Where Angels Rest (31 page)

Half of Hopewell’s emergency response team members stood in the cold night, studying their toes and scrupulously not watching. Nick clasped her arm and pulled her into the garage.

She felt brittle and small and if someone hurt her, he’d be responsible for it. He should have heeded the
warning bells going off in his head when he came home to the aroma of Snickerdoodles. Should have remembered that for a woman, being in his life was the kiss of death. Like trusting him.

Allison had learned that. So had Rebecca Engel.

His heart wrenched with a knowledge he held in his bones but hadn’t yet muttered in conscious realms: Rebecca was dead and that was on him. If he’d only opened his eyes and accepted what Erin had known all along:
Yes, here. Yes, on your watch.
Instead, he’d accepted a notion better-suited to Hopewell—that Becca had run off with her boyfriend.

I’m scared, Nick.

I’ll handle it… It’s okay.

Not this time.

He got into the garage and seized her arms. “I want you out of here. Out of Hopewell.”

“No.”

“Damn it, Erin.”

“What about Justin? Have you forgotten about him?”

Nick stepped back. Christ. He
had
forgotten about him. For Nick, it was all about Becca now. And Jack Calloway and Carl Whitmore and the girls on a list. It was all about Hopewell.

Yes. He’d forgotten about Justin.

“I can help,” Erin said.

“How?” he snapped. “By getting killed?”

“Katie. If Becca’s not with Ace, then Katie is the key. She knows something, even if she doesn’t know what it is.”

“Baker is working with—”

“She won’t talk to that Baker quack, and you know it. But she’ll talk to me. You need me.”

“I don’t need you.”

“Then you want me.” She said it with such hopeful conviction that he stared at her. Jesus, yes, he wanted her. And that very fact made her a target.

“I wanted you,” he said, stiffening his resolve. He dropped his hands. “I wanted you for a tumble and it was great. But it’s too inconvenient to keep you around for just that. By the way, Jensen won the pool.”

She looked like she’d been slapped. Nick felt a chunk of his heart fall away. He steeled himself against it and turned away. He didn’t want to see the shudder of pain that rippled through her.

But instead of shuddering with pain, she came around to face him, squaring her shoulders. “Liar,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“You don’t get to throw me out of town because you’re afraid of caring for me.”

He was taken aback.

“You’re a coward,” she said. “If you want to get rid of me, okay. But at least be honest about your motives. It isn’t because all we had was a tumble. It’s because we had more. So much more, it scares you.”

“Don’t shrink me, Doctor. You won’t like what you find.”

“I already know what I’ll find. I’ll find a man who’s spent five years pretending he’s happy chasing shoplifters and arresting drunks. I’ll find a man who’s been punishing himself, one cigarette at a time, for giving up on the big cases. A man who’s trying to live with the fact that the criminals he once chased are still out there killing people, while he’s hiding here in Hopewell. So he goes to his wife’s woods once a year and takes out his frustrations on pieces of paper—”

“I don’t have time for this,” Nick growled.

“I’ll find a man who says he wants peace and quiet in his town, but who hasn’t felt so alive in the past five years as he has in the past five days.”

He glared at her. “I don’t
enjoy
having my town terrorized, damn you.”

“No, of course you don’t. But don’t you see, Nick? This is big. Life and death. It’s okay to want to be a hero. It’s not just what you do. It’s who you are.”

“Are you finished? Because Deputy Hogue is waiting to take you to a—”

“It’s too late to get rid of me. I mean, you
can,
physically. You can have me removed and I can’t stop you because you have an army of deputies to carry out any order you give.”

“Then go peacefully so I won’t have to waste manpower. We’re spread a little thin right now.”

“And what about Katie? Are you going to let Rebecca die out there while Andrew Baker drugs Katie and drives her into a hole?”

Rebecca’s already dead.
The thought squeezed his heart.

“Maybe it’s too late for Rebecca,” Erin said, reading his mind. She spoke through gritted teeth. “But it’s not too late for Justin. There’s still two more days. Please, Nick. It’s still my fight, and for the first time ever, I feel like I may win. Because I have you fighting with me.”

Nick gazed down at her and saw what she must have been fifteen years ago—a terrified girl with a pistol, trying to keep her and her brother safe. She’d been fighting monsters all her life. Alone.

“You can do the cop things,” she said. “But I think I can get through to Katie. You just have to let me.”

