“Okay, I’ll take care of that a bit later. You talk to Clyde?”
“Asked him to keep his questions to himself, that you’d come talk to him later. We both know nobody else is likely to miss the judge unless we start shouting about it, at least for a day or two. Might not be such a bad idea for us to have that day or two without . . .”
“Without panicking the town?”
“Something like that. Missing kids with a clear intention of eloping is one thing; the judge is a fixture here. He goes missing, nobody is going to believe he just ran off.”
“Probably right.” Jonah fumbled for his alarm clock and squinted at the time. “It’s after ten.”
“Well, there really wasn’t much for you to do here anyway. I figured you needed the rest, and I could take care of the preliminary look-see. Even went ahead and got pictures, for all the good it’ll do us.”
“I appreciate it.” He swung his legs off the bed, absently noting that they were still wrapped, mummylike, in the covers. “What time did Clyde call?”
“Right at seven. Called me on my cell, not the station. Said the judge was always there when he opened up at six.”
“Figure thirty minutes to walk from the stream to the Diner. He never uses lures in that stream; how fresh was that bait?”
“It’s a worm, Jonah. All I can tell you is that it wasn’t moving and hadn’t dried out. He had a little can of live worms beside the tackle box.” She paused, then added, “He had one of those little fisherman’s battery lanterns beside his chair. The kind that’s fairly powerful even though it’s small enough to fit inside a tackle box. It was still on.”
“So it was still dark when he . . . left.”
“That would be my guess.” She drew a breath. “The only thing the disappearances really have in common. Every victim was taken in the dark.”
THREE
Jonah ran his fingers through his hair, trying to think. “Shit,” he said again. “Did you say you were still there?”
“Judge’s fishing spot, yeah. I knew you wouldn’t want crime scene tape around the area, but I also figured you’d want to see it the same way I did. Only a few cars have gone by this morning on the way to church. Nobody’s appeared to notice anything strange about me being here, and I’m leaning against the car all nice and natural. Just looking at the view. I’ll stick around here. You can get to the Diner before church lets out. Have breakfast and talk to Clyde.”
“Anything else?” he asked politely.
“Yeah. Bring me a coffee, will you?”
“See you in a few.” He didn’t wait for a response but cradled the receiver and fought free of the remaining covers so he could get out of bed. He had been told he was an extremely restless sleeper but had no idea why, since he could never remember his dreams.
In less than half an hour, he was showered, shaved, dressed, and out the door. Like the judge and even though both were bachelors, Jonah owned a house not far from the downtown area, with a small front yard, a garage, and a fenced backyard where the latest thing in barbecue grills lived on a spacious patio.
Though Jonah had never asked, he figured the judge owned a house rather than a condo for the same reason he did: a dislike of neighbors being too close.
They each knew more than they really wanted to about their neighbors through their respective jobs. There was no sense finding out more details they didn’t need to know.
The Diner held only a scattering of customers, since church hadn’t yet let out, so Jonah was able to claim his usual stool at the counter. Am I becoming predictable? And is that a bad thing?
“The usual, Chief?” a fresh-faced waitress named LaRae Owens asked cheerfully as she poured coffee for him.
Definitely predictable.
“Yeah, thanks, LaRae.”
She nodded, smiled, and went off to serve somebody else, calling out Jonah’s order as she passed the serving window to the kitchen, a bit quieter than usual because it was Sunday. And because Waylon and Johnny weren’t singing back in the kitchen.
Jonah sipped his coffee and looked at nothing, his mind racing. Phillip Carson wasn’t the sort for a joke, not like this, not when he knew how worried Jonah was about the kids disappearing. How worried the town was. So he hadn’t vanished just to have fun. He didn’t have family to speak of, at least not in Serenity, and if he’d been called away for a family emergency or because of his duties as a judge, Sarah would have known about it because the station was always notified of any change to his schedule.
If he had vanished as the kids had vanished, then victimology was not going to help find either the judge or the kids. Two teenagers attempting an elopement, and then a highly respected judge in his late forties who liked to fish at night? What did they have in common? Why would both be targets to be . . . taken?
They all lived in Serenity. They were all white, which was the majority demographic for the town, so possibly not something important to victimology. They had all been taken, apparently, sometime before the sun rose.
Jonah didn’t know that the latter mattered; if he’d wanted to abduct someone, he probably would have chosen the darkness as a cover himself. And so late, between midnight and dawn, there was certainly less chance of being seen or heard, especially in a little town not exactly famous for its nightlife.
But . . . the unsettlingly weird aspects were true of all three disappearances. It was as if those three people had simply vanished in an instant. No signs of struggle. In the case of the kids, there had been footprints that had seemed decidedly strange when Jonah had seen them with his own eyes; the fact that the camera had not shown them at all just added to the eeriness of his memory of them.
The fact that both his watch and his cell had apparently been affected at the site where the kids had vanished, just as Sarah’s and Tim’s had been affected, was decidedly weird.
Jonah mentally kicked himself for not having asked Sarah if the same . . . situation . . . existed at the judge’s fishing site. Though he’d find out soon enough, he supposed.
He hadn’t realized he’d been lost in thought so long until a steaming plate of eggs, hash browns, and bacon slid in front of him, along with a smaller plate of toast.
“What the hell’s going on, Jonah?”
It was Clyde, and he kept his voice low.
Jonah glanced back over his shoulder toward the kitchen.
“Alec’s minding the griddle. Kid’s a fair cook—and nobody can screw up breakfast anyhow. Where’s the judge?”
“I have no idea,” Jonah replied honestly, keeping his own voice low, his tone determinedly casual.
“So he’s just gone? Gone like those kids last weekend?”
“That’s how it looks. I’m going to meet Sarah at the stream as soon as I finish up here so we can put our heads together and try to figure it out. Wanted to ask you if he’d said anything to you recently. If he’d noticed anything odd, strange phone calls, a car he didn’t recognize parked near his house or office, anybody following him.”
Clyde leaned an elbow on the counter, looking very casual until Jonah met his very level, steely gaze—and reminded himself that even though he was only a few years older than himself, Clyde had served in Iraq back in the beginning.
“Not a word. Nothing out of the ordinary. And you do know, I hope, that he didn’t talk to me about those kids going missing, not the way he must have talked to you, about details I imagine you’ve mostly kept to yourself.”
“Yeah, I figured.”
“I know how to keep my trap shut too, Jonah. Do me a favor and keep me in the loop about the judge as much as you can, okay? We’ve known each other a long time.”
Jonah nodded.
“Appreciate it. Now eat your breakfast. You don’t look much better than you did last night.”
Without bothering to comment, Jonah merely dug into his meal, knowing he needed to eat even though he had absolutely no appetite. He was aware of Clyde returning to the back and his griddle, joking normally with the two waitresses working this morning and talking to Alec. And then he cranked up Waylon and Johnny—though a few notches lower than normal in deference to its being Sunday.