Without a Trace Read online

  But I know the truth. He was angry that day. Angry at me for calling him a bad father and determined to watch after Annie all day on his own to prove me wrong. I tried to come out, tried to watch them, to take care of my child, but he yelled for me to go back inside the farmhouse. I can watch my own daughter, dammit! Better than you can, you mean old bitch—those were his words that day. Made me nervous, leaving her alone with him, but then again, there was this niggly, nasty part of me that wondered if he was right. I didn’t give him enough credit. I never let him watch the girls. And he blamed me for his drinking. Blamed me for how the farm was going under. You’re not the girl you used to be, he said. You changed. You made me depressed. You drove me to drink, you terrible woman.

  I was standing at the kitchen sink. Krissy was sitting on the floor by my ankles. Such a needy child, she was just like Annie, always desperate to be close to me even though she was almost ten at the time.

  Krissy was coloring in that book of hers, hair swooped around her face like a shield. That’s when I heard Andy outside yelling. Not screaming for help but shouting in anger. I recognized that sound. Had heard it before. Heard it so many times…Little Annie was throwing a tantrum again. She was only three, and any time she would go near the barn, she’d cry and scream to ride the horse.

  By the time I made it to the back door, I saw him yank her off her feet and toss her on the horse’s back. I couldn’t hear his words. But I imagined him saying exactly this: “There, you little brat! Just ride the damn thing! Are ya happy now?”

  Time slows down. It flexes and bends. It taunts me in my sleep. Oh, how I fucking hate time.

  I ran. Hard as I could, I took off across the field toward that horse.

  Here’s the strange thing: Annie wasn’t screaming on the back of that horse. She was laughing, wild and excited. Oh, how that girl loved horses…

  But then her face changed. That look—that look, I’ll never forget…it haunts me when I’m asleep. It haunts me when I’m awake.

  Eyes wide, her mouth in a troubled O. For a second, her eyes met mine. They were confused. Pleading. Please help me, mommy, that’s what those eyes were saying…

  Her eyes begged for me to save her. But then she fell, and her body shattered when it hit the ground.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Cop

  ELLIE

  My personal cell phone chimed on the dash as I veered right onto Meadow Lane. Frustrated, I whipped my cruiser to the side of the silent street. Street lamps glowed hazy and orange overhead, but the houses, despite their whimsical Victorian designs, were quiet and dark.

  “Officer James here,” I huffed into the phone, instantly realizing that I’d answered my personal phone the way I normally answered the on-call line.

  “Good! I was hoping you’d answer,” Sergeant DelGrande wheezed into the phone. “You’re on your way to see Mr. Nesbitt, aren’t you? I just got off the phone with Chad.”

  Rolling my eyes, I scanned the houses on the right side of the street. I had to be close. The mailbox beside me was 603. Martin Nesbitt lived in 609.

  “I am.”

  “Roland and Mike with you?” he asked.

  “Of course not. They stayed behind in the hotel. Roland’s probably drinking. Are you surprised?”

  “Turn around, Ellie, and go back to the hotel. And call me from your room when you get there. I know the guys give you a hard time, but they’re your partners. And you need back-up. You can go first thing in the morning,” he said, his voice suddenly deep and serious.

  I wanted to argue, but he had a good point. Barging in there alone was probably a bad idea. I couldn’t take the risk of shooting another man on the job, deserved or not. But Nova or Lily might need my help at this very moment…

  “But what if she’s in there, sarge? What if he’s hurting that little girl? We missed her call! Maybe we could have stopped her from being murdered.”

  “But we don’t know that she was killed, now do we? The blood we found belonged to a god damned cow. And I did an NCIC on her. Nova Nesbitt has a record. Maybe she staged this whole thing. Maybe she’s running in the opposite direction with the girl. She could be in South Carolina by now for all we know. We have to handle this carefully.”

  Damn. He was right. But still…I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was inside that house. “There’s a reason she was so scared. He has something to hide. I won’t know what that something is till I talk to him.”

