The Only Witness (2 page)

Grass had shot up through the driveway again. The tufts of green and gold made an interesting visual contrast against the background of gray-white gravel. He knew his police colleagues would find that thought very odd, and he'd learned not to make observations like that out loud. At any rate, he couldn’t leave the driveway like that just because he liked the patterns and textures. He'd have to get out the RoundUp and spray for the hundredth time.

The big house, with its covered wraparound deck and accompanying three acres, cost a fifth of what it would have in Chicago. Wendy had loved the wildlife; the deer and raccoons that prowled through the yard, the coyotes that howled and owls that hooted after dark. These days, Finn mostly thought the house was a pain in the butt to maintain.

Three sets of eyes watched him walk from the driveway to the front door. The mismatched set on the porch—one brown eye and one blue—belonged to Cargo, a black furry mix of husky and some other giant breed—maybe Newfoundland or Rottweiler. The two sets of green eyes in the front window belonged to Lok and Kee, a pair of orange tabbies.

Finn slid his key into the deadbolt. Cargo sighed a barely audible whine as he gently pawed Finn's calf.

"Oh, please," Finn told the dog. "Don't give me the fading blossom routine. You could live for a week on that fat."

Aarrnh
, the dog moaned, and pawed him again. As soon as Finn had the lock undone, the giant beast nosed the door open and galloped for the pantry, where he would plant his furry hulk and stare at the cabinet that held the dog chow.

The cats were only slightly more dignified, trailing him through the living room to the master bedroom. They rubbed against his legs and meowed as he took off his jacket and holster and slung them onto the dresser, then kicked off his shoes.

The meowing grew louder as he padded to the kitchen, pulled out a cold IPA from the refrigerator and an iced mug from the freezer. One cat—he thought it was Kee—jumped onto the counter to
rraow
at him, while the other sank its teeth into the tender flesh above his right heel. He peeled open a can of tuna and practically threw it at them in self-defense.

"Drama queens, that's what you are. You'd think you hadn't been fed for a week." He took a long swallow of his beer and watched the cats delicately lick the chunks of fish before they picked them up with their teeth. With such dainty maneuvers, it seemed like Lok and Kee should be neat eaters, but the two cats always managed to lick more onto the floor than into their mouths. Maybe he should just dispense with their dishes altogether.

A loud bark echoed in the pantry.

"For chrissake," he groaned. The only pets he'd had as a kid growing up in Chicago were a couple of fantails in a glass bowl. He had no idea that animals could be so demanding. And so vocal. He took another sip and went to feed the black beast. Cargo wolfed down the mountain of kibble before Finn had even finished shoveling it into the dog's stainless steel bowl.

Now that the animals had quit nagging him, Finn walked the few steps to the open door of his den and flicked on the overhead light. He paused in the doorway to study his half-finished painting on the desk. Sailboats racing on Lake Michigan, a scene he'd often witnessed from his condo in Chicago. He missed that wide-open vista over the water.

At one point during happier economic times, the Chicago police department decided to fund a recreation course for its officers, supposedly to promote better mental health among stressed-out cops. Most of his colleagues chose bowling or racquetball or martial arts lessons. Finn chose painting. Studying art had taught him to look at the world in a different way. Now he noticed hues and patterns of light and dark that he'd overlooked before. Oddly enough, his painting hobby made his surroundings seem more three-dimensional and colorful, whereas before he remembered the world as largely flat with shades of gray. He'd learned to live with the razzing at the office.

Although the painting was remarkably similar to the photo that he'd tacked onto the bulletin board, there was something lifeless about his composition. The shadows needed work, he decided; he'd used too much flat Prussian blue. Shadows were never just one color; that was one thing his painting instructor had drummed into the class. Beads of burnt sienna gleamed along the closest boat's trim; maybe if he added a hint of that warmth to the shadows?

A wet dog tongue washed his fingertips. Cargo's mismatched eyes gazed at Finn's face, then shifted to his empty food bowl and back again.

"No way," Finn said, drying his fingers on his thigh. "One cup of chow twice a day, that's it. You're too fat."

At least that was what Wendy had told him.
The vet said Cargo's too fat.
Odd how he remembered what she said about the dog when he obviously hadn't registered most of what came out of his wife's mouth.

Dinner before painting, he decided. Finn flicked off the den light and walked back to the kitchen, followed by the click of four sets of toenails on the hardwood floor. He had to find the time to take these critters to the animal shelter, and soon. It couldn't be here in Evansburg, though, there was already too much talk. He'd try the next county over. Let some unsuspecting family with plenty of time on their hands take on these furry burdens.

He nuked a frozen dinner—turkey and dressing and the works. While he waited, he thumbed through his mail on the counter. Cargo hovered hopefully, a dark hulk breathing hotly on Finn's elbow.

One envelope was addressed to Gwendolyn Finn. The return address was the university alumni association, where she'd met up with her old friends once a month. He stuck a
No Longer at This Address
label onto it and tossed it into a stack with several others. The microwave dinged, and Finn hauled himself and his dinner to his recliner. He turned on the local news just in time to catch a report about a missing baby in Oregon. He'd seen the story before; the kid had disappeared at least a month ago, hadn't she? Sitting forward in his chair, he pumped up the volume. Yes, it was the case he remembered: six-month-old Tika Kinsey had vanished from a playpen on the front porch when her mother, a freshman just about to start college, had gone inside to answer the phone. According to the newscaster, there were no leads in the case, but it was the one-month anniversary of the baby's disappearance, so they were running the story again. Aside from the five-second introduction by the newscaster, the footage was exactly the same as he'd seen weeks ago. It was annoying how the news channels played reruns now, too.

