She checked the time as they walked to their vehicles. It was nearly nine. The same time they last heard from Truman yesterday.
Tick tick tick.
She bit the inside of her lip to prevent falling apart in front of Bolton, and tasted blood. “I need to get to the office.”
He halted, turning to her in shock. “Surely they’ll let you have the day off.”
“I don’t want the day off. I need to keep moving and keep working on Truman’s case. I can’t sit around and wait. There are plenty of people searching the roads for him, and I can be more helpful directing the FBI’s resources along with a computer and a telephone.” I hope that’s true.
Bolton took a hard look at her. “Are you sure you want to work?”
“Positive.”
His face said he didn’t believe her.
This man doesn’t know me at all.
“Let me know when they’re done with the pond,” she told him. Deschutes County had taken the lead on the Clint Moody case, and Truman’s was in the hands of the FBI.
“We’re going to find him.”
“I’m starting to despise that phrase.”
His eyes were full of sympathy.
I’m starting to despise that look too.
TWENTY-EIGHT
His shivering wouldn’t stop.
Pale light crept in some of the cracks around the door, and Truman figured it was morning. The concrete floor of the shed felt like a sheet of ice, and even though he knew the temperature was nearly twenty degrees above freezing, he was surprised he hadn’t frozen to death. He’d fully expected not to wake up this morning—because of either the cold or his head injury. He’d vomited three times yesterday, and double vision was making him dizzy. No doubt he had a concussion. Maybe something worse.
He’d woken still leaning against the wall, his right arm suspended above him, cuffed to a four-foot-long horizontal pipe along the rear concrete wall of the shed. His hand was long numb. He stood and massaged it, willing feeling back into the icy fingers. Pain finally shot through the nerves in his hand and he welcomed the discomfort. It meant he hadn’t destroyed the circulation to his hand. Yet.
The pipe was about three feet off the ground. Just far enough that he couldn’t lie down to sleep. Several times during the night he’d stood, gripping the bar for balance and letting the blood run back into his hand. He’d investigated the ends of the pipe. They were firmly embedded in the concrete wall. No hope of getting them loose.
Someone had left him a large jar of water and four empty jars. He’d made use of one empty jar during his vomiting sessions and used another to piss in. He suspected that if he could see better in the poor light, he’d see blood in his urine. His kidneys still hurt from his beating yesterday.
Everything hurt. His hair held several large patches of dried blood. The head injuries had swollen, and touching the spots made him hiss. His lower back felt as if shards of glass were in his kidneys. The worst pain was in his left arm, and he suspected a bone had fractured near the elbow. It hurt like a son of a bitch to move, which doubly sucked because it was his free arm. He licked his dry lips, tasting blood and gingerly touching the rough edges of a large gash on the side of his mouth. His teeth ached on that side but were all present. One positive thing.
Mercy must be going nuts.
It hurt to imagine her frustration and fear at the unanswered phone calls and texts. No doubt she’d gone to his house and wondered what happened.
At least Simon will be fed.
He’d get out of this fucking shed and back to her if it was the last thing he ever did. Pain be damned.
He hadn’t seen any people or heard any voices since the attack in his driveway. Apparently the beating had continued after he blacked out. When he woke, he’d found himself in the shed, handcuffed to the pipe, with no idea how he’d gotten there.
Who hates me enough to do this?
Plenty of people got angry when he arrested them, but most eventually understood they’d had it coming. No one had sworn revenge in his presence.
He remembered hearing one of the attackers call him a fucking cop. Hate had infused the word. Am I here solely because I was the closest available cop to wreak havoc on?
He’d been in his own driveway.
They must have followed me.
Twenty times over the last year, he’d sworn he would install security cameras at his home. It had never happened. He crossed his fingers that one of his neighbors had cameras and his officers had thought to check them.
Assuming they know where I disappeared from.
His truck would still be in front of his house. He hoped.
Assume nothing.
He had confidence in his men and Mercy. They would push until they tracked him down.
He closed his eyes as another wave of dizziness swamped him.
“Wake up.”
A pause.
“Wake up.”
Truman jerked and gasped for breath as cold water splashed his face. He tried to lunge forward but was stopped by the handcuff on his wrist. Pain shot up his left arm as he wiped the water from his face, making his vision blur. He sucked in a breath, struggling to stay conscious and look at the man standing before him.