“She’s right, Nick.”

Quentin. His voice was quiet, his expression resolved.

Nick grimaced. Tension reached down his neck through his shoulders and arms and curled his hands into fists. Tension, and maybe something else. Fear.

He looked at Erin for a full ten seconds, then grabbed her by the jacket. He pulled her up and kissed her, hard. When he was finished, he glared at Quentin. “Put someone on her,” he ordered. “All the time.”

B
ACK TO HEADQUARTERS
, in the wee hours of the morning. The fire had cost him more time in the hunt for Rebecca: working the scene, talking to Mrs. Piltzecker and other neighbors, processing. He thought about the delay. If this were a cop movie, that’s what the fire would be—the murderer trying to distract them, tie them up while something else was happening.

But it didn’t feel like that. It felt like someone had gone after Erin. And the fact that Hannah was in the way… Jesus.

Bishop met him at the office. “Geez, Sheriff. Is everyone okay?”

Nick gave him a
Reader’s Digest
version of the fire, then said, “I want you to talk to Margaret Calloway. I wanna know where she was when Rebecca Engel disappeared, between five-fifteen and five-forty-five this morning.”

Bishop looked at his watch. “You mean yesterday morning.”

“Yeah,” Nick said, with the razor edge of guilt cutting in. Wednesday morning now. Justin’s execution was scheduled for midnight Thursday. “Push her. Scare her
if you need to.” He thought about the Molotov cocktail. An easy enough weapon. Anyone who could log onto the Internet could make one. “And find out if she went anywhere late tonight.”

“Okay.” Bishop held out his hand. An envelope. “This was on the front door just now.”

Nick took it. “You see who left it?”

“No, sir. Nobody around.”

Nick opened the envelope. It was typewritten and sent ice through his veins.

He dropped the note as if it burned him. “Don’t touch that,” he said, and shot out the front door. Bishop followed him outside, following instinct. They picked up Quentin on the sidewalk.

“Looking for the person who left a note on the door,” Nick said.

The three of them scattered, scouring the street, the parking lot, the area around the courthouse and jail. Spent fifteen minutes looking.

No one. Two in the morning. No one.

They jogged back together, convening on the lawn of the courthouse. Nick was still catching his breath. “The note wasn’t here when I left.”

Bishop said, “Maybe someone was out late, saw something. I’ll keep looking.”

Nick blew out a breath. “Goddamn it.”

Quent was panting, but didn’t know why. “I’m lost. What note?”

Nick told him, then shook his head. He couldn’t seem to get his heart to settle down.

“Ah, man,” Quent said. “Someone’s giving us clues.”

But Nick didn’t think so. It felt more to him like someone was pulling their strings, watching them dance. Manipulating them and enjoying the show.

“So, who’s Robin Weelkes?” Quentin asked.

“I don’t know,” Nick said. “But I’d bet my left nut it’s the name of a missing woman.”

“Weelkes.”

An office clerk named Brendan Madigan, a stout Irishman with a tendency to break into tenor arias when he got drunk, scanned the master list of names. He’d become the lead on a four-person team trying to locate missing students from the past five years.

“Not here. We’ve been going alphabetically so I thought maybe we just hadn’t gotten to her yet. But Weelkes isn’t here at all.”

“Find her.”

Madigan rubbed a hand over his face, but didn’t say the obvious. Middle of the night didn’t seem to matter to the sheriff anymore.

Nick walked across the street to the lab. Martin Gamble’s prairie-dog eyes had the look of a sleep-deprived mouse.

“Couldn’t this have happened during the daytime?” he griped. He held up the envelope, now stuck inside a plastic bag. “Yours, Sheriff. No one else’s prints anywhere on the note. I haven’t checked the envelope yet, but the note itself was handled by someone wearing gloves. Someone being careful.”

“What about the typeface, the lettering?”

He shook his head. “Courier font, 10-point. Every computer in the state can do it. And the paper is standard white Georgia-Pacific; I buy it ten reams at a time at—”

“Ink?”

“Give me a little while and I could determine the type of cartridge, maybe…”

“Give me
something
.”

Gamble hummed a note. “Find me a printer.”

Nick’s brows went up.

“Printers are almost like fingerprints. They have a specific pattern to their lettering—heavier ink in the upper right corner of a line, for example, or a little less weight to the ‘Q’, like that. If you bring me the suspect’s printer, chances are good I can tell you whether or not that printer did this note.”

