Where Angels Rest (19 page)

Dear Lord, Jack. Where does it end?

A half hour after Nick pulled Erin from Engel’s, they were in—of all places—the local radio/television station, in time for a segment on the morning news shows. With a bitter taste in his mouth, Nick summarized the allegations Erin Sims was making, gave a statement about her “accident” last night, and announced the APB on a dark truck with probable damage to the front right side. He let the vultures get a couple of pictures of Erin’s new stitches.
Didn’t like using the media but couldn’t afford not to. He had to find Jack.

They went back to the sheriff’s office and Quentin slapped a note on Nick’s desk. “The commissioner called. That makes about ten times. He wants to talk to you.”

“About Calloway or a possum?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you can ask when you
call him back.
And Luke called again. And your mother, telling you that Luke’s trying to reach you.”

“Shit,” Nick said, then saw Valeria rushing toward him. She still wore her coat, had her gloves on, and held an envelope in hand.

A sliver of worry pricked Nick’s skin. “What is it?”

“This,” she said. She held up the envelope. A piece of folded paper stuck out of it. “It was on my car this morning, under the windshield wiper.”

Nick took the envelope, opened the page. A name:
Shelly Quinn.
It was typed.

Shelly Quinn, Shelly Quinn
. Nick couldn’t place it. “Do you know who this is?” Valeria shook her head. “Or who left it on your car?”

“No.”

Nick tried not to let the sliver cut any deeper. He handed the note to Quentin. “Find out,” he said, then looked at the clock. Monday morning, and here he was, just starting to wade into years of information authorities had blown off. Sorting it out in four days’ time—soon enough to matter to Justin—was going to take a miracle.

But not if they used what Erin already knew.

“Valeria,” he said, “set Dr. Sims up with a printer.” He looked at Erin and pointed at her laptop. “I presume you have information on that thing?”

“Years of it.”

“Print it out. Then I want you to sit down with Jensen and organize it.”

The look on her face was filled with such gratitude it nicked his soul. He hoped he could live up to it.

She followed Valeria out and when they were gone, Quent said, “So, you’re buying it now? That Jack’s a murderer?”

Nick closed his eyes. “All I know is that Erin Sims could have been waving irrefutable evidence around all these years and no one would have listened to her.”

“She isn’t waving irrefutable evidence.”

“No. But the fact is that someone doesn’t like what she
is
waving. Reason enough to dig in.”

The computer on his desk
ding
ed and Nick hit the button, recognized the address in the e-mail header. The skin on the back of his neck tightened. “It’s from the FBI,” he said.

Quentin came around the desk to look at the monitor, and Nick typed in his security code. The message came up and his heart turned to stone.

“Jesus Christ,” Quent said beneath his breath. “You were right.”

T
HE
A
NGELMAKER SAT
in the workshop with Jack’s face in hand, sanding, sanding. The finest grade sandpaper, smoothing every edge and curve. It had to be perfect to go with the others.

Finally it was finished. Jack was gone. Burning in hell now with the other fallen angels.

The Angelmaker walked to the shelf behind the stairs and eyed the porcelain figurines. Once there had been ten. Angels, one and all, each a little different but each fulfilling the same promise:
They watch over you.

No, they didn’t. The Angelmaker was seeing to that. One at a time, each one became deaf, dumb, and blind.

Three left. The Angelmaker picked up the third to last figurine—with an oval base and big, knowing eyes—held it high overhead and let it drop to the concrete below. It smashed into pieces, and a rush of power swelled up inside.

Eight down, two to go.

Nick sank into his chair, looking at the message on his computer. Horror washed over him. There
was
a person from Hopewell on the FBI’s missing persons list.

Shelly Quinn.

Quent read from the computer screen. “She was a student at Mansfeld College. Disappeared in 2008, during her freshman year.”

Nick bullied his brow with his fingers. He’d been here in 2008. He collected the memory in bits and pieces. “She quit college, moved back to her hometown.”

“Right,” Quentin said. “And then she went missing. That’s why we didn’t get it. She was already back home living in Pittsburgh.”

That’s why Nick didn’t remember it in detail. It was an abduction in Pittsburgh. It had barely touched Hopewell.

“They never found her?” Nick asked.

