Page 33 of Vanish From Sight (High Peaks Murder, Mystery and Crime Thrillers #2)

A bright sun peeked above the horizon, revealing the black smoke.

A short distance away, at the mouth of the trailhead, Callie exited her cruiser to the sight of the vehicle still smoldering.

The air was thick with the smell of burnt rubber and gasoline.

There were already two deputies on scene along with the fire department, who had made short work of the blaze before it could spread.

They were just in the process of rolling up hoses.

“Well, that adds credence to his story of it being stolen as he’s still being held until he sees a judge,” Callie said.

“Unless he had a propane tank set with timers,” McKenzie added.

“You’ve been watching too many movies,” Callie retorted.

“Oh trust me, princess, assholes who want to get away with things, do all manner of shit to keep you looking in the wrong direction.”

“Call came in the early hours of the morning from a farmer. He said he was out feeding his livestock when he saw the flames through the trees,” said Ansel Carlton, the fire chief. “Accelerant was used.”

“Propane?” McKenzie asked.

“No. Gasoline.”

“Whoever lit it made sure to douse the vehicle good,” Callie added, holding a handkerchief up to her mouth and nose and skirting around it to get a better look at the steel bones. The flames had chewed their way through the inside and devoured the paint, leaving little behind.

“Plates had been removed and were in the back of the SUV. I fished them out. Whoever tossed them in there obviously wasn’t smart. The paint’s gone but the embossed letters and numbers are as clear as day. It’s a perfect match.”

“And no one saw who walked away?” Callie asked.

“Nope,” Ansel said.

“Vehicle tracks?”

“If they used one, it must have been parked by the road or they set off on foot through the forest.”

“Footprints?” McKenzie asked.

“Nothing found so far.”

Glancing across the wreckage, Callie noticed a figure approaching in the distance, coffee in hand. It was Noah.

“What’s he doing here?” McKenzie asked .

“Your guess is as good as mine,” she said. “Give us a moment.”

Both of them had been told late last night about Lena. It was devastating news. She couldn’t even fathom the amount of pain it would put his family through. They’d already suffered so much loss as it was.

As Noah got closer, Callie noticed his eyes were bloodshot and his face pale. He looked as if he hadn’t slept at all. “Is it Sawyer’s?” Noah asked, his voice barely above a mutter.

She exchanged a glance of concern with McKenzie before looking back and answering. “Seems so. Plates are a match. Noah, what are you doing here?”

“Same thing as you are. Investigating.”

He went to walk around her and she took him by the arm.

He shucked her with a stern look. “Let me do my job, Callie.”

“That’s what worries me. Can you? Should you even be here?”

Noah nodded; his eyes fixed on the burnt-out SUV. “I had to see it for myself. I can’t stay at home. I have to do something.”

“What about your kids?”

“I dropped them off at my aunt’s.”

“You should be with them.”

“And do what? Huh? Stare at a wall? How is that going to change anything? I can’t change the way they feel. I can’t soften the blow anymore. Or take away their grief. But I can try and find the asshole who took her life. That I can do.”

Callie understood. She’d seen cops like Noah before, the ones who threw themselves into their work to distract from their personal lives. She didn’t blame him for being there, but she figured it was best for his kids if he wasn’t.

There was a short pause.

“Let me guess, no one saw them drop it off?” he asked .

“Nope. A farmer spotted the smoke,” McKenzie replied, walking away.

Callie added, “Sawyer told me that this was a second vehicle that he kept at home in his driveway. I already had a deputy canvass the area for footage. So far nothing. It’s like they just stole it up from underneath his nose, committed a crime and…”

“Them?” he asked.

“Him, her, them. Who knows how many we are dealing with right now.” She narrowed her gaze.

“What did you get up to yesterday?” Noah asked.

“Where do I start? Yesterday we got confirmation on the dental records. So, we have a positive on Katherine. We also found out that DNA from Sawyer’s cup is a match to Katherine’s fetus.

