Chief Dutch Burton now led a band of inept small-town officers—yokels outfitted in spiffy uniforms with shiny badges—who had been hard-pressed to catch the culprit spray-painting obscenities on the trash receptacles behind the Texaco station.
Now they were focused on the five unsolved missing-persons cases. Despite their insufficiencies, Cleary’s finest had deduced that having five women vanish from one small community within two and a half years was, in all probability, more than a coincidence.
In a metropolis, that statistic would have been trumped by others even scarier. But here, in this mountainous, sparsely populated area, the disappearance of five women was staggering.
Further, it was a generally held opinion that the missing women had met with foul play, so finding human remains, not the women themselves, was the task facing the authorities. Suspicion would fall on a man carrying a shovel through the woods.
Like Tierney.
Up till now, he had flown under the radar of Police Chief Burton’s curiosity. It was crucial to keep it that way.
In pace with his footsteps, he clicked off the vital statistics of the women buried in the graves on the summit. Carolyn Maddox, a twenty-six-year-old who had a deep bosom, beautiful black hair, and large brown eyes. Reported missing last October. A single mom and sole supporter of a diabetic child, she had cleaned rooms at one of the guest lodges in town. Her life had been a cheerless, non-stop cycle of toil and exhaustion.
Carolyn Maddox was getting plenty of peace and rest now. As was Laureen Elliott. Single, blond, and overweight, she had worked as a nurse at a medical clinic.
Betsy Calhoun, a widowed homemaker, had been older than the others.
Torrie Lambert, the youngest of them, had also been the first, the prettiest, and the only one not a resident of Cleary.
Tierney picked up his speed, trying to outrun his haunting thoughts as well as the weather. Ice was beginning to coat tree limbs like sleeves. Boulders were becoming glazed with it. The steep, curving road down to Cleary would soon become unnavigable, and it was imperative that he get off this goddamn mountain.
Fortunately, his built-in compass didn’t fail him, and he emerged from the woods no more than twenty feet from where he’d entered it. He wasn’t surprised to see that his car was already coated with a thin layer of ice.
As he approached it, he was breathing hard, emitting bursts of vapor into the cold air. His descent from the summit had been arduous. Or perhaps his labored breathing and rapid heart rate were caused by anxiety. Or frustration. Or regret.
He placed the shovel in the trunk of his car. Peeling off the latex gloves he’d been wearing, he tossed them into the trunk as well, then shut the lid. He got into the car and quickly closed the door, welcoming shelter from the biting wind.
Shivering, he blew on his hands and vigorously rubbed them together in the hope of restoring circulation to his fingertips. The latex gloves had been necessary, but they hadn’t provided any protection against the cold. He took a pair of cashmere-lined leather gloves from a coat pocket and pulled them on.
He turned the ignition key.
Nothing happened.
He pumped the accelerator and tried again. The motor didn’t even growl. After several more unsuccessful tries, he leaned back against the seat and stared at the gauges on the dashboard as though expecting them to communicate what he was doing wrong.
He cranked the key one more time, but the engine remained as dead and silent as the women crudely buried not that far away.
Author photo © Andrew Eccles
SANDRA BROWN is the author of numerous New York Times bestsellers. Her most recent novels include Chill Factor, White Hot, and Hello, Darkness. She and her husband live in Arlington, Texas.
Visit her website at www.sandrabrown.net.
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Fat Tuesday
Exclusive
The Witness
Charade
Where There’s Smoke
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2004 by Sandra Brown Management Ltd.
Originally published in hardcover in 2004 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
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