“Nope. Gone.”

“How hard did they look here?”

Quent scrolled down. “A field agent from Pittsburgh drove over here once, asked some questions.” Nick nodded; he remembered that. “The college administration told the FBI she was no longer enrolled. There’s a couple of interviews here—her girlfriends, or roommates, I guess. Elizabeth Kunkle and Shea Blaurock. They said they didn’t know her that well. Her midterm grades were mostly Fs and she was living on kegs and drugs. No close friends, no dates.” He straightened. “There was no one to keep up with her after she left.”

Nick closed his eyes.
He has a type… Lost, lonely, experimenting with drugs…

He stood. Jesus. A college student gone and he’d never even known it. The implications of that stabbed him in the gut. He looked at Quentin. “Fucker could’ve taken a bunch that way and we’d’ve never raised an eyebrow.”

“Naw,” Quentin said, “not a bunch.”

“But more than Shelly Quinn.” Fear nibbled at the edges of his brain. “Jesus, Quent. What if there’s more?”

Quentin picked up his jacket. “I’ll get over to the college.”

Nick read through the file on Shelly Quinn twice, then called a guy named Feldman in the FBI field office in Pittsburgh. Missing persons almost always went to the Feds.

“There was nothing,” said Agent Feldman, crunching on something that might have been carrots. “Her parents said Shelly was wild and spent her time at bars, coming home drunk. They thought she might’ve been doing some drugs, too. One night, she went out and just didn’t come home.”

“And there was no boyfriend.”

“If there was, no one knew about him. Martinez—he’s retired now—came with me to Ohio and we poked around your campus a little.”

“I remember.”

“There was nothing. She didn’t really make friends there, and it was fall of her freshman year. She’d only been there a couple of months. No one stayed connected with her after she left.”

“Anyone hunt for a dealer? Where was she getting her shit?”

“Walk down any street, man.”

In Pittsburgh, maybe. Not here. Here, she’d have to have a way to get it.

“Hey, you know what I do remember?” Feldman asked.

“What?”

“I remember thinking the boyfriend thing was weird. Quinn was beautiful. You know, CoverGirl beautiful. And she dressed for sex. I always thought it was weird she
didn’t have studly frat boys crawling all over her, inviting her to all the parties.”

“You remember her pretty clearly.”

“Sure,” Feldman said, and his voice took on a weary note. “You always remember the ones you don’t catch.”

The ones you don’t catch.
Nick chased the thought away and dug in his drawer for a cigarette. Valeria appeared at the door and he jumped her. “For God’s sake, stop taking my cigarettes.”

“You ever decide to light one, I’ll buy you a pack. But you won’t, because you’re the only parent your daughter has, so stop grumping at me.” She handed him a note. “Dispatch called, wanting to know what to do. They just took a 911 call from Ray Cod. The aliens are back, in his barn. Dispatch wants to know what to do.”

Nick gaped at her. “What do you mean, they want to know what to do? What are they fucking supposed to do when a resident calls 911?”

“But the commissioner… after the possum incident…”

“Fuck the commissioner. Send someone to Cod’s. We don’t assume false alarms. Not even for aliens.”

“Yes, sir.” Happy with that. But not moving.

“Is there more?” he asked.

“Calvin didn’t do those things.”

Nick closed his eyes. Calvin had been sprung this morning by Dorian. Not before Nick had gone to see him and put the fear of God into him. “I don’t know, Valeria. I just don’t know.”

She wagged a finger at him. “You’ll see.”

“I hope you’re right,” he said, and meant it.

She snapped back to business. “Milner is doing traffic near Ray Cod’s. I’ll send him.”

“That’ll do.” Milner wasn’t the brightest candle on the cake, but then again, these were aliens. Nick sighed. He had a full-time staff of twenty-five deputies. Enough to handle traffic issues, ward off aliens and deal with the occasional robbery, brawl, overturned truck, or possum. Enough to carry out the various court orders for which the sheriff’s department was responsible. Enough to handle all that and still look into Lauren McAllister’s murder and her possible connection to Jack Calloway.

But Shelly Quinn, too? Others?

