Page 16 of Left Behind

Tom listened to the message, and then handed it back and pulled his notebook and pen out of his back pocket. “What’s Billy’s address?” he asked, then wrote it down when Johnny told him. “What time did Carey leave?”

“I don’t know for sure. She helped me into bed a little after three p.m., I think. I’d taken pain pills and fell asleep. I woke up to this message, but she sent it just after eight p.m., and I didn’t wake up until just before I called you. I tried to call her over and over, but it just goes to voicemail.”

“What kind of car does he drive?” Tom asked.

“Last I knew, it was a white 2019 Jeep Cherokee,” Johnny said.

“Billy’s got priors,” Tom said. “If he’s dead, it’s likely drug related.”

“Oh, hell, we both knew that. But he’s all the family Carey has, and Billy practically raised her. He worships the ground she walks on.”

“Are you out of pain meds?” Tom asked.

“I have two left. I’ve been saving them for when it gets really bad.”

“Shit, Johnny. You could have asked me. Sit tight. We’ll deal with your meds in a minute. Right now, I need to call all this in.”

Johnny leaned back and closed his eyes as Tom walked out of the room to make the call, but he couldn’t stop the tears. Carey was his life, and he was scared to death that hers was already over. He could hear Tom’s voice in the other room, but let the sounds roll over him. All he wanted was for Carey to walk in the door with that beautiful smile on her face.

A few minutes later, Tom came back. “Here’s what’s happening,” he said. “The first thing they’re doing is a welfare check at Billy Eggers’s residence. If he’s dead, they’ll go from there. We put out a BOLO for his car. And the detectives are running the name Gunny through the system on the off chance there’s actually someone in the system with that alias. We’ll see how many hits we get on that. Now tell me where the bottle is with your pain meds.”

“In the bathroom medicine cabinet,” Johnny said.

Tom headed for the bedroom and then into the en suite bathroom. When he came back, he laid the two remaining pain pills on the table.

“I’m going to get this refilled. I’ll be back.”

Johnny wiped the tears off his face and nodded. “I owe you.”

“You owe me nothing, John Knight. Nothing. We’re friends. We’ll get through this together. Understood?”

Johnny nodded.

“Take the pain meds,” Tom said.

“Can’t. Not until I know what’s happened to my girl.”

“Jesus, Johnny. It could take—”

Johnny looked up.

Tom sighed. “Right. I think there’s a twenty-four-hour pharmacy not too far from here. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Do you need help getting back to bed?”

“No. I can manage. But take my house key with you. It’s in that dish on the hall table. Lock the door when you leave.”

***

The welfare check at Billy Eggers’s house yielded exactly what Carey had described. The front door was ajar. The living room was a disaster, and Billy’s body was lying in a pool of congealed blood. The back door to the house was open, and his car was missing. Crime scene investigators were called to the scene, as was the county coroner. The can of Pepsi that Carey had been drinking was bagged along with everything else, including a spent cartridge shell.

***

It was just after daybreak when Annie Cauley left her house on Pope Mountain to make her daily drive down into Jubilee. There would be people waiting in line for her baked goods by 6:00 a.m., and she needed to have Granny Annie’s Bakery open for business. She knew her daughter, Laurel, would have driven in before daylight and already be at the shop setting dough to rise.

She hadn’t slept well because of last night’s storm. The rain had been a deluge, and when she walked out onto the back porch to watch the sunrise, she could hear the water coming off Big Falls and roaring down the creek that ran through Jubilee, even from this far away.

She and her husband, John, were one of the families living highest on Pope Mountain, so the drive down every morning was a long one. She was coming up on the road leading to her nephew Cameron’s house when she caught a glimpse of a white vehicle off into the trees on the south side of the road. It was obvious it had crashed, and the passenger door was standing open.

Annie slammed on the brakes and killed the engine, then got out on the run, taking care not to slide as she moved down into the ditch. Her worst fear was that she’d find a body. She saw a purse lying on the floorboard, but the car was empty. Knowing better than to disturb anything that might turn into evidence, she ran back to her car and made a quick call to Cameron. It rang a couple of times before he answered.

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