Shattered (7 page)

According to the St. Theresa County Chamber of Commerce, St. T. has been playing host to more and more of these sun-and-fun-seeking youngsters since the toll gate on the F. W. Jackson bridge was eliminated in 2009. Last year, an estimated eight hundred young people crowded the streets, shops, and restaurants of St. T. at the height of spring break.

The students are attracted by St. T.'s pristine beaches and casual lifestyle, as well as the abundance of beachfront homes available for rent at off season prices during the month of March.

Although some residents express concern about the traffic problems, property damage, and general disorder attributed to raucous spring breakers, few merchants have been heard to complain. Ed Williams of Earth Treasures Book and Gift Shop reported an increased profit of almost one hundred percent in March of last year as opposed to the previous month. Earth Treasures features inexpensive jewelry, crystals, and semiprecious stones which have special appeal to young adults. Pizza-to-Go and Beach Combers reported a similar surge in business during spring break, as did most of the fast food and casual dining establishments in the city.

Sheriff John Case estimates a possible three thousand students will visit St. T. this year during the middle two weeks of March. Although the vast majority of students will be day tourists ...

He had to stop then, and reread that last paragraph. A possible three thousand students. Three thousand. The streets would be crowded with lithe, tan bodies, the music of laughter, the flash of flirtatious smiles, the air redolent with the scent of sweat and coconut oil and sweet young sexuality ... three thousand. Three thousand baby dolls, his for the choosing. His for the taking, his for the cherishing. His for the keeping.

His breath was coming fast and he felt a fine film of perspiration begin to form on his upper lip. He closed his eyes, took a few deep, cleansing breaths, and found his center. It was important to stay centered. Balance was at the core of all things. Those without balance were doomed to failure, for nature itself abhorred inequity.

Balance. It was a concept worth meditating upon.

He was startled out of his reverie by a beeping sound coming from the vicinity of his briefcase. Startled, yes, but he refused to be annoyed. He opened the case and took out his cell phone, which was emitting a high-pitched rhythmic alarm warning of low batteries.

Now he was close to becoming annoyed. The battery charger was on the boat, which meant he would have to do without his phone all day and two or three hours tonight while it recharged. This was particularly irritating, since he had charged it fully only two days ago and the battery was supposed to last for over forty-eight hours of continuous use. He hadn't used it at all.

He liked his phone; he didn't need it, but he liked it. And he wasn't at all pleased at the thought that it might be defective.

And then he noticed something odd. The power switch was on, which was why the battery was low. He must have left it on the last time he had used it. But no. He had recharged it since then. He couldn't possibly have left the telephone on.

Which could only mean that someone else had.

Hesitantly, hardly daring to believe what must have happened, he pushed the redial button.

A connection was made, and an answering machine picked up. He listened to the message in its entirety, and disconnected.

Breathing slowly and deeply, he put the phone aside. He focused on the blue, blue water, sand and shore, clean salt breeze. This was unexpected. But sometimes the unexpected was good. It forced one to reexamine, regroup to meet the challenge and sometimes, to allow wonderful surprises into one's life.

He could deal with this. He certainly could. In a moment, he opened the phone again and made another call.

***

Sheriff John Case estimates a possible three thousand students will visit St. T. this year during the middle two weeks of March. Although the vast majority of students will be day tourists, the sheriff's department points out that, under present innkeeping laws, the possibility exists for a serious overcrowding of the county's overnight facilities. Municipal agencies, points out Case, are unprepared to deal with those kinds of numbers. “St. Theresa County welcomes all visitors,” said Case, “as long as they abide by the law.”

Sheriff John Case pushed the newspaper away with a barely suppressed sigh and reached for his coffee cup. It was his fifth cup of the morning, but the morning had already lasted six hours too long.

He had worked an accident until midnight—a gruesome thing, with two dead—and had returned to the office to find the report filed by the Dennisons waiting on his desk. It had been too late to interview them last night, but he hadn't slept too well, thinking about it. Then at four a.m., he had been called back to the office with the report of a missing resident from Shady Homes Retirement Center. A three-hour manhunt had yielded the ninety-two-year-old man, perfectly safe and extremely confused, trying to break into an empty trailer a mile and a half away.

Case wasn't able to get both Dennisons in until nine o'clock, and he didn't like the story they told. He didn't like it because it opened up too many doors, left too many possibilities, presented too little evidence of anything at all. And because all of the possibilities were bad.

“So,” said Derrick Long, the investigator he had assigned to the case, “you want to assume the incidents are related—the phone call to Mr. Dennison from the male, and the one to Mrs. Dennison from a female she believes to be her daughter?”

“Until you get some evidence to prove otherwise,” said Case, “that's exactly what we have to assume.”

Long flipped back through his notes. Long had only been with the department for a year, and he was a meticulous, deadly serious young man—an attitude, Case suspected, that was born out of a determination to prove himself worthy of the title “investigator” with the St. Theresa County Sheriff's Department. He needn't have worried. John Case had found him to be not only competent, but one of the brightest men under his command—otherwise, he would never have assigned him the Dennison case.

“Not much to go on,” Long admitted after a moment. “I'll have wiretaps put on both their phones and do some checking into Dennison's background—who he might have pissed off bad enough to play this kind of practical joke—but my guess is we're not going to find much. Most of the time these things just wear themselves out.”

Case glanced absently at the newspaper again. Focusing for a moment or two on unrelated matters was a way of keeping his mind clear for the task at hand. It was a trick he had used for years.