  “Talk to him in the morning with your partners. You’re only a few hours away from daylight, anyway. Go sleep and then you can go back. Promise me you will wait, okay?”

  “I promise,” I groaned, hanging up. I dropped the phone on the passenger seat and gripped the wheel with both hands. I tried not to clench my teeth, but I couldn’t help myself. By the time this case was over, I’d need to see a dentist.

  Before I could change my mind, I nudged my cruiser door open and stepped out into the street.

  It won’t hurt to take a quick look at the house. Then I’ll go back to the hotel, I decided.

  The wind was vicious as I crossed in front of my cruiser and stepped onto the sidewalk. I didn’t have a jacket, so I tucked my head down to my chin as I moved beneath the shadowy trees that lined the houses on Meadow Lane.

  As I stole a glance up at the houses, the first words that came to mind were “old money”. These houses looked like family heirlooms, the kind that people could afford to fix up and take care of.

  I counted the house numbers on the mailboxes, finally approaching a baby blue Victorian house. 609 Meadow Lane.

  Remembering the rundown cabin on Appleton Farm, it was hard to believe that Nova Nesbitt had traded this to move to Northfolk. The two towns couldn’t be any more different from each other. Northfolk was a poor mountain town and Granton was a rising American suburb. It looked like the perfect place to raise a child. The fact that Nova didn’t want that further confirmed my theory that she feared the man who lived here.

  She reminded me of Mandy Clark; she too had been so desperate and fearful that day…but I hoped finding Nova didn’t lead me into making another mistake.

  Sarge was right; I needed to bring my partners with me. But I found myself scooting in closer, staring at the hulking house before me … Was there a killer inside?

  The house was surrounded by a wrought-iron fence. Several lights were on, upstairs and down, and as I peered closer through the grates, I realized that the house was actually sectioned off into apartments. But which one did Martin and Nova live in?

  In the dim gray light, I looked for movement behind the windows. Was he in there somewhere, hiding Nova? I considered Lily Nesbitt. Was she behind these walls, too, just a few feet away from safety?

  It looked like there were individual mailboxes and name plates on the far right and left-hand entrances to the house. I moved up and down the sidewalk, trying to read them in the dark. It was pointless. I couldn’t see a damn thing out here and I needed to go back now…

  I was just about to walk away when the on-call cell phone buzzed loudly in my pocket. I whipped it out and silenced it. Damn you, sarge. He’d probably tried my personal phone to make sure I was headed back to the hotel, and when I didn’t answer, he’d called the on-call phone.

  I started walking back toward my car, so I could call him back, and that’s when I saw the black Chevy Silverado parked on the opposite side of the street. Clara Appleton had said she’d seen a big black truck pull in during the early morning hours before Nova had gone missing, I recalled.

  I looked left and right to make sure no one was watching, then I crossed the street. The windows in the truck were dark, and it sat so high up off the ground I couldn’t see inside.

  Screw it. I placed my right foot on the nerf bar and pushed off the pavement with the other foot. I squinted through the driver’s side window, then lost my footing and had to kick off the ground again. The front cab looked neat and clean. In the back, I was disappointed not to see a car sea
t, or anything to indicate that he’d transported Lily Nesbitt in this car.

  But suddenly, something on the back floorboard caught my eye.

  Breathless, I looked left and right again, making sure I remained unseen. Then I propped both feet on the nerf bar, cupped my hands around my face, and peered into the backseat of what I presumed was Martin Nesbitt’s truck. My jaw tightened with fear.

  A pair of little girl’s shoes were laying limply on the floor in the back. They were orange and sparkly.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Neighbor

  CLARA

  In the highest and most exposed part of the field, I walked to see my Annie. Her melodic laughter whistled through the trees. As I knelt down at the tree line, in front of her tiny grave marker, I could almost feel her standing over my shoulder, watching me with a curious, accusatory smile. Why, mama? Why did you let me fall?

