Thread of Fear Read online

  Suddenly the car slowed as Sullivan exited the interstate. They drove through a few stoplights, and Fiona looked out the window. They appeared to be entering a bedroom community like so many others that had cropped up on the outskirts of American cities. The landscape was a series of strip centers, mega-markets, and cow pastures. Every telephone pole and stop sign was adorned with yellow ribbons and missing flyers bearing Shelby Sherwood’s picture.

  “Ma’am?” Jack Bowman’s voice jerked her attention away from the girl’s face. “You still there?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Bowman. I can’t help you.”

  She snapped the phone shut and shoved it back into her bag. As she zipped the attaché closed, her hands trembled. She flattened her palms on top of her thighs and took a deep breath. She needed to focus on the task ahead. This was her last case. She needed to get it right.

  We’ve got a homicide down here. How many times had she heard those words? Too many to count. She didn’t want to dwell on it. She didn’t want to think about the words Jack Bowman hadn’t said, because she’d heard those before, too, from the detectives who called her from all over the state, and lately, the nation. We’ve got a young woman…they usually said. And the woman had been raped, or murdered, or beaten to within an inch of her life. Maybe her child saw it happen. The witness is highly traumatized, and we heard you can help…

  Sullivan approached an intersection and entered the left-turn lane.

  “Is this it?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Fiona leaned forward and peered out the window at the residential street. All the homes looked alike—small, red-brick one-stories with garages dominating the fronts. The entrance to the neighborhood was marked by a young magnolia tree and a sign that said rolling hills.

  Fiona glanced over her shoulder at the strip center they’d just passed. She spotted a convenience store.

  “Can you do a U-turn?” she asked.

  “Sure. Why?”

  “I’m not dressed for this,” she said. “I need to stop and change.”

  The homes of missing children are charged with a peculiar energy. Parents wait for their sons and daughters thinking unthinkable thoughts, and their desperation is like a current in the room. Their energy is powerful, galvanizing scores of perfect strangers to tromp through woods and pass out flyers and tie ribbons. But it doesn’t last forever, and as the days and weeks and months tick by, the energy fades.

  Fiona knew the odds. She knew that in all likelihood she could visit Shelby’s house a year from now and the energy would be gone completely, snuffed out by a single phone call.

  She surveyed the Sherwood home as she walked up the driveway. The concrete path leading to the front entrance had been cordoned off by crime scene tape, the doorbell and doorjamb dusted for fingerprints by hopeful investigators. The yard had no landscaping to speak of, save a leafless gray sapling whose slender trunk had been wrapped with a big yellow bow.

  A handful of B-team reporters kept an eye on things while their colleagues covered the press conference downtown. Most waited for something to happen in the comfort of their vans, but a few milled around on the sidewalk talking and smoking. Sullivan ignored their inquisitive glances as he sauntered up the drive with Fiona at his side. There was nothing going on here, his gait seemed to say, nothing new to report.

  “Another member of our CARD team’s on the way over,” Sullivan said, his voice low. “She’s in charge of releasing the drawing, so I’m sure she’ll have some questions for you after the interview.”

  “You’re with CARD?”

  “Yep. They put four of us on this one.”

  “Good for them,” Fiona said, impressed. The FBI’s Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team was an elite group, and she was surprised Sullivan hadn’t mentioned he was part of it before now.

  They mounted the back steps. A forgotten Christmas wreath made of plastic holly decorated the Sherwoods’ door. Sullivan rapped lightly on the windowpane beneath it as Fiona stood behind him on the stoop, stealing glimpses of the backyard through weathered slats of fence. She saw a sliver of patio, some yellowed grass, a blue-and-white swing set.

  Her icy fingers tightened on the handles of her brown leather case. She’d left her coat in the Taurus, along with her luggage, which now contained a neatly folded pantsuit. She’d changed into jeans, white Keds, and the navy Mickey Mouse sweatshirt she’d bought in Anaheim years ago. Her prim French braid was long gone, and her hair now hung loose around her shoulders.

