Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(46)

“It may not be permanent. Let things settle.” But that’s adult advice, and I know it feels useless to her. “Did she say she’d still talk to you?”

“Yeah.” Lanny blinks back more tears. “When her mom wasn’t home.”

“Then maybe it’ll work out.”

“Maybe.” Lanny doesn’t sound too optimistic. She scoots closer and leans her hand against my shoulder. I put my arm around her. “Thanks.”

“Anytime, kid. These rumors she mentioned. Like, what kind of rumors?”

“That mom helped Melvin kill people. That she’s some kind of sicko.” She swallows when her voice falters on that last part.

“Your mom had a fair trial. She was acquitted. Not guilty.”

“Yeah? Tell that to the Sicko Patrol that follows us around on the internet,” Lanny says. “They still believe she’s guilty. It ruins everything.”

I think about Miranda. The Lost Angels. She’s absolutely right. Some things leave a stain, even after all the scrubbing in the world. I feel it like a slow knife to the guts, because I also know how much guilt I bear for that.

“Sam?” Connor’s voice. I look over at him. “Uh, maybe you should look at this?”

I kiss the side of Lanny’s head and go over to him to see what he’s got. He swivels the laptop toward me.

“That’s something, right?”

A third young woman, reported missing not from Wolfhunter, but from the Daniel Boone National Forest that Wolfhunter clings on the edge of like a burr. I pick up the laptop.

It’s another entry like the ones he found before. Same blog.

ANOTHER WOMAN MISSING FROM NEAR WOLFHUNTER

Earlier I covered the suspicious disappearance of Tarla Dawes, eighteen. Then Bethany Wardrip, twenty-one.

Now there’s another one. Sandra Clegman, who lives in Sioux City, Iowa, but was vacationing in the nearby Daniel Boone National Forest. Her friends saw her zipped up in her tent one night, and she was missing the next morning, leaving behind everything she’d brought with her, including wallet and cash.

People get lost in the woods. But Sandra Clegman was a country girl with a history of camping in forests, and the idea that she wandered off to be eaten by bears without a trace is pretty sketchy, if you ask me. Forest rangers conducted a thorough search, along with the state police and even some FBI. No traces were found: not a drop of blood or a snag of fabric on a branch.

Sandra Clegman, like Tarla and Bethany, just vanished.

If you draw a circle from the center of Wolfhunter, Tennessee, with a ten-mile circumference, you’ll find all three of these disappearances fall inside that circle. I made a phone call to the Wolfhunter PD and asked what they thought.

They told me I was talking about two runaways and a hiker who’d probably had a bad fall and died in the wilderness. Nothing to see here, move along.

Well, I’m not moving along. Because something’s off.



“It’s weird, right?” Connor says. “Three women now. That can’t be just luck, can it?”

“Strangely enough, it can,” I tell him. “Weird things happen. But more than that, the police may actually believe something’s wrong and not want to put the word out to the public just yet. There could be an investigation going on that this blogger doesn’t know about.”

He doesn’t seem thrilled with that. “I still think it’s weird.”

“I’m not saying it isn’t,” I tell him. “Keep looking. You could be onto something.”

He nods, a little happier, and I give him back the laptop. I check my watch. Gwen’s been at the police station for two hours now, and I haven’t gotten any calls from her. I wonder if she decided to use the traditional one phone call (presuming they offered; they’re not required to) for a lawyer, and she trusts me to call and ask after her.

“I’m going to check on Mom,” I tell the kids, and walk into the other room. I close the connecting door and dial her cell.

I get voice mail. I leave a message asking her to check in, and then I look up Wolfhunter PD’s central number in the tiny phone book on the nightstand. I get a smooth southern voice asking me how to direct my call, and I ask if I can speak to Gwen Proctor.

She hesitates, then transfers me without another word. This time, a male voice. “Detective Ben Fairweather. Who’s this?”

“Sam Cade,” I say. “I was looking for Gwen Proctor.”

“Hello, Mr. Cade, nice to talk to you. I had a good chat with Ms. Proctor, but she left out of here about ten minutes back.”

I don’t like that. “Heading where?”

“Most likely to see Vera Crockett’s defense lawyer,” he says. “You got time to stop in and give me a statement? I understand you were in the room when Ms. Proctor took that call from Vera. I’d like to get your account of it, and a timeline for the past forty-eight hours or so.”

He sounds friendly and reasonable. I don’t like it, and I don’t trust it. “Sure,” I say. “Later today, once Gwen’s back. I can’t leave the kids.”

“Of course.” He pauses. “So you all came up.”

“Family trip,” I say. “We might visit the forest.” Almost certainly not, but it gives a decent excuse. If Gwen hasn’t mentioned it, I don’t want him digging into reasons we left Stillhouse Lake. Miranda’s crew is, I hope, still in Norton. They’ll have a lot to say. Some of it might even be true.