  The fall had killed her. But Andy had facilitated the fall. Ultimately, though, I was responsible. I was her protector. Her mother. I should have dug my toes into the dirt, held my ground. Never should have left her with that man. I knew better, and that’s why I’d been so worried in the first place when he’d taken her out there…

  Ten years—that’s how long I waited to kill him. After Annie died, he eventually went back to his old ways—drinking and screaming. Setting the emotional tone in our family. I imagined our house was made of cards. One wrong move, and the whole thing would come tumbling down…

  I moved out of our bedroom and slept with Krissy, never leaving her side, even when she was older. She thought I was overprotective, sure, but she and I both knew the real reason. I couldn’t stand to lose another daughter.

  I stopped fighting with Andy. If he yelled or stomped, I grew quiet. I stared at him with such viciousness sometimes that I think it scared him. Hell, it scared me. There’s anger and then there’s anger, the kind of fury that burns deep inside your chest and has no place to go. Sometimes, I wondered if actual steam was emitting from my ears and nose.

  Andy took to leaving the house for long bouts of time—either on drinking benders or running around with that mistress of his. I fantasized about killing him so many times, but I didn’t…I didn’t think I had it in me.

  After Krissy left, I gave him most of our savings and told him to go stay with his mistress. I thought he’d put up more of a fight than he did, but he didn’t. He left. I thought he’d left for good…

  When he showed back up, he didn’t beg me to take him back and promise to change his drinking, cheating ways…he told me he was moving back in. He also told me that he blew through the savings I gave him.

  It’s strange how when you live with someone abusive, you get so used to it. What’s also strange is how quickly you become repelled by men like that once you escape…so, when he turned back up and he raised his fist…I raised a metal shovel and brought it down over his head.

  I didn’t mean to kill him. That initial smack was an accident…it was self-defense. But I just kept going…I wish I could say that it felt awful. Unnatural. But it didn’t. It felt like I was finally doling out justice for Annie.

  Maybe his evil and meanness slithered out from his body and was absorbed into my own.

  A monster lurks inside me. Or maybe I am the monster. Maybe I always have been…

  Every time I close my eyes, I can feel that shovel in my palm…I can see the red river of blood engulfing his entire face…

  “I got you something, angel eyes.” I blinked back tears and pressed a hand on my daughter’s flimsy marker. It was all I could afford at the time, with the farm going under, and after a while, I grew used to it, not wanting to replace the marker. It was silly—I was worried that if I disturbed it and put up a new one, she might not come back. That her ghost might become lost to me…

  In my hand, I held a pack of cheap plastic toys, the kind you can get for a few dollars. Wasn’t much, but I’d seen it on the shelf at Dollar Tree, and I’d spotted tiny black horses mixed among the sheep and chickens in the pack. My hands shook as I scooped the horses out, one by one. There were six of them in all. Tenderly, I lined them up on the grass in front of Annie’s marker.

  That damn horse. Its name was Midnight, a name we let Krissy choose. Should have been mad at the horse, but I couldn’t bring myself to get angry at an animal. Annie loved him. We took her to the zoo in St. Paul once, and instead of being interested in the real animals, she was drawn to a sparkly old carousel. Cost a dollar each time you rode. There were at least a dozen horses, with elaborate roses carved on their saddles and manes. She chose the plain black one without a saddle. Looking back, I wonder if she somehow knew a plain black horse would go and kill her…

  After the accident, Andy had put that beautiful creature down. I locked Krissy and I in my bedroom and turned on Mickey Mouse to drown out the sound of gunfire when he did it…

  “Clara?” Startled, I jerked my head around, surprised to see Sergeant DelGrande standing in the field behind me. It was early, barely daylight.

  He was standing with his legs apart, clutching his hat to his chest. His hair was thinner and grayer than it used to be and for the first time, I noticed the thickness of his jowls and the drooping of his shoulders. He’d always been such a kind man. Never could understand why he liked to hang around with Andy.

