Trace Evidence

Roughhewn shelves held pottery and woven baskets in all shapes and sizes and a collection of hummingbirds set on top of the fireplace mantle. Fresh wildflowers were in vases everywhere and the room was scented with their sweet fragrance.

The total effect should have been chaotic and cluttered, but instead the room radiated a sense of balance and serenity.

As he looked around, taking it all in, he felt some of the day’s pressures easing. His shoulder muscles seemed to unkink a little and the burn that had smoldered in the pit of his stomach for the last month dissipated somewhat.

“Please, come on into the kitchen and I’ll put the coffee on.”

He followed her into a cozy kitchen as colorful and unique as the living room. She gestured him to a small wooden table, then busied herself with the coffeemaker.

He noticed a shelf above the kitchen sink filled with healthy plants of various types. “You must have quite a green thumb,” he said.

“I like growing things.”

He leaned back in the surprisingly comfortable wooden chair and viewed her from top to bottom, taking in the length of her slender back and the curve of shapely hips beneath the dress. “I’m surprised we haven’t run into each other before now.”

She turned from the coffeepot and flashed him a grin. “I try not to run into the police, Officer James.”

“Call me Clay,” he said. “Whenever you say Mr. or Officer James, I think you’re talking to my father.”

“All right, then Clay it is. And I don’t go into town very often, just when I need groceries or art supplies and occasionally to visit with Alyssa at the Redbud.”

He looked at her in surprise. “You know my cousin Alyssa?”

“She and I have become good friends recently, since I moved back from New York. I try to have her to dinner out here at least once every couple of weeks.”

“That’s nice. Alyssa could use more friends. So, you didn’t like the Big Apple?”

She hesitated a moment before replying. “No…it wasn’t my cup of tea.” There was something in her tone that forbid him to ask any more questions on that particular topic.

“But you’re originally from Cherokee Corners?” He was aware that he was talking more to her than he’d talked to anyone in the last several weeks, but she was easy to talk to. Something about her soft, seemingly accepting demeanor invited conversation.

“Born and raised here. You were several years older than me, so we didn’t run in the same crowd.”

“What’s with the hummingbirds?” he asked, noting that several glass figurines hung at the window over the sink.

“The hummingbird is one of my totem animals.”

He was grateful when she didn’t elaborate. He didn’t want to hear about totems and spirituality, about old Cherokee ways and the voice of the elders. It was these kinds of things that he’d fought about with his mother just before she’d disappeared.

He was suddenly sorry he’d followed his impulse to come inside, but now that the coffee was finished brewing, he wasn’t sure how to leave gracefully. Just one fast cup, then I’m out of here, he thought.

As she reached up high in a cabinet to pull down two stoneware mugs, he couldn’t help but notice the slender curve of her calves beneath the length of her dress.

Although he’d tried his best to immerse himself in his work as he’d taken samples and photographed her classroom, he’d been acutely conscious of her presence the entire time. Not only had her exotic fragrance gone directly to his head, but he’d been impressed by her quiet and calm in the face of such devastation.

“I appreciate you not being one of those hysterical women,” he said as she sat a mug of steaming coffee before him.

“Cream or sugar?” He shook his head negatively and she joined him at the table. “What’s to be hysterical about? What’s done is done. My screaming and yelling wouldn’t have put the classroom back in order. I’m just sorry so many of the books appeared to have been torn up. It will be months before we can get more books and then only if extra money can be squeezed out of the budget.”

He took a sip of the coffee. It was good—hot and strong the way he liked it. “You said you watched a lot of television, but I noticed there wasn’t a TV in the living room.”

She smiled and the beauty of that smile hit him square in the pit of his stomach. “Ah, you’ve discovered my guilty pleasure. I have a little ten-inch set in my bedroom and am notorious for watching it for a couple of hours before I fall asleep.” Her dark eyes gazed at him for a long moment. “But I’m sure you’ve been far too busy lately to even think about television programming.”

“Yeah, it’s been a long six weeks.”

“Any breaks in your mother’s disappearance?”