He was tall and lean, with slightly stooped shoulders, wearing a heavy coat and holding a cowboy hat in one hand and Truman’s now-empty water jar in the other. Truman couldn’t see his eyes with the light streaming in the door behind his captor.
A memory of his field-training officer popped in his head. This man had the same stance and physical build, but Truman didn’t recognize him.
My hand. Numbness had set in again, and he slowly slid up the wall to let the blood run to his hand, never taking his gaze from the stranger.
A silent power struggle filled the small shed. Truman knew the stranger was waiting for his captive to ask who’d locked him up or where they were.
Truman kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want the stranger to know he knew nothing.
The silence stretched for thirty seconds as Truman stared at where he knew the man’s eyes would be.
“Stubborn, eh?” the man finally said.
Truman said nothing.
“Know why you’re here?”
Silence.
The man shifted his stance, frustration rolling off him. “Think you’re tough, do you? I bet you don’t feel so powerful now, chained up like a pig.”
In the pit of Truman’s belly a small snake of fear started to coil.
“You’ll get what’s comin’ to ya, fucking cop. Fucking pig.” The man snorted in laughter. “I was right. You are a chained-up pig. Damn, it stinks like pigs in here.”
“I’d like some food,” Truman stated.
“You won’t need food.” The man tossed the glass jar in his hand into a corner, where it shattered. “Won’t need that either.” He shoved his hat on his head and turned toward the door, giving Truman a clear view of a profile with a strong nose and chin. He slammed the door shut behind him, and a bolt scraped across the wood.
Truman slid back down the wall, his heart racing as rampant thirst instantly overtook him. He looked in the direction of the shattered water jar, unable to see the shards. Fuck me.
He shoved the image of drinking the only alternative fluid in the shed out of his mind.
What will he do to me?
Mercy’s face arose in his mind, and he ached to touch her, feel her warmth beside him. Several nights ago, they’d stretched out on his couch together and watched TV, sharing a bottle of wine and Chinese takeout. Simon had alternated between trying to paw food from their plates and wedging herself between them.
It’d been an intimate, calm evening. And looking back now, he realized it’d been heaven.
He wanted it again.
Hurry up, Mercy.
TWENTY-NINE
Mercy quickly reviewed her current murder cases in her office, getting them ready to set aside. Truman was her priority now.
I promise I won’t leave Amy and Alison for too long.
Sporadic updates came from the Eagle’s Nest officers and Bolton. No one in Truman’s neighborhood had seen anything occur in his driveway. No one had outdoor security cameras. Evidence at the campground did not indicate how Truman’s truck had gotten there.
An arson investigator was examining the truck, but Mercy was pessimistic about him finding anything. Yes, it was arson. Yes, it was gasoline. How could there be anything left in the fire to lead them to Truman’s abductor?
Struggling to focus, Mercy read the latest reports from the Hartlage investigation.
She was pleased that four of the Hartlages had been positively identified, but the unknown Caucasian male skull she and Dr. Peres had found farther down the slope still bothered her. Only Kenneth Forbes had stated that Corrine Hartlage’s brother was living with them. There was nothing else to back up his identity.
She had confidence in Dr. Peres’s theory that the Asian skull was a war trophy. Especially after Mercy had done some online research. People collected weird shit.
But that doesn’t help me find their killer.
The family’s old Suburban hadn’t turned up. No one had used their missing credit cards or accessed their bank accounts, so the motive didn’t appear to be financial. The post office had closed their mailbox when no one renewed the lease and returned all the mail that hadn’t been picked up. The Hartlages got their water from their well and generated their own power. They’d truly been off the grid. So far off the grid that no one had missed them for eight months. A calendar hanging on the back side of a kitchen cupboard door was open to August of the year before. The few pieces of mail that had been found in the home were postmarked last August.
Those weren’t confirmations of the time of disappearance, but several of the windows had been left open, and summer clothing was in the laundry. All that was enough to make Mercy pretty darn certain the Hartlages had been gone for eight months, and that had been more than enough time for their remains to skeletonize.
Mercy understood people not being missed for a week or two, but was this family so socially isolated that there was no one to care?
Is that the reason this family was targeted? The killer suspected no one would notice for a long time?