“You only have to look at my face to see how violent he can be. I’ve given him ample opportunities to turn himself around, but after this attack on me, he gave me no choice. I had to let him go. Not just for my own safety, but for the safety of anyone else in the department who crossed him. Like Frank Gray.”
Lowering his voice, he moved closer to Derby. “Those two couldn’t stand the sight of each other. Bowie had been fired. He had nothing to lose by killing his arch-enemy.”
Derby held up his hand. “Tom, maybe you shouldn’t say anything more without an attorney present.”
“Attorney?”
“I know about the trap you set for Bowie last night.”
He looked chagrined. “I’ll admit that wasn’t by the book, but Bowie had managed to avoid arrest for days. When he called, accusing me of abducting his daughter of all things, Frank hatched this plan to draw him out.”
“It was the ogre’s idea?”
“Yes. Frank was, well, I don’t want to speak disrespectfully, but he stepped over the line sometimes. I was leery of this plot he hatched, but Frank was convinced that it would work as nothing else would. ‘Bowie’s nuts about that kid,’ he said. So,” Barker said with a shrug, “I went along. I regret that decision now. Frank’s brilliant plan got him killed.”
Looking thoughtful, Derby tugged on his earlobe. “I’ve known John for a long time. I can’t see him shooting an unarmed man in the back of his head.”
“You didn’t see him last night. Whew! When he discovered that we didn’t have his daughter, he went apeshit, knocked me out cold. I don’t know what happened after that. I regained consciousness. Went looking for Frank. But Bowie’s place is almost uninhabitable unless you’re an alligator or a water fowl.”
“You didn’t check the shed?”
“Didn’t even see it. It’s dark as hell out there. I stumbled around, but finally gave up the search, thinking that maybe Bowie and Haskell had taken Frank with them when they cleared out. When I learned this morning how he’d been found, it made me sick.”
“I know that feeling,” Derby said dryly.
“Derby?”
He and Barker turned to see the subject of their conversation walking down the hallway toward them.
“Well, well, look who the cat dragged in.”
Bowie ignored Barker and spoke directly to Derby. “I need to see you immediately. Alone. It’s about him.” He angled his head toward the interrogation room, where the professor seemed to be pontificating to the deputies. “Back here.” He turned and walked away in the direction from which he’d come.
Without a word or backward glance at Barker, Derby followed Bowie’s long strides. Barker hurried to catch up. Derby said, “He said alone, Tom.”
“But you can’t just let him—”
“For the present, I can. I’ll get back to you.”
When John pushed open the door to the empty office he’d temporarily commandeered, Beth was saying into her cell phone, “I hope you’ll listen to this message, Richard. Brady is ignoring the voice mails I’ve left him. The Crissy Mellin story has taken a shocking twist. She’s alive, and sitting not five feet from me. She’s alive and well. It’s seventeen minutes to air time. I advise you get that message to Brady.”
As she clicked off, John met her gaze. She acknowledged his and Derby’s entrance with a nod, but John knew the other man hadn’t noticed. He was staring with stupefaction at the young woman with strawberry-blond hair. She and her mother were sitting side by side in metal folding chairs. Crissy was composed, Carla less so.
After the stunning discovery that Crissy was alive, John and Beth had hustled them into his car. The first thing he’d asked was, “Were you even kidnapped, Crissy?”
“Yes, Mr. Bowie.”
Carla had declared, “It’s not against the law to pretend you’re dead. I looked it up.”
His angry response had been to tell her to shut up. Looking across at Crissy, to whom Beth had yielded the passenger seat, he’d said, “I’ve lived in hell over you for three years. Three years. Why didn’t you tell me? Tom Barker? Somebody?”
Before Crissy could say a word, Carla had pounced. “I had to protect my girl from that psycho, that’s why. By the time she escaped, Billy Oliver was already dead. There was nothing we could do for him.
“But the real culprit was still out there. Her identity had been blasted all over the media. We were afraid he’d come after her. Keeping her hidden was the only way she would be safe.”
John had experienced warring emotions. The girl was alive. She wasn’t dead from tortures he’d had recurring nightmares about. But he’d had those nightmares because of their ruse, which had cost him dearly. He felt he had a right to be at least borderline outraged.
He’d taken out his anger on other motorists who didn’t get out of his way fast enough. During that hair-raising drive from Carla’s house to the sheriff’s office, Crissy had talked him and Beth through her ordeal.
Now he’d summoned Derby to listen to it. He made quick work of the introductions, then said to Crissy, “Tell Mr. Derby what you told Beth and me.”
In the first few minutes, she confirmed that she’d been abducted but had escaped five days later. Derby wanted to know, as John had, why she hadn’t come forward as soon as she’d escaped. She explained her and Carla’s reasoning, then said, “I understand why y’all would be mad at us for that, but I was so scared.”
Derby accepted that explanation for now. “How did it happen?”
“Mom asked me to go to the convenience store. It had been raining all day, but it had stopped, so I decided to walk. Billy came out of his house to see where I was off to. I asked him to come along, but he didn’t want to go because of the weather. We parted ways at his house. The last time I saw him, he was going inside.”
She told them that after she’d picked up the few items at the store and was headed home, a car had pulled to a stop beside her. The driver had lowered his window and told her she’d left something behind on the counter.
“He got out of his car, and that’s pretty much all I remember until I came to, lying on the floor in a building with corrugated tin walls. My hands and feet had zip ties around them.”
John looked over at Derby. “Sound familiar?”
Looking grim, Derby signaled for Crissy to continue. She described the scene in which they’d discovered Molly in detail down to the plastic sheeting lining the floor and the workbench with its array of surgical instruments. “He sterilized them each time he came to bring me a bottle of water and something to eat. Usually an energy bar.”
John interrupted. “He told Molly her great moment was going to be that night during the blood moon. But he kept you for days after the November seventh one. Why do you think that was?”