“Suspect?” Nick said. “What fucking suspect?”

But on the way out, he had a thought: “How fast could you tell me if that note was printed on the same machine that printed Jack’s suicide note?”

Martin rubbed his chin, then pulled a copy of Jack’s suicide note from a file. He eyeballed both notes through a magnifying glass. “I can tell you right now. It wasn’t.”

Bad to worse. Six investigators went to the street where Becca lived. Nick sent two pairs block to block, on foot, scouting with high-powered flashlights, checking everything they could find, including trash. While they got started, he knocked on Leni’s door, with Erin in tow.

“Did you find her?” Leni asked, through a stuffy nose. Her eyes were red-rimmed.

“Not yet,” Nick said.

“Then go to hell.” She slammed the door but Nick stuck his boot in the corner. “Leni. I need to talk to you.”

“So you can put the daughter I have left in jail?”

“Honey, you know that isn’t what I’m about. Let us in.”

There were too many years between them, too much
friendship, and Leni was too beat-up to fight him. “Sam Fulton will have my hide,” she said, naming Katie’s public defender.

“So call him if you want to. But I swear to you, Leni, we’re not trying to pin anything on Katie. I don’t think she killed Jack or Carl Whitmore. Neither does anybody else. By tomorrow, we’ll know for certain that your gun wasn’t fired, and Katie’s part in this will be over. But before that, we’ve got to know what was going on with Becca. Katie’s the one who may know.” He stepped back, touched the small of Erin’s back to move her forward. “I don’t care about protocol anymore, Leni. You want Erin with Katie, you got her.”

Leni thought about it then backed up. The look in her eyes sent a wave of horror through Nick. What if it were Hannah, gone, into the dust?

Stop it.

“Listen, Leni,” Nick said. “Ace Holmes swears Becca wasn’t with him. I believe him.”

A split second of disbelief, then the panic took over. “He’s lying. The bastard’s lying…”

“I don’t think so.”

“Let
me
talk to him.” She started past Nick, hysteria moving her toward the door, and Nick caught her, bullied her into his arms. She wailed and slapped at him, and he held her and fielded her panic until it faded, then took her by both arms and pushed her back a step. He wanted to say that he’d find Becca and everything would be all right, but the words jammed in his throat. In the end, all Nick could manage to say to her mother was, “God, I’m sorry.”

Erin stepped in. “Leni, I think Katie will talk to me.”

“No,” she said, and when Nick opened his mouth, she added, “not because I don’t want her to, but because she’s
asleep. Baker gave her a sleeping pill.” She looked at Erin. “That damned Dr. Baker, he drove her into a shell. He accused her of being jealous because Becca had the boys. Katie just clammed up.” Tears came. “I’m afraid I’ll never get either one of my girls back.”

Erin touched Leni’s arm. “I’ll get Katie back.”

Nick caught Erin’s eye; this was her element—dealing with victims. He had no business putting her back with the Engel family, but he was going to do it anyway. “Okay. In the morning, then. Fulton can be here if you want. Put Erin with Katie as soon as she wakes up.”

Leni nodded and looked at Erin. “You can try. But I don’t know if she’s in there anymore.”

Erin stayed with Leni, and Nick waited until a deputy showed up to watch the house. He had just shut the door behind him when his radio burped.

“Sheriff.” It was a deputy named Cutter. “We’re on North Franklin Street, across from the back of Woode’s place, with Lud Ferguson. You better come.”

W
OODE’S WAS AN ANCIENT
neighborhood grocery in a depressed section of Hopewell, a couple of miles off the main drag. It had survived the era of twenty-four-hour Krogers and SuperWalmarts out of sheer stubbornness. Chuck Woode would hack up a side of beef for a customer any way they wanted, and because he was that kind of a guy, he’d take the time to wipe his hands on his apron before he sliced a hunk of cheese to go with it.

The back of Woode’s was precisely what you’d expect: a dumpster, a bunch of cardboard boxes and crates, a truck that had rusted there since the ’60s, a whole lot of trash. For a five-block stretch, the streets were lined with bars, a couple of low-end sandwich shops, and Hopewell’s only tattoo parlor. If Hopewell had a slum, this was it. Eighty percent of the crimes Nick dealt with, though mostly petty, came from this area.