He said, “What about the girl?”

“That is disturbing,” said Long, glancing back at his notes. “If it is Kelly Dennison—and what I've heard so far gives me no reason to believe it is—then we could have a real mess on our hands.”

Case seized on his first statement. “What you mean, you have no reason to believe it's her?”

Long shrugged. “You heard the tape. She doesn't give her name. The father didn't even pretend to recognize her voice, and I think the mother would have started to back down if we'd questioned her a little longer.”

Case frowned. “You an only child, Long?”

The detective looked a little taken aback by the change of subject. “Well, no, as a matter of fact. Two brothers.”

Case grunted. “Me, I'm an only child. And I'll tell you what. I never, for as long as she lived, God rest her soul, called up my mother and said, 'Mama, this is John.' Who the hell else was going to be calling her 'Mama,' huh? Kelly Dennison was an only child. She wouldn't have given her name to her own mother.”

“But somebody trying to make Carol Dennison think it was her daughter might have,” Long observed slowly.

Case shrugged. Possibilities. They could drive a person crazy.

Long hesitated. “I've looked at the old case file, when Kelly Dennison was first listed as a runaway.”

“She wasn't the first,” Case said, “and God knows not the last. You grow up in a place like St. T., your opportunities are limited, if you know what I mean. The boys can look forward to a lifetime standing knee deep in fish guts and the girls to having a baby every year and getting knocked around no more than twice a year if they're lucky. They live on an island, for God's sake, and all they can see is life passing them by everywhere they turn. They best we can hope for is that they stay ‘til they finish high school, but that doesn't happen very often either.”

“Kelly Dennison didn't really fit that profile,” Long pointed out cautiously. “She lived on the beach. Her folks were rich. She had pretty good grades, would have gone to college. She had it made.”

“Yeah, well it might have looked a little different from the point of view of a fourteen-year-old. Her parents had just gotten a divorce, her grades were dropping, her friends were dropping her....”

“Drugs?”

“Could be. It doesn't make a lot of difference, though. She was messed up. A good kid deep down, but she just let everything get the best of her. Maybe she thought she could run away from her problems, maybe she was just trying to get some attention. But she had enough money to get her just about as far as she wanted to go, and there's nobody harder to find than a kid who's made up her mind she's not going to be found. You know that yourself. Anyway, after her mama got that second letter from her, postmarked Tallahassee, saying she was off to California to become a movie star or some such, it seemed pretty cut and dried to us. Another one bites the dust.”

“Yeah.” Long was frowning thoughtfully. “Except this one has a change of heart two and a half years later and calls her mama for help.”

“Maybe.”

“Begs her to come get her, only forgets to tell her where to come.”

“Looks that way.”

“What are the chances it is Kelly Dennison calling her mother and she's in collusion with this other dude somehow—hitting her daddy up for ransom or something?”

Case shrugged. Possibilities.

“Because she's going to a certain amount of trouble for a plausible story here. She says she can see the house. That means she's somewhere on the island, but she can't get to her mama.”

“Fishy,” said Case. “That's how the whole thing smells. Real fishy.”

Long nodded in agreement. “I sure would hate for the kid to be involved in this. Those poor folks have been through enough.”

“I won't argue with you there.”

“My gut tells me we've got a hoaxster and a paid accomplice. But I'll check out all the possibilities.” Long hesitated, then said, “I noticed that when the girl first disappeared, you investigated it as a possible kidnapping.”

“Not for long. Her mother was hysterical, and you can't take chances. We had to follow up on every possibility, and I tell you, there were a few rough days and nights there before we got that second note.”

Long looked down at his notebook, although it was clear he wasn't reading anything, just buying time. When he looked up again, his expression was reluctant and unhappy. He said, “I also noticed, during the first part of the investigation, Guy Dennison was a suspect.”

Case did not respond for a moment. He sipped his coffee, he glanced at the newspaper, and he thought, Three thousand students. Jesus, what a mess.

He pushed up from the desk and walked over to the window, coffee cup in hand. He spent a moment looking out, searching for some way to get a handhold on a day that had already begun to spiral out of control. Then he said, scowling, “Get to work, Deputy. If this is a hoax, you bring me the prankster's balls on a platter. If it's not. . . just get me some answers, and get them soon. This time next week all hell will be breaking loose on our little island and we're not going to have any time to waste looking for ghosts.”

***

“St. Theresa County welcomes all visitors,” said Case, “as long as they abide by the law.”

Sheriff Case goes on to add that, while his department will be fully staffed during the two weeks of spring break, no extraordinary measures are planned to deal with the crowds.

He smiled as he read the article for the third time. First there had been anger, then there had been amazement, then there had been simple amusement. Because it was funny, how things had a way of working themselves out for those who were patient enough. For those who had a plan.

And he had one hell of a plan.

At the center of it all, as he had been for three solid years, was Guy Dennison.

Before Dennison, he had had a wife, a kid, a job, and a house. Now he had nothing.

The most important thing in his life—the only thing in his life—was to make sure Guy Dennison ended up the same way. And he knew just how to start.

He smiled again as he glanced at the headlines. spring break comes to st. t and the subhead officials predict record crowds. Three thousand kids, and an undermanned, under-budgeted sheriff's department. The law officers in this county were going to have more than they could handle the next couple of weeks.

A lot more.

~

Chapter Seven

L
aura had finished the lead article and was just starting on cocaine held prisoner in the county jail, when she heard Carol come in. She folded the paper and went quickly into the outer office.