It’s his kid. That’s not even the half of it all.

Sawyer’s alibi checks out for the night of Laura’s death, barring twenty-five minutes when he went to a liquor store, but even if he was speeding, I can’t see him being able to kill Laura, stash his vehicle here, hike it back to his truck and return all within that short window. However, someone is lying.”

“About?”

“Well, we visited the Academy.”

“Without me?” Noah asked.

“McKenzie would have gone alone had I refused to go with him.”

“And?” he asked, still eyeing the charred remains.

Callie shifted her weight from one foot to the next. “Seems as though Sawyer’s alibi for the night Katherine was found is a crock of crap. That meeting he said he had was canceled according to Hawthorne, which means Sawyer doesn’t have an alibi for the night Katherine died.”

“Or Hawthorne’s lying,” Noah added.

“That’s possible. If Katherine told Sawyer about the baby and he decided he wanted her to have an abortion and she didn’t, it’s possible that he lost it and killed her. And maybe Laura knew.”

“And so, you think that’s the connection with the school nurse?”

“Well, that’s the interesting part. According to staff members, they were close friends but something about it doesn’t add up.

When we told Hawthorne what Nicholas had shared about Katherine being forced out of her job due to rumors of interfering with students, he didn’t deny it.

In his words, he gave her an option to leave before it went any further than a rumor.

The thing is, he can’t verify who the rumors came from because they were shared in confidence with Laura. ”

“Who’s dead.”

“Exactly. You’d think she would have gone to Katherine directly?”

“We’ll never know if she did,” he said, staring at the wreckage.

“Anyway, apparently, Laura held back the names of those Katherine supposedly interfered with from Hawthorne, at least that’s what he wants us to think. And because Katherine never dug her heels in when confronted, the rector felt there was no need to go any further. The matter was dropped.”

“Because he wanted to protect the Academy.”

“You got it. Parents never learned about the interference. They dealt with the issue inhouse. The alleged victims obviously were persuaded not to say anything out of fear of tainting their educational record or they chose not to say anything to their parents out of embarrassment. Who knows? Either way, the matter was quashed with Katherine’s exit. ”

Noah shook his head. “So where does that leave us?”

“I managed to dig up an incident report from State Police of an arrest made at the Academy a year prior to Katherine’s death. Four teenagers assaulted another in what is considered a hazing gone wrong. The victim was Charlie Delaney.”

“That’s the kid Nicholas mentioned Katherine was seeing before she left.”

She nodded.

“You dug that up?”

“Devil’s in the details, right?”

He smiled. “So?”

“We think that the hazing was related to the stress Katherine was going through when she left her marriage the first time, as it was around then that Charlie started seeing her for counseling. Before we left yesterday, Erin Spencer, the new residential counselor, gave us a list of names and dates for students that Katherine met with over the past year one-on-one.”

“Any record of what they talked about?”

“Sealed. We’d need a warrant. Client confidentiality.”

“There are limits to that.”

“Yes, but without knowing what was shared, and Katherine not being alive and Charlie no longer continuing therapy with Erin, they have no justified reason to share those records. And also, it depends if Katherine even took notes. According to Erin, she was told by Hawthorne that Katherine wasn’t in the habit of keeping good records. Apparently, it wasn’t her style.”

“Convenient if you want to keep something buried.”

“I agree. For all we know, by the time she was hired they destroyed what records Katherine had, especially if the contents could have brought the Academy into disrepute.”

Callie glanced over to McKenzie who was squatting and staring at a chunk of metal. He was an oddball if she’d ever met one but she couldn’t deny he’d had a way of drawing out information from Hawthorne.

She looked back at Noah. “Anyway, among those names there are only two that stand out that she saw on an ongoing basis. One was an eighteen-year-old girl, Isabella Perez who graduated last year, and the other was Charlie who is still a student at the Academy.”

“The timing of her graduation?”

“A week before the assault.”

“Well, let’s speak to Isabella Perez. Do we have an address for her?”