Crossfire Creek Read online

  Her brain had done it again; it was trying so hard to show her the man. And, as usual, she’d drawn the boots. Of course she had. She knew she’d recognize those boots if she ever saw them again. Ordinary tan hiking boots—there must be a million pairs of them on feet right now as she sat here—but this pair had a deep, long slash running through the fabric on the outer side of the right boot, like it had gotten caught on a jagged branch or the edge of a rock face. The left boot had a big amoeba-shaped blotch of white house paint covering half of the toe. And instead of regular laces, neon green and black paracord was laced through the eyelets.

  Stop it with the boots, already. The police want a face. The only way they’ll be satisfied is if Mom describes the man who tried to break in.

  But Mom hadn’t seen him, despite the lie she’d told the police. Joy-Lynn had.

  And his nasty monster face was locked away inside her stupid, useless brain.

  If she could just talk to Mr. Caine. He might be able to help her unlock it.

  She shakily flipped the page back to the tree, hurrying so Mom didn’t look over and see what she’d drawn. Mom had enough to worry about. She didn’t need to know Joy-Lynn’s memory was trying to bust through on top of everything else.

  9

  Aroostine stood in the visitor parking lot near the waterfall, spread out the map, and smoothed it over the hood of the truck. She drew an X over the approximate location of the Glassers’ apartment and a second X at the picnic site where the murder had occurred. The two X’s formed a more or less straight vertical line.

  She took a step back and peered down at the page.

  The circles Terry had drawn to indicate the clusters of cabins owned by the firefly enthusiasts were west of the murder site and the Glasser home and on the same approximate horizontal plane as the town of Crossfire Creek. She pursed her lips. If she were Marlene, she’d want to be as close to home and as far from the murder site as possible, as a matter of psychological comfort.

  She focused on the lower left area of Terry’s circles and traced her pen to the nearest bodies of water: a creek and a small lake. Judging by the poster tacked to Marlene’s bedroom wall, she was drawn to the water. The cabins situated closest to the creek were farther from the scene of the murder than those near the lake and were shielded from view by the mountain waterfall a little more than three miles from where she stood.

  A frisson of anticipation sparked at the base of her neck and rippled down her spine. Her heart rate ticked up a notch. Adrenaline coursed through her veins. Game time.

  She refolded the map, grabbed her canteen from the car, and a lightweight, foldable, waterproof backpack. Then she set out on the creek trail.

  She walked at a steady but leisurely pace, scanning both sides of the trail, not looking for anything in particular. She was acquiring a general sense of the environment. The trail itself was hard-packed and relatively flat but she expected that to change the further she went. Tall oak trees lined the path on both sides, their branches extending above the trail to create an open canopy overhead.

  When she reached the fork that led to the waterfall trail, she stopped and took a swig of water. As she approached the cabins that sat on the other side of a grassy meadow between the two trail loops, she decreased her pace. She heard the faint skitter of claws in the shrubs to her left and squatted by the edge of the trail for a closer look. A startled chipmunk peered out at her from between the deep-green leaves of a gnarled mountain laurel, its cheek pouches bulging with acorns.

  “Hello, little buddy.”

  She hoped to run into lots of chipmunks, squirrels, and white-tailed deer but not the Smokies' most famous inhabitant. She’d been keeping her eyes peeled for black bear tracks, droppings, and signs of dens and her fingers crossed that she didn’t encounter one of the big guys in person.

  She veered left. The distinctive song of a male wood thrush trilled out on the air and she scanned the trees ahead. She spotted the white- and brown-speckled breast, soft brown crown, and intelligent black eyes. If she weren’t hunting for the Glassers, she’d sit and listen to the birdsong for a spell, but she had work to do.

  She pressed on. She walked approximately eighty yards at a mild incline before the first of the cabins came into view. She was certain Marlene wouldn’t choose the first cabin. Much like the ladies’ room stall closest to the door, it would feel too exposed, too busy.

