In Her Tracks (Tracy Crosswhite #8)(44)

“I don’t sit on my hands.”

“I . . . I . . . I was at work.”

“Really? What time did you get off?”

Carrol lowered his gaze.

“You think I’m as big a dumbshit as the two of you? I know when you got off. If you had come home instead of going to the bar, we wouldn’t be in this mess, now would we? So, you’re both to blame. Him for doing what he done and you for letting him do it.” He took another drink of Evan’s beer. Then he said, “Evan, get in the van.” He turned to Carrol. “You got your cell phone?”

Carrol looked from Franklin to Evan and back to Franklin, uncertain. “Yeah. I got it.”

“Keep it close, in case I need to get ahold of you.”

“I . . . I . . . I don’t understand.”

“You’re staying here a couple days to make sure nothing else happens.”

Carrol became animated. Then he said, “I . . . I . . . I got work tomorrow.”

“You call in sick, just like today. You told your boss you had the flu, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Call tomorrow morning. Tell her you’re still under the weather and you’re coughing and sneezing and you don’t want to get all the other employees sick. She won’t want you coming in and spreading flu germs all over the store.”

“Where are you going?”

“Me and Evan are going back to Seattle. I want to take him into the doctor, so we have a record he was sick. And the detectives want to talk to him. So I need to get him ready.”

Carrol smiled like a jack-o’-lantern.

“Wipe that shit-eating grin off your face. This isn’t a pleasure trip. There’s plenty of things to get done up here, and the police want to talk to you as well.”

“M . . . m . . . me? Wh . . . wh . . . why do they want to talk to me?”

Franklin pulled a sheet of paper out of his shirt pocket. “I wrote out some things for you to say. Read this and memorize it. In a day or two I should have a better idea if we got anything to worry about and I’ll coach you up. Evan, get in the van.”

“I want to—”

Franklin put his hand on his belt buckle and stepped toward his youngest brother. Evan slid back his chair and hurried from the table. Franklin swatted him in the back of the head as he passed. Carrol sat grinning. “You think something is funny?” Franklin asked.

“N . . . n . . . no,” he said, quickly losing the grin.

Franklin picked up both bottles of beer and poured what remained down the sink. “Stay off the sauce and keep your ass sober. I’m going to call you, and if I think you been drinking, I’ll haul ass back up here and give you the beating of a lifetime. We clear?”

“We’re clear,” Carrol said. Franklin turned and started for the kitchen door. “Franklin?”

Franklin turned back. “What?”

“What about my woman?”

Franklin gave it a moment of thought. Who knew what Carrol would do if he didn’t give him a chance to get out all that pent-up anxiety.

“Yours,” he said. “After you get work done. Don’t touch mine.”

“I won’t.”

“And don’t touch Evan’s none neither. There’s still a chance we could get out of this,” Franklin said, though at the moment he was uncertain how. “Maybe we put the blame on Evan if we have to, plead he’s retarded and didn’t know better and throw ourselves on the mercy of the court.”

“Y . . . y . . . you think that will work?”

Franklin didn’t. But he wasn’t about to tell that to a stuttering fool and just make it worse. “Read that script. I’ll call and we’ll go over it again. Right now I got to get Evan prepared.” Though Franklin didn’t think Evan would remember much. He’d make sure of it.





CHAPTER 19

Sunday, early evening, Tracy and Kins returned to the houses that backed up to the ravine as CSI and Wright departed. They noted two cars in Nancy Maxwell’s driveway. She didn’t seem surprised to see them again, and this time her husband stood beside her. Tracy immediately assessed him. He was over six feet, medium build. Tracy looked down at his slippers. They didn’t look particularly large, but then she couldn’t really judge. Maxwell introduced her husband as Paul.

“I heard you closed down the park,” Paul said, sounding on edge. “Can I ask what’s going on? Is it related to that girl who went missing? Everyone around here is a bit freaked out.”

“How did you hear the park was closed?” Kins asked.

“I talked to our neighbor, Brian Bibby,” Paul said. “He said you spoke to him yesterday about a young woman he saw running in the park last Wednesday, the girl who’s been on the news. He said he went to walk Jackpot this afternoon and found the park was closed, with police tape strung across the entrance.”

“We have two small children,” Nancy said. “Do we need to be worried?”

“We’re still trying to find the young woman,” Kins said in a calm voice. “And we’re looking for clues to confirm she was there.”

“Then you didn’t find a body, is that right?” Paul asked.

“We can’t discuss the details of an ongoing investigation.”