Hoskins & Fletcher Crime Series, Books 4-6: Hoskins & Fletcher Crime Series

Contents

Missing Piece (Book 4)

The Violet Hour (Book 5)

Better The Devil (Book 6)

Want More? Your Free Novella

What Next?

Also by T.L. Dyer

About the Author

MISSING PIECE

A

Hoskins & Fletcher

crime novel

Book Four

T.L. DYER

Copyright © 2022 by T.L. Dyer

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author and publisher, except for the use of quotations in a book review.

Published by Edge of the Roof Press, an imprint of T.L. Dyer

For enquiries visit: www.TLDyer.com

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to incidents involving businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Author’s Note: The Hoskins & Fletcher books are set in a fictional geographical location, based on regions within and surrounding the American state of Oregon.

Acknowledgements

For volunteering their time and efforts to improve the Hoskins & Fletcher books for all readers, this fourth book in the series is dedicated to: Mary Arnold, Jenny Belliotti, Suzanne Gochenouer, Loretta Jubb, June, Janet Lerner, Elaine Posterick, Cheryl Walton, and Terri Rose Wilson. Your kind contribution and willingness to help a neurotic author out of a tight spot is appreciated more than I can say. Thank you to each of you.

In addition, that same neurotic author sometimes needs a reassuring pat on the back, and a small shove, to put her books out there in the arena where all the big writers play. And for giving me that, I’d like to thank both my faithful team of pre-publication readers, and of course every individual who buys one of my books and enjoys it. Each one of you is the reason I return time and again to my desk to write.

Last, but far from least, this book is dedicated to Barbara Woods Wright, without whom I may still be cowering under the desk or else throwing my keyboard in the bin in a child-like tantrum. Thank you, Barbara, for your selfless dedication to motivating and inspiring us writers, and for always being there with a kind word and an almighty confidence boost when the neurosis kicks in. I am truly inspired by the passion you show for books and their authors, and I’m sure many indie authors are still writing and publishing because of you. Including myself. Much love and gratitude. You are my ideal reader.

part one

no one saves us but ourselves

no one can and no one may

we ourselves must walk the path

buddha

Prologue

September 1990

A tune played in her head. Not the words that went with it. She couldn’t remember any of those. Just the tune, the one her mother liked when they sang it in church. Music had a way of looping continuously in her mind when her stupid thoughts wouldn’t settle. It drove her crazy if she was trying to get to sleep before a big test, or when she needed to memorize her lines for the school play. It drove her crazy now as she tried to concentrate on finding her way in the impossible blackness of the forest, each tree she passed looking the same as the last, the rough bracken underfoot piercing her skin with every step. There wasn’t even a moon tonight to break through the towering pines and offer a shred of guidance or reassurance she wasn’t just going in circles.

Branches whipped at her forearms, her stomach, her thighs – snapped stinging sensations that distracted her from the goosebumps and the trembling. She didn’t think she was cold. Not when the air was so thick with heat she couldn’t catch a breath.

It was the sounds – coming from behind her, in front of her, over the ground, up in the branches – that made the tune in her head play louder so that she hummed along with it. Not letting those unknown noises stop her, or force her to acknowledge her raging heartbeat or the fact she might never find the way out, ever, she strode on, and on, and hummed until her voice no longer sounded strange. Instead, its rumble in her throat and her chest became a source of energy, and she resolved to go on like that all night, or for days if she had to. When her eyes blurred, she rubbed at them until they cleared. When her skin split under the slice of another branch, she wiped away the blood with the heel of her hand. When her belly growled with emptiness, she just clasped her hands together, hummed louder, and silently prayed to the Lord Almighty that He hadn’t turned His back on her for all that she had done, all the sins she had committed.

She didn’t notice at what point her voice had grown so raw from the humming that she’d stopped. But by doing so, it meant the moment another sound reached her ears, much different from all the rest in the otherwise eerie silence, she immediately came to a halt and snapped her weary eyes wide to be better able to place it.

Now that her feet weren’t crunching and rustling through the forest’s undergrowth, she could hear the thump of her heart working doubly hard in her chest, her breath uneven with the shivers that rushed over her. Her limbs ached, soles of her feet throbbed, skin stung, but the sound was not only still there but getting louder. A sound she couldn’t have been more familiar with but hadn’t heard in… What was it? Weeks? Months? Years? She didn’t know anymore.

Pinpointing where the sound of the vehicle’s engine was coming from, she started up again, ignoring her body’s reluctance, and instead picking up the pace from a walk to a half-jog, then from a jog to a run. Pain flared up her shins from her feet, her ankles. She stumbled, palm landing against the rough trunk of a pine. She propelled herself off it; the vehicle was drawing closer, which meant she too was closer, to the road, to help.

Her panting breath tore through her lungs, and a yelp of desperation burst out of her with each exhale. She even tried calling, but what use was that? Better to save whatever she had left to get her to the road before whoever was coming passed right by, perhaps the only vehicle to come out this way in days. Weeks. She cried at the thought, balled her hands into fists, and pushed on.

The engine was so loud now it was almost a roar. More noise than she’d heard in a long time. And there, up ahead, was the break in the trees. It was just yards away but her body was struck with the urge to stop. It saw help coming and wanted to drop right there, but she wasn’t at the road yet. Her legs weakened and she folded to the ground, her hands slapping against pine needles and the damp earth beneath them. An intrusion of light caught her eye and she looked up. The glorious strip of asphalt road lit up before her in a thin stream of illumination from the vehicle she couldn’t yet see, but that was running at a fair speed if the rumble of its engine was anything to go by. If she stayed here though, in the forest, flat out on the ground, they’d never see her. Eyes on the road ahead, they’d just drive on by and that would be that.