“Not really, although my sister Savannah found two cases in Oklahoma that are so similar it’s eerie.”

“Really?” She leaned forward and he caught another whiff of her scent.

“In fact, one of those cases is what brought Savannah and her fiancé, Riley, together.” He took another sip of his coffee, wishing she’d lean back in her chair so he couldn’t smell her, so he couldn’t see the dark length of her eyelashes, the dewy moisture of her lips.

What on earth was wrong with him? Why was Tamara Greystone making him think of things he hadn’t thought of in a very long time…like hot, eager kisses and silky hair tangled around his fingers, and warm, slender curves pressed against his body? Why was he talking so much when normally he had nothing much to say to anyone?

For just a moment, as he’d looked into her large, dark gray eyes, the pain, the anger, the uncertainty that had ruled his life for so long had momentarily ebbed. He reached for it now, the pain chasing away any inexplicable desire he might feel for Tamara.

“Two years ago Riley Frazier’s mother disappeared under the same kind of circumstances as my mother. Riley’s father had been hit over the head. Unfortunately, he was killed. Riley’s mother was nowhere to be found. Some of her clothing was missing and the police assumed she was responsible for Riley’s father’s death.”

“Sounds exactly like what happened to your parents, although thankfully your father wasn’t killed.”

Clay nodded, and swallowed hard against the knot of emotion that twisted in him at thoughts of his mother. He remembered that night almost six weeks ago when he’d been called to his parents’ ranch. His father had been taken away in an ambulance and his mother hadn’t been anywhere to be found. He’d known then that something terrible had happened not only to his father, but to his mother as well.

“True, although he’s still recuperating. Unfortunately, he doesn’t remember anything about that night. Anyway, Riley’s mother’s body was found a week ago in Sycamore Ridge on some property he was excavating for building a home.”

“How tragic,” Tamara replied. “Did anyone find out what had happened to her?”

“According to the medical examiner, she’d been dead for about four months.”

“Four months…but didn’t you say she went missing two years ago?”

Clay nodded. “We don’t know what happened to her between the time of her disappearance and the time of her murder.”

“Murder?” Tamara’s voice was a soft whisper.

“Yeah, her skull was smashed in, just like her husband’s had been two years before.”

Tamara wrapped her fingers around her mug. He noticed that her fingers were long and slender, and her nails just long enough to be completely feminine. “You said three cases. What’s the third?”

“Two years before Riley Frazier’s mother went missing a woman in Sequoia Falls also disappeared under the same exact circumstances. The husband was hit over the head and killed, and she was gone, along with some of her personal belongings. She still hasn’t been found.”

“So, maybe she’s still alive. Just like it’s possible your mother is still alive.” Her voice rang with hope that he desperately wanted to grab on to.

“That’s the only thought that keeps me getting up in the morning.” He took another drink of the coffee, then continued, “I feel like I’m working against a bomb with a ticking clock, but the problem is I don’t know who set the timer, or how much time is left. I just feel so damned helpless.” Again, he felt a ball of emotion pressing tight against his chest.

She reached across the table and lightly touched one of his hands. “You’ll find her, Clay.”

He pulled his hand from her touch, finding it not only distracting, but disturbing as well. The touch had been too warm, too soft.

He took a drink of his coffee, his thoughts returning to his mother. Yes, eventually he’d find her, but would he find her in time? Would he find her dead or alive?

And what in the hell was he doing here sipping coffee and baring his soul to a woman he didn’t know at all?

Tamara could tell the exact moment he turned off. His black eyes went blank and his jaw muscles tightened and she knew their conversation had come to a halt. Sure enough, he downed the last drop of coffee from his mug and stood.

“Thanks for the coffee,” he said. “I’ve got to get going.”

She followed him to the front door. Even his walk looked uptight despite the fact that she couldn’t help but notice that his jeans fit quite nicely on his long legs and rear end.

“One of the other officers will be in touch with you when they have anything on the vandalism.”

“Thank you, Clay, for all your help.”