He finished his dinner and set the tray on the side table. Cargo nabbed the tray and trotted off with it. After spending a minute and a half on the Tika Kinsey story, the news program moved on to a report about road repairs and then the weather—more above-normal temps to come in the next week.

Finn slid a photo out of the breast pocket on his shirt. Apparently, the Kittitas County Sheriff's Department had succeeded in keeping this story quiet so far, which was actually pretty amazing. Technically, the case was not in his jurisdiction, but he had more experience with dead bodies than anyone in the county, so they called him in. The photo was hard to look at, even for him. The reality had been worse. Before breakfast, the farm wife had found her Labrador retriever chewing on what she thought was a discarded doll from a neighbor's garbage heap. She'd nearly fainted when she took the 'toy' from the dog's mouth.

A tiny corpse, covered in dirt, decayed and brutally mangled. John Doe, once an infant boy, now a miniature mummy: dark, dried skin stretched over a skeleton. Buried for weeks or maybe even months among the wheat stubble.

"Homicide?" Everyone had asked Finn, as if he was a miracle worker who could read mummies.

It was impossible to say if murder was involved. Whoever had buried the naked corpse had done it before the field was harvested; time and heavy equipment had obliterated whatever evidence might have been there. Finn had left the case in the hands of the County Sheriff's department, which would have to get more information from the coroner. Finn had suggested the possibility of a stillbirth to a worker in the country illegally; every year the police across the U.S. ran into a few unclaimed bodies in farm country. That's probably why the discovery had been kept quiet; few people wanted to admit to knowing illegals worked in their community. But babies didn't naturally turn up in farm fields. Or in the family dog's jaws.

A crunch from his own canine drew Finn's attention. Cargo flopped next to the fireplace, with the plastic shreds of the frozen dinner tray at his feet.

"For chrissakes, dog." Finn slid the photo back into his pocket, got up and cleaned up the remnants. He had to play tug-of-war with the mutt over the last piece, ending up with slobber up to his elbows.

"I should let you eat the damn thing." He stuffed the plastic pieces into the trash bin under the kitchen sink. "It would serve you right."

Cargo whined and collapsed onto the rug with a melodramatic sigh.

The television was stuck in commercial break mode. What was this, the fifth ad in a row? He wanted to see the sports scores before he went to the den to paint. He sat back down and raised the chair's footrest. He chose a multi-legged yellow wall-walker from an assortment in the bowl at his elbow and lobbed the toy at the large framed photo on the opposite wall. It smacked Wendy just below her wedding tiara and began the slow crawl on its suction-cup feet down her face. Such a beautiful face. So sweet and unpretentious. Or so he'd thought, up until six weeks ago. Now Wendy was living with her pretty-boy business professor outside of town, and he was stuck here in Podunk, Washington, with
her
dream house,
her
parents, and
her
animals.

His former dearly beloved had bought these sticky toys for the cats, who watched his motions with interest. When the first toy dropped off Wendy's wedding photo, he lobbed another, a green one this time. It glommed onto the bride's perfect little nose and quivered there for a second like a horrendous wart before rolling over onto her upper lip.

An orange furball leapt onto his abdomen. The cat deposited the yellow wall-walker onto his chest. It curled its paws under its body and purred, proud of itself.

He tapped the cat on the head. "So you fetch?" Dark orange stripes across its forehead looked like delicate feline eyebrows. The cat lifted its chin and pressed its head against his palm. He couldn't help but stroke it. The fur behind its ears was so soft Finn could barely feel it against his callused fingertips.

"Nice try," he said. "But you're still going to the pound."

When Brittany saw the passenger seat of the Civic was empty, she screamed and dropped her groceries beside the car. Several people turned around to stare at her, and a kind, fat woman started picking up her groceries up from the pavement.

At first, Brittany had the insane thought that Ivy had crawled off. Leaving the driver's door open, she got down on her hands and knees to peer beneath the car. Only an old plastic bag was moving down there, inching its way across the filthy pavement in the light breeze.

"Are you okay, honey?" the fat woman asked.

Then Brittany saw Jed and Marcus and Madison in their smokers huddle across the parking lot. This was some sort of prank. Stuck-up seniors freak out slut girl. Oh yeah, laugh riot. She stood up and dusted off her hands.

"Yeah, I'm okay. I just … uh … saw a big spider run underneath my car."

The woman smiled. "Oh, I hate those, too. But people say they're more scared of us than we are of them."

"Like I believe that." Brittany picked up her groceries and slung them into the front seat before she walked over to the smokers.

"Okay, you fuckheads, what did you do with her?"

They did a good job of acting surprised. "
What
did you call us, Brittany Morgan?" Madison put her hands on her hips just like her mother, the la-dee-da head of the PTA, did when she wanted everyone to know she was outraged.

"You heard me. Where's Ivy?" She looked around, expecting to see the beige car seat with Ivy in it on the ground between the nearby cars.

Jed squinted. "Ivy?"

She peered into the closest cars. "Ivy Rose, my baby." A terrible tightness began in her chest.

Marcus walked over to stand beside her, staring through the window of a RAV4. "We ain't seen no baby, Britt." For some reason, a lot of the preppy kids talked like they'd failed English 101. They thought it made them sound tough or something.

"No shit?" She examined each of their faces. Blank, blank, and blank. Her breath stuck in her chest. Ice water rushed down her spine and raised goosebumps all over her body. "Really, no shit, you don't have her?"

Madison touched Brittany's forearm with her perfectly manicured fuchsia fingernails. "You
lost
your baby?"

"Smooth, girl," Marcus commented. "Real smooth."

Suddenly the scenery got wavy, like air shimmering around hot metal, and a demon inside Brittany's chest clawed to get out. She ran back to her car.
Please God, let me wake up now
. The seat was still empty. No Ivy, no car seat. She tugged on the passenger-side door handle. Still locked. Nothing made sense.