  She scanned the woods again, right to left, then left to right. To her right, a swath of broken twigs, scattered rocks, and trampled branches suggested someone had forged a diagonal path through the brush. She stepped off the trail and followed it. Several feet in, she stopped and crouched to examine a small pile of dead leaves that had been disturbed. Footsteps had kicked up the leaves and overturned them, so the sun-exposed, dried sides were down and the darker sides faced up.

  She reached out and touched a leaf. It didn’t crumble between her fingers. It was damp on top. It had been turned over recently, within hours most likely. In another day, the leaf would be completely dried out.

  She raised her eyes and searched the area at ankle height. A thin shrub listed to right, its branches bent and pointing seventy-five degrees to the right. Someone had brushed against the branches as they’d passed by.

  She stood and proceeded to the bush for a closer look. What she saw brought a smile to her lips. Two someones had passed this way.

  A patch of soft dirt showed the overlapping imprints of two pairs of shoes in the soil. Both narrow, both smaller than Aroostine’s own shoeprint; one, considerably smaller. Child-sized. There was an ever-present danger that a tracker will see what she expects to see. But even so … if she had to guess, she’d peg the prints as belonging to a woman and a preteen girl.

  The fine hairs on her forearms prickled and stood on end as if there were a breeze, but the air was still. Once upon a time, she would have looked inward for confirmation—a sign from her grandfather or her spirit animal. But not now. Aroostine had doubts and second guesses, Rue did not.

  Even though this path led her away from the cabins, she knew she was to follow it. So she did. Stealthily, almost silently, she trekked through the brush. After twenty minutes, she reached a creek. She weaved among the trees, following the ribbon of water that snaked through the forest.

  Then she saw them. A dark-haired woman and a girl sitting on the bank, their backs to her. The woman perched on a rock, her head bent over something in her lap. The girl had a sketchbook propped up on her bent knees and a paintbrush in her hand; she wore her hair in pigtails. One tied with a bright blue ribbon, one tied with a white ribbon.

  Aroostine clenched her fist in silent triumph. Gotcha.

  She crouched in the woods and waited. Patient. Still. Unblinking.

  When the girl packed up her art supplies and the woman closed her book, she stalked them through the woods, an unseen ghost, following their route back to the cluster of cabins. Too far away to hear their conversation, but close enough to pick up stray words.

  They stopped to rest on a fallen log, and she stopped, too. After several minutes it was clear they wouldn’t be moving on any time soon, so she crept, low and slow, through the hollow to eavesdrop on Marlene and Joy-Lynn.

  She’d known she would find them. She hadn’t expected it to be quite so easy. Almost too easy.

  10

  “I still don’t understand why we can’t go to the Qualla Boundary. We’ll be safe there. You know we can’t hide in these cabins forever.”

  Marlene glanced over at Joy-Lynn, who kept her eyes glued to the path as she trudged alongside her. She sounded much older than her eleven years—a fact that made Marlene’s heart constrict in her chest.

  “I know we can’t.”

  She had to tell Joy-Lynn some time. She might as well get it over with. She spotted a fallen tree stretched across a small dip in the earth just off the path. She detoured to the log and sat down, patting the rough bark beside her.

  “Let’s rest here for a
minute.”

  “Okay?”

  The caution and suspicion in her daughter’s tone gutted Marlene, but she pasted on a smile as Joy-Lynn plopped down next to her.

  “We need to leave town, sweetheart. As soon as my next pay hits the bank account, we need to move on. I was thinking we could go to California. Wouldn’t that be amazing?”

  “California? Like, a vacation?”

  She shook her head. “No. For good.”

  “But why? You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  She so badly wanted to protect Joy-Lynn from the truth, but she had to make her understand the danger they were in. She looped her arm around the girl’s narrow shoulders and pulled her into her side.

  “I did do something wrong. I lied, and told the police I saw the man who killed Mr. Costa. That was a bad idea—”

  “You were only trying to protect me.”

