Part 21 (1/2)

”That's right,” he said. ”What can we put them in?” He looked around, frowning. Then his face lit up. ”I know.” He unzipped his sweats.h.i.+rt and pulled it off. Underneath he was wearing a T-s.h.i.+rt. ”We can put them in this.”

”Honey, you'll be cold,” said Tess.

”It feels better without it on,” he insisted.

Tess shook her head. Erny, like all of his schoolmates, went off to school each day, even in the winter, with only a sweats.h.i.+rt for warmth. Erny always insisted he was warm enough and, she had to admit, he didn't seem to suffer from poor health as a result. She always reminded herself of how her own grandmother, Dawn's mother, used to say that it did a child good to be out in the cold air. Maybe it was true.

”If you're already hot, why do we need a fire?” Tess teased him.

”Ma...” Erny wailed at her lack of imagination.

”Okay, okay. That's a good idea you had. We'll put them in the sweats.h.i.+rt. Turn it inside out so you won't be full of splinters when you put it back on.”

As Erny was obediently reversing the sweats.h.i.+rt, inverting the sleeves, Tess's cell phone began to ring. She pulled it from her jacket pocket and looked at the ID. The Stone Hill Inn. She felt a little anxious throb in her throat. Her mother wasn't one to call without a good reason.

Tess frowned. ”I'd better take this.” She pushed the b.u.t.ton and held it to her ear. ”Mom?” she said. ”What's up?”

”Tess, you won't believe it,” said Dawn.

Erny had gotten up from the table and started filling his hoodie, now a wood carrier, with twigs he was scavenging among the leaves. ”Stay where I can see you,” said Tess.

Erny nodded and continued his search. Tess watched him for a minute and then returned to her call. ”Won't believe what?” she asked.

”Nelson Abbott,” Dawn said.

Tess frowned. ”What about him?”

Dawn hesitated. ”They let him go.”

Tess went rigid. ”Let him go? When?”

”Last night, apparently. I just heard it from a reporter who called here. The lawyer, that Ramsey fellow whom Edith hired, said there was something wrong with the evidence and he got the judge to go along with it. The judge said Nelson was free to go. They're not going to arrest him.”

”I don't understand. They have the DNA,” she protested. ”What more do they need?”

”That's all I know, honey. Nelson's attorney convinced them.”

G.o.dd.a.m.n him, Tess thought, picturing Ben Ramsey's ice blue eyes. He had found his loophole. ”I guess I must have violated Nelson's civil rights somehow. I mean, what's more important? The way the DNA was obtained or the fact that he killed my sister?”

”I don't know, Tess,” Dawn said wearily. ”I'm not a lawyer.”

Tess's mind was roiling. She understood that there were legal procedures that had to be respected, but now that they knew he was guilty, couldn't the police have held Nelson Abbott until they obtained evidence through other, more...traditional means? Besides, Tess was pretty sure that private citizens were allowed to do things that the police couldn't do. Private citizens could tape phone calls and it wasn't called wiretapping or entrapment. Surely this was the same kind of thing?

”Tess?” Dawn asked.

”I'm here,” said Tess. ”Yes. All right, look. We're coming back. Erny's not going to like it, but...”

Her gaze swept the beach but he was not there. Not enough twigs, she told herself. Not enough twigs on the beach. He must have gone up to the edge of the woods. All of a sudden, from the direction of the woods, she heard an inchoate shout. To her ears, in her gut, it sounded like Erny calling for her. Tess glanced around, telling herself it was her imagination. Then, clearly, she heard a wailing sound and the thud of a car door or a trunk slamming.

”Erny?” she cried.

”What is it?” Dawn was asking on the phone, hearing the panic in her daughter's voice.

”I'll call you back,” said Tess. She snapped the phone shut and began to run. ”Erny,” she screamed. ”Erny, where are you? Answer me this minute!”

There was a sound of an engine revving and tires screeching.

”Erny?”

No, she thought. No. Be here. Call out to me. Jump out from behind a tree. Scare me. ”Erny!” she screamed. She ran up the hill, stumbling, crying out for him, looking around. She plunged into the woods and toward the trail that led to the campsites. There was no sign of a car, but there was dust in the air and pines and bits of leaves drifting back to earth where a car had pulled away.