“Just doing my job,” he replied as he stepped out of the door. “Good night, Tamara.”

“Good night, Clay.”

She stood on her front porch long after his van had disappeared from sight.

It had been a long time since she’d felt a spark of physical attraction toward a man. But the moment Clay had stepped into the classroom and introduced himself, she’d felt a definite spark of warmth deep in the pit of her stomach.

The last time she’d found herself physically attracted to a man she’d allowed herself to be swept into a relationship that had not only ended in heartache, but had also left her questioning her values and the very essence of who she was.

She looked up at the moon peeping through the branches of the ancient trees. Good old Maxwell Bishop. He’d been her agent for six months before they had become lovers. He’d done amazing things for her career as an artist, but in the four months they had been a couple, he’d nearly destroyed her self-identity.

According to everything she’d heard about Clay, he’d be a danger to her in much the same way. This was one particular spark she intended to ignore.

Not that it mattered. Clay had made it quite clear that others would handle her case from here on out. Cherokee Corners wasn’t that small a town. The odds of her and Clay running into each other again were minimal.

Reluctantly, she left the night air and went back inside the cabin. She had just finished washing the coffee mugs to put back in the cabinet when the phone rang.

She hurried from the kitchen to the sofa and picked up the cordless from the end table. “Hello?”

“Are you all right?” Alyssa Whitefeather’s voice filled the line.

“Bad news travels fast in this town,” Tamara replied. “How did you hear about it?”

“I heard between a hot fudge sundae and a banana split.” Alyssa owned the Redbud Bed and Breakfast. The top two floors of her establishment were guest rooms and the bottom floor was Alyssa’s living quarters and an ice cream parlor. “Burt Creighton stopped in for a cup of coffee and was talking about the mess in your classroom.”

“It was a mess,” Tamara agreed.

“You must have been terrified when you saw it.”

Tamara thought of that moment when she’d first viewed the vandalized room. “Actually, it didn’t scare me at all,” she said. “Mostly I just felt sad for whomever had done such a terrible thing.”

“Well, it frightened me when I heard about it,” Alyssa replied.

There was something in her friend’s voice that sent a flutter of disquiet through Tamara. “Why? Have you seen something, Alyssa?”

Alyssa laughed, the laughter sounding forced. “Oh, you know me. I’m the local nutcase in town. I’m always seeing things that aren’t there, having visions that don’t make sense. I should probably be on medication.”

“Having a pity party, are we?”

This time Alyssa’s laugh was genuine. “Maybe a little one,” she admitted. “It’s just been a bad week,” she added.

Tamara heard the weariness in her friend’s voice. Over the course of their friendship Alyssa had confided in Tamara that she’d always suffered visions. Since Rita James’s disappearance the visions had increased in frequency and intensity.

“I’ll tell you what I think you need,” Tamara said. “You need dinner tomorrow night with a friend.”

“I can’t do that,” Alyssa protested. “Friday nights are the busiest of the week in the ice cream parlor.”

Tamara frowned thoughtfully. She knew there was no way she could talk Alyssa into closing up shop on a Friday night. “Okay, then how about we meet at the café about four. You can get back to work by five or five-thirty when your Friday night rush usually begins.”

“That sounds good,” Alyssa replied after a moment of hesitation. “I could use a little break. So, I’ll see you tomorrow about four. And Tamara, do me a favor and be extra careful.”

“Don’t you worry about me. I’m fine.”

With a murmur of goodbyes, the two hung up. It was getting late enough Tamara knew she should go to bed, but her head was too filled with thoughts to allow sleep.

She got up from the sofa and went into the small bedroom. She took off the traditional tear dress and hung it in the closet next to half a dozen others. She usually only wore the dresses on Tuesday and Thursday evenings when she taught her adult Native American cultural classes, or for special occasions and ceremonies.

She pulled on her nightie, a short yellow silk sheath with spaghetti straps, then returned to the kitchen for a glass of ice water.

