Page 105 of You Betrayed Me (The Cahills 3)

Now, shaking off the memory, he stood and stretched, his spine popping from long hours at his desk. He rolled the kinks from his neck, checked his watch, and realized it was time to go. If they wanted to make Marysville by three, they needed to head out. He strode to the locker area, where he found Mendoza already slipping her arms through her jacket.

“Time to roll,” he said as they both checked out from the station, then stepped outside to a day that was crisp and cold, the cloudless sky a brilliant shade of blue. “I’ll drive.”

Mendoza was already heading to the passenger side of a department SUV as a cruiser with two deputies pulled into an open space. “Got the keys?” she asked.

He shot her a look over the roof of the Jeep. “Yes, Mother.”

Her lips twitched as she slid inside, and once he was behind the wheel and driving out of the lot, she asked, “Bad morning?”

“Not so much bad as fruitless,” he grumbled. “And cooped up.”

“Well, now you’re not,” she pointed out.

That much was true. They were on their way to meet with Jennifer Korpi, and he’d be away from the phone and computer screen for a good while. He’d spent hours going over reports and statements from witnesses and watched reams of footage taken by street and business cameras in the area, looking for a clue, hoping to spot Megan Travers’s black Toyota. There was a tiny bit of hope when a Tacoma couple who had been driving east at the time reported seeing what could have been Megan’s car. The timing was right, and it had happened just before the summit, on the eastern slope, where the driver had been forced to ease closer to the side of the road as the Toyota, heading west and uphill, had blown by. But so far nothing had come from the tip.

The snowplow driver who’d been cut off, Bud Frandsen, had come in and talked to Rivers. Frandsen was a big, beefy guy in a baseball cap who was looking at retirement and had been behind the wheel of a plow for nearly thirty years. When asked who was driving the car that had careened out of James Cahill’s driveway, he’d adjusted the hat on his head and replied, “I had to hit my GD brakes so hard I nearly slid. Didn’t pay attention to who was driving. But the car was a black Toyota, that much I can tell you.”

“W

as there anyone else in the car, other than the driver?”

“Don’t know. Don’t think so,” he said and, when handed Megan Travers’s driver’s license picture and asked if she could be the driver, he’d swung his big head side to side and said, “Maybe. Maybe not. I was just trying to keep the rig on the road while cussin’ a blue streak.” As if to underscore that, he added, “Fuckin’ idiot. Coulda got me killed.”

Rivers hadn’t gotten much more from Olga Marsden, either, a woman near eighty who had been out walking her dog on the night Megan disappeared. Gray-haired and thin, Mrs. Marsden was a widow and sharp as a tack, her dark eyes bright behind big blue-rimmed glasses. She had taken her little Scottie dog for a walk through Riggs Crossing that night, just as, she said, she did every night. “We leave the house just after seven and get home before eight so I can catch up on my shows. I tape Wheel and Jeopardy, you know, after the news,” she’d informed Rivers. “I always walk Bitsy then. He’s a Scottie, you know, the fifth one I’ve owned, and it’s been my experience they all like their routines. Bitsy for sure. He doesn’t like his routine changed. Puts him in a bad mood.”

Though she hadn’t been sure, Olga Marsden had thought a woman was behind the wheel of the dark car. “She was driving like a bat out of hell! Just a few blocks from Main Street, if you can believe that. Oh, boy! I signaled for her to slow down, you know, patted the air like this.” She mimicked the movement. “But she didn’t even notice. Just kept right on going. In fact,” the old woman had confided, lifting a “tsking” finger, “I think she actually sped up, if you can believe that.”

When Rivers had asked if the driver had been alone in the car, Mrs. Marsden had thought hard, her face screwing up beneath her cap of gray curls. “I think so, but I couldn’t swear to it. It happened so fast. I was too concerned about Bitsy, you know. Afraid he might run out into the street. He’s a love. Name’s short for Bitterroot’s Scion; he’s registered. Purebred. We just call him Bitsy.”

That had been the end of the interview.

Later, Mrs. Marsden’s story had been confirmed. Two cameras, one from a service station, another mounted over the parking area of a restaurant, caught glimpses of a dark Corolla hurtling past around the same time as the dog walker said she was out.

Olga’s recollection coincided with that of Megan’s coworkers as well, both of whom he’d spoken with on the phone and confirmed their previous statements. Ramone Garcia, a physician’s assistant, had seen Megan leave at her regular time, right after 5:00 P.M., and his coworker, Andie Jeffries, an RN for the McEwen Clinic, had agreed. The parking-lot camera had filmed Megan leaving work and getting into her Toyota at 5:09. The doctor who owned and ran the clinic, Thomas McEwen, MD, had been at the hospital that afternoon, and there was nothing more that he could add, only to say that everyone who worked at the clinic was trustworthy and that Megan had done a good job as a bookkeeper who worked with the insurance companies. Other than having trouble getting to work on time, Megan Travers had been “an asset to the team.”

Rivers wondered about that, but didn’t say as much. He directed search teams from both the county and state police to look carefully in the area near or past the summit. It appeared she’d gotten that far, at least, but then what?

He and Mendoza also double-checked Megan’s phone records and credit-card receipts. Her checking account had been untouched, no debit activity since the last time anyone had seen her. Unless she had a secret identity or a helluva lot of cash stashed away, or a friend who was hiding her and letting her use his or her funds, there was no way she wouldn’t be spending her money for gas, food, and lodging.

His frustration with the case grew. It was over a week since Megan’s disappearance, and he had no idea what had happened to her. Was she alive? Hiding? Kidnapped? In a bad accident, trapped somewhere? Or, he worried, dead?

“Any word from the state police?” he asked again, glancing at Mendoza, who was, as usual, looking at her phone.

She shook her head. “Don’t you think I would’ve said?”

“Maybe we can nudge them again.”

“Like we did yesterday and the day before.”

He looked through the windshield at the vibrant blue sky. “It’s clear today. They could send a chopper up.”

With a lift of one eyebrow, she sent him a get-real glance. “I think they’re on it.”

“Just check, would you?”

He reached into a pocket and grabbed his sunglasses as the glare of sunlight off the snow was blinding. The road was clear until they reached the foothills, where the plows hadn’t been able to keep up with the snowfall and the road was packed with ice, snow, and, in some spots, gravel.

He wondered about the little Toyota. It too had disappeared. Was it secreted in a garage somewhere? Or already out of the country, as the Canadian border was only a few hours north? Or buried deep in the snow at the bottom of a steep ravine in these craggy mountains?

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