Free Dark Lie (9781101607084) by Nancy; Springer Page A

bags, none of the usual debris.
    No dead leaves either, or mouse turds, or bird nests.
    Good upholstery. Good carpeting. Protected by mats.
    Abandoned van, my hind foot.
    I shone my flashlight on the flat tires. The weeds grew up around them, yes, but some weeds also lay squashed under them.
    Huh. He’d let the air out of the tires. Removed the license plate. Removed the spare wheel, stowed it someplace. And now nobody would give the van a second glance. This guy was smart.
    I still hadn’t seen the source of the blue flashing light. Flicking off my flashlight, I waited until the darkness seeped back and once more I could see the faint sapphire glow come and go, come and go. From under the driver’s seat. I couldn’t see what was causing it.
    It didn’t matter. I knew.
    Juliet had been carrying her newly purchased bauble in her hand when the kidnapper had hit her on the head. She’d dropped it when she fell. It had rolled under the driver’s seat, where he hadn’t noticed it. Its flashing hadn’t caught his attention in daylight. By dark its battery was dying. He’d overlooked it.
    I knew all this as clearly as if I’d been there and seen.
    And at the same time I knew it was crazy. Why would the kidnapper have brought my daughter here, to Appletree, of all places?
    But the question caused a door to slam and lock in my mind.
Don’t go there.
Quickly I decided the Appletree connection had to be a coincidence. Stranger things had been known to happen.
    * * *
    Sam muttered to himself, “I can’t face this.”
    Yet he knew he had to.
    He flung open Dorrie’s closet door.
    And released his breath almost with a sob. There stood Dorrie’s old flower-fabric suitcase, right where it belonged. There hung her big soft dresses and tops and skirts, posy-print calico, peach, pale green, denim blue with daisy trim. Taking mental inventory of the closet, Sam didn’t see a thing missing.
    He felt certain now that she hadn’t left him in any premeditated sense of the word.
    Suddenly a bit weak in the knees, Sam sank to a seat on Dorrie’s side of the queen-sized bed. He stared at the clothes in the closet, relieved enough to think maybe the police would listen to him now. So far all he’d gotten was
No
.
No
, there hadn’t been an accident or incident,
No
, his wife hadn’t been taken to the hospital, and
No
, they wouldn’t consider her a missing person until at least twenty-four hours had passed, unless she was retarded, disabled, or suffering a life-threatening medical condition. Sam had tried to convince them that Dorrie needed to have her lupus medication, but he had never been a good fibber. He knew Dorrie carried her meds in her purse, and he knew her purse was virtually grafted onto her arm, and the police had evinced no concern when he had told them otherwise. Maybe they had heard the lie in his voice. Maybe they were too preoccupied by the Juliet Phillips case to care. Anyway, the answer had been
No
. They weren’t even sending an officer to take a report.
    Later, Sam told himself, after he’d found Dorrie and when he had time to get righteously outraged, certain people in public office in Fulcrum were going to hear his opinion regarding the FPD. But right now he had to focus on locating his missing wife.
    Sam stared at the bedside phone. Sitting around waiting for the confounded thing to ring was—Sam suppressed an urge to invoke the word “hell” in a nonbiblical context. The urge showed how upset he was. Couldn’t stand much more of this. He needed to do something. Go looking for Dorrie. But where?
    Sam blinked and shook his head. He didn’t know. He’d lived with Dorrie and loved her for ten years, yet he felt as if he didn’t really know her at all.
    â€œThink,” Sam whispered to himself.
    But thinking was of no use. Anything could have happened to her. Accident. Rape. Abduction. Murder.