  “I was. But the thing is, honey, I can’t identify the man and neither can you. He could be anyone. We could walk right past him on the street. Or sit next to him on the bus. He could live on the Qualla for all we know. And … he doesn’t know I can’t identify him. So, we’ll always be in danger. He could decide he needs to … get rid of us to protect himself.”

  Joy-Lynn’s pale face went whiter still. “Get rid of us?”

  Crap. She’d gone too far.

  “Just think, Joy-Lynn. California. The ocean.”

  But Joy-Lynn would not be distracted. “This is all my fault.”

  She buried her face in her hands and sobbed, her shoulders heaving.

  “What? No, no, shhh.” Marlene rubbed circles on her back. “It’s not your fault at all.”

  “But if my brain weren’t broken, I’d be able to describe him to you, and you could describe him to the police.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why not? It’s true. I’m broken.”

  Marlene wrapped her hands around her daughter’s wrists and pulled her arms down so she could see the girl’s face. “Look at me.”

  She waited until Joy-Lynn raised her red-rimmed eyes and met her gaze. “You are not broken. Do you hear me? None of this is your fault. I’m the adult here. It’s my job to protect you. It’s your job to be a kid. And … to turn your clothes right-side-in before you put them in the wash.”

  Joy-Lynn managed a lopsided smile, but it faded quickly. “Do you really think we have to go away forever?”

  “I don’t know, baby,” she answered honestly. “We might.”

  “But if they find the guy …”

  “If they find the guy, we might be able to come back.”

  Joy-Lynn fell silent again. After a moment, she said, “If I could just talk to Mr. Caine. He could probably help me remember the man’s face.”

  Marlene winced. She’d had the same thought about Boyd Caine, more than once. But she didn’t think they could risk reaching out to the man. He was a mandatory reporter in the child welfare system; he might be obliged to turn them in. And she couldn’t take the chance she might lose custody of Joy-Lynn.

  She didn’t see a way out.

  Oh, crud, this changes everything.

  As Aroostine crouched in the hollow, hidden by the hillside, and listened to the Glassers’ conversation, the zing of victory gave way to a pang of disappointment. Marlene, far from being a neglectful parent, was simply trying to protect her daughter—an impulse Aroostine wished her own biological mother had felt, even once in her short life.

  So, now what? She couldn’t very well march them over to Ranger Painter and tell him to call the ISB. Marlene’s fear was legitimate, reasonable, and well-founded. She had a valid reason for running.

  Carole and Ellis had asked her to find them. Well, she’d found them. And now, she needed to help them. But first, she needed to announce her presence without giving them a heart attack.

  She hummed a few bars of “This Land Is Your Land” as she thrashed through the underbrush, snapping twigs and stomping her feet. If she managed to sneak up on the pair of them after this performance, they were more oblivious than two people on the run had any right to be.

  As she crested the gentle rise, both mother and daughter jumped up from the log they’d been sitting on, prepared to bolt.

  “Marlene, Joy-Lynn, wait!”

  Marlene turned and faced her with her left arm outstretched and her palm vertical, like a crossing guard. She lowered her right arm at a diagonal across Joy-Lynn’s chest. “Stop right there.”

  Aroostine stopped.

  “Do I know you?”

  “No. My name is Rue Jackman. Ellis Brown asked me to find you.”

  “Why?” Marlene demanded.

  “Because she’s worried about you and your daughter.”

  “No, why you?”

  “I’m a tracker. I find people.”

  Joy-Lynn tilted her head and studied her.

  Marlene was also studying her. “Can you lose people, too?”

  Aroostine smiled. “When necessary. I’m camping over in the national park. Why don’t you come back to my camper and we can talk about it?”

  The Glassers exchanged worried glances.

  “I’ll fix us lunch. I even have most of a pie from Pattie’s Pies.”

  “Apple?” Joy-Lynn asked.

  “Better. Cranberry-apple.”

  Joy-Lynn grinned.

