brothers made it up, apparently.”

“Why’s it called Popsmack?” Janelle asked, curiosity getting the better of her grumpy mood.

“I’m told that when the brothers and sisters played the game when they were younger, they’d inevitably end up in a tussle. Hence the pop. And the smack.”

Laney sat by Doyle at the foot of the bed, giving him a stern look. “You’re not suggesting that’s the expected outcome. Because I don’t think it would be very politic of a police chief to pop or smack a young woman in a hospital bed.”

“I think we can keep it nonviolent,” Doyle assured her with a grin. He nudged Laney’s shoulder with his. “Three can play this game.”

Based on the wicked gleam in his eyes, she wasn’t sure playing Popsmack with him was a good idea. But the idea seemed to make Janelle forget about being stuck in the hospital for a while, at least, so what could it hurt?

“Okay,” she said. “How do we play?”

* * *

“W
HY
,
WHAT
’
S
THAT
?
That’s the queen of spades.” Janelle shot Doyle a wicked grin that made him smile. He’d bought the cards in the hospital gift shop to give Janelle a way to pass the time, but his spur-of-the-moment brainstorm about playing Popsmack had turned out to be a mood changer for the patient. It even had Laney laughing, a delightful bonus.

Plus, thanks to the distraction, neither of the Hanvey women had protested having him stick around to play bodyguard.

He laid his card on the tray table. Ten of hearts. Janelle waggled her eyebrows at him.

Laney played her own card—jack of diamonds. She shot a grin at Doyle. “Guess you’re in the hot seat, Chief.”

“Hmm.” Janelle seemed to give her question some thought. They’d been playing for half an hour already and had gone through the obvious questions—age, schooling, favorite food and color. If he were playing with Laney alone, he might have been inclined to cheat in order to get answers to a few of the more intimate questions he’d like to ask, but Janelle’s presence put a damper on seduction by card game.

Maybe later, when he had to convince Laney to let him go home with her....

“How many brothers and sisters do you have?” Janelle asked.

He’d braced himself for the question earlier, but neither had thought to ask it before. “Two,” he answered. “A brother and a sister.”

He didn’t clarify that only one of them was still alive.

“What are their names?” Janelle asked as he prepared to show his next card.

“Dana and David.”

“Older or younger?”

“Dana’s older by a year. David...” He stopped, realizing that if he stuck around Bitterwood long enough, they’d know all his secrets anyway, and it didn’t seem fair to start out by hiding this one, inescapable truth about his life. “David was three years younger.”

“Was?” Laney slanted a look at him.

“He was working with a charity group in South America when a drug cartel targeted the village where he was working. They wanted to make an example of people who tried to thwart them.”

Janelle put her hand over her mouth, while Laney’s expression was more grim than horrified. She worked for a county prosecutor, so she’d probably seen her share of brutality, though he doubted she’d ever seen the kind of carnage that had greeted the army patrol that had stumbled on the ruins of the tiny jungle village in Sanselmo.

“He was twenty-three.”

“Your poor family.” Laney’s gaze drifted to her sister, and Doyle realized she probably understood what he’d gone through better than most people. She’d lost a brother herself, and almost lost her sister twice.

“My parents had died a few years earlier.” Small blessings, he thought.

“But you and your sister—”

He nodded sharply, ready to move to a cheerier topic. He waved his next card at them. “We ready to deal again?”

Laney squeezed her sister’s hand. “Sure.”

He laid down a card, forcing a grin when he saw it was a king. “Y’all are in trouble now.”

Janelle dealt a nine of hearts and grimaced. “Ugh.”

Laney looked as if the last thing she wanted to do was play any more games, but she lifted her chin, smiled at her sister and put down a card. Three of clubs.

“Uh-oh.” Janelle’s grin was downright wicked.

Laney looked at Doyle, her blue eyes still soft with sympathy. Any thought of giving her a hard time vanished, and he tossed her an easy question. “Loony Tunes or Disney?”

“Loony Tunes,” she said emphatically.

“Mickey Mouse scared her,” Janelle said with a grin.

“Oh?” Doyle quirked his brows at Laney. “What was it? The big ears? The white gloves? The enormous shoes?”

“It wasn’t Mickey Mouse as such,” she answered, glaring at her sister. “If you have to know, it was the movie
Fantasia.
Mom took me to see it when I was really little, and I guess it was too intense for me. I’m told I woke from a few nightmares screaming about Mickey Mouse trying to kill me.”

Doyle bit back a smile.
Fantasia
had scared him the first time he saw it, too. Only later had he come to appreciate its magic. “So, Mickey gives you the heebie-jeebies?”

“I got over it,” she defended quickly. “Mickey’s the man and all that. Yay, Disney!”

“She hates to admit having any weaknesses,” Janelle said with a sisterly shrug. “It can be annoying, but what can you do?”

The fact that he found Laney more endearing than annoying was starting to scare him. He wasn’t quite sure what it was about the pretty blue-eyed mountain girl that had gotten under his skin, but there wasn’t much point in denying the fact that he found her damned near irresistible.

Considering the power she held over his job, any sort of personal relationship between them was risky as hell. He should be running hard and fast the other way, but he couldn’t exactly do that now, could he? Not with someone targeting her and her sister.

A knock on the door sent a jolt down his spine, and he reached for his holster, not relaxing until the door opened a few inches and Ivy Hawkins stuck her head through the opening. “Everybody decent?”

“Depends who you’re asking,” Doyle said with a smile.

Ivy grinned at him as she entered the room. She was carrying a folder, which she handed to Doyle before turning her smile on Janelle. “Hey there, Jannie. You’re looking a lot better than the last time I saw you.”

“I’m feeling better,” Janelle assured her. “Although my stupid doctors won’t let me out of here.”

“The doctors are not stupid.” Laney’s voice held a hint of sternness that Doyle recognized from his own dealings with his bossy older sister. He let the sisters sort things out between them while he opened the folder Ivy had given him.

Compiled inside, he saw with a glance, were typed reports from the search parties on Copperhead Ridge. He flipped through them, looking for anything new but seeing more of the same. The searchers had so far stuck mostly to the trails, but there were no signs of the missing girl.

He supposed soon they’d have to send searchers off the beaten paths, as dangerous as that might prove to be. For all any of them knew, the girl could be miles away from Bitterwood by now, assuming she was even still alive.

And he was fast losing any hope that she could be.

“Thought you might want these today,” Ivy said in a quiet tone.

“Thanks. You still on duty?”

Ivy glanced at her watch. “My shift ended on the way here, but you know we’re always on call. You need something?”

He nodded toward the door, and she walked with him over there so they could talk without Janelle overhearing. Doyle felt Laney’s gaze follow him across the room, as tangible as a touch.

“I doubt Laney’s eaten anything since we came off the mountain. I thought I’d take her out for dinner, but I need to arrange for another guard for Janelle.”

Ivy frowned. “Yeah, I heard someone lured Delilah away. Strange.”

“It might have been a misunderstanding,” Doyle told her, though the more he thought about it, the less he was inclined to think so. Dispatchers didn’t normally take it upon themselves to interpret a vague mention of wanting to gather his detectives as an order to call one of them off a guard assignment.