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Kris had to say she wasn’t a fan of that news, either.
“Did you tell him where I lived?”
“He did not ask.”
“What did he ask?”
Unease filtered over Jamaica’s face, and Kris felt cold all over again. “If you were happy.”
Why did Kris find that more sinister than if he’d asked for directions to her front porch?
*
Kris hung around, finishing one cup of coffee and then another while she assured Jamaica that she’d be careful out there.
“You tell Alan Mac about dis weird happy-man or I will,” Jamaica insisted.
“All right,” Kris agreed, but what would she say? Some guy, whose name she didn’t know, who was of average weight and maybe six feet tall, with brown hair and a Bo-Sox cap, was asking about her.
Big whoop.
Since Alan Mac already thought she’d invented one imaginary man, she didn’t relish him thinking she’d dreamed up another. Sure, she could have him talk to Jamaica, and Dougal for that matter, but what had the guy done? Asked if she was happy. Sure it was freaky, but it wasn’t a crime.
Kris decided to keep the info to herself. She needed the constable to take last night’s attack seriously. It could very well be a lead to whoever had killed that poor girl Kris had found near the loch and the other one, too.
Stopping at the bank, Kris exchanged Mandenauer’s money for currency she could use, then moved on to the police station. Alan Mac stood out front. She might not have recognized him dressed in street clothes—a jacket, slacks, and white shirt—if not for the orange hair.
Must be his day off. If chief constables had such things.
Kris would have hurried over, except he was already talking to someone.
“She was walking home from work last night,” the woman said, her shrill, frightened voice carrying. “From Drumnadrochit to our place is not so far. She’s walked it a hundred times. And now she’s gone. I ken ye found another strange girl, drowned just like the first one.”
“Shh.” Alan Mac glanced around, saw Kris, who waved, and winced. “That’s not to be bandied aboot, Janet. Ye know that.”
“I don’t care about the damn tourists. I want my daughter. So do the McCoys.” She tilted her head, her silver-flecked dark hair sliding across the shoulder of her Fair Isle sweater. “The Brodies maybe no. That Kelsie of theirs was a real handful. But I’m sure they’d be happy to know where she got to. Even if it is dragged to the bottom of the loch.”
“She wasnae dragged to the bottom of the loch,” Alan said.
“And how do you know that, Alan Mac?” The woman set her fists on her ample hips. “We have five girls missing.”
An icy finger traced Kris’s neck. This was the first she’d heard of anyone gone missing. Of course Alan Mac appeared to operate on the less-is-less theory of police work. Less information for everyone meant less trouble for him.
“I want that loch searched.” Janet put a finger in Alan’s face. She had to reach up quite a bit to do it, since Alan Mac towered over her by at least a foot. She didn’t seem to care. She’d probably known him since he ran “aboot” in diapers.
“Ye know we cannae,” he said.
“Willnae,” she corrected.
“She’s too big and too deep.”
“So ye’ll just wait for the bodies to appear?”
“Ye know as well as I, Janet, that the loch never gives up its dead.”
“The loch?” she asked. “Or the monster?”
Then she put her nose in the air and walked away with more dignity than Kris would have been able to muster if her daughter were missing.
