“Maybe he took her in his car and left the purse behind.”
“In which case, we’re back to square one.” He twisted around, looking back into the woods. “What I worry about is that he might have met up with her here, tried to intimidate her into paying him off, and—”
“And then something went wrong,” she said.
He looked at her. “There’re lots of places to hide a body in these woods.”
Despite the heat, she felt a prickle of gooseflesh along her arms. “Let’s try the other trail, the one that heads up the mountain.” Even as she made the suggestion, she knew that it was more an attempt to deny the awful possibility that Peggy was lying dead out there than a realistic hope that they might find her.
He shifted his weight. “Okay. We’ll try it for a ways. But if we don’t see anything, we’re turning around and heading into town.”
“Will you put together a search team?”
He nodded. “And get a dog up here.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The track up the mountain was harder. They walked side by side, silent once more, although Clare had stopped expecting they would find anyone lurking ahead. At least anyone alive. Silence in the woods seemed to come naturally to Russ. She slogged along, one foot in front of the other, feeling as if she were hiking with a wet Turkish towel draped around her, but his back and arms had a line of tension about them, and each step he took was deliberate. He kept looking into the trees, left, right, scanning overhead.
They passed a dump site barely hacked out of the woods, filled with cracked pallets and bags of rubbish. One of those golf carts Ray had mentioned to Clare lay tipped over on its side. Russ made her get behind him, then drew his gun from its holster before approaching the pile of trash. He peered into an open barrel before retreating back to the trail. He shook his head and motioned to Clare to keep walking as he reholstered his gun.
She didn’t know if it was the quiet, or Russ’s behavior, or the tangled thicket of underbrush, which reminded her of where she had found Ingraham’s body, but she was getting seriously creeped out. When he paused at the sound of a woodpecker’s knock and searched the trees, she hissed at him, “Why are you doing that?”
“What?” He turned to her. “Doing what?”
“Acting like we’re about to come under fire. I ferried guys to the front during Desert Storm who were less tense than you are.”
“I didn’t know you were in the Gulf.”
“Cut it out. You’re making me more nervous than I already am.”
“Sorry.” A dried-up streambed cut across the trail, and they picked their way across the smooth stones. His eyes flicked across the trees.
“Do you really think that the guy who took Peggy is waiting to ambush us?” She kept her voice close to a whisper.
He shook his head. “No. I don’t know. It’s just…” He flipped his hands out. “The green. The heat. The humidity.”
“I thought you liked to go into the woods. Don’t you hunt?”
“That’s in the fall. Not when everything’s green.” He looked again, left, right, up. “I like the fall. And the spring. Nothing good ever happened to me in green leaves.” The trail twisted to the right, running parallel to a dense stand of hardwood. Clare could feel her calf muscles sigh with relief at the chance to travel on more level ground.
“Sometimes I have dreams,” he said. “Red on green.”
“Oh,” she said, and then, after a moment, “Tell me about them.”
He smiled at her, but his eyes were still far away. Lost in the green. “I would, but I’d have to have a bottle of whiskey while I was doing it, and then the folks at my AA meeting would be cheesed off at me.”
There was a sound from up the trail. They both stopped. She heard it again, a beat, or a rustle. Hard to tell. Not a sound made by nature. He motioned her to the side of the trail and she pressed herself into the underbrush, hardly feeling the sharp twigs and tickling leaves, her heart pounding. She had a second to wonder if he was just going to stand there in the middle of the track, and another second to start to feel irritation along with fear, and then he faded into the shadows of the big trees on the opposite side of the trail. She peered through the tiny branches to where the rutted track turned uphill again and disappeared from view.
Peggy Landry walked around the bend. Clare looked at Russ, but he held up one finger. She waited. Peggy was a mess, her arms scratched, a sleeve half-torn off her camp shirt, a reddening mark across her temple and eye that looked as if it would bloom into a very bad bruise. She was walking quickly, watching her footing on the trail, but not running. Clare looked over at Russ again. He was still holding up a finger, looking well past Peggy to the bend in the trail, clearly waiting to see if she was being pursued. Clare held her breath and tried to ignore an itchy trickle of sweat on her chest. Peggy walked past their concealed positions. She was almost at the next turn of the track when Russ stepped out from the trees. “Ms. Landry,” he said.
She screamed. Clare stumbled out of her hiding place. Peggy screamed again.
“Peggy!” Clare shouted. “It’s me! Clare Fergusson!”
Russ threw his hands up into the air. “And Chief Van Alstyne.”
Peggy staggered back, clutching her chest, and collapsed on the ground.
“Oh, my God!” They both ran toward Peggy, Clare reaching her first and skidding as she dropped down next to the older woman. “Peggy! Are you okay?”
Russ knelt on Peggy’s other side. “Let me take a look at her,” he said, brushing Clare’s hands away. Peggy was hunched over, panting so fast that Clare was sure she would pass out from hyperventilation. Russ took Peggy’s head between his hands and tilted her face toward him. Her eyes were wide and white-rimmed, like a spooked horse. “I don’t think she’s in shock,” he said. He brushed her hair away from her temple. “This looks nasty, though.” He looked at Clare. “Run your hands over her torso. Make sure she doesn’t have any puncture wounds.”
Clare did as he asked. “Nothing,” she said.
“Peggy,” Russ said slowly and clearly, “you need to calm down and tell us what happened. Was someone with you? Were you threatened? Did he injure you?”
“How…what…” Peggy gasped for air.
“We went to your house,” Clare said. “Mr. Wood told us you had left for the construction site after getting a phone call.” She glanced up at Russ, uncertain how much to say to the woman huddled between them.
“We had reason to believe you might be in danger from Jason Colvin.” Russ said. “He’s wanted for questioning in the Ingraham murder.”
Peggy buried her face in her hands and rocked forward. “Please, Peggy, tell us what happened,” Clare said.
Russ looked grim. “Ms. Landry, were you sexually assaulted?”
That seemed to reach her. She sat up straighter and pushed her hair out of her face. “No,” she said. She covered her eyes with her hands again. “But I think he was trying to kill me.”
“Who?” Clare could hear Russ trying to keep a tight rein on his voice.
“Leo Waxman.”
Clare rocked back on her heels. “Leo Waxman?”
Russ spread his hands with a look of complete confusion on his face. “Who’s he?”
“The state’s geologist for the project. Remember I told you he showed me around the quarry when I was here Monday? That’s him.”
“What the hell does the geologist have to do with any of this?” Clare could empathize with the bafflement in Russ’s voice.
“He called me,” Peggy said. “He told me he had something very important to show me at the site. Something that could affect the project going forward. I met him at the spa area and he insisted on driving me way up here to show me something. He wouldn’t say what.” She hunched over again. “He took me as far as you can on this road, up to where it gets very close to the gorge. He—he demanded money from me. Told me Bill had promised him a job with BWI and a fat salary, and then Bill reneged. He was crazy. Furious.” She looked up at them. “I think he may have murdered Bill.” She closed her eyes. “I was terrified. He came at me. We fought. Somehow—I’m not sure how—he went over.” Her voice thinned out into little more than a whisper. “Into the gorge. I didn’t know what to do. So I started walking back. I didn’t know what else to do.”