With her palms torn and bloody, she used her knuckles instead to push herself upright and onto unsteady feet. And with nothing much left but blind will, she forced her weak limbs onward. Get to the edge of the road. That’s all she needed to do. It would be enough.

She began the humming again, her mother’s favorite, and pressed forward until her toes scuffed against hard asphalt. She kept going, needed to be sure, one foot landing on the unforgiving surface, then the other. On and on, over and over, she dragged her weary limbs to the center of the road. And when the truck at last came into sight, her eyes could stay open no more. They fell closed, her body giving way under the blinding headlights and blaring horn bearing down on her like a monstrous, angry, and out of control Goliath.

Chapter 1

October 2020

‘This is one time, my friends, when it doesn’t pay to be the David slaying the Goliath. But that’s what we’re doing. Even if that’s not what we intended. We’ve thrown our weight around like we’ve got this, like we’re the superior species and just look at what we can do, aren’t we the clever ones? Well, here’s what we can do. We can bite ourselves in the ass, is what we can do.

‘How about we start with the animals on our factory farms, the ones who produce five hundred million tons of manure each year? That’s a lot of shit. Where does it go, I hear you ask. Well, its run-off finds its way into our rivers, our lakes, all those places you take your kids on the weekend and let them paddle around in barefoot. Unless, of course, you’re the wily farmer who avoids the pesky problem of exceeding the water pollution limit on your farm by instead spraying manure in liquid form straight into the air.

‘You all know air, right? That thing that doesn’t stay in one place? That thing that travels; over fields, over houses, into people’s homes, people’s lungs. Yeah, that’s right. That chest issue Uncle Bob’s been nursing for twenty years, or the inflammation Aunt Sue can’t seem to shift – don’t happen to live near a farm, do they?

‘But hey, setting that aside a second, if none of this agriculture conversation is really your thing, let’s talk instead for a moment about the sort of problems we’re leaving behind for the generations to come, your children’s children and grandchildren and great grandchildren. Yeah, sure, you and me, we’re all right, we’re golden. We’ll already be gone by then. But the shit we are leaving for our kin to inherit, my friends. That apocalypse you’ve all been dreading… not our problem. But it will be theirs. And it’ll be because of us. Because of what we choose to do – or not do – today. Not tomorrow. Today. Right this minute.’

Beneath the fifty-foot banner running above the stage, marking the Sykes County GreenCraft Fall Festival, the speaker paused to take a sip of refreshment from his compostable, biodegradable, and one hundred percent recycled and recyclable paper cup. It was the same kind handed out to upwards of a couple of thousand visitors over the weekend and a good few hundred of those just today, Cass Fletcher estimated. She’d never been one for community events, preferring the solitude of her woodland cabin several miles down the road, to sitting in a damp field for hours surrounded by folk music, arts and crafts demos, passionate speakers, and far too many people making far too much noise. And it seemed she wasn’t the only one less than enamored with it. Her partner in private investigation had spent the last thirty minutes trying to find a position on the picnic blanket she’d brought that would allow some degree of comfort for his gangling legs, and was now clutching his coccyx, cracking his back, and rolling his eyes as the current speaker reeled off numbers pertaining to greenhouse gases that put everyone in the audience to shame.

‘Remind me again why you thought this was a good idea, Busta?’ Lawrence Hoskins said with a wince, screwing up his hazel eyes and returning to a slouch. He snatched up his paper cup to down what was left of the lukewarm flat beer he hadn’t stopped complaining about since they got here.

Luckily, Joshua ‘Busta’ Rimes was the easygoing kind and had gotten used to this kind of persistent pessimism, demonstrating a level of patience with Hoss that Cass hadn’t managed in all the years she’d known and worked with him. Reclining on the blanket, with his ankles crossed and elbows propping him up, Josh lightly chuckled. ‘Give it time, you might learn something new, mate,’ he said, the British twang still unmistakable despite his seventeen years on American soil.

Hoss belched and peered into the empty cup for any last remnant of the five dollars he’d spent on it. ‘If this is another one of your ploys to turn me vegan, let me save you the effort. It ain’t gonna happen. I’m a meat man through and through. And don’t bother with Fletcher, either,’ he said, throwing Cass a sideways glance. ‘Once a bunny killer, always a bunny killer.’

A breeze brushed Josh’s fair hair over his forehead as he raised his eyebrows, a spark of uncertain humor curving his lips. For a man just shy of thirty, he had an energy about him that made him look boyish when he smiled. ‘You hunt rabbits, Cass?’

‘Jesus, Hoss.’ She slapped the back of her hand across his arm, stealing a glance at the largely creature-loving crowd, envisioning being doused with fake blood by an enraged horde of animal activists. ‘Not anymore. Don’t listen to him. That was a long time ago.’

Hoss coughed a response into his fist. ‘Last year.’

‘Oh right. I see,’ Josh said, sitting upright and clutching his arms around his knees. ‘Wow. Well, that changes things. I never knew that about you.’

The breeze picked up, fluttering the curls across Cass’s face and giving her the excuse she needed to avoid Josh’s teasing stare by slipping on the cable-knit sweater she’d brought with her. By the time she’d straightened it and hooked her hair behind her ears, he was back to watching the man on the stage. Except now she felt another pointed stare aimed at her, and this one less endearing. She countered it the way she knew best.

‘So, Hoss,’ she said, turning to face his unamused dressing down head on. ‘About this Meredith inquiry you’ve had…’

‘What about it? This our new office now?’ he replied, with a dry tone and a deadpan stare. ‘We call this a day off, Fletcher.’

