Page 67 of The Devil Knows Her Name

When more than an hour had passed, I left, locking both the house door and the gate firmly behind me. I dawdled down the road and to the private drive, wanting to make sure I wasn’t the first one there. The last thing I needed was to look like I was trying to get time alone at the scene.

But the road opposite the driveway was lined with cars when I pulled up. As I walked around its curve, I spotted police tape and a small crowd of people. Broder was there, along with a handful of cops, and I spotted Christine and Max talking with Will Thornton, a town council member. There were three other council members there, plus a handful of folks I recognized but didn’t know. As I glanced around, I locked eyes with Evelyn; she turned away to talk to Georgie, who held my gaze longer but made no move to greet me.

There was no sign of David or Rachel.

“There you are, Tess,” Christine said, hurrying down the drive toward me. I was conscious of every eye that followed her to land on me. “I was starting to worry you weren’t coming.”

“Sorry, I got caught up with chores,” I lied. “Is this it? I thought Broder would’ve called in the dogs.”

“He did, but they couldn’t pick up anything. The handlers said it must’ve been because of the storm that went through.”

“But they’re sure this is his truck?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“And Broder said it was okay for a search party to be here? It’s not going to mess up the scene or whatever?”

Christine gave me a strange look; the question was paper thin. “We can’t go within the tape, but it’s not a crime scene—not yet, anyway. Besides, Chief Broder asked me to do it since they don’t have the manpower.”

“Oh, okay.” I wanted to ask why the pastor’s wife and son weren’t here to join in the search, but Christine was watching my face closely, and I didn’t dare push my luck. “Well, I’m ready when you are.”

My mind raced as Christine and Max rounded up the other volunteers. Since the dog hadn’t found anything, they already knew the truck was here before the storm. Unless Broder was even dumber than I thought, he would already have a timeline. How long before he decided it was a crime scene?

The volunteers grabbed walkie-talkies and counted off in pairs, and there was an odd number. “I’m fine to go alone,” I said. Christine nodded.

“I don’t think anyone should go alone,” Evelyn said—loud enough that everyone else went quiet and turned to look. “We should all keep an eye on each other.”

I spun on her, a scathing reply on the tip of my tongue, but then a meaty hand landed on my shoulder.

“Officer Perry will go with you,” Broder said; he was too close, and his breath reeked of onions. “We don’t need anyone else getting lost.”

Officer Perry’s first name was Mark, and I’d met him before. He was a quiet, bookish man in his late forties. His wife had multiple sclerosis, and every year at the harvest festival he pushed her wheelchair around to the games and bought her cotton candy. He was clearly caught wrong-footed by Broder’s suggestion, but he didn’t argue, and neither did I.

We set off into the woods. I had no walkie-talkie, but I could hear Perry’s radio crackling from his shoulder. For the first few yards, the pairs on either side of us were visible, but as the volunteers fanned out, they were lost to view. The woods here were not as old as mine, the trees dozens of years old rather than hundreds, but they were poorly kept and choked with scrawny saplings and brush. Perry trailed a few feet behind me, content to let me make the path.

As dense as the woods were, the undergrowth was not spared in the recent deluge. There were large limbs down everywhere, many still showing live wood, and in some places the brush had been flattened into a mat by the weight of the wet, fallen leaves. In the few places where the forest floor was visible, water had cut little furrows into the dirt and piled leaves along their sides. The trees all seemed to be varying shades of gray, a forest of iron.

“Doesn’t look like anyone’s been this way in a long time,” Perry said after a while.

“Hard to tell when everything’s washed out,” I said. “Besides, if he was hurt or disoriented, he probably wasn’t walking in a straight line. We might intersect with a trail.”

He didn’t answer, but his silence was doubtful. We walked for an hour more without saying a word to each other. How’s your wife? I could’ve asked, but the fact was that I didn’t care. All I cared about was how clear it was that no one had passed this way, and how clear it would be to the rest of the search party. There wasn’t so much as a deer path through the trees, and even if I’d had a boot or a scrap of cloth from the pastor, it would’ve been an obvious plant.

Occasionally, Perry’s radio crackled to life, and he would mutter back into it behind his hand. I strained my ears to catch what was being said, but the snapping of the small branches around me and under my feet was too loud. Only once, he said, “No one else has found anything either.”

Sometime later, we broke out of the trees. A field stretched at our feet, yellowed soybeans crushed into the mud or floating in standing water. About forty yards away, I saw another spot of color emerge from the trees—one of the other pairs.

Perry clicked the button on his radio. “We’ve cleared the woods; no sign of him.”

The voice on the other end instructed him to return. I heard it clearly, and yet for a moment I stood there, staring out across the field and swallowing down the panic climbing up my throat.

“Time to go,” Perry said, as if I’d been arrested already, as if he would perp-walk me back.

I spun around, preempting the hand I sensed was reaching for me. But instead, Perry’s hand shot to his holster, and his gaze was focused on the deep woods.

“Who’s there?” he shouted.

There was no answer.