Touch & Go (Tessa Leoni, #2)(18)

Initial police canvassing of the neighborhood had yielded no sightings of any member of the Denbe family. Calls to relatives, friends and known associates hadn’t produced any member of the Denbe family. Same with all outreach to local businesses, area hospitals and nearby establishments.

Justin Denbe’s vehicle had been located four blocks down, empty. Libby Denbe’s Mercedes was still tucked in the garage, empty. All cash, credit cards and ATM cards appeared to be sitting on the family’s kitchen counter. According to the local bank, no financial activity had occurred on any of the family accounts since 4:00 P.M. on Friday, when two hundred and fifty dollars had been withdrawn from an ATM in Copley Square (video from the bank pending). Likewise, no member of the family had placed an outgoing call or text on a mobile phone since 10:00 P.M. on Friday (faxes from cellular provider pending).

At this time, all three members of the Denbe family appeared to have been missing for the past fourteen hours. The investigator’s only lead: Justin Denbe’s outdoor jacket, which was now broadcasting a GPS signal from the wilds of New Hampshire.

In an aggressive move that surprised Tessa, Neil Cap got out his phone, pulled up a New Hampshire map and translated the missing jacket’s GPS coordinates to a local law enforcement agency.

Then, without waiting for the FBI’s official blessing, Neil made what would probably be his last call as Boston’s lead investigator: He contacted the New Hampshire sheriff’s department and asked them to track down the signal on the coat. A quick and efficient move to glean the most amount of information in the shortest amount of time. The FBI would hate him immediately for stealing their thunder.

Tessa took that as her cue to exit stage right.

Best she could tell, she’d seen what there was to see. Boston had control of the crime scene where the family used to be. Some local cops, too far north for her to assist, would handle the investigation of the next location where the family might be. Which left her with one central question: Who would’ve wanted to abduct and/or harm the Denbe family to begin with?

She decided it was time to learn more about her new client, Denbe Construction.





Chapter 10


WYATT FOSTER WAS A COP who wanted to be a carpenter. Or maybe a carpenter who wanted to be a cop. He’d never completely figured it out, which was just as well. In this day and age of constant budget crises, the going rate for protecting and serving the good citizens of North Country New Hampshire made two jobs a necessity for himself as well as most of his fellow officers. Some guys picked up refereeing. Other guys bartended on weekends. Then there was him.

This fine Saturday morning, sun shining, air brisk with late-fall chill, he was staring at a collection of old pine boards, reclaimed from his neighbor’s hundred-year-old barn, and trying to put together a design for a rustic bookshelf. Or maybe a kitchen table, the kind with bench seats. Or a wine cabinet. People paid good money for wine cabinets. Hell, he wouldn’t mind a wine cabinet.

He’d just made up his mind, reaching for the first board, when his pager went off.

Early forties, buzz-cut hair that used to be a dark brown but these days held a fair amount of silver, Wyatt had served the county sheriff’s department for the past twenty years. First as a deputy, then as a detective, now as a sergeant in charge of the detectives unit. Best part of being a sergeant was the hours. Monday through Friday, 8:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. ’Bout as regular as one could get in a profession not known for its regularity.

Of course, like any county officer, he served on call a couple of nights a week. And, yeah, things happened, even in the wilds of New Hampshire, perhaps especially in the wilds of New Hampshire. Drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, some interesting embezzlement cases as an employee sought new ways to fund his or her drug and alcohol issues. Lately, the murder rate had been spiking uncomfortably. Death by hatchet. A disgruntled employee who’d brought his high-powered bow to his former job site at a sand and gravel company. A number of vehicular manslaughter cases, including an eighty-year-old woman who swore she ran over her eighty-five-year-old husband by accident. All three times. Turned out he’d been cheating on her with their seventy-year-old neighbor. Hussy, the wife had declared, which came out more like fuffy, because before “accidentally” running over her husband three times, she hadn’t bothered putting in her teeth.

Certainly, the job was never boring, which Wyatt appreciated. A quiet man by nature, he liked a good puzzle, followed by a just resolution. And, as crazy as it sounded, he liked people. Interviewing them, investigating them, arresting them, people never failed to fascinate. He looked forward to his work, just as he looked forward to coming home from work. Build a case, craft a wine cabinet. Each project was compelling in its own way, and each, on a good day, yielded tangible results.

Now Wyatt checked his pager, sighed a little and hoofed it back inside his cabin to grab his cell. Missing Boston family. Fancy jacket with a built-in GPS emitting a signal forty miles to the south. He knew the area. Long on trees, short on people.

Wyatt asked a few questions, then started in on his next list.

No more wine cabinet. Instead, he prepared to assemble some manpower and go snipe hunting in the woods.


ON WYATT’S FIRST DAY AS A COUNTY OFFICER, the sheriff had given him the lay of the land: Basically, there were two New Hampshires. There was the New Hampshire south of Concord, and there was the New Hampshire north of Concord. The New Hampshire south of Concord served as a Boston suburb. The neighborhoods featured either 1950s ranch houses for the working class, or 1990s McMansions for the wealthy Boston executives. That New Hampshire, being a small geographic area with a dense, tumbling-over-each-other population, was entitled to a police force where multiple officers worked every shift, with backup never being more than a couple of minutes away, and each department boasting its very own collection of modern forensic tools to better facilitate criminal investigation.