She returned his glare only long enough to bite her tongue. His discomfort on the blanket, the price of the beer, his restlessness, had all put him in one of his moods. There’d be no reasoning with him like this. She turned back to the stage. The male speaker had concluded his talk and was being replaced by members of a folk band setting up instruments and testing microphones.

‘Is this a fresh case you’re talking about?’ Josh asked, out of more than just curiosity, Cass guessed. He was throwing her a lifeline, stepping in to smooth the tension. Something she’d noticed he had done a lot over the past ten months since she’d been introduced to him as Hoss’s housemate. Despite working five miles offshore at the Sandowne Oil Rig for the better part of each month, the two new besties had struck up a genuine bond and, by extension, she too had found they shared a lot in common. Though whether mutual experience of childhood tragedy was a solid foundation from which to build a friendship remained to be seen. Increasingly all that did was make her uncomfortable.

‘It will be a new case,’ Hoss said, leaning back on his hands, his checked flannel shirt falling to either side of his t-shirt as he stretched his legs out in front of him and crossed one black ankle boot over the other. ‘As soon as Miss Moneypenny here gets her backside in gear.’

‘Well, shit, forgive me for helping my old friend and work partner recover from a brutal attack that almost killed him.’

‘All right, Fletch, reel it in. Busta doesn’t need to hear you talk like that.’

‘No? Well, maybe Busta would be interested to know that you’re only agreeing to take this case because the client in question, a Ms Amelia Meredith, fluttered her eyelashes at you.’

Hoss held up his middle finger. ‘Number one, the client in question is in her sixties, and thus twice my age…’

‘Never stopped you before.’

He raised his index finger. ‘And number two, you realize I only spoke to her on the phone, don’t you?’

‘Someone teach you that, did they?’ she asked, with a nod toward his two fingers, a gesture she didn’t think was purely for numerical demonstration. Josh downed his beer, pretending he hadn’t heard. ‘You said you remembered her from the sheriff’s office because, and I quote, She was hard to forget.’

‘And how do you know I didn’t mean she was hard to forget because she had three legs and swore like a marine?’

Cass blew out a laugh and looked past him to explain to Josh: ‘Ms Meredith’s eight-year-old son went missing in the summer.’

‘Shit.’

‘Of 1985.’

‘What?’

‘Exactly. Thirty-five years ago. And if law enforcement hasn’t found him by now, there’s little chance we will. Meaning there must be some other reason the Hossman is so keen on taking this case. He’s a sucker for a cougar.’

Hoss’s hands slapped against the thighs of his jeans. ‘You know what? Think what you like, Fletch. This one’s mine to call, and I say we’re doing it.’ He brushed his hand across his nose and sniffed. ‘Besides, she’s loaded, from what I remember. And we’re running a business here, not some not-for-profit venture.’

‘Oh no you don’t. Don’t go there, Hoss, that’s a low blow. You know why we took Rosa’s case. My ex-field training officer’s dying wish, might I remind you—’

‘Not even expense reimbursements,’ he muttered in an aside to Josh.

‘And which you agreed to proceed with. Remember that? I was more than happy to work it without you, but as usual you dug your heels in—’

‘And aren’t you glad I did? Because remind me again how that might have ended if I hadn’t been there?’

‘Children, children, time out.’ Josh raised both his voice and his hands in a rare glimpse of irritation that surprised and silenced both of them. ‘Bloody hell. How on earth do you two even work together?’

‘Just fine,’ she answered.

‘Like a dream,’ Hoss added.

In the time it took them to clamp their mouths shut and leave it there, Josh got up from the blanket and mumbled something about taking a leak. But after he’d gone, Cass was less concerned with his uncharacteristic frustration than how close their heated exchange had come to revealing more than they would ever want him to know. Like how that last case had brought them within spitting distance of the raw end of a Mexican cartel, and how they were still breathing today only because of an alliance Hoss had formed with the very gang boss who had orchestrated the untimely death of Joshua’s closest friend, Simon. The gang boss in question was Jimmy Rosedale, and the unlikely alliance was based on a mutual desire to go on living. Rosedale, aka Jimmy the Drain, had since gone on the run, wanted for more than just the killing of one man. But, in the meantime, Josh still hailed his new buddy as some kind of hero for finding the body of his friend years after his disappearance. Should he learn the truth about Hoss’s gentleman’s agreement with Simon’s killer, this whole friendship the three of them shared would be cut short as abruptly as it had begun, and probably in the ugliest way possible.

On the stage, the GreenCraft Festival’s band struck up their first number, and the twanging of a banjo, thump of a dholak drum, and drawn-out peal of a concertina, poured out from the speakers and over the heads of the revelers who, now that the formalities were over, were eager to relax and have some fun. Bodies swayed and hands clapped, but Cass didn’t join in. Nor did the life and soul of the party, the Hossman himself. Instead, he was trying to snag her attention with a frown that would induce raging shame even in the most devout of Buddhist monks. She raised her eyebrows for him to have out with it. Which was all the encouragement he needed.

‘When are you going to put that poor boy out of his misery?’

‘Oh Jesus, not this again.’ She reached for her bag, pulling its strap over her head.

‘One word from you and he’d tell his bosses on Sandowne where they can shove that shit job of his. You know as well as I do he doesn’t want to be there anymore. And that’s clearly because of you.’

‘Joder,’ she seethed, frustration bringing out her mother’s native tongue. ‘What makes you think I’m responsible for what he does with his life, Hoss? He’d quit all by himself if he really wanted to.’