”Erny, where are you?” she screamed. But he did not answer. She looked all around her, but it all looked the same. Pine needles and dead leaves among certain bushes and trees still strangely green though winter was nearly here.

”Erny.” She kicked through the leaves, rus.h.i.+ng first one way and then another, looking up the trail helplessly for some sign of him.

”Oh my G.o.d,” Tess wailed, but it came out as a squeak. No, no. It can't be. He's hiding. He's here. She started back toward the beach, trying another path. Her heart was pounding hard and she stumbled, landing against a boulder as the toe of her boot kicked into something soft and heavy. Something that gave way, moved.

She looked down and saw what she had kicked. A hand lay open, fingers curled. Tess clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle the scream and steadied herself against the boulder. She jumped back from the boulder and then forced herself to go around it to look. It was a man, lying on the ground among the dead leaves. His eyes were open, but he was not alive. She could see that instantly. Under his head was blood, sticking to the leaves, running down into his neck matting his short, graying haircut. Nelson Abbott, his mouth hanging open, as if in surprise at the suddenness of his own death.

Beside him was the beginning of a hole. A trough someone had started to dig. A grave, left half-finished, as if the digger had been interrupted in midtask.

”Oh my G.o.d,” she breathed. ”Oh my G.o.d.” She looked up from the murdered man's face, looked around at the trees that rustled in the gentle breeze. ”Erny?”

And then, before she could even formulate the next question in her mind, her gaze landed on a hapless bundle just beyond the boulder. And the sight of it was more horrible to her than the sight of any b.l.o.o.d.y dead man. Of any ten men with their heads smashed in. For there, tossed aside on the ground by someone who didn't know or care what they were discarding, lay a hooded sweats.h.i.+rt, tied in a bundle, half-filled with twigs.

CHAPTER 22.

The uniformed officer held a wadded sweats.h.i.+rt in his gloved hands and pressed it to the nose of the leashed hound. The black dog jerked his head back and then forward again into the cloth, then nervously stepped away from the proffered sweats.h.i.+rt, straining at his lead. ”Okay, Diablo,” said the handler. ”Find it.” The dog took off, sniffing the ground and the tree trunks, pulling his handler toward the deep woods.

Tess shook her head. ”We're wasting time,” she insisted. ”He's not in the woods. He would hear me calling for him. He'd come back. Don't you see that?”

Rusty Bosworth crossed his arms over his broad chest and squinted into the trees. ”Boys get lost in these woods all the time. If he's out there, we'll find him.” The dirt roads that ran through the campground were clogged with police vehicles and the ATVs of volunteers who had fanned out to search for Erny. Members of the press were being kept back behind a police line, but there was a constant hum of chatter from their direction.

”I told you what happened. Erny must have witnessed...something,” Tess cried, unable to keep her tone rational. ”Whoever killed Nelson Abbott took Erny. My son's life is in danger.”

Chief Bosworth a.s.sessed Tess coolly. ”Well, now, that's your idea of what happened, but it could be completely wrong. I mean, you know from past experience that your version of events can be...inaccurate.”

”How dare you?” Tess exploded. ”My son is missing and you-”

Rusty raised a hand. ”Calm down. I'm agreeing with you. To a point. Your boy may have seen something, panicked, and took off running into these woods. Dropped his sweats.h.i.+rt as he ran.”

”I heard him scream,” Tess cried. She was almost screaming herself and her face was white with the strain. ”I heard the car tearing away. The tires screeching.”

”Well, we only have your word for that, Miss DeGraff. You claim that when you found Nelson Abbott, he was already dead. But I have to consider all the possibilities. Now, you say there was a car, but what if there wasn't? What if you asked Nelson Abbott to meet you here and things got ugly. After all, you were so sure he was involved in the death of your sister.”

My sister, Tess thought, looking helplessly around the woods, the campsite, the path to the beach. The same nightmare, in the same place. But this time it was her son who was taken. This time it was Erny.