Part 22 (1/2)

As Chan was unceremoniously escorted back behind the police line, Rusty turned to his aunt, who was sneaking furtive glances at the body of her husband, as if she felt as if it were wrong to look at him.

”Aunt Edith, do you know anything about this?” he asked. ”Did Uncle Nelson tell you who he believed was the guilty party?”

Edith Abbott's shoulders slumped and she shook her head. ”He always believed that Lazarus was guilty. Now I hear that he had another idea. I don't know. He didn't say so to me. But then again, he never did tell me much,” she explained. ”He had a secretive nature.”

Rusty beckoned to another officer. ”Find out where my uncle went after he left the newspaper offices. There has to be somebody who'd seen him. And let me know as soon as you get a line on Jake DeGraff.”

Tess felt as if a vise were tightening around her head. Her son had been kidnapped and these people were standing around talking. ”What are you doing?” she shrieked. ”Why won't you listen to me? My son is not with my brother. He was taken by whoever was driving this car. We have to find the car. Look,” she strode past the people who were gathering evidence and pointed to the dirt path. ”There are tire tracks here. Someone should be following them. Someone has to have seen the car.” She began to head down the road that led to the clearing. ”If we follow these tracks...”

”Tess,” a familiar voice cried. Tess looked up and saw Dawn, who had just arrived, waving frantically to her from behind the police lines.

At the same moment, Rusty Bosworth grabbed Tess roughly by the upper arm. ”You could be destroying evidence. Get out of the way and let us do our jobs.”

Tess jerked her arm free from his grasp and rubbed it with her other hand. ”Your job is to find my son.” She pointed behind her. ”You've sent half your people out into the woods and my son is not out there. He did not run away. You're wasting precious time asking questions about Nelson Abbott's death. I know he was your uncle, but since when is a dead body more urgent than a missing child? You should let someone else take over. Someone whose priorities aren't all messed up.”

Rusty Bosworth glared at her, his face red. ”When I want your advice about how to handle things, I'll ask for it,” he said. ”There's your mother. Go home with her. When we have something to tell you, I'll let you know.”

CHAPTER 23.

”Stop the car, Mother,” Tess cried, glimpsing a hiker on a neighboring trail. ”Maybe this guy knows something.”

Dawn glanced in her rearview mirror as her car bounced along the rutted, dirt road. Her face was chalk white and impa.s.sive. ”All right,” she said.

Tess leaped from the car and began to stumble through the brambles, calling out to the young man on a nearby trail who was wearing a backpack and a knitted hat with earflaps.

The young man stopped and looked up at the frantic woman who was cras.h.i.+ng through the woods in his direction.

”Help me!” Tess cried. ”I need your help. Did you see a car with a young boy in it coming along this trail maybe-I don't know-an hour ago? Probably going very fast?”

The hiker, who had a tufted beard and mild eyes, shook his head and his earflaps rose and fell. ”The cops already stopped me and asked me. I told them I wasn't on this trail. I was on the other side of the lake forty minutes ago. I didn't see anybody over there.”

Tess's small flicker of hope was doused by his words. ”Are you sure?”

”Yeah. What's going on anyway?”

Tess shook her head. ”Never mind.”

”Wish I could help,” the young man said.

”Thanks.” Tess trudged back to her mother's idling car and slid into the front seat.

”Nothing?” Dawn asked.

Tess shook her head and pressed her face against the car window, trying to peer through it into the curtain of bare branches and evergreens, dense and twisted, that stretched as far as the eye could see. ”How will I ever find him?” she asked. ”Nelson Abbott is dead.”

”I know,” said Dawn.

”I thought it was Nelson, but it wasn't. There's another killer.”

”I guess so,” said Dawn.

Tess turned and looked at her mother. ”Where is Kenneth Phalen today, Mother?”

Dawn yelped in dismay. ”Ken!”

”Yes, Ken,” Tess cried. ”Why should he be above suspicion? He was around when Phoebe was killed. His own daughter was a suicide at that same age. All of a sudden, after all these years, he shows up here out of the blue-”

”Tess,” Dawn cried. ”Stop. Just stop it.”

Tess fell silent.

”Sweetheart, I know you're desperate. I know exactly how you feel. But it's not going to help to make a scapegoat out of that poor man.”

Tess glanced over at her mother's sagging profile as she drove through the woods. Dawn had been through this same ordeal once before in her life. ”How can you go through this, Mother?” Tess asked. ”Again?”

”Don't think like that. It's not the same. It's different these days. When a child disappears, the FBI gets involved right away...it's not going to end that same way. It can't,” Dawn said, keeping her eyes fixed on the narrow road.

Tess looked back out the window as the car crept along the road leading out of the woods. Erny. She wanted to call out his name, but she knew that he would not answer. He was with Nelson Abbott's killer. Whoever it was who had come to the forest to bury Nelson had s.n.a.t.c.hed Erny, not as part of a plan, but impulsively. She could only pray that Nelson's killer was not someone who would hurt a child.

”The DNA proved that Nelson was guilty,” said Tess. ”But somebody killed Nelson. Somebody who was desperate.”

Dawn nodded with a distant look in her eyes.

Tess sighed, rolled down the window, and leaned her head out. She knew it was futile but she had to do something to relieve the pain in her heart. She began to scream Erny's name.

When they got back to the inn, another car had already pulled into the parking area and two men who were clearly not guests were getting out of it. One man pulled a transmitter from inside his windbreaker and began to speak into it. ”The police are here,” said Tess. Dawn nodded agreement. ”I'm going to ask them to keep the reporters away,” she said.

Tess didn't even wait for Dawn to pull into her parking spot. She asked her mother to stop near the front door. She jumped out of the car and went inside, not looking up when reporters called her name. She hung up her jacket and went through the inn, to the phone in the kitchen. She had to speak to someone who could explain to her how it was possible that Nelson Abbott had been set free. Obviously, she was not going to call Ben Ramsey. She called Chief Fuller, whose number was written on a pad by the phone. His daughter-in-law answered on the second ring. Tess identified herself and asked to speak to the former chief.

”He's can't come to the phone,” said Mary Anne.

”Can you have him call me?” Tess asked hopefully.

”No, he won't be calling anyone. He can't talk. He had a terrible night. He's, um...we had to put him on hospice care this morning.”

”Hospice!” Tess exclaimed.

”You knew he was sick,” Mary Anne said accusingly.

”I know. But I didn't realize he was that bad.”

”Well, he is,” said Mary Anne in an angry tone.

”Is he there? Is he at home?”

”Yes, he's at home,” Mary Anne said indignantly. ”But he's extremely weak. He can't talk on the phone. Now leave the man in peace.” Without waiting for Tess to reply, she hung up the phone.