‘Weren’t you the one implying not so long ago that there was something going on between the pair of you?’

‘No, you were the one judging everyone else by your standards and getting the wrong idea.’

He waved her away. ‘Don’t come at me with your backward psychology, Fletch. Just decide what you want and be straight with him. The tension between the two of you is killing me.’

She opened her mouth to reply, then snapped it shut. It was the kind of statement that didn’t deserve a response. Instead, she used the excuse of getting more drinks as an excuse for a time-out.

In line at the bar she tried to push away her partner’s comments, but they nagged at her all the more because she knew he was right. For a short while, she and Josh had been in the habit of video calling one another when he was away on the rig. He was restless in the hours of downtime between shifts, and since he was fun to talk to, with a bright, easygoing personality, she enjoyed the conversations as much as he did. But then he’d started opening up about the car accident that killed his parents when he was twelve, forever changing his life; and, after that, confessing to the humiliating bullying he’d endured throughout his teenage years that culminated in his decision to leave his aunt and uncle’s home for a career off shore. Whether he’d expected her to reciprocate she didn’t know, but he never seemed hurt that she didn’t. And somewhere around there was the problem. He made it too easy for her to like him.

Reaching the bar, Cass bought and paid for three drinks. Balancing them between her hands, she glanced up to mentally map out the most direct route between the bodies splayed on the grass to where the pair of them were in deep discussion, if Hoss’s hand gesticulations were anything to go by. She lifted the cups to her lips and took a sip from the closest one, then started back in their direction, wondering how much more of the warm, weak, fizzless alcohol would be enough for her to have the conversation with Josh that Hoss implied she should. Josh wouldn’t know why she’d eased up on the video calls – telling him she was on her way out, or busy with work, or helping her ex-work partner Buck. The latter was true, at least; Buck’s attackers had put him in a coma, and when he’d recuperated enough to leave the hospital, it was to look for somewhere to live – while he’d been working undercover on the job that nearly killed him, his wife had filed for divorce. But even if her reasons for avoiding Josh were genuine, it had only taken a handful of them before he backed off. Now when he was home he acted as if he was still at ease around her, but she knew that under the broad smile and laidback demeanor was a delicate soul who had been poked and prodded too many times already. Which was all the more reason to cut short any wrong ideas before they did any further damage.

A scream went up to Cass’s left. She shot her head in that direction, hands tightening on the cups as she readied herself to drop them and take action. But the scream descended into giggling, a young woman in a cropped top and shorts being teased by her boyfriend who was running an ice cube from his drink over her bare midriff. Cass shivered beneath her cable-knit sweater and was about to turn away when something caught her attention. She slowed to a stop, beer spilling from one of the cups to run down her fingers, eyes scanning the faces for what had bothered her. Just groups of friends chatting, families playing, everyone relaxed and having a great time, nothing untoward, no one up to no good. Even if they were, her power to act was limited; a citizen’s arrest or calling the cops were the only options available to her these days. Still, the old habits of her eleven years in the sheriff’s office hadn’t left her in the three years she’d been out of service. She started to walk on again, cursing her hyper-alertness and instructing herself to tone it down to at least cop status yellow so she could relax. But she’d barely gone another step when that status accelerated through the spectrum into the black – the color associated with incapacitating fear; a cop’s worse nightmare – and she froze.

It was the voice. A low, broad drawl that she could have picked out of a packed field in the middle of the deep South, never mind over two thousand miles northwest in the state of Belwall where it stood out like a foreign language. She’d heard that voice in her head enough times. Had at one time hung on to its every word. And the years in between – nineteen now, give or take – hadn’t done a thing to diminish the memory of it. She backed up, still clutching the drinks between her hands but searching for the source. And now that she knew who she was looking for, it didn’t take long for her eyes to land on him. Red lumberjack shirt hanging loose, black pants, chunky boots, same thick mop of dark disheveled hair, same clumsy stance, same booming raucous laugh. The first time she’d heard that laugh was outside the courtroom. It had sickened her. Literally sickened her, so that she’d broken free of her father’s supportive arm and run to the restroom to throw up. She thought she might do the same thing again now but couldn’t move from the spot, couldn’t look away. He was swaying to the music, an ungainly swagger of his hips from side to side, the rhythmic tapping of one boot against the grass. Drunk, she thought, as he laughed and sang and danced in his own ridiculous way. Drunk again.

Then, as if he felt the prickle of her eyes piercing the back of his neck, he began to turn. She saw him first in profile, noticed that he held something in the crook of his right arm. Not a drink, she realized when he turned fully, his face filled out, forehead longer as his hair receded, but otherwise no different. His cheeks were flushed with color, hooded eyes finding and then looking right at her, as he went on rocking the baby he cradled. A small child ran up and tugged on the leg of his pants to get his attention, and on the blanket at his feet a woman pulled the little boy away, drew him onto her lap and tickled him. Another child, a girl, older than the other two and with a string of daisies woven around her braided black hair, joined in with the teasing of her brother and they laughed.

Cass took a step back, her sandal catching the edge of someone’s bag so that she stumbled and dropped the drinks to the grass. Eyes turned her way, but all she saw was him. And his family. A happy family. Just like the one she would have had, if the man before her hadn’t taken it from her.

Chapter 2

Amelia Meredith did indeed have money, as Hoss had indicated, living in a sizeable three-story house with a fifty-foot outdoor pool, all enclosed within a gated community of wealthy business owners, retired company executives, and trust fund beneficiaries. Amelia belonged to the latter; her father had been a self-made millionaire after founding West General Motors, which he grew to an international conglomerate. Aside from the wealth, there was also something in the wily, almond-shaped eyes, slender jaw bone and strands of silver hair escaping from her silken headscarf that, though touched now by her sixty-five years, still alluded to the beautiful woman she had once been.