  “Sorry to interrupt you, but we need to talk about something important,” he said, solemnly. My heart fluttered in my chest.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The Cop

  ELLIE

  The entrance to the Nesbitt unit was in the back of the house. I hadn’t slept all night. The first thing I did when I saw the shoes was call Sergeant DelGrande back. He’d managed to wake up Judge Horrace and get a warrant issued based on what I found in the truck.

  “What if he’d been out there, Ellie? What if he’d attacked you?” Sergeant DelGrande had boomed when I told him about what I had found.

  “But he didn’t, sir.”

  “But if he had…”

  “Then I guess I would have used my service revolver on him.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I cringed.

  I flinched again, recalling the painful silence that followed on the other end of the line…

  Roland and Mike came trudging up the sidewalk. I watched a cab pull away from the curb. I could have gone back to the hotel to pick them up, but I hadn’t wanted to leave the scene, just in case Martin was inside and tried to run. If he’d noticed my police car out here, or me looking up at the house, he hadn’t let on. I hadn’t even seen a curtain rustle in there.

  The sun was barely up, but Roland looked like death. I wondered how much drinking he’d done last night. I hadn’t slept a wink. My head and jaw were throbbing, but at least I was sober.

  “You were supposed to wait for us,” Roland grumbled, adjusting the belt around his waist. His uniform was wrinkled and a little smelly. I wondered if he was married. I’d never asked him, but I didn’t think he was. Mike, on the other hand, had recently gone through a divorce. He was dressed in a button-down shirt and carefully creased slacks. It didn’t look like he’d been up all night, drinking like Roland. Well, at least one of them is sensible, I thought.

  “Did ya bring the warrant?” I asked Mike. I’d asked Sergeant DelGrande to have it faxed to the hotel.

  Roland unfolded a piece of paper from his pocket and shook it at me. “I got it. Chill.”

  “We should have waited for SWAT,” Mike said as we made our way up to the door.

  “Yeah, well, who knows how long that would have taken, or if they’d have come at all.” I raised my hand, took a deep breath, then knocked on the Nesbitt residence. I noticed a weathered wicker chair on the front porch. No kid toys or bikes, I noted.

  Roland leaned over my shoulder and laid his finger down on the bell. “That’s enough,” I snapped.

  The door swung open quickly and I stepped back in surprise. A nicely dressed man with wavy brown hair and bold blue eyes stared out at us wit
h a look of surprise.

  “I’m heading out to work. What can I do for you, officers?”

  “Martin Nesbitt?” I asked.

  “In the flesh,” he said, giving me a smile that showed all his teeth. He was younger than I’d imagined, and handsome too. He was wearing a polo and expensive-looking jeans.

  “We’re here to talk about your wife. She’s missing. We also have a warrant to search your truck and home,” Roland announced. He held up the warrant from Judge Horrace and the local judge in Granton, Judge Percy.

  “O-kaaay. But Nova isn’t here. Whatever trouble she’s into, whatever she did, I’m not responsible. If she ran somewhere, it wasn’t back here to me. Trust me.”

  “When did you see her last?” I asked.

  Martin scrunched up his nose, thinking slowly. “It’s been almost a week since she left, and to be honest, I’m not upset she’s gone.”

  “Why didn’t you respond to my messages I left you? I called a dozen times,” I said, confused.

  Martin shrugged. “I thought she was probably in the drunk tank or something. I wasn’t about to come bail her out, not after I told her to leave.”

  “Wait. You told her to leave?” This story wasn’t jiving with the one Nova told me. Either Martin was a liar, or she was. But which one?

  “Okay, we get it. You don’t give a fuck about your wife. But aren’t you just a little worried about your daughter’s safety?” Mike asked.

  Martin’s eyes grew so wide, I thought they might pop from his head. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Sir, we’re very serious. Nova reported your daughter missing on Friday, then she went missing herself. We have reason to believe one or both have come to harm,” Mike said.

  I was growing impatient. Standing on my tiptoes, I tried to look past him into the unit.

  Martin took a big step back, nearly stumbling. At first, I thought he was in shock. But then his next words shook me to the core: