Beneath Blackwater River Leslie Wolfe (me reader txt) 📖

worked the case had jotted down a few names on a page ripped from a notebook. The girl’s nanny. The neighbor Elliot and she had met the day before, Martha Duncan. A couple of others she’d never heard of.

No reference to any Caldwell whatsoever, but the case file was far from complete.

Fed up with the way the case had been handled, she decided to stop griping and visit with the detective who’d signed most of the paperwork only with his initials, H.S. For that, she had to identify him.

She flipped the pages backward. Somewhere, on the original missing person report, right below the narrative on the second page, there was the name of the reporting officer, and below that, the approving officer. She recognized both names, belonging to deputies who worked in the same office as she did. But then she saw the name typed in the box for “Internally Route To,” indicating which detective had been assigned to the case.

Herbert Scott.

She read the name and couldn’t comprehend, at first. The Herbert Scott she knew was a deputy, a wife beater and a drunk, but a deputy, nevertheless. She’d been left with no choice but to offer his poor wife shelter at her own house, to keep her and her baby safe from the violent rages of the man. Yet the report indicated Deputy Scott used to be a detective fourteen years ago, when he investigated Rose’s disappearance and did an impressively poor job at it.

Kay closed the case file and leaned back in her seat, willing the thousand thoughts racing through her mind to settle and construct a clear picture of what that meant.

She’d thought of how to deal with Scott on the spousal abuse issue. She’d contrived a plan that could put him in jail without having to drag Nicole to court to testify, but she needed a couple of days before she could execute it. She had to identify the leak first, the man or woman on the sheriff’s staff who had intercepted the mailed letter sent by Nicole and put it in her husband’s hands instead of its intended recipient. She could bury that person under a slew of charges, from the federal crime of mail theft to obstruction of government administration, because the letter Nicole had sent had been addressed to Sheriff Logan with the intention of reporting and stopping a crime.

And then she’d turn them. She’d offer them a deal. They’d have to serve some time in a federal facility, because the thought of that person walking free made the bile rise in her throat. That deal would come in exchange for their testimony against Scott. Then Scott would take a deal himself, and that meant Nicole and her baby could be free of him. Forever.

That had been her carefully woven plan, shredded to bits by his name typed on a missing person report from fourteen years ago.

She couldn’t delay speaking with him about the Harrelson case, but at the same time, she needed to come clean with the sheriff about what was going on.

Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she scrolled through the names and tapped the sheriff’s. He picked up almost immediately.

“Detective,” he said, his voice energetic and bold against a backdrop of bullpen chatter and office noise. “How’s the Caldwell investigation going?”

She forced some air into her lungs. “About that, sir, would you be available for an off-the-record conversation with me?”

He was silent for a beat. “Um, sure. What did you have in mind?” His tone had dropped to somber, quieter.

“When can you leave the office?” she asked, looking at the time and planning the rest of her day. First off, she had to drive back from Redding, then she had to drop the DNA sample at the morgue, and she wanted to stop by the old Harrelson residence, to take another look at that house. Maybe there was evidence that had gone unnoticed by the then Detective Scott that could help with the case. She needed about two hours, if not more.

“Not before seven,” the sheriff replied. She could hear the frown in his voice, the unspoken questions.

It was almost five. “That’s perfect,” she replied. “Say, seven thirty at Katse?” For a moment, only the background noise came across the open connection. “Let’s meet on the outdoor patio. It’s closed now, and it should be completely dark.”

The long silence told Kay that Logan had doubts, questioning her motives and probably her sanity. She’d been officially on his team for less than a week and, most likely, hadn’t yet earned his trust.

“And none of this, er, conversation can take place in my office?” he eventually asked.

“I’m afraid it can’t,” she replied, then allowed him the time to decide.

“Okay, yes, I can make it,” he eventually replied, before immediately disconnecting the call.

There was nothing left to say.

35Ultimatum

Deputy Leach downed his burrito with the appetite of a wild hog after a long winter, barely taking the time to chew the large bites he took every few seconds. He looked as if he could eat anything that didn’t eat him first, a budding waistline starting to bubble over his duty belt.

Elliot waited patiently for Leach to finish his lunch; it wasn’t going to take much longer anyway. Since seven o’clock that morning, he’d been traveling that section of highway up and down, studying traffic patterns, noticing trucks that drove by the place where Kirsten had last been seen after Hazel Fuentes had dropped her off by the Caldwell Farms entrance.

At about ten, he’d received a call from Hazel, who’d asked all the Caldwell truck drivers if they’d seen the girl and had managed to narrow down the time window of her disappearance. The last of her colleagues to have seen Kirsten when he drove off the farm had left at 3:15 p.m. that day. The first one who was sure no girl had been lingering by the ramp was headed south for a delivery, having left at almost five.

That meant whoever picked