Her career as a model and actress had been cut short, first by the birth of her son when she was twenty-one, and then by his disappearance just eight years later, but her affection for those days remained in the framed photographs that adorned the walls in the entrance hallway of her home. Cass had been drawn by the quality of the images. One a close-up of the young Amelia draped in furs apart from a bare shoulder captured by the camera, a tilt of the head and parted lips treading the fine line between innocent and alluring, questioning eyes challenging the viewer to decide which they thought she was. In another, a full-length black and white, Amelia stood in the center of the frame in a raincoat and heels, her back to the camera but looking over her shoulder into the lens. Bewitching shots, made poignant for their reminder of what might have been if fate had not stepped in to divert the trajectory of her life.

All of this Cass could have predicted of a woman blessed with both good looks and Daddy’s wealth and influence, but what she hadn’t been prepared for was the humbleness with which Amelia welcomed them into her home. Perhaps Cass had expected someone more embittered with the cards she had been dealt, but the millionairess took great care to be hospitable, offering them a selection of drinks and bringing out trays of sandwiches which she laid on the dining table in the conservatory at the rear of the house.

‘You have a beautiful home, Amelia,’ Cass said, turning from the view of the landscaped gardens, which were rich with color on this bright early fall day, one of the last glimpses of sun they’d see before the darker days set in. She pulled out the chair beside Hoss at the table, nudging his elbow as he helped himself to a third sandwich in only the ten minutes they’d been there. Across from them, on the table meant to seat ten, Amelia was laying out folders and notebooks in order of what she wanted them to see and know about her son.

‘I’m very lucky,’ she said, in reply to Cass’s comment. Then with a wry smile bordering on wickedness, she added, ‘Most of the time, anyway.’

Sipping from the cup of black coffee Amelia had poured for her, Cass noted that between the entrance hall through the kitchen to the conservatory, she hadn’t yet seen a photograph of the missing boy. Though that didn’t mean that somewhere in this vast house, where Amelia lived alone, there weren’t plenty of them. School photos in the sitting room perhaps, family portraits in the study, his own bedroom a shrine, frozen in time on the day he left and never came back. She had seen all of those things in her brief career. Had seen, too, the families whose pain was so raw they couldn’t bear to look at a photograph and be reminded constantly of what they’d lost. Since what happened a few days ago at the fair, and the memories it had brought surging back, Cass could certainly understand that sentiment. Although, in her case, the constant reminders seemed to be everywhere, not only in photographs.

Hoss delivered the elbow nudge this time. Cass snapped her eyes up from the coffee cup just as Amelia was passing a photograph over the table.

‘Here he is,’ she said with pride, tapping a neatly manicured fingernail on the four-by-six color print. ‘This is my boy. This is Alex.’

The photo was an old snapshot from the family album, one that would have been captured on a reel of film back then in the 1980s and developed in a store, or a home darkroom in the case of an amateur photographer. The camera used must have been a decent model, the clarity of the image sharper than the average family photos that were commonplace in those days. It meant that, though the picture-taker had stood several yards back from the boy standing on a rock with one arm extended as he held out a sand crab from the tips of his fingers, his features were unmistakably recognizable as those of his mother’s. The same slim nose, same shaped eyes that suggested an open and amenable demeanor, same wide grin and straight white teeth. The same photogenic appeal.

‘My father took it. Isn’t he a darling in that one? That was Maui. Dad had a condo there.’

‘No longer?’ Cass asked, struck by the turquoise ocean and white sands in the picture’s background.

‘Dad passed some years ago. He left his properties to me and the businesses to my sister. But that vacation, with Alex, was the last one I ever spent on Maui. I could never go back there, not without him. It would have killed me.’ Amelia touched her hand to her headscarf, tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ears. ‘So I donated it to a Maui community charity. They rent it out and it provides them with a substantial annual income.’

‘That’s very generous,’ Hoss said, with a gentle smile that Amelia returned.

‘Dad always took care of the people over there. The way he saw it, they allowed him to spend time on their beautiful island and anything he could do to repay them for that, he would. He’d have been happy with this arrangement, I like to think.’

‘He sounds like a good man.’

‘He was, Mr Hoskins. But losing Alex…’ She looked at the photo Cass passed to Hoss. ‘He was never the same after that. None of us were.’

‘Is that how it felt, Amelia?’ Cass asked. ‘As though you’d lost him?’

The polite smile never left her lips as she gave a gentle shrug of her shoulder. ‘In whichever way you choose to interpret the word. In the beginning, it was maybe not something I would have dared utter. But thirty-five years. If I haven’t come to terms with the inevitable by now, then I’m the biggest fool of all, aren’t I?’

As Hoss flicked through the photos of Alex that Amelia had assembled into an album, Cass returned to the sixteenth of August 1985, the day the boy had left his home and gated community for a trip to the convenience store less than a fifteen-minute walk away, never to return.

‘He was a responsible boy. I trusted him. And I wanted him to have as normal an upbringing as possible. I didn’t want all of this…’ Amelia gestured to the roof over her head, perhaps the money, the company they kept in the community, ‘to have too much bearing on his life. I didn’t want it to confine him. Funny, really, isn’t it? How money can do that. Restricts us in different ways than those who have none.’ She softly smiled, her gaze resting on the photos laid out on the table. ‘So he went to the local public school, and I did my best to allow him as much freedom to explore with his friends as I thought appropriate for his age. He’d been making the trip to Jackie’s store for over a year. I knew the route he took, and he never deviated from it. Like I said, I trusted him. He was a good kid. Which is why, when he wasn’t back within the hour, I knew something was wrong. I knew it immediately.’

When he hadn’t returned, Amelia had walked the route to the store herself, hoping to see a glimpse of the red t-shirt he was wearing, the flash of his white Adidas basketball shoes bouncing up the path, brown hair fluttering in the summer breeze, a broad grin telling her he’d bumped into a friend on the way and got talking, or been distracted by something and lost track of time. But there was nothing. At the store, Jackie told her Alex had been in for the peanut butter and maple syrup that the two of them were going to have for lunch with the pancakes she’d made that morning, and with the change he’d bought a pack of soccer cards, the same way she often allowed him to do when he ran an errand for her. Then he’d left. Which was by then more than an hour before.

Any other family might have been told by their local sheriff’s office or police department that a child missing for less than two hours wasn’t anything to panic over, that likely he’d gone off with a friend and would wander home in his own time wondering what all the fuss was about. But back then, a family with money could garner a whole other level of service. Two deputies were at Amelia’s door before the pancakes on the kitchen counter had grown cold, and later that afternoon a search party complete with sniffer dogs was in full operation, while a wiretap was installed on the home phone line ahead of an expected ransom request.

But neither money nor speed made any difference. No sign of Alex or the items he’d bought in the store were ever found, and no telephone call came. Not then, and not in the weeks and months of investigation that followed. The boy had vanished. And over time the leads ran out and the manpower allotted to find him was slowly withdrawn. After that, only anniversaries of his disappearance reinvigorated efforts and now and then rejuvenated hope. But as decades rather than just years passed, even that support faded away. Other things went on in the world, other children went missing, other crimes were committed, other concerns occupied people’s minds and the deputies’ time and resources. Everyone else moved on, as did forensic science and what it was capable of, but Alex was forever destined to be nothing more than another statistic in a prolific era of missing persons and unsolved crimes.

‘Tell me about Alex’s father,’ Cass prompted gently, when Amelia paused and leaned back in the chair as if all this exhausted her. What was thirty-five years when your reason for being had been torn from you? She looked as worn out by it now as she would have done the day he failed to return home.

She ran her tongue over her bottom lip and pulled a tired gaze up to Cass. ‘Will Stone didn’t take his son. Let’s just get that idea out of the way. Trust me, I know that beyond any doubt. I knew it even before the deputies assured me he’d been thoroughly investigated. I could have told them not to waste their time.’ A weary sigh escaped her lips as she propped her clasped hands on the table. ‘I wouldn’t say he didn’t love Alex. I mean, he must have felt something. But Will is… Well, he’s not the most demonstrative man there is. Emotionally. Let’s put it that way. The most animated I ever saw him was in front of the judge when he was trying to take more than his fair share of my father’s money. He was much less possessive about the custody arrangements for his three-year-old son. In fact, he couldn’t be more in agreement that a child should be with its mother. Six months later he moved out of state and the scarce visits became even fewer and farther between until they stopped altogether. After age five, Alex never saw his father. They spoke on the phone, but we’re talking once or twice a year, if that.’

‘Did you reach a mutually agreeable divorce settlement?’ Hoss asked, and Amelia drew in a long breath through her nose.

‘Not at all. One point five million, Mr Hoskins. Money that was hard earned and handed over to a man who barely lifted a finger in his life. But by then I’d had enough and just wanted it over with. He kept up that end of the bargain, at least. From what I understand, there’s little of that money left now. That doesn’t surprise me, though what he spent it on only he can tell you. I’ve a fair idea. He never could pass a liquor store or a bar without stepping inside. It’s a wonder the damn stuff hasn’t killed him yet. But no, he’s never asked for more money, he wouldn’t dare; when my father was alive, he’d have garroted him for trying. And he most definitely didn’t take Alex or hurt him. He was quite happy to wash his hands of that responsibility. That’s why I changed Alex’s surname to mine. I guess you could say I paid a high price for my teenage rebellion with the first handsome face to come along. But if Will Stone gave me nothing much else in the time we were together, he gave me Alex. Granted, it was only for a short time. But for that reason alone I’d do it all again. Exactly the same.’

Her eyes shone with tears for the first time in their conversation. To counter them, she busied herself with the notes she’d written and correspondence she’d exchanged with the sheriff’s department, returning them to the folder.

As Hoss placed their empty cups on the tray, Cass asked, ‘What do you believe happened to your son, Ms Meredith?’

‘Not just believe, but know. With every breath I have left in my body I know that someone took my boy,’ she said, pushing the folder and photo albums to one side, her gaze returning to Cass with an intensity that suggested she had set aside the emotion of a moment ago as efficiently as the paperwork. Her hand came up, and long, pale fingers touched her headscarf. ‘This isn’t just a fashion statement, by the way. Though I’ve been known to make a few of those in my time.’ Her smile was gentle, almost apologetic. ‘If I’m lucky, I might get to open my Christmas presents.’

She spoke the words with none of the weight they deserved, but Cass felt her heart sink as this woman’s reasons for hiring them took on an extra dimension, as did Hoss’s unusual silence throughout most of this conversation. His mother’s cancer had been quick and cruel, taking her from him and his sisters before she had a chance to fight it. He must have caught on to what Cass hadn’t, long before Amelia made it clear.

‘So you’ll understand my urgency,’ she went on. ‘Before I make peace with my maker, I need to know what happened to my boy. If I don’t, I won’t ever fully be at rest. I know I won’t. And while there are few things in this world that terrify me, that certainly does. I haven’t rested in thirty-five years. And I’m so incredibly, incredibly tired.’

The placid smile remained despite the weary eyes that echoed Amelia’s sentiments.

‘This is my last chance,’ she added, voice deteriorating to a whisper. ‘The last chance to bring my boy home.’

*

Hoss had barely driven a hundred yards from the exit of The Cedars gated community when he pulled the Trailblazer to the side of the road. Cass turned to see why. But he only stared out of the windshield, his palms tightening on the steering wheel.

‘What’s up, partner?’ she prompted. ‘You hit the mute button in there or what?’

‘It’s an ugly disease.’

‘It is.’

‘But at least my mother had the three of us.’ Hands still on the wheel, he looked at her. ‘We can’t take this, Cass. She’s asking us to solve a thirty-five-year-old missing person case within the next, what, two months? Three at best? I mean, that’s what you’re thinking too, right? We can’t take this.’

Cass should have expected that from him. Her partner’s swagger and arrogance in all other areas of his life were often a cunning disguise for the crippling self-doubt he couldn’t ever seem to shake where work matters were concerned. Not even the recent death of his father, the ex-sheriff he never felt he could live up to, had diminished that annoying and fruitless personality trait. But she couldn’t deny he might have a point this time. All the same…

‘What I think is we’d better get it right. And fast,’ she said, looking at him when he turned in the seat to face her.

‘The other day you wanted nothing to do with it. Waste of time, you more or less said. So what’s changed?’

Everything, she thought, picturing again the moment Robbie Myers looked her way. Everything’s changed.

‘Look, Hoss, someone took that woman’s son. I think we can both agree on that. They took her boy, did whatever the hell they wanted with him, without a care for the family they were tearing apart, the lives they would ruin. And right now they think they’ve got away with it. Well, over my dead body. I won’t just find that boy, I’ll do my damnedest to make sure whoever hurt him pays for what they’ve done.’

She turned from his stare, anticipating the comeback, but none came. Instead, he hit the turn signal and pulled back onto the road. It was another minute before he spoke.

‘Don’t you mean we will, Fletch?’ he asked, glancing her way.

‘Course. That’s what I said.’ She pointed out the windshield. ‘Eyes on the road at all times, Detective.’

Chapter 3

Mid-October was the most beautiful time of the year at the cabin. Cass could say that with conviction even though this was only the third year she had lived in her grandfather’s old home. Her father, an English Literature professor two hundred and fifty miles away on the west coast, had no desire to make the forests of Fallmarsh Creek his neighborhood – for which Cass was sure her mother, the highly esteemed Judge Sofia Marie Ferrer, was grateful. And so it was to her they gave the keys after her grandfather passed away; it had always held a special place in her heart, as had he. When she ended her peace officer career prematurely, following a fatal officer-involved shooting, this was where she came. And had never left.

Now, as she sat on the top step of the front porch, she could set aside the things that had brought her eighteen miles south from her old apartment in Pinefort City, and lose herself instead in drama of a different kind. At this time of year, the glorious golds and coppers of the Oak and Maple trees were challenging the resilience of the dark evergreen Douglas firs. A low fall mist crept around the tops of the very tallest trees, but it was the sort that would burn off as the morning went on. The odd crack of a branch in the distance and the shuffling of an animal along the forest floor were the only sounds in her woodland hideaway. The birds were quiet, as if the hour was too early even for them. Or perhaps some, like her favorite, the copper-colored Rufous Hummingbird, would already have left for the warmer climate further south.

Cass drained the last of the coffee from her mug, setting it down on the porch step beside her to reach in her pocket for the piece of paper she’d written on days before at the fair. She carefully unfolded it, her heart beating hard in her chest.

He had looked right through her as if she wasn’t there. Robbie Myers. The man she hadn’t seen since his sentencing in November 2002. Before that, she had been at his trial every day. And yet, standing there with his youngest child propped on his arm, he had turned away from her as if he had no idea who she was. Well, what about the boy he killed? Had he forgotten him too? Forgotten his face, his name, forgotten the picture of him they’d used over and over again at the trial, the one that made Cass sick to her stomach because it didn’t belong there in that courtroom with all those strangers looking at him – strangers who knew nothing about him, but were just following instructions, doing what had been asked of them. Had Myers also forgotten what kind of person that boy was, what he had been meant to do with his life, who he was going to be? A promising young man with a long and admirable career in law enforcement ahead of him, that was what the judge had said. But how much had Myers remembered of that? Or had he simply pushed it from his mind, set it aside so he could go on with life? Go on with life? For others, that wasn’t even an option. Certainly not for Cass. Just after midday on June the twenty-fourth, 2001, her world came to an abrupt stop. And it was only as she stood in that field four days ago and stared at the man responsible, that she realized with alarming clarity that it had never really started again.

For second-degree manslaughter, driving while under the influence and without insurance, they gave Myers five years and a two hundred thousand dollar fine. In the three years he actually spent in prison, they also gave him a college education and a biology degree. Myers himself gave nothing. He only took. He took nineteen-year-old Brett Lee Curtis’s life in the moment his Toyota impacted the driver’s side of the Honda Civic after running a red light. And from seventeen-year-old Cass, from the passenger seat protected by Brett’s body from the worst of the collision, he took the only man she had ever allowed herself to love.

