Page 60 of The Grave Between Us
And if Director King was as abrasive with the Des Moines law enforcement community as he had been with Noah, he’d be iced out of any mutual assistance—which he would need, at some point, guaranteed—faster than he could sneer.
Noah didn’t work that way. He liked to keep the local community close, police departments, sheriffs, and feds alike. They were all on the same team, just bringing different strengths to bear.
He didn’t like keeping the truth back from Sheriff Clarke, but a Director’s Eyes Only classification wasn’t something to ignore. That was jail time.
“We’re taking a look at a few angles here, Sheriff. Kidnapping is one of them. Interstate crime is another. I’ll keep you in the loop as much as I can. Cole and I found this scene about ten minutes ago. We’re not holding anything here back.”
“You’ve always been a straight shooter, Downing. Can I trust you to read me in on this when I need to know the details? I have to protect my county and my people.”
“Sheriff, you’ll be the first one I call. You always are.”
“I’ll send a deputy out there right away. You guys want copies of our evidence processing?”
“I’d appreciate that.”
“Consider it done. I’ll have it faxed over as soon as it’s complete.”
Noah hung up. Cole was staring at the pavement and the shattered glass. His jacket ruffled, bouncing open on the cold prairie wind. The ends of his hair danced, the strands brushing his eyebrows and the tops of his ears.
“We’ve never found one of Ian’s abduction sites before.” Cole’s voice was thin, strained. “I’ve heard him describe the abductions, but I’ve never seen it. He took him, right here—” He looked away, squinted into the gray horizon. “How do you think he did it?”
“Ingram pulled ahead of Kerrigan in his car, and then he most likely set up a ruse to get Kerrigan to stop, before storming his car. Based on the skid marks, I’m guessing he faked some kind of car trouble in the middle of the road. Whatever he did, it looks like he came at Kerrigan through the driver’s window, just like you said.”
Cole nodded. “Michael is going to want some of that glass and the photos of the tire marks. He’ll want the FBI labs to process it. He’s a snob. He doesn’t trust locals.”
“I never would have guessed,” Noah said. He went back to Jacob’s trunk and grabbed a paper evidence envelope, then had Cole watch the road again as he scraped up a few shards of glass. He sealed the envelope, signed it, dated it. Had Cole countersign and then watched Cole tuck the envelope into his jacket pocket.
“What happened after this?” Cole gazed up and down the highway, a lost look settling over his face. “Where did they go? How did Ian take Kerrigan and his car?”
“He had two cars and one victim.” Noah looked east, down the highway. Half a mile, maybe a little less, by his reckoning. “This way,” he said. “I think I know where he dumped the extra car.”
They walked side by side, silent. Tension rolled off Cole, so much it made Noah’s head ache. He watched his lover out of the corner of his eye. Cole’s fingers tapped against each other. Fluttered over his thigh. This was a different man than the Cole he knew.
Noah guided Cole to the gravel turnoff that led to the underbrush-choked boat ramp. Winter rain had filled the river, and it was wide and swift, eddies circling underwater boulders and reeds in shifting green-and-brown swirls. Algae and moss clung to the rocks along the bank. Water rushed over the gravel and cracked concrete slope of the narrow ramp, splashing Noah’s shoes when he walked to the edge. Twenty feet to their left, County F90 crossed the river on a flat bridge. Trestle train tracks ran beside the road to the north.
“There,” Noah said. He pointed to a deep current of water around an unseen mass, flowing left and right and whirlpooling in little drafts, as if outlining an eight-foot oval. He could just see the small shark-fin bump of a radio antenna on the back of the roof. There was a dark blue sheen where the water ran thin over the top of the car. “That will be the stolen Honda he was driving.”
The breath punched out of Cole.
“Do you think Kerrigan is inside?” Noah asked softly. “Would he have dumped the body along with the car?”
“No.” Cole shook his head. “Ian keeps his victims for as long as he can. He likes them to suffer as much as possible. He lives for their terror. Ian took Kerrigan with him. Somewhere he could torture him in private.”
“It makes sense he would ditch the stolen car, then. He was running the risk of a sheriff or a state trooper running the plate every time he drove. But if he took Kerrigan’s car, he could drive undetected, safe from triggering any red flags until Kerrigan was reported missing.”
“And he wasn’t reported missing until ten p.m. The sheriff’s department probably took an hour to get the alert out and the APB on Kerrigan’s car pushed out to all units. The report went to the county, right?” Cole asked.
Noah nodded. “The reporting county, Dallas, and neighboring counties. They wouldn’t have pushed the APB statewide in a first incident report.”
“Ian had eight hours of drive time, then. Almost five hundred miles.”
Noah did the mental math, drawing a big circle around Des Moines. “He could have gone all the way to the Canadian border. The Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, or Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri… or even as far as northern Arkansas or Oklahoma, almost to the Texas state line.”
“He’s familiar with Arkansas. With Oklahoma, too. He buried victims in the Ozarks. He lived in Oklahoma a long time ago.” Cole scrubbed his hands over his face and groaned. “They could be anywhere.”
“Do you think he would have driven that far? With what you know of him, how far does he usually travel with his victims?”
“We never found enough of his victims to really know, or to put together a predictive profile. He kept so much to himself. But of the victims he did discuss…” He paled, turning as green as the algae on the bank. “No, he didn’t travel far. A hundred miles at most, I think.”