  The door squeaked open, and a thin brunette woman stood on the threshold. Matching streaks of blond framed her angular face, and she held a cigarette behind her. She looked like a barely adult version of Shelby. Fiona was startled by her young age and the fact that she’d answered the door herself. Most people in these situations had protective relatives standing guard.

  “Afternoon, Mrs. Sherwood. This is the forensic artist I told you about, Fiona Glass.” Sullivan stepped aside to make room for Fiona beside him.

  The woman nodded a greeting, her gaze wary but not unfriendly. “Y’all come on in,” she said, opening the door wider.

  Fiona entered the small breakfast room. It smelled of Pine-Sol, as if someone had just finished mopping. The blinds were sealed shut, and the only light shone down from a fixture above the kitchen sink. So often, it seemed, these houses were dimly lit, as if the people within had an aversion to bright lights. Fiona had observed this phenomenon enough times to think there must be some psychological explanation for it, but she wasn’t a psychologist and had no idea what it might be.

  A vacuum hummed to life in another part of the house. Shelby’s mother leaned back against the Formica counter. She wore low-rise jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. Beige woolen socks covered her feet.

  “Y’all want anything?” she asked, nodding at the endless row of bundt cakes and casseroles sitting on the counter. “It’s just me and my mom and Colter. No way we can eat all this.”

  “I’m fine, thanks,” Sullivan said. “How is he today?”

  The woman took a long, pensive drag on her cigarette, then reached over to tap ash into the sink. “Pretty much the same. He asked for Froot Loops this morning, but that’s been about it. He’s playing in Shelby’s room now. I told him you were coming.”

  “If it’s all right with you,” Fiona said gently, “I’d like to talk to him one-on-one. It seems to work better that way.”

  The young woman pitched her cigarette butt into the sink and gazed at Fiona for a long moment. She started to say something, then stopped herself and looked at the floor. She crossed her arms and cleared her throat before looking up at Fiona with glistening blue eyes. Again, Fiona was struck by her resemblance to Shelby.

  “We can certainly leave the door open if you’d be more comfortable, Mrs. Sherwood. But I’d like to minimize distractions.”

  “Just call me Annie,” the woman said, swiping at her cheeks. “And whatever you need to do is fine.” She pushed off from the counter and padded out of the kitchen.

  As they walked through the house, Sullivan paused briefly to show Fiona the living area just off the front door. It contained a royal blue sectional sofa, an oak wood coffee table, and a matching entertainment center. A large television inside the cabinet was tuned to CNN, but the sound was muted.

  “Colter was seated there,” Sullivan said, pointing to a denim beanbag chair beside the table.

  “And the lighting conditions?” Fiona asked.

  “The blinds were open,” Annie said from the doorway. “And the overhead light was on.” She flipped the wall switch to demonstrate, and the room brightened considerably.

  Fiona looked from the beanbag chair to the front door. Sullivan was right. The boy almost certainly saw something.

  Annie led them to the bedroom wing of the house, which was even darker than the rest and smelled like stale cigarette smoke. “My mom’s been cleaning nonstop,” she said as they neared the vacuum noise that drifted from one of the ba
ck rooms. “She drove up from Albany Monday night.”

  Annie paused beside the first doorway. “Colter, hon. The artist lady’s here to see you.”

  Fiona glanced into the bedroom and saw a boy with sandy blond hair sitting cross-legged on the carpet. He wore green Incredible Hulk pajamas, and Fiona wondered whether he was ready for bed or simply hadn’t dressed today. He didn’t look up from his project, a multilayered Lego structure that appeared to be some kind of staging area for his many plastic dinosaurs.

  Annie gazed at her son for a few moments before shifting her attention to Fiona. “Well. I guess we’ll leave you to it.”