The question should have dropped him to his chair, but instead Nick felt a surge of excitement shiver through his bones. God damn, what kind of asshole was he, to get a kick of adrenaline from a missing college student? But Christ, it had been a long time since he felt useful. Seven years.

Jensen stuck his head in, waving a piece of paper. “You told us to check clinics and hospitals where Lauren McAllister and Sara Daniels went missing?” he said. “I faxed warrants to all the ones within an easy drive from each of the girls’ homes. I just got this back from a clinic outside Miami. An hour from McAllister’s home.”

“What?”

“Lauren McAllister had an abortion a month before she disappeared.”

Nick snatched the page from Jensen. Southeast Regional Women’s Center letterhead, from Milton, Florida. “Jesus,” he said, flipping through the pages. “Is a father’s name listed?”

“Page three. Signed consent.”

Nick found the page, drew his finger down to a man’s angular scrawl:
John Huggins.

H
E PHONED
Q
UENT
at Mansfeld College.

“Give me a break, Nick. I just got here.”

“Leave someone there to compile the list,” Nick said.

“The registrar says it’ll be a couple hundred names. Maybe more.”

Couple
hundred
? “That many girls dropped out of college in the past five years?”

“Yup.”

“So have them fax the names ten at a time so we can start tracking them down. Right now I need you to meet me at Hilltop House.”

“Something happen?”

“Lauren McAllister aborted Jack’s kid just before she disappeared.”

Silence, then Quentin said, “Whoa.”

“We gotta talk to Margaret.”

“She already told us she doesn’t know where he is. She doesn’t even know when he left.”

“I know. But the son of a bitch lied to us about Lauren. I bet Margaret can tell us about that.”

“And may know the name Shelly Quinn?”

“We’ll find out.”

“Jack is represented by counsel. A wife can’t be forced to speak against her husband. Want me to call Dorian?”

“Who?” Nick pulled the phone halfway from his face. “You’re breaking up, I can’t hear you…”

Nick left Jensen with Erin, to compare her information with what they had collected, and had Valeria call in two office assistants to man the phones. “Track down every name on the list,” he said. “Find every girl who quit college at Mansfeld.”

The list was coming ten at a time: girls who had, for whatever reason, left Mansfeld. The college administration would be able to narrow it some—transfer students and those who took some time off then came back later—but there would be a pretty long list of others who left college to get a job, get married, go back home, or whatever. Nick wanted to account for each and every one of them.

A second list was from the FBI: women reported missing and never found, from all over the country. If a name showed up on both lists… God willing, Shelly Quinn would be the only one.

“And find Kunkle and Blaurock,” Nick said, then spelled out the names for Jensen.

“Who are they?”

“They were roommates of Shelly Quinn. They’d be seniors now, maybe still here. Wherever they are, I wanna talk to both of them.”

He pulled up the drive to Hilltop House and Quent swung in right behind him. “Let’s go,” Nick said, but Quent put a hand on his sleeve.

“This is the kind of shit that ruins marriages.”

And breaks up families and destroys careers and
causes custody battles.
Nick remembered all too well. “This isn’t rumor, Quent. We have Jack’s signature.”

“Right. But you can’t go in there the way you are. You’re vibrating.”

“I am not.” Nick took a deep breath. “I’m nothing but calm and relaxed.”

“Calm like an earthquake. You’re a textbook for plate tectonics.”

“I’m cool.”

“You don’t look cool.”

“I’m cool, God damn it.”

Margaret was in the kitchen, stirring a mulled cider concoction that smelled of cloves and cinnamon and orange zest. Rosa walked in with a load of folded towels from the laundry room and a couple dangling from her fingers. She shot Nick a glare. “A couple of these won’t come clean,” she said to Margaret. “Mud, I think. Do we have another set like this?”

“Check the linen closet outside Room 6,” Margaret said.

Rosa marched past Nick, deliberately snubbing him. Still mad about Calvin. Nick couldn’t blame her, but didn’t know what else to do. Christ, the paint had been right there.

“Margaret,” he said, “we need to talk to you.”

She closed her fingers around a silver pendant between her breasts. “I don’t know where he is. I told the deputy that hours ago.”

“It’s not about that.” Nick took a deep breath and pulled out a piece of paper. It had only one thing on it. “Does this look like Jack’s signature?”