While she sat at the table, a nice light breeze breathed through the window to caress her. The cabin had no air-conditioning except a window unit in the bedroom. She rarely ran it, preferring her windows opened and the sweet, forest-scented night air coming inside.

But tonight, with Alyssa’s pressure for her to take care, she finished her ice water, then closed the window and locked it. She did the same with the other windows in the cabin, then went into her bedroom and turned the window unit air conditioner on low.

She got into bed, although thoughts still tumbled topsy-turvy through her head. She had no idea what to anticipate when she returned to school the next day. The only thing she knew for sure was that she would not be teaching classes in her own classroom.

She remembered Clay’s question about students she might have that might nurse a grudge against her. Nobody specific came to mind, but her class was filled with wise guys and underachievers.

There were also some gems in the class, students who were taking the summer classes in order to graduate early or to fill the long summer days.

It was the long summer nights that far too often lately filled Tamara with longing. She was thirty years old and more and more felt the desire for a family. But in order to have a family, she’d have to first find a good man and that had been a problem.

She’d become wary since her experience with Max. And in the two years since Max, she had mentally formed a picture of the kind of man she wanted in her life. Alyssa always told her no such man existed, that she was too picky and her expectations were too high.

She rolled over on her back and stared up at the ceiling, a vision of Clay James filling her mind. Physically, he was everything she’d ever hope to find in a man.

As she thought of the way his shoulders had filled out his shirt, the lean hips in those tight blue jeans, she could swear the temperature of the room rose by several degrees.

But she knew better than to get her hormones racing where Clay James was concerned. According to Alyssa the only thing that interested her cousin came in test tubes and evidence sample bags.

According to Clay’s own mother he was an angry man who had turned his back on his Native American heritage. Tamara had attempted to do the same thing for four months to please the man she’d thought she’d loved, but she’d been unable to sustain the rejection of her Cherokee blood. She would never attempt it again.

No, Clay James wasn’t her dream man, either. Her dream man was still out there somewhere, waiting for the winds of fate to bring them together. Tamara was a patient woman and she’d learned long ago not to try to hurry fate, but to accept each day as a gift.

Rita James had lost track of how many days she’d been held captive. She hadn’t known how long she’d been unconscious, but when she’d finally come to and realized she was being held prisoner, she’d begun to keep track of the days by the meals that appeared through a slot in the steel door. Breakfast…sometimes lunch…and dinner…a day had passed.

But tonight she couldn’t remember whether it had been twenty-two days or thirty-two days and the fact that she couldn’t remember for sure frightened her as much as anything that had happened so far.

She feared she was losing her mind, and that was all she had left. Her beloved husband, Thomas, had been taken from her…murdered. She remembered seeing him lying motionless on their living room floor, blood everywhere. She knew he was dead, then she’d been grabbed from behind and that was the last thing she remembered until she’d awakened in this room.

This mockery of a room, she thought as she sat in the middle of the bed. When she’d first awakened from her drugged sleep, she’d thought she was at home in her own bed. The bedspread was the same, the bed was the same, even the nightstand and Tiffany-style lamp were the same as what she had in her own room.

However, this wasn’t her room. Her bedroom had a window where sweet morning light crept in and moonlight whispered good-night. Her bedroom had no steel door with a lock. This was a stage setting…a facade, a fake built by a madman who held her hostage, a madman who had yet to tell her why she was here or what he wanted from her.

Initially she’d had hope. Her daughter Breanna was a vice cop, her other daughter, Savannah, a homicide detective and her son, Clay, was a crime-scene investigator. She’d hoped they would find her. She’d hoped there would be enough clues to lead them to her, but with each day that passed, her hope grew dimmer and dimmer.

Twenty-two days or thirty-two? How had she managed to lose track? Thomas…Thomas…her heart cried out for her husband and the life they’d shared together, the future they had anticipated spending together.

Even if she managed to get out of this windowless, locked room, even if eventually she was found, there would be no Thomas waiting for her.

Tears burned at her eyes as she realized no matter what happened, her life would never be the same again. Her tears were also for her children, who she knew must be suffering all kinds of agony trying to find out what had happened to her.

