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She didn’t have time for this. Whatever was happening between them didn’t matter in the face of a missing scared little boy, and she wasn’t about to let one more roadblock slow her down. Leigh took another step forward, lowering her voice. “Listen to me, Pierce. I know it was you in my house the night it burned, just as I know you’re the one who slashed my tires back in high school. I know that broken nose you’re sporting came from my foot ramming into your face when you tried to make it look like I’d died in that fire, and your sling is supporting a stab wound from my hammer.”
Nervousness exploded across Pierce’s face.
“Now, the only reason I haven’t started an investigation into you is because there are more important things going on here than whatever issue you have with me.” Suspicion she might be talking to the unsub responsible for three adult victims charged through her. “I know where Carter Boucher is, and despite your winning personality, I’d like to think you’re the kind of guy who isn’t going to let an innocent child die. So are you going to help me save him, or are you going to be the one to stand in my way?”
One second. Two.
Pierce pinched his radio in one hand. “4058 to dispatch, requesting additional units at my location for scene security.” He looked at her then, clearly questioning her motive. As well as his own. “The FBI is requiring assistance.” The dispatcher’s voice crackled confirmation, and he stood taller. “We find that boy, I get the credit. You understand? Then you’re gone. Out of Lebanon. No looking back.”
“Whatever helps you sleep better at night.” She followed him to his patrol vehicle and collapsed into the passenger seat. Within fifteen minutes of determined silence, Pierce pulled over just before the gravel road leading to Chris Ellingson’s home.
The bridge where Michelle Cross’s body had been found was right on the other side of these trees. Now she understood the reasoning for that. Whoever’d killed Gresham Schmidt, Roxanne Jennings, and Michelle Cross had wanted her to suspect Ellingson. The unsub had planned on it. And she’d played right into their hand.
She and Pierce hit the dirt as one, leaving the car behind. Of all the people she could trust in this investigation, Pierce sure as hell wasn’t one of them, but he was armed, and she had to believe he’d follow through on aiding her during the search.
They approached the house, her senses raw. Chris Ellingson was an intelligent predator who’d outlasted suspicion and law enforcement for two decades. There was no telling what lengths he’d gone to to protect his home and the surrounding property. She’d known serial offenders to funnel police into an ambush with garbage and junk in their yards, dig holes then cover them over to stop intruders, and cleverly direct unwanted visitors in front of windows for a kill shot.
The house came into view. It looked exactly as it had five days ago. Only now the car that’d been parked in front of the garage was missing.
“You really think the lieutenant’s boy is in there?” Sweat beaded along Pierce’s temple. Most of Lebanon PD’s calls were in response to domestic disturbance calls. Not surprising a suspected child murderer.
“Only one way to find out.” Her search warrant request wouldn’t have gone through in the past twenty minutes, but there was no harm in knocking on the front door, was there? Leigh set her weight on the bottom step leading to the screened-in front porch. The resulting creak hadn’t triggered her nerves during her last visit, but it might as well have been a bull horn announcing their presence this time.
Three knocks swung the door inward. The fine hairs at the back of her neck stood on end as the seconds ticked by. No movement through the kitchen window. No footsteps rushing toward the front of the house. Only silence.
“Step back.” Pierce unholstered his service weapon and maneuvered in front of her. He shoved inside, raising his uninjured arm, and entered the house.
Leigh barely had time to register the small details of the house before the smell hit the back of her throat. It resurrected buried memories, dread, and loss as she pushed past Pierce through the living room.
“Brody, wait! The house isn’t clear!” The officer tried to keep up with her, but she knew the layout here.
She’d never forgotten.
She wrenched the basement door open and descended the stairs. The odor turned thick and physical, a wall of warning she refused to slow down for. The windows had been blacked out, but the lightbulb cord at the bottom of the stairs was right where she remembered. Leigh tugged at the string.
Yellow light spread across the basement.
And exposed the body waiting in the dark.
TWENTY-FIVE
Lebanon, New Hampshire
Wednesday, April 2, 2004
11:30 p.m.
Her parents had finally cried themselves to sleep.
But she couldn’t. There’d been plenty of times she’d prayed to be an only child—when her brother had spilled her favorite nail polish all over her Walkman, when he’d answered the phone and told her first boyfriend she was in the bathroom, when he’d broken her favorite Xena action figure—but she’d never expected she wouldn’t be able to go to sleep without Troy in the next room.
Leigh closed the back door behind her as softly as possible. She didn’t care what the police had said. The body under the house wasn’t Troy. They could claim she was in denial all they wanted. Didn’t make it true. She knew her brother as effortlessly as she knew her own face in the mirror, and that boy wasn’t him. Someone had placed him there to keep everyone from finding out the truth.
Her boots squished in the overwatered backyard as she headed for the woods behind their house. Air burned at the back of her throat. She wasn’t allowed to come out here alone, especially at night, but no one believed her. Troy was still out there.
And she was going to find him.
Leigh closed her hand around the toy soldier she’d taken off the boy in the crawl space. The one with Troy’s name written on the bottom. When she’d asked about it, Troy had said something stupid and told her to mind her own business. But when her parents had brought it up, she’d overheard him explain that Mr. Ellingson had given it to him at an appointment a couple weeks ago. An experiment to see if it helped her brother focus better in class. It was the first time she’d heard anything about him having problems in school. He’d seemed just fine to her, but they were in separate schools. Had been all their lives with their age difference, but disappointment stabbed through her at the thought of what else he might not have told her before he’d disappeared. Of all the things he wouldn’t get to do with his life.