  Marlene relaxed her shoulders an eighth of an inch. “Pattie’s cranberry-apple? In that case, lead the way, Ms. Jackman.”

  11

  Pat stood in the middle of the clearing where Demetrius Costa had died and squinted at the ground. There’d been no rain since the murder, and he could still see the rusty blood stains in the dirt, but only because he knew where to look.

  He turned and surveyed the area. He hadn’t had the chance to interview Marlene Glasser personally. He’d been way out on Cumberland Island National Seashore in Georgia investigating a tip about an alleged loggerhead sea turtle poaching ring when Park Ranger Luke Painter had called to let the Atlantic Field Office know a local criminal had been killed in his park.

  Pat was up next on the board, so he drew the case. Unfortunately, by the time he wrapped up the poaching matter, ferried back to the mainland, and made the seven-hour-plus drive from St. Mary’s to Great Smoky Mountains National Park, it was after four in the morning. When he knocked on Marlene Glasser’s door at sunrise, no one had answered. The crap-for-brains local police chief had scared off his only witness and given her a twelve-hour head start.

  Luke felt responsible for the fact that the Glasser woman had bolted, but, in the moment, Pat knew he’d have made the same call that Luke had made. The park ranger had stayed with the body and secured the area to prevent local law enforcement from contaminating the scene and to ensure the chain of custody remained intact with regard to the evidence.

  It was the right decision. It was always the right decision to safeguard the scene. If the local PD screwed up the crime scene, rendering evidence inadmissible or destroying it outright, your case was dead in the water. A local witness, who lived an eight-minute drive away, she’d be available any time. Or so the thinking went.

  Who could have predicted the aptly-named Dick Wagner would’ve spooked the Glasser woman so badly? Not Luke, and not Pat.

  He sighed. None of this changed the current reality that without someone to identify Costa’s murderer, his case was destined for a cold case file. He should have told Luke to request backup to secure the scene until he could get there and get himself over to the Glasser house to sit on the witness.

  Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Or, as his dear old dad would say, what’s done is done, now what do you intend to do, son?

  He scratched his nose, lost in thought, then walked up the hill to the stand of trees that Marlene Glasser said she’d hidden behind to watch the murder go down. Chief Wagner said the woman claimed not to have seen the shooter’s face. He shimmed into the tight copse of trees and looked down on the picnic area.

  He was up on a hill looki
ng down at the scene from a distance of no more than twenty feet. From this vantage point, even in fading light, even from behind the cover of trees, Marlene Glasser had enjoyed, for lack of a better word, a front row seat to the murder of Demetrius Costa. There was zero chance she hadn’t seen the man’s face. If she said otherwise, she was lying.

  But why report a murder if you’re going to refuse to cooperate with the investigation? Had the shooter seen her? Was she on the run because she feared Wagner’s ability to protect her as a witness? He couldn’t fault her for that impulse. But this wasn’t Wagner’s case, despite the man’s incessant posturing and meddling. The claim that the picnic area wasn’t National Park Service property was laughable. It might technically be National Forest land, but it sure as shooting wasn’t county land.

  He could protect Marlene and her daughter. He had access to United States Marshals, the federal witness protection program, safe houses, you name it. He just needed to find her.

  He shook his head. A murder investigation on its own was all-consuming. Add a missing persons investigation on top, and he was floundering. He pulled out his phone to call his Assistant Special Agent in Charge to ask for some help.

  The phone rang twice.

  “ASAC Collins.”

  “Sir, it’s Patton.”

  “You about ready to wrap it up out there and get your butt back here? There’s work to do.”

  He exhaled noisily. “Not quite. Any chance you can spare another set of hands? Maybe Munez? Or Jones?”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “No, sir.” He leaned against a tree and waited. He knew what was coming next.

  “For crying out loud, Banks, how many states does the Atlantic Field Office serve?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  Collins waited.

  Pat rolled his eyes. “Twenty-three, sir.”