Cop by Her Side

JANE WAS CHEWING the hide off two detectives who had allowed half the citizens of Angel Butte to tromp through a crime scene when her desk phone rang. She gave it an irritated glance. She’d asked not to be interrupted and decided to let it go.

“And what about the log?” She stabbed the document in question with her forefinger. “I know for a fact that patrol officer Gwen Schneider walked through the house. Perhaps you can explain what she contributed to the investigation.”

Kyle Griffin’s mouth opened and closed a couple of times.

She leaned forward. They’d get back to the reason why a pretty young patrol officer had been given a tour of a nasty home-invasion scene. Now, though, she turned the log around so they could see the list of names with times of arrival and departure. Both sets of eyes were drawn irresistibly to it. “Perhaps,” she said with silky menace, “you can point out to me where her name is.”

“How did you know—?” Phil Henry was stupid enough to blurt.

Her cell phone began to ring. She shot it an exasperated glance, having already ignored a call from her brother-in-law, then felt a weird clench in her chest when she saw the displayed name. Clay Renner. Somehow she’d never deleted his phone number from her address book. Why would he be calling in the middle of the afternoon?

She wanted to mute the damn phone and ignore him—but he was one of her counterparts at the sheriff’s department.

Jane blistered the two detectives sitting across from her with a stare, said, “Excuse me, I need to take this,” and picked up the phone. “Vahalik.”

“Jane, Clay Renner here.”

Conscious of her audience, she said stiffly, “Sergeant.”

“This is about your sister.” He hesitated. “Your brother-in-law came in to report her and their daughter Brianna missing. Melissa’s vehicle was located in a ditch. I’m at the scene. She suffered a head injury, Jane. She’s in ICU, still unconscious. I’m afraid I don’t know more. I’m focusing on another problem. The girl is missing.”

“Oh, dear God,” she whispered. “Drew... Is he all right? What about Alexis?”

“Alexis is safe with a neighbor.”

“Did anyone see the accident?”

“No. A young couple on a day hike popped out of the woods just down the road from the SUV. They say another car had stopped. When the man called, ‘Hey, is anybody hurt?’ they heard a car door slam and the vehicle sped off. Fortunately, they were carrying a cell phone. They didn’t try to move your sister once they realized she was unresponsive.”

“If the other car caused the accident and the driver freaked...?” Even in shock, she knew that was stupid.

“A logical assumption, except that we’ve so far been unable to locate Brianna. Your brother-in-law went home to get his wife’s address book and lists of names and phone numbers for Brianna’s summer day camp and her first-grade classroom. Mr. Wilson started with the kids he thought she might be friends with, but so far no one has heard from her or Melissa today. We still haven’t given up hope that your sister dropped her off somewhere—a friend’s mother might have called to see if they could take her on a picnic or something that means they’re not answering their phone. But at this point—”

“You have no idea where she is.” Oh, God. She sounded so harsh.

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Lieutenant.”

She closed her eyes. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...”

“Working on the assumption that she was a passenger when the accident occurred, we’re organizing a search. Volunteers are already arriving.”

“I don’t know whether to help or to go to the hospital.”

“Your brother-in-law is now at the hospital.”

She swallowed, trying to think. “Then I’ll come help search. If Bree’s hurt or hiding for some reason, she’d recognize my voice.”

“All right,” Clay said. He told her where the SUV had gone off the road, and when she asked what Melissa could have been doing there, he said only, “At this point, we don’t know. You okay to drive?”

“Of course I am!”

“Then I’ll look for you.” He disconnected.

Jane pushed her chair back and rose, looking at the two men in front of her. “You disgraced your shields today. Straight out of the academy, you should have known how to secure a crime scene. You are both on suspension until we can discuss this further.”

They argued. She told them to go home, then detoured by Captain McAllister’s office, found him there—another workaholic—and told him what she’d done and why, and where she was going.

