Page 52 of Threat of Danger
Years ago, at the hospital, he’d wanted to know if the rape had been bad. His tone had been asking,Are you sure you didn’t enjoy it?He’d also asked if she had rape fantasies.
On behalf of her eighteen-year-old self, Jess wanted to jump up and sock the bastard in the face. Instead, she kept answering the questions he asked.
Because the bones were human.
Because a girl was missing.
She wanted the police to find something, even if, at the same time, she didnotwant her suspicions and intuition confirmed. She didn’t want her gut feeling—that the kidnapper had not died in the river—to be right. She wanted to be wrong about the masked man kidnapping others. Because the others hadn’t come back. Which would mean that they’d been killed.
Holding those dark suspicions in her heart over the years had been draining, but seeing them confirmed might be even worse. Jess didn’t want to be right. She would rather be paranoid and delusional, like Mark Maxwell had called her.
She answered more questions. She answered every question the deputy had. Then they were finally done, and Muller took his leave.
Jess watched the deputy’s cruiser disappear down the driveway, and she relaxed by degrees. The relief lasted only seconds. Then she was just drained.
Derek came up behind her.
She didn’t turn as she asked, “Why didn’t the sheriff come himself?”
“Sheriff Rollins has one foot and two toes in the grave. He’s aged some since you last saw him. He keeps getting reelected because he’s one of the local good old boys and everybody likes him. Muller pretty much does everything these days.”
She rubbed her hands up and down her arms. “You know what I don’t understand? Why did they think at first that the girl in the water was Hannah? I mean, the body was near Hannah’s car, but didn’t her parents identify her?”
Derek stayed silent.
She looked at him over her shoulder. “What? Do you know?”
His reluctant expression clearly said that he did, but he didn’t want to tell her.
“How bad is it?” she asked.
“Bad.”
She waited.
“The girl had been in the water for four or five days,” he said.
Jess understood that was a long time for a body, but the water had to be near freezing, so rapid decomposition couldn’t have been the problem. She waited for Derek to finish.
“The current kept rolling her against the foot of the bridge, the big cement pillar. The body was caught there pretty much the whole time. When they found her, what was left of her clothes were just muddy strips. Most of her face rubbed off.”
She turned back to the window, wishing she hadn’t asked. The images in her mind filled her with horror.
“You remember Billy Gellar?” Derek asked from behind her. “Skinny little twig who got run up the flagpole freshman year in high school?”
How could she forget? The poor kid had been mercilessly bullied, culminating in the flagpole incident. Derek had cut him down, then taken him under his protection.
“He’s Mayor Gellar now,” he said.
“No way.”
“He went into finance. Wall Street for a while. Made a ton of money. Came back. The kids who used to harass him are now kissing his ass.”
She really liked the sound of that.
“Jared became a vet,” Derek said. “He married Selena.”
They’d been high school sweethearts, theitcouple. “Good for them.”
