Shattered Secrets (Cold Creek #1)(91)

Wide-eyed, the child nodded solemnly.

“Okay, then. When we play horsey, you try to wrap your legs around me. But if you can’t because of my tied hands, you just stand on the ropes between my wrists. But there is just one rule. When you put your arms around me for the ride downstairs and outside, don’t grab my neck so I can’t breathe. Okay? Promise? And—if I fall, or something bad happens to me, you run fast away from here and hide in the cornfield until daylight when a car comes by. Make sure Miss Etta doesn’t find you.”

“I’m afraid of cornfields at night. Scarecrows can be in them.”

“I know, but don’t let her find you again. If you see a car going by, you yell your name to them, say that they should call the sheriff. Okay? Promise?” she repeated as the footsteps sounded on the stairs again.

Making a little X on her chest, the child whispered, “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

*

Gabe thought Melanie Parkinson’s voice was calm, almost soothing. He was sure she must have been a comfort to little Teresa years ago. Had his father even known the child had been counseled at church? That information was never recorded, and he wondered if it could have been some sort of help.

“I’m asking you to think back twenty years to the Lockwood kidnap case,” he said to Mrs. Parkinson after he explained the situation.

“The so-called Cold Creek kidnapper. Yes, I remember the events and little Teresa Lockwood well. She’d been brutalized and terrified, so much so it had changed her personality. Inward, shy, afraid, when her mother said she’d been so bold and outgoing before that.”

“What would help me now,” he said without explaining Tess was missing again—it pained him to even say it—“is if you can recall anything specific she might have said about the place she was held or the person who held her. Anything!”

“Yes, all right. Several of her drawings we did for therapy were of a room with a deer head on the wall and a huge, oversize window. I assume she was wishing she could have gone out it, or that might have been how she actually escaped, because she was iffy on that. Out the window, she drew small gravestones.”

“She recently recalled that view. Anything else?”

“She once drew a scarecrow and then crayoned through it with near violence. Oh, and for such a young child, I think she referred to the cemetery once as a pioneer cemetery.”

Gabe sat up straight. He knew of only two in the area, one in the very back of the Glen Rest Cemetery outside town, but the only place Tess could have seen that from was the caretaker’s house. Clemment Dixon was surely no kidnapper, and he’d been in the hospital in Chillicothe when Tess was taken. And the other such cemetery—a little, old, one-family graveyard—was behind the Falls house on Blackberry Road.

A chill raced up Gabe’s spine. It didn’t seem possible and yet... The library was just two doors down from the shop where Sandy had disappeared. That old rattletrap of a bookmobile was always parked out back. Tess recalled the sounds of trains and the waterfall...but that cemetery was the thing.

“Sheriff, are you there? I just thought of something else. Teresa’s mother told me she didn’t like to read, didn’t like to be read to, but several of her drawings had rows of books on shelves lining the walls and—”

“Thanks, Melanie. You’ve been a big help, maybe more than you know. I’ll call back later.”

Disconnecting his phone, he leaped from behind his desk. It couldn’t be, and yet it made horrible sense. “Peg,” he shouted as he ran down the hall, strapping on his gun belt. “Call Agent Reingold and Jace. Tell them no lights, no sirens, park on the road, but they need to meet me at the Falls house on Blackberry Road.”

“But I didn’t get a 911 from her—”

“Now!”

*

Tess heard the chain rattle loose on the other side of the door. Sandy was holding on to her, but it was too late to remind her not to cling to her when Miss Etta stepped in.

The door opened. “I’m back,” she sang out. Tess could see her through the crack between the door and the frame as it opened, as the librarian stepped up to their level.

Tess threw herself against the door. It slammed shut. She heard the woman scream, bounce down the stairs, but how far? And what about the gun?

Tess turned her back to the door, grabbed the old knob, twisted it and opened the door. Miss Etta lay on the second-floor landing, looking stunned. In the dim stairwell, Tess couldn’t tell if she had the pistol or not, or even if she was conscious.

“Get on my back,” Tess told Sandy, bending down. “Horsey time.”

The child obeyed. She was heavier than Tess had expected. At least she could stick her skinny legs between Tess’s ribs and her tied arms. Trying to flee, desperate not to fall, Tess started down the steps just as Miss Etta moved, tried to right herself.

Tess kept going. The woman had the pistol, raised it and pointed it. They would never dodge a bullet in this narrow space. At least Sandy was behind her, so Tess would take the shot, but that could still leave both of them buried out back.

Scraping her shoulder along the stairwell wall, Tess rushed toward Miss Etta, tried to brace herself with the extra weight behind her and kicked at the woman. The pistol went off, but the gun fell to the floor. Tess waited for the pain but felt nothing. Leaning against the staircase wall, she kicked at Miss Etta again to get her out of the way, then edged past her and fled.