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FORTY-NINE

SHERIFF HUDSON

Stacy Howard is lying in a hospital bed, tucked snugly under the scratchy, sterile sheets. The beeping from the vital monitoring system punctuates a healthy, normal heart rate—hopefully she’ll be ready to speak with us now. She’s hooked up to an IV, providing her with the fluids and nutrients needed to restore her strength. Other than dehydration and the wounds on her hands and ankle from the chain, she was mostly unharmed. But not all injuries are borne on the body. Doctors also found she had trace amounts of scopolamine in her system, a powerful anticholinergic drug that, if taken in large doses, can render a person unconscious for twenty-four hours or more.

Olson and I take a seat in the guest chairs beside her bed. “Stacy, can you tell us how long you were down in that basement?” I ask.

Her voice is weak, and she strains to talk. “It was hard to tell without any light, but I would guess at least a week, maybe. What day is it?”

“Thursday, June 8,” Olson says.

“Were you taken to another location before the basement?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Sorry,” she says, tears rolling out of her eyes. “I just woke up down there.”

“Don’t apologize. Every little piece of information you can give us is helpful, and don’t worry about the parts you can’t remember.” Olson reaches out her hand, touching Stacy’s.

We know, given the drug that showed up in her blood analysis, she probably won’t remember much.

“There was someone else down there with me, not the whole time though. She said her name was Carissa. But...” Stacy stops as pain twists her face, a sob threatening to pour out of her. “I think he killed her. She was screaming, calling out my name, begging me for help, but I couldn’t. And then... then... I didn’t hear her anymore.” Stacy meets Olson’s gaze and begins to weep, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably.

Pam brushes away the hair caught in her tears. “Shh, shh, shh, it’s okay. You’re safe. No one is going to hurt you anymore. You can just rest.” Olson looks back at me and shakes her head.

Now isn’t the time for questioning, despite how badly we need information in relation to Carissa’s whereabouts. But the last thing we want to do is push a tortured woman back into the recesses of the hell she just crawled out of.

Olson and I say our goodbyes and tell Stacy not to worry. We leave the room and continue through the hospital, stopping off at a vending machine area to grab what will surely be a horrendous cup of fifty-cent coffee.

“Forensics came back with the results from the blood on that knife that was dropped off at the station,” Olson says as the machine dispenses the hot, brown liquid into a matching brown paper cup.

“That fast?” I ask, shocked at the turnaround.

She nods.

“And?”

“It’s pig’s blood.” She snaps a lid onto the coffee cup and hands it to me. She inserts two more coins and presses a button to start the brewing process again; another cup drops down the chute and falls into place.

“Pig’s blood?” I reply, snarling my lip in disbelief.

“I was just as surprised as you are. So, unless what the person wanted to tell us is that the last thing Sarah Morgan did with that knife was butcher a pig, then I think we’ve got a prankster on our hands.”

“What about fingerprints?” I ask.

“Wiped clean.”

I sip the coffee. It’s scalding and flavorless, just as I predicted. “Why would somebody send us that, and why point it to Sarah?”

“I don’t know, but you were right,” she says, retrieving her cup and placing a lid on it.

“About what?”

“You said it could be everything or it could be nothing. Turns out it’s nothing.” She shrugs, bringing the coffee to her lips.

“Speaking of Sarah, someone has to inform her about Bob.”

Olson shakes her head. “That’s two dead husbands now. I feel bad for her.”

“They were in the middle of a separation,” I say.

“Still. They have a kid together.”

I sigh, feeling sorry for their daughter. She’s going to be the one that takes this the hardest. “We should go tell Sarah,” I say. As we begin walking toward the exit, something still nags at me. “We know Bob took Stacy, and the motive as to why is pretty clear, given their history. But the part I don’t get is, why Carissa?”

“I don’t know,” Olson says. “It’s not like we can ask him anymore.”

If Bob did murder Carissa as Stacy indicated, we might never find her body. Right now, we’re waiting on forensics to compare the blood found in the basement near the other mattress and all over the abandoned house to the blood found at the salon. If they’re a match, then at least we’ll know Carissa was down there.

* * *

I knock three times on the front door of Sarah’s home and take a step back, waiting for her to appear. It’s Thursday, just before eight in the morning. The birds are chirping, and the sun is ablaze. Notifying the next of kin that a loved one has passed is the worst part of this job, even if they were a criminal or got what was coming to them. The person receiving the news often has no idea of the scope of their loved one’s misdeeds, and instead, they’re simply in shock at the news that the person they hold dear is gone forever.

Thirty seconds pass, and no one comes to the door—so I knock again, this time with more vigor.

“Maybe she’s not here,” Olson says.

“Her car’s here.” I point to the white Range Rover parked in the driveway before I knock on the door again. I walk along the front of the house, trying to peer into the windows for any signs of movement, but the curtains are all drawn. I return to the door, pounding loudly again.

“Do you think we should go in?”

“I don’t know,” I say. The number of circumstances that allow us to break down a door and enter someone’s private residence is a small list, but someone being in danger of great bodily harm is one of them. Would Bob have done something to his own wife?

A sense of dread starts to slowly build in the pit of my stomach. What if that farmhouse wasn’t the only place Bob went last night?

Frantically, I continue pounding on the door and yell, “Sheriff’s office. Open up!” My heart rate is accelerating with each passing second, and Olson begins to shake her head, our two minds likely thinking the same thing. I step back and hoist my pant leg up, readying to kick down the heavy wooden door.

A lock clicks.

A dead bolt slides.

The door opens, and on the other side stands Sarah Morgan. Her head is tilted at an angle as she dries her wet hair with a towel. She’s dressed in a white waffle robe and a pair of matching slippers. A few droplets of water slither down her neck, disappearing into the material as they’re absorbed by it.

Her eyes dart back and forth between the two of us. “Sheriff Hudson. Chief Deputy Olson,” she says with a slight nod. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”