He listened and shook his head. “Family comes first,” he said, and asked if she should be driving.

She stared at him. He was serious. Colin McAllister was more like Clay Renner than she’d wanted to admit. She couldn’t imagine either man would have asked that question if she’d been male.

“I’m fine,” she said shortly, and left.

* * *

EVEN AS SHE DROVE, Jane puzzled over what Lissa had been doing out on 253rd, a little-traveled back road that would, heading west as Lissa had apparently been, have ultimately bisected a somewhat busier road that meandered between Angel Butte and Sun River far to the north. If she’d wanted to go to Sun River, though, it would have made a lot more sense to backtrack east to Highway 97, the major north-south route. And there were way more logical ways to return home or even to go into Angel Butte.

Okay, people did live along 253rd, so she might have taken Bree to some friend’s house out there. But then, if she’d already dropped Bree off, why wasn’t she heading back toward home? And—there weren’t that many houses out here. Probably fortunately, as Jane was ignoring posted speed limits.

Bear Creek ran on the right of the road, which was several miles outside the Angel Butte city limits; she vaguely recalled a picnic area that shut down in the winter. She passed the decrepit sign for a long-since-closed resort and recalled a shooting that had happened there last December involving Colin’s wife, Nell. Maybe this stretch of woods had some kind of bad karma.

Slowing at the sight of a dozen vehicles ahead parked along the shoulder, she shook off thoughts of Lissa’s motives. Lissa would open her eyes anytime and tell them what she was doing here. Jane loved her sister fiercely even though she didn’t always like her. She refused to even consider the possibility the head injury was severe enough that Lissa wouldn’t be opening her eyes.

She parked at the end of the long line of cars, pickups and SUVs, then locked her vehicle and hurried forward. The burble of the creek, running low in late summer, and voices calling from the woods drifted to her ears as she rushed along the pavement toward the closer sound of other voices ahead.

Several men stood just outside the yellow tape surrounding her sister’s red Toyota. Aware one of those men was Clay and that he’d turned when he heard her hurried footsteps, Jane initially ignored them to gape at her sister’s Venza, a sporty crossover. Ditch had been a misnomer. Really, it was more of a bank that dropped toward the creek. It appeared as if a cluster of small alders and shrubbery was all that had kept the Venza from plunging another ten feet down into Bear Creek.

Clay separated himself from the group and approached her, his blue eyes intent on her face. He wore chinos and a polo shirt. She wondered if he’d been working today anyway, or if he had been called in. But no, she realized right away—that made no sense. Like her, he worked major crimes, not traffic accidents. In fact...what was he doing here?

“Jane,” he said with a nod.

As always, she reacted to his physical presence in a way that aggravated her. Even his stride was so blasted male.

“Have you learned anything?” she asked, although she knew better. He’d have called if her sister had regained consciousness or a search-and-rescue volunteer had found her niece.

“I’m afraid not.” He sounded regretful. “We’ve been going over the ground around the vehicle without finding a damn thing.” Lines furrowed his forehead. “We need to find the driver of the other car that stopped. I’d hoped for a tire impression that would give us something to go on to locate it.”

“Can’t the hikers you said called tell you a make and color?”

He grimaced. “They think it was a car rather than a pickup or SUV. But it was apparently parked in front of your sister’s SUV, which blocked their view. They were standing—” he turned and pointed back the way she’d come “—probably fifty yards away. They were aiming to come out at the picnic ground where they’d left their car, but they heard the sound of what they thought was a small waterfall and cut through the woods.”

“Is there a falls here?” Jane asked, puzzled.

“No. Not enough elevation change. We’re thinking they heard an engine.”

She nodded. “What can I do?”

He led her to a man who appeared to be the organizer of the volunteers here to hunt for Bree. They had initially concentrated their efforts on the creek side of the road, in part because a child getting out of the vehicle would have had to scramble up to the road, while sliding down to the creek would have been easier.