The sound of her sob was welcomed in this silent tomb. The utter silence of her days and nights had the potential to drive her utterly mad. She’d always been a woman who had valued a certain amount of silence, but this complete isolation was soul-damaging.

The only time she had any human contact at all was when the slot in the steel door would open and two black-gloved hands would slide in a tray of food.

Over and over again she’d begged him to say something to her, anything, her hunger for interaction so great. But no word was ever spoken. The tray slid in, the door slammed shut and she was once again left alone in the killing silence.

Help me to remain strong, she prayed. Eventually she would learn why she was being held here, what was wanted from her. The terror of the unknown was with her every minute of every day.

Please, please keep me strong. She knew sooner or later the madman with the black-gloved hands would show his face, would make demands and she prayed she would be strong enough to survive.

Chapter 3

Decorative rocks. Clay spent most of his morning chasing down names on lists of customers who had ordered the kind of decorative rocks he’d found around his father’s chair in his parents’ living room and in Riley Frazier’s parents’ living room.

It was the only real evidence he had from the two crime scenes that had left one man dead, one man severely wounded and two women missing. One of those women, Riley Frazier’s mother, had since been found dead and Clay felt the pressure of trying to make sense of what little had been left behind at each crime scene.

He was still waiting for test results on trace evidence that had to be sent to a lab in Oklahoma City. But he knew the lab was backed up and it might be weeks before he got definitive test results.

“Clay?”

He looked up from the list of quarry customers he’d obtained to see his sister Savannah standing in the doorway of the lab.

“You have any more for me on the McClane fiber?”

He nodded as his sister approached where he sat at his desk. “Unfortunately the only thing I can tell you is that it’s one hundred percent cotton.”

“That’s it?” she asked, a frown creasing her brow.

“Afraid so.” He sighed in frustration and raked a hand through his hair. “I’ve got a single fiber for you on a serial murder case and a handful of pebbles to try to find out what happened to Mom.”

“You can only work with what you have, Clay,” Savannah said softly. “That’s all any of us can do.”

“But it’s not enough.” Anger rose up inside him, the anger of utter impotence. Somehow, someway, he couldn’t help but think somebody had missed something…a vital piece of evidence that might lead them to their mother.

“Glen should have let me process the scene initially,” he said, his anger evident in his voice.

“You know that wasn’t a good idea,” Savannah said. “And you know your team is good. If there had been anything there to find, they would have found it.”

“At least we have the rocks from Mom and Dad’s house and from Riley’s parents’ home,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s not much in the form of a smoking gun. We don’t even know if the perpetrator of whatever has been going on with the missing women is from here, from Sycamore Ridge where the Frazier’s lived, or from Sequoia Falls where the first incident occurred. Dammit, we don’t have any idea at all what’s going on.”

Savannah laid a hand on his shoulder. “I know you’re hurting, Clay. We’re all hurting and we’re all doing the best we can to find her.”

Clay nodded, but he knew his pain was different from his sisters’ pain. They hadn’t fought with Rita the very last time they’d seen her alive.

They hadn’t said things that needed to be left unsaid, that now might never get the chance to be unsaid. Savannah and Breanna missed her, were frightened for her, but they didn’t live with the regrets that were slowly eating him alive.

“Have you had lunch?” she asked.

“Haven’t had time.”

“It’s going to be dinnertime soon, why don’t you give yourself a break and go get something to eat. Your brain doesn’t function as well when your stomach is empty.”

Clay stood from his desk, knowing she was right. His stomach had been growling for the past hour and the gnarl had become more and more difficult to ignore as time had passed.

He put away the reports he’d been reading from the quarries that had provided client lists, then left the small building that was an appendage to the back of the police station.

It had been six years ago, when Clay’s father, Thomas, had been chief of police that Thomas had decided the small town needed its own crime-scene investigators and crime lab.

Thomas had been not only a great chief of police, but also a fine politician, who’d convinced the town of the need and had actively gone after private donations to get what he wanted.