Skip held his hands up with his fingers parallel to the brim of his hat and palms hooked at a ninety-degree angle, trying to shield his eyes from the blowing flakes as he concentrated on each individual car before moving his gaze to the next. Unfortunately, of the few vehicles present, the sedan Missus Babbs had described was nowhere to be seen, at least not that he could tell. On top of that, they were all currently excelling at the task of collecting their own blankets of white, which made them even harder to make out. However, that also meant that it was unlikely that any of them had been running recently enough to be warm.
He repeated the scan just to be sure. Not only was Carter’s vehicle not on the lot, there were no tire tracks or footprints readily visible in the freshly fallen snow either. This could simply mean that nobody had gone out this door since it had started snowing. When you combined that observation with the lack of a warm vehicle, it might also indicate that Carter wasn’t as conscientious about his job as Missus Babbs wanted to believe and that he was late returning from his dinner break.
Or, it could mean that Carter had indeed taken Merrie and had done so before the snow had really begun to fall, which fit the timeline. In Skip’s mind, as horrifying a thought as that was, thus far everything seemed to be adding up to foul play.
Finally satisfied that the car wasn’t there, Skip panned his gaze lower across the flat expanse of snow. Even though no tracks were immediately evident, that didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t there, or even that something else important might not be hiding in plain sight. Sometimes you just had to look a little closer. As he swept toward the right, he noticed a dark spot in the snow just a few feet away from where he was standing and very near the dumpster-right at the corner of it, in fact. The stain was roughly the size of a small dinner plate, though much more oblong in shape, and appeared as if something was melting through the thin layer of snow cover from beneath.
He stepped toward the spot and knelt down next to it, shifting his upper body to keep from casting his shadow across the anomaly. As he peered at the lumpy, wet mass, the wind made a sudden shift, sending a flake-filled gust directly into his face. He blinked against the onslaught of snow and at the same time sputtered a bit as a foul odor wafted upward into his nostrils. Taking a second, shallower breath he recognized the smell that was coming from the mass.
It was the sharp funk of fresh vomit.
Skip swallowed hard and continued to inspect the somewhat teardrop shape in the snow, despite having to battle his own wave of nausea brought on by both the sight and stench of the recent puke. Even though his own stomach now felt sour, his brain was noticing a pattern. The spread of the spilled stomach contents seemed to indicate that it had been propelled at a slight angle toward the back of the store, almost as if the person was facing the door instead of away. However, given the amoeba like bulge along the outer edge, it also seemed to have been deflected by something. Sending his eyes upward he found frozen dribbles of what appeared to be vomit clinging to the corner of the dumpster. Standing up and angling his gaze back downward, he followed the splatter in reverse, noticing that it spread in a way that suggested the person responsible might have been moving in the opposite direction. The fading line of smaller spots led several inches away from the primary, appearing to hook around the corner of the huge metal bin with spray-like lines radiating outward.
Skip’s heart jumped, felt as if it stopped, and then it started to race. A new thought popped into his brain. Perhaps Merrie was simply ill and disoriented with a fever. That flu had been going around, and it was bad; he knew that for a fact. Missus Callahan had said Merrie wasn’t feeling well. Maybe it wasn’t those bad thoughts she claimed to be having. Maybe she really was sick.
It could very well be that he had jumped to conclusions. That he had simply misread the circumstances and then allowed paranoia to take over, in turn driving him toward a faulty hypothesis. Maybe he was going to walk around the corner of the dumpster and find the little girl, delirious with a fever, and hiding from the world because of it. Right now, he would definitely settle for that instead of the other option that had been dominating his thoughts.
“Merrie?” he called out as he stepped forward and around the corner of the bin.
Unfortunately, there was still no answer. Not only that, there was no Merrie. Just fast falling snow and the hard line of the dumpster’s shadow where it stood in the swath of light from the flood lamps overhead. Skip felt the pit of his stomach sink when he was greeted with nothing more than the oblique line of blue-black darkness. He stood there for a moment and then looked out across the lot toward the entrance at the far end.
Between the heavy moans of the wind he could hear the occasional noise of traffic out on the main drag in front of the store.
He called out again, “Merrie?”
His voice hitched a ride on a snowy gale and disappeared into the darkness behind him.
“Merrie!” he called out again, cupping his hands on either side of his mouth and shouting against the weather. “MERRIE CALLAHAN!”
He held his breath and waited. There was still no answer.
Deputy Carmichael sighed and started turning to go back into the store. As he shifted, his own shadow moved, and in the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of something protruding from the snow as light glinted from it in a quick flash. Twisting back around, he scanned the area. It was probably just a random snowflake catching the beam from the flood lamps at just the right moment, but in his peripheral vision it had seemed far more metallic. Slowly, keeping his eyes focused ahead, he stepped sideways, allowing the light to fall in the general direction of the phantom once again.
Panning his gaze back and forth he suddenly caught another glimpse of the flash right at the edge of the dumpster’s long shadow and even farther out at the edge of his vision. He knew it could still have been a rogue flake, so he carefully and ever so slightly moved his head back and forth, staring through the curtain of falling snow.
The flash hit the edge of his sight once again.
Locking his eyes on the spot, he took a step forward and stopped. Then another, and waited again. Squinting against the wind he finally noticed an almost insignificant lump of crystalline white. He stepped toward it, and a more detailed outline began to emerge. Another step and he saw a small swath of black and the suggestion of a glint of silver. As the wind blew around it, a miniature drift was forming on the opposite side, leaving a concave void facing him.
He advanced the last few steps forward and again knelt down. Reaching out, he brushed away the rapidly accumulating flakes to reveal the object beneath. When he saw it, the pit of his stomach did more than just sink. This time it twisted into a hard knot as his heart thudded painfully in his chest.
A nauseating thought flickered through his head, and he remembered that less than a half-hour ago he had been glad to have a distraction. Now he was cursing himself for it.
He reached out and picked up the lone, abandoned shoe-a little girl’s black leather Mary Jane. Light once again glinted from the silver metal buckle as he lifted it from the snow, and his breath caught in his chest, lodging itself in that agonizing somewhere between an inhale and an exhale.
He didn’t need anyone to tell him that the shoe belonged to Merrie Frances Callahan. Nor did he need someone to explain that she was nowhere around to claim it.
He just knew.
CHAPTER 7
6:23 A.M. – December 22, 2010