  Fiona nodded and entered the room. The lilac-painted walls matched the floral-print spread and pillow sham on Shelby’s twin bed. A white wicker desk sat beneath a window, and Fiona noticed gray smudges on the windowsill where someone had dusted for latent prints. Beside the bed was a second windowsill, also smudged. Gold thumbtacks were pinned to the woodwork, each spaced about one inch apart. From every tack dangled a woven bracelet made of brightly colored embroidery thread. The intricately patterned bracelets were in various stages of completion, and Fiona stared at them a moment, thinking they were just the sort of thing she’d enjoyed making as a kid.

  She chose a spot on the carpet far enough away from Colter to give him a sense of space. He still hadn’t looked up from his dinosaurs or in any way acknowledged that he had a visitor.

  “Hi, Colter,” she said casually, mirroring his cross-legged posture on the floor. “My name’s Fiona. I’d like to hang out with you for a while if it’s okay.”

  Colter said nothing, but he stole a glimpse of her from beneath his cowlick.

  She unzipped her leather case and pulled out a wooden board. It was four boards, actually, fitted together with brass hinges. Folded, the board measured twelve inches by twelve, the perfect size to fit inside a carry-on bag. Fiona unfolded the flaps and slid several brass fasteners into place, creating a two-foot-square work surface. Her grandfather had created the drawing board in his woodshop last summer, and Fiona considered it a clever feat of engineering. The brass fasteners that held the pieces rigid also served as clips for photographs or other visual aids. There was a shallow groove for pencils, and a notch at the top where a light could be attached if needed.

  Colter didn’t look up, but his hands had stilled.

  Fiona pulled out a cardboard tube and unrolled a thick sheet of vellum-finish watercolor paper. She clipped it to the board and then dug a graphite pencil from her bag, along with a small container of Play-Doh. She spotted her FBI Facial Identification Catalogue and placed it within easy reach on the carpet. She preferred to work without it, but sometimes it came in handy when young children or non-native English speakers struggled to describe something they’d seen. A six-year-old boy might not know the term “receding chin,” but he could point to a picture.

  Fiona then rummaged through her collection of Beanie Babies and selected a soft green dragon with purple spikes on his back. It was the closest thing she had to a dinosaur, and she plopped it on top of her drawing board. She made a quick sketch of the dragon and glanced at Colter. His attention was riveted to her paper.

  “What’s your favorite dinosaur?” she asked him.

  He tipped his head to the side, giving the question ample consideration.

  “Mine’s triceratops,” she told him, quickly drawing one. It ended up looking more like a rhinoceros than a dinosaur, but she had Colter’s attention.

  “I like velociraptor,” he mumbled.

  Fiona’s heart skipped a beat, but she nodded gamely. “I’m not sure I know that one. Is he the guy in your hand there?”

  “That’s pachycephalosaurus.”

  Whoa. So much for limited verbal skills. Fiona took a closer look at the dinosaur toys and noticed they’d been divided into camps. Her prehistoric animal trivia was rusty, but she was pretty sure he had them grouped into meat eaters and plant eaters.

  Colter scooped up several of the dinos and scooted closer to Fiona. “Here,” he said, dumping them on the carpet beside her. “These are the best ones.”

  One by one, Fiona drew each plastic toy, quizzing Colter about them as she went. He was a font of information.

  “I draw people sometimes, too,” she said as she shaded a T-Rex. “I’d like to draw the person you saw at the door after school Monday. You think you could help me do that?”

  Colter sat across from her on the carpet now. He bowed his head.

  Fiona removed the dinosaur picture and replaced it with a clean sheet. She brought her knees up and rested the drawing board on them so he wouldn’t be distracted by it. “Will you help me, Colter?”

  “I didn’t see him,” he muttered.

  Fiona tried to keep her voice relaxed. She didn’t want Colter to sense the pressure, although clearly he already did. “It’s okay,” she said. “Just tell me anything you can.”

  He sat inert.

  “Colter? Do you remember someone coming to the door Monday?”

  A slight nod.

  “What color hair do you remember?” Asking about characteristics in the abstract was less threatening, and hair color was the trait most witnesses talked about first.

  “Brown,” he whispered.

  Brown hair.

  “Okay.” She leaned forward to hear his quiet voice. “What else did you see?”

  “He was big.”

