Page 11 of Tears on Her Grave

“How are the roads out there?” Piper looked past her and out onto Main. “Any local flooding? Will we be able to get home okay?”

“Yeah, you’re good to go.” Rio walked up to the counter. “I checked the weather conditions five minutes ago and the highway to our place is clear. Drive safe.”

“I always do.” Cade smiled at him. “See you at dinner.” He led the way out of the office, with Piper close on his heels.

Flicking through the notes, Jenna could almost see a pattern. There’d been a number of people concerned about the missing college students and remembered the incident clearly, even after twelve years had passed. She headed up the stairs as Kane was walking down with Duke. She waved the notes at him. “We have a result. Head up to the conference room when you get back. We’ll spread these out on the table and work through them together. She leaned over the railing. “Rio, grab Rowley and come up to the conference room. Bring any notes you have about what you’ve been doing all day.”

Once inside the conference room, she went about filling the coffee pots and kettle to make herself a cup of hot chocolate. She turned and smiled at Rowley as he arrived carrying a box of takeout. Being out in the rain and cold all day, she would appreciate a hot drink and a pastry. “Oh, can I smell donuts?”

“Yeah, Susie told me that Aunt Betty’s has purchased a new donut fryer. She has been selling them as fast as they can cook them.” Rowley slid the box across the table toward her. “Eatthem while they’re hot. I’ll make you a cup of hot chocolate. I’ll even thrown in a few marshmallows.”

“Do you want a rundown of what we’ve been doing or do you want to go through the hotline calls first?” Rio dropped into a chair and yawned. “I can’t imagine why Kalo enjoys hunting down people. I’ve scanned so many images of college students over the last few hours my head is spinning.”

“What did I miss?” Kane walked into the room with Duke close behind. He peered into the box of takeout and then went to the counter to pour a cup of coffee. “Mmm, hot cinnamon donuts.”

Savoring the bite of the delicious sugary treat, Jenna licked her fingers and then, after pulling a legal pad from a drawer, picked up her pen. “Okay, Rio, what have you got for me?”

“We compiled a list of everyone in that year at the college and added kids from the year before as Wolfe is convinced that both the killer and Cole were part of the football team. We separated the players from the others but kept all the girls’ names from two years previously as well. Mainly because guys date girls younger than they are some of the time.” He blew out a long sigh. “Then we went through those students who were in social clubs together. We found most of this information from the yearbooks and put them into groups.”

“Yeah, we found the majority of the football players dated the cheerleaders, going on the prom photographs we found in the archives of the local newspaper. We made a separate list of them.” Rowley handed Jenna a cup and slid one across the table to Rio. “The newspapers covered the missing students as well.”

“Hmm.” Kane licked sugar from his fingers. “All these responses from the public, the media, and yet the sheriff didn’t make so much as a note about it in his daybook. That’s very strange.”

Unable to comprehend why such an important thing had been overlooked by the local sheriff, Jenna sorted the hotline information into four separate piles and handed three to the others. “We’ll need to follow up on every one of these.” She glanced at her watch. “However, as we don’t have a killer roaming around murdering anyone at the moment, we will finish at five and take this up again first thing in the morning. I figure we just call each of these people and try to get them to expand a little more on their information.” She moved her attention to Rio and then Rowley. “Did you get the name of the local reporter at the time, or find anything that might assist with the case?”

“I did.” Rowley smiled. “They still work at the local newspaper and they have a very good memory. Main problem is that when the local sheriff and the media interviewed the kids, they all came up with the same story. A group of them read the flyer and a large group camped alongside the river. Where they stopped was a long way from the Whispering Caves. It was bitterly cold at that time of the year and none of them wanted to go that high up the mountain and camp out overnight. Many broke away from the main group and left before midnight, saying they’d decided to drop by the Old Mitcham Ranch to see if they could see any ghosts. A couple of the kids mentioned that they noticed Cole and Abby heading up the mountain trail toward the Whispering Caves. Nobody took any notice as cheerleader Abby had been getting the attention of Cole for some time. None of them stayed there overnight. It was so cold that by a little after one, without any sight of the Whispering Caves Axman’s ghost, people had started wandering away. Nobody knew anything about Cole and Abby going missing until one or two days later.”

“That’s just about the same story we got from Josie Grady, now Josie Campbell.” Kane reached for another donut. “This isgoing to take some detective work. Someone out there knows the names of the close group of friends who hung out with Cole and Abby.”

Sipping her drink, Jenna looked from one to the other. “When we do, we’ll split this case wide open.”

