LITMIR.BIZ

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but she had business and she wanted to get on with it, not play head games.

      “Detective Stoner, something strange happened yesterday.”

      He leaned forward and slipped into a cracker drawl. “Miz Conrad, if you only knew, sumpin’ strange happens in this town every day.” He tapped his fingers on his desk. “We haven’t found that boy. Eric.” He looked away from her.

      “Yes. I know.”

      “I’m sorry. I know you hope we’ll find him alive. We sure as hell want to.” Continuing to avoid her gaze, he sighed.

      “Detective—” she paused, not quite sure how to say what she wanted to “—Ryder Hayes is a sort of neighbor of mine.”

      “What kind of neighbor is that? A ‘sort of’ one?” The chair creaked and squeaked. “Do you know him?”

      “No. I met him yesterday for the first time.” She lifted the flap of her purse and her fingers brushed the edge of the capsaicin cylinder. “Look, I think I heard a child in his house. Crying.” She stared at the floor, at the black pattern of scuff marks against the linoleum, the coffee stains on the side of Stoner’s desk. “I know it sounds unbelievable, but…”

      There was a long pause.

      “And when would that have been, Miz Conrad?” he asked gently. He picked up a pen, put it down carefully. “Yesterday?”

      “Yes,” she said slowly, puzzled.

      “You were pis—ticked off with him, weren’t you? About the dogs you thought were his?”

      “What?” Josie spoke very carefully, not ready to uncork her temper but well and truly pis—ticked off now. “What are you talking about?”

      “Um,” he said, stretching out his short legs and watching her from half-closed eyes. He was a man who sat tall and stood short, a disproportionately long torso giving the illusion that he was taller than his five foot nine. As he pivoted under his desk, his feet brushed against the sides of her shoes. Josie tucked her toes under the rung of the metal folding chair as he pa-dum-dumped in a negligent rhythm on the arms of his chair. “Well, it’s like this, Miz Conrad. Hayes came in earlier today.”

      “What?” Josie’s fingers tightened on her purse.

      That was why Stoner had been watching for her, to “handle” her with official soothing.

      “He said we might expect a call from you. He wanted to touch base with us first.”

      “He’s been a busy man, Detective.” The red-pepper spray at her house. The visit to the police. Oh, yes, Hayes had been very busy. She wished she knew what else he’d been doing during the long hours of the night after she left his house. She shut her eyes for a moment, collecting herself. “What did he have to say?”

      Stoner’s voice was pleasant. “He thought you might be…upset, is how I think he put it.”

      Josie leaned forward and gripped the edge of the scarred desk. Ryder Hayes had been one jump ahead of her. He’d been busily creating a picture of her for the police. A picture she didn’t care one damned bit for. “Listen, ‘upset’ doesn’t begin to describe how I felt about his dogs—”

      “They’re not his dogs, Miz Conrad.”

      “So he says.” She stood up, angry with Stoner, with Ryder Hayes, with herself. “But the dogs were on my property. For all I know, they might be responsible for what’s happened to the children. They’re dangerous. They went toward his house, and I believe they’re his. And when I went to his house to—” she paused, wondering what word was best to use “—to talk with him about the situation, I think I saw a child crying in the hallway of his house.”

      “A child?” Stoner brushed his hand against the edge of an envelope.

      Leaning toward him, both hands flat on the desk on either side of her purse, Josie added, “You should consider adding him to your list of people to investigate.” She whirled away, whirled back in anger. “Why did he come here, anyway? What did he give as his reason for making a Sunday-morning visit to the police station? Don’t you think it’s a little peculiar? Just a tiny bit suspicious, Detective?” Josie was so angry she thought her eardrums would burst with the force of her blood pounding in her head.

      She wanted to scream at the stolid-looking detective, shake him, make him get up and go immediately to the Hayes house, and yet Stoner sat there rocking and watching her with that bland expression that told her nothing.

      “Calm down, Miz Conrad,” he said, rocking forward and leaning his elbows on the desk.

      “Calm down?” She wanted to screech at him, pull her hair out by the roots. Instead, she controlled her voice.

      He motioned toward the chair. “Yeah. Take it easy and set a spell longer, hear?” Light blond hair grew thickly along the length of his fair, sun-spotted arms.

      Like fur, Josie thought irritably. “Why should I? You’re wasting my time, Detective. And telling me nothing. Nothing.”

      “Sit down, Miz Conrad.” The casual tone disappeared. Command deepened his easy, light voice into something else. “Please.”

      Josie recognized an order. She sat.

      Stoner templed his fingers, pad to pad. He avoided her eyes. “I know you think we haven’t done enough to find your daughter.”

      Not answering, Josie sat there, tension pounding in her head. He was right. She didn’t believe they’d done everything they could have. If they’d looked harder, spent more hours, searched—She wound her fingers into the braided strap of her purse.

      “However,” Stoner said, letting his hands fall to the desk, “we’ve done everything we can. We’ve sent out APBs, we’ve distributed pictures to the restaurants along the highway, we’ve followed up every lead we’ve been given.” His voice was weary. “You know that. You’ve been in here twice a week, checking.”

      Josie nodded, her throat spasming against the words threatening to spill forth. She couldn’t afford to alienate Stoner. He was her only link to the search for Mellie. Stoner was willing at least to talk with her. Over the months, the other detectives had passed her along to him, tired of her calls and visits. “Yes,” she managed to say at last. Clearing her throat, she continued, her voice rising with frustration, “But why won’t you follow up on Ryder Hayes? How can you know he’s in the clear unless you’ve searched his house?”

      “We searched his house earlier today.”

      “What?” Josie sank bonelessly against the chair.

      Now Stoner looked at her. She thought it was sympathy that darkened his eyes, but astonished by what he’d said, she couldn’t tell. “This morning. After he came in and volunteered that you might call or swear out a complaint. He invited us out to search his house.”

      “But—”

      “If he’d had anything to hide, he would have taken care of it before he showed up here, but, Miz Conrad, I swear on my mother’s grave, there’s been no kid at this house. And there aren’t any dogs anywhere around. No sign of dogs on his property. We checked. Nothing that would signal that a pack of dogs had been there at all. No sign of a kid. There’s nothing in that whole blamed house except dust and his magic stuff, a slick kitchen, and one room he sleeps in. We looked. Top to bottom. Everywhere.”

      “Everywhere?” she whispered, stunned. “What if you’d looked last night?” She should have insisted that they initiate a search earlier. Why hadn’t she?

      Because she’d been disoriented by the strange experience in those last moments with him. So bewildered that she’d felt as if her whole world had flipped crazily upside down.

      “If we’d looked last night, we might have found indications that animals had been there, that a kid had been on the premises. We might have found something. But

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