  “All right. That’s good, Colter.” But she didn’t start drawing yet. Lots of people would seem “big” to a child seated on the floor, particularly a scared child. “Can you remember what he looked like?”

  The silence stretched out as Colter stared at his lap. A tear splashed onto his pajama pants, and he rubbed it in with a pudgy thumb. Fiona’s chest tightened.

  “He said not to tell.”

  “It’s okay to tell me, Colter. What else do you remember?”

  “He made Shelby cry.” The boy’s voice caught, and he hunched his shoulders.

  “It’s okay.” Her heart was breaking. “Take your time.”

  “He sticked his knife in my face!” A sob erupted from the depths of his little body. “He said don’t tell about him or he’ll come cut out my tongue.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Jack hadn’t expected her to be so young.

  He watched Fiona Glass from across the darkened room, gathering details and filing them away in his brain: five-eight, average build—though it was difficult to tell because of the suit. Hair, light brown. Skin, pale. Full, pink lips illuminated by the glare of the slide projector.

  He listened to her talk, not really caring about the words, as she stood beside the lectern and clicked through slides. Her voice was clear and confident, no discernable accent. He knew she was from California, but her businesslike demeanor didn’t gel with his idea of an art teacher from the land of fruits, flakes, and nuts.

  She turned to face the class, and her gaze skimmed over the bodies slumped in chairs throughout the lecture hall. She used a laser pointer to highlight something on the screen, something that excited her, judging by her tone. But the windowless room was warm and dim, and Jack knew from his own college days how that combination could put a person to sleep, especially one who’d been up half the night drinking beer.

  Unfazed by her students’ drowsiness, she continued to hammer away at her point about humanism. She made another visual sweep of the room, and this time her gaze landed on him. Her speech faltered a moment, and he could tell she was wondering why a guy his age had appeared in her lecture hall to eavesdrop on a discussion of Florentine painters.

  A bell sounded in the outer hallway, and the room jolted to life. Students stood, yawned, stretched, and shouldered backpacks so they could be on their way to the next gig.

  Jack leaned against the wall and waited until the last sloppy coed had trudged out, leaving him alone with Fiona Glass.

  She had her hair pulled back in a fancy braid. With efficient movements, she packed her slide carousel into
a cardboard box and loaded it into a briefcase. Then she threw her coat over her arm and crossed the carpeted lecture room to his place by the door.

  “May I help you?”

  “That depends,” he said, looking her up and down. From a distance, she resembled a tax attorney, but up close like this he could see there was more to the story. That dull brown hair was actually more of a reddish gold, and the body he’d dismissed as average was straining against her suit in all the right places.

  “Depends on?” She watched him impatiently, and he could see she didn’t appreciate the way he was checking her out.

  “Are you Fiona Glass?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jack Bowman.” He held out a hand. “We spoke on the phone.”

  She glanced down at his hand but didn’t take it. Amused by her attitude, he propped a shoulder against the wall and crossed his arms.

  “I thought I made myself clear,” she said tersely. “I’m not taking any more cases right now.”

  “That’s not what you said,” he pointed out. “You said you were on another case right then, and I have to assume that’s finished because I saw your drawing on Fox News yesterday.”

  She huffed out a breath. “Mr. Bowman—”

  “Jack.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Jack—”

  “Why don’t we go have a cup of coffee? I’ll tell you about my case.”

  “As I said on the phone, Jack, I can’t help you. You’ll have to find someone else.”

  He studied her face. She felt annoyed with him—that much was clear. But he was picking up something else here, too. Like she was afraid of him for some reason.

  Okay, fair enough. Six-foot stranger corners her at her workplace and demands a meeting. Hell, she sketched perverts and murderers for a living. Maybe she was skittish with men. He decided to try a different tactic.

  Jack reached into the back pocket of his Levi’s and pulled out a leather billfold. He opened it and slipped out a dog-eared business card. He gave it to her. Since moving back to his hometown, Jack had found few occasions to use the cards because most people he dealt with knew him on sight. But this woman needed reassurance.