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Dammit. I needed more time to look over Ava’s room, search for some sign of struggle. Not to mention, I wanted to go downstairs and look for more evidence that a ladder had been propped against the side of the house.
Vanessa was still screaming, so I pulled her into a sideways hug. “Nessi, it might be nothing. We can’t read too much into this yet.”
She looked up at me with a tear-streaked face. “Do you really believe that?”
I wanted to lie to her, but I’d never once lied during the course of my career, and I wasn’t going to start now. Even if I did want to comfort Vanessa. “My gut says no.”
She looked up at me and nodded. She was close to collapsing, but I could see she was fighting to hold on. If she was like most mothers I’d dealt with, she was telling herself that her daughter needed her to be strong.
“Vanessa?” a man’s voice demanded from Ava’s room, then TJ’s red face appeared in the window. “What in God’s name are you doing out here?” He climbed out and stalked toward us.
“TJ,” Vanessa sobbed, turning to him and grabbing the front of his navy three-quarter zip pullover when he reached us. “There’s a ribbon.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” he asked, annoyed. He turned a glare on me. “What the hell are you doing up here?”
“She’s—” Vanessa started, but I interrupted her.
I held her gaze as I said, “I asked Vanessa to let me see the porch.” I didn’t want TJ to know that I was looking into his daughter’s disappearance, because I knew he’d do everything in his power to stop me. He hadn’t liked me much in high school, and it seemed like his opinion hadn’t changed much, whether it was because of the shooting or something else. I already had enough obstacles going into this. I didn’t need him throwing his weight around town. Especially since I hadn’t ruled him out as a suspect.
I looked up at him with an innocent expression. “I love old houses like this, and I wanted to check it out. So we came out here. That’s when we saw the ribbon.”
His eyes narrowed. “Vanessa has no business being out here in her state. What in God’s name were you thinking?”
“If we hadn’t come out, we wouldn’t have found the ribbon,” Vanessa said in a meek tone.
The younger officer from front door duty crawled out of the window next, glowering at me. “What’s the trouble?”
“Is Chief Larson still running the force?” Based on a few articles I’d read about a bank robbery case in Jackson Creek a few years ago, I knew he’d still been in charge then, but he had to be in his sixties by now.
The front door officer hiked up his pants, copping an attitude. He was close enough for me to read his name tag—Officer Brent Stillman. “Yeah, why?”
“I’m not going to explain this to you, Officer Stillman. I’m going to talk to him. Now either get him here or call him and let me talk to him.”
A sneer spread across his face. “How about you go down to the station to talk to him like any other ordinary citizen?” Then he added with extra malice, “Or felon.”
I hadn’t been convicted of a felony, merely indicted, and the charges had been dropped. But fuck him. I wasn’t playing his mind games.
“Tell him it has to do with Andrea Adams.”
His jaw went slack, but it only took him seconds to come to his senses and start to argue. I held up my hand. “Think twice before you blow this off. That case was a mess and you’ve got a city council member’s daughter involved this time, not just a mayor. Plus, the press is a lot less forgiving of mistakes these days. Better to play it safe than sorry.”
He swallowed hard then shot me a dark glare as he slipped out his cell phone and placed a call.
“Why do you think this has something to do with your sister?” TJ asked, his hands clenched at his sides. I noticed he wasn’t comforting his crying wife. He was more interested in provoking me.
“I can’t tell you,” I said. “The information was never made public, and I doubt the chief wants it getting out now.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” TJ demanded, then looked down at Vanessa. “Why did you scream?”
She turned watery eyes on me, but I slowly shook my head.
Did TJ really not know?
Vanessa knew about the ribbon because I’d told her before I’d been warned not to, but she’d been sworn to secrecy, and when John Michael Stevens had been convicted, as far as I knew, the information had still been withheld.
But someone knew, and now they were toying with Vanessa.
Or were they toying with me?
