Gabriel winced and closed his eyes briefly.
Ann let that statement stand for a moment before she continued. “The odds Josh can find those remains after so many years is admittedly low, but he’ll be walking the property to find whatever can be discovered. If Ashley Dayton is buried on the uncle’s land, Josh and his dogs will find her. We let Josh do his work, and we’ll support Grace however we can if there are discoveries out there.”
She paused, sighed, and added, “If we do find the child’s remains, we’ll help Grace to face this. If we can’t find the child, we keep this probable answer to the Dayton case to ourselves and her parents. What we tell them needs to stay pretty high level unless we can formally close the case. I don’t want them seeking out Grace. If we can’t find Ashley’s remains, we don’t tell Grace about the case.”
“We’re not going to cause further pain to a living victim, Ann,” Gabriel agreed, speaking for the group. “Not when it’s Grace Arnett.”
Ann nodded at his reassurance.
Even though Evie didn’t personally know Grace or the uncle who’d done this, she could imagine what others in this room were dealing with. She shook her head, trying to get her concentration back, to see what had to be done first to work the case now laid out in an entirely new pattern. She studied the map on the wall. “Can someone describe the property? What are we dealing with here?” Evie asked.
“About two hundred acres,” Caleb replied, getting up and moving over to circle the area with a marker. “Most of the land is leased out and planted with corn and beans, but Carin Lake cuts into it on the west side. The shoreline and woods here”-he indicated the spot with the marker-“are on the property. There’s good hunting in these thick woods. Probably twenty acres or better of timber are going to have to be searched. The house here,” he said, using the marker again, “is set back from the road a distance. I remember there being a barn or two. The estate trustee kept the house together enough that the roof didn’t leak and the windows were still solid, but it hasn’t been lived in since Grace moved away. I don’t know what Grace has done with it since she reached eighteen and the property was distributed to her.”
“It’s the same,” Ann said. “The house is basically as it was and still unoccupied. Any evidence that remained out there, we’ll find and collect. When we’re done, Grace plans to demolish the house and barns, turn the acreage back into tillable land, and sell the place. She’s got an offer from the man now leasing the farmland. She’ll make a separate arrangement for the wooded acres and the access road with one of the hunting groups in the area. She doesn’t plan to come back here again once this is done.”
Evie thought Grace’s plan to return it to farmland, cut any connection to the place, was the best decision she could make, given the history there.
Ann rubbed the back of her neck, walked over to the crime wall, took down the two photos, and returned them to her briefcase. Evie watched her lock it, understood the gesture.
“I’m convinced Kevin killed Grace’s parents to gain legal guardianship of her,” Ann said as she straightened, turned to the group. “Whether we can prove that and find a way to close the cold case on her parents’ disappearance is difficult to say at this point. But they came to Carin to visit family, vanished from their hotel on a Friday night-a car and two adults-leaving their daughter with a cousin who was babysitting while they went out to eat. They wouldn’t leave a child they loved. They were murdered that night. It’s likely the uncle concealed it all by hiding the evidence on the land he owned. Now, twenty-five years later, we’re going to try to find that proof. And in the process hopefully locate Ashley Dayton as well.
“We need to make sure the search doesn’t leak. Nothing gets written down, entered into a computer, formalized. We leave the initial work to Josh, reevaluate once he’s done. And we keep news of the missing child away from Grace for as long as we can.”
“Ann, does Josh know the full picture?” Gabriel asked.
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
“He’s going to have to know.” At Ann’s nod of agreement, Gabriel pulled out his phone and walked to the other side of the room to make a call to Josh.
Evie knew Josh couldn’t walk beside Grace on that property and not know they might locate the remains of a child, not know the farmhouse was a place that haunted Grace with the memories it stirred. She watched Gabriel as he spoke with his brother. His father had been sheriff while this was happening, Gabriel was the sheriff now. Evie didn’t think any of the Thanes would be the same after today. A child had been abused on the periphery of their lives for years, and they hadn’t seen it.
Looking spent, Ann came back to the table and sat down. Evie refilled Ann’s coffee, would have put her phone in her hand and told her to call Paul if she thought Ann would step aside for a few minutes right now. Evie got a brief look of thanks and knew Ann was at her limit.
Evie realized she was the only one in the room not getting personally whipsawed by the revelations and mentally stepped in to take over, started making notes on what had to be done next. There was a high probability before the next two weeks were over that the Dayton girl’s disappearance would be closed with the discovery of her remains. It wouldn’t be a celebration when they closed the case. They would have a success, but at a very heavy price for those who knew the whole truth.
“We need to take another look at her uncle’s hunting accident,” Caleb said.
“Yes,” Ann agreed, sipping at the cup of coffee.
“Arnett’s death looked like a hunting accident,” Caleb went on. “He was shot from an angle indicating the bullet came from above, from the deer blind. He wasn’t wearing anything reflective or bright. Someone mistook him for an animal and fired, then ran from the scene. At the time it didn’t play any other way. An anonymous call came in of a shooting accident. We couldn’t trace cellphones as well back then, but it seems likely it was called in from a road out that way-once whoever did it was away from the scene. What prints could be recovered from the blind were people you’d expect to have used it, and those folks had reasonable alibis for the time in question.”
“Grace didn’t kill him,” Ann said quietly. “I’d lay money on that. It probably was just what it appeared, a hunting accident.”
Caleb gave Ann a reassuring nod. “Actually, Grace was with Josh when her uncle was killed-riding their bikes over by the ice cream shop and then to the library. Grace was the one girl Josh didn’t mind knowing that his affection for books ran as deep as hers. A deputy met up with them at the library so we could keep Grace away from the scene.” Caleb sighed. “This hurts, Ann. Hurts really bad. It surely takes a lot of courage for her to come back. How is she?”
“Still in deep pain. Quiet. Facing that past. Dealing with it. Moving too fast through the memories, in my estimation. I’d say she needed another year before taking this step. But I haven’t been able to shift her from this course. She’s facing it, trying to get through it, get it done and behind her.”
“I never saw it.” Caleb shook his head. “Not in her uncle, not in her. I noticed Grace around town most weeks. Growing up without a mom or dad. The sadness was in her eyes most of the time. She was a quiet girl. But I took it as that. I never once suspected this, and no one told me anything even in confidence that they had questions. I would have acted, Ann. God is my witness, I would have believed her.”
“I know, Caleb. I know.”
“If my boys had seen anything, if she had said anything-”
“She didn’t, Dad,” Gabriel said, rejoining them. “We would have gotten a clue from something she said, I promise you that. We all liked her, Josh most of all. Grace didn’t let us in, not to this secret. Not to this darkness.”