ELEVEN

The Old Mitcham Ranch

Head bent against the rain, Wyatt Twotrees used bolt cutters to break the chain securing the gate to the Old Mitcham Ranch and pushed it wide open. It had been a very long time since he’d been at the haunted ranch house. After more than one mass murder had happened in the exact same place, he figured it wasn’t only Mitcham, who’d murdered his wife and then hanged himself, who haunted the place now. The old place was dangerous and anyone could be waiting in the shadows. The hairs on the back of his neck stood to attention as he looked out across the shadowed driveway. The haze from the rain had been enhanced by the swirling mist rising from the river and in the moonlight the old ranch house, with its peeling paint and empty windows, radiated a warning not to enter. He looked toward the barn, where Mitcham had hung himself from the rafters. The legend was that on Halloween he could be heard swinging back and forth, the rope creaking with each sway of his decaying body.

Wyatt wasn’t sure if he believed in ghosts, but over the years, he had sure seen a few weird things happening in Black Rock Falls, so anything could be possible. He stood to oneside as vehicles drove into the driveway forming a circle, their headlights highlighting the downfall of rain and making the perimeter outside dark and foreboding.

Over the last twelve years since the incident at the Whispering Caves everyone involved had taken a low profile, going their separate ways and meeting only at college reunions. They all had close friends within the group, figuring that was normal as they’d spent so long together in college. He’d married and divorced and worked in the spare automobile parts industry, and his close friend Clint Wasser worked in sales. He was still single, saying he liked to play the field on his sales trips. Both his other college buddies Jess Hallon and Dustin Crawley worked on their parents’ cattle ranches. Dustin was often away on the rodeo circuit and had never married, but Jess had a son and a wife. The girls in the group he didn’t make contact with at all. Josie had married Bob Campbell. Marissa, a tax accountant, was still the little scared mouse he’d known at college, and Lily was a hairstylist. They did talk but kept it on the down-low. In all, they’d hid their secret from the world very well.

He climbed into his truck and headed for the other vehicles. He buzzed down his window. “I’m not standing out in the rain. Drive into the barn.” He grinned at them. “Unless you’re chicken.”

“I don’t know why you dragged us all out here in the middle of a flood, Marissa.” Wasser shook rain from his baseball cap and glared at her. “No one is going to know we’re talking. Why do you figure the cops believe we’re involved?”

“It’s been a very long time, Clint.” Marissa stared at him from under her hood. “Haven’t you watched the news? The sheriff is hunting down friends of Cole and Abby. They found their bodies floating in the river. I wanted to make sure we all understood the implications of what was happening and to ensure that after all this time, our stories were the same.”

“I agree.” Hallon shrugged and removed his hat to shake out the rain. “You know the law. Murder doesn’t come under the statute of limitations. We covered this up and I’m not blaming anyone because most of us would have done the same thing in the circumstances, so we’re all equally guilty. If the truth comes out, we’ll all go to prison for murder one.”

“I still find it hard to believe Cole murdered Abby.” Lily pushed both hands into her coat pockets. “Why would he? They got along real well and she was really nice. I know she loved him. I wonder what really happened. Did they argue?”

Rolling his eyes, Wyatt Twotrees gaped at her. “That’s water under the bridge now, Lily. Why he did it is irrelevant. All we need to remember is he murdered Abby and needed to be stopped. You all know it was the right thing to do and any one of us would have done the same. We all agreed to bury the bodies that night and nothing has changed.”

“If we’d let him go, he’d have murdered us in our sleep.” Dustin Crawley, rugged and strong, rested both hands on his belt and his buckle glistened in the headlights. “It’s too late now to have second thoughts. We go over the story and stick to it.” His gaze swung to Josie. “I hope you didn’t spill your guts.” His gaze shifted to the other women. “Y’all are weak links and we’re trusting our lives to you. One slip and y’all become liabilities. Us guys are solid. Look what happened today. Who did they question first? Josie, and they’ll get to the rest of y’all and try and make you talk. You know the sheriff’s reputation: she can read a lie and she will hunt us down like a dog after a bone.”

“It doesn’t matter who killed Cole.” Clint Wasser folded his arms across his chest and his gaze moved around the group. “We’re all equally to blame. We have never spoken about it since that night, and Josie calls Marissa the second the cops leave. How stupid is that? Don’t you figure they’ll check the phone records?”

“Yeah, and what does Marissa do?” Jess Hallon stood feet apart and back straight. He pointed a finger at Marissa. “Within seconds of disconnecting, she contacts Lily.” He shook his head. “Didn’t you think it through before you acted? You’ll get us all life in prison.” He threw his arms up in the air and glared at them. “My dog’s got more brains than you two.”

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