As the distant rumble of an engine coming down the track behind the cabin disturbed the silence, Cass took a last look at the piece of paper in her hand. On it was the series of letters and numbers making up the license plate of Robbie Myers’ minivan, the one she’d scribbled down after following his family to the parking lot as they prepared to leave. She folded it and tucked it down inside her jeans pocket just as the sun broke through the mist and flashed off the hood of her partner’s maroon Trailblazer. She hadn’t yet decided what to do with this new information. But for the first time in a long while, certainly since handing in her badge, she felt a spark of something igniting in her gut. What it was exactly she didn’t know or care to examine. Only that she was compelled to follow where it led.

Chapter 4

The suburb of Orley at the northernmost point of Pinefort City in Sykes County was known, primarily by residents in the southern districts, as If Only, owing to the price tags attached to real estate in the area. Houses were larger and more private than in other parts of the city. Most came with landscaped gardens, some with enviable acreage, and nearly all contributed to ensuring the local pool servicing company survived and thrived. In addition, crime rates were lower out this way. But for added home security there was The Cedars, with its personal team of surveillance guards manning the only entrance and exit point to the fenced boundaries surrounding just shy of a hundred and seventy homes.

Amelia Meredith’s father had purchased his plot in the exclusive community back in 1982 before they had even laid the first brick. The concept of a group of like-minded individuals and families with the same cultural and social values communing within a shared residential space was new at that point, but before long, similar projects were springing up in cities all over the United States. Ideal for those who wanted to live close to the metropolis but without the risk of the city’s hubbub – criminal activity and noise pollution included – spilling over into their everyday lives. For Amelia, who had moved herself and her son into the property with her dad when construction was complete, she was both grateful for the security it offered them and also mindful of its potential to isolate a growing young boy. That there were no amenities on the site, like there were in some of the gated communities that followed afterward, at least meant she could allow him to attend the local public school. And as he grew older, she extended his freedom to include walking the sidewalk to a nearby friend’s house in one direction, and the short distance to Jackie’s convenience store in the other. He had made such trips dozens of times without incident before the day he never returned.

‘According to Amelia’s notes, every single resident within the community was extensively interviewed about Alex’s disappearance, some more than once over the years, and not one good lead ever came out of it,’ Cass said to Hoss, as they walked the route Alex would have taken to the store that day more than thirty-five years previously. The early mist had cleared and given way to a bright, crisp fall morning, the sun offering them their best chance to visualize how it must have been for Alex on that warm mid-summer day in August 1985.

‘Then let’s not prioritize them yet, Fletch.’ Hoss came to a stop, peering toward a row of houses set back from the road. ‘Last thing we want is to charge off in the wrong direction.’

‘Agreed. So if you could just tell me which one is the right direction, we’ll go with that.’

He drew his narrowed gaze back her way, but didn’t deign to credit her sarcasm with a response. Shame. She was hoping to draw him out of the mood he’d brought with him when he picked her up this morning. It was looking like this could be a long day. They continued walking.

Cass checked her watch. They had only left the gates of The Cedars a few minutes ago, and she could already see the luminous green sign of the store up ahead. Not Jackie’s anymore. Now it was yet another franchise in the Clifton’s 24-Hour chain.

‘Amelia said the only things that have changed in the last thirty-five years are the construction of the retail park a quarter of a mile beyond the store and the widening of this road to accommodate the extra traffic coming through. Other than that, what we’re seeing is not too far removed from what Alex would have seen that day.’

‘The place is wide open,’ Hoss said, looking past her to the expanse of grassland on their left, which ended at a line of trees that skirted the fence bordering the Merediths’ home community. ‘You’d think someone would have spotted him. It’s not like he was walking through back alleys or built-up suburbs. He had friends living nearby, right?’

‘None of whom saw him on that day.’

‘So they claim.’

‘They’re kids, Hoss. What reason would they have to lie?’

He hitched one eyebrow at her. ‘Were you really law enforcement once or did I dream that part?’

‘Good kids, I mean. Eight-year-old good kids.’

‘What, they’re good kids just because their daddies drive Mercs and take them to exotic islands for vacation?’

She stopped, compelling him to do the same. ‘Eleven years in the sheriff’s office taught me how to tell the difference between a half-decent family and a troubled one. I wouldn’t for one second suggest wealth was the qualifying factor. Would you?’

Not bothering to wait for a response, Cass jogged across the road and skipped up the step into the convenience store. Amelia had explained that the building had expanded to almost double its size since the franchise had taken it over. Previous owner Jackie, otherwise known as Jack O’Sullivan, had passed away more than a decade before. But keeping it in the family seemed to have been the priority for the descendants of the local store’s original founder. Jackie’s eldest daughter, Lisa, was the manager of the franchise.

Hoss came in behind Cass as she walked the aisles of refrigerators and stacked shelves. There was only a handful of shoppers at this time on a Thursday morning, and when Cass asked a cashier if she could speak with the manager, she was directed toward a cubicle with a blacked-out window and a half-open door in the corner of the store. She tapped lightly on the door, going in when a voice from inside instructed her to do so.

‘Lisa O’Sullivan? My name’s Cass Fletcher and this is my partner, Lawrence Hoskins. We’re private investigators and we’re working for Amelia Meredith. I wonder if you could spare us a moment of your time?’

‘Of course.’ Lisa O’Sullivan rose from her chair and held out her hand to shake both of theirs, before offering them a seat in the two chairs on the other side of her desk. She was a short woman with dark brown hair tied at the back of her head. And though she wore little makeup behind her black-framed glasses, she had a warm smile that brightened her face and revealed an understated attractiveness. Cass placed her at about mid-thirties and wondered if she was even born back in 1985, and this was the first thing the woman addressed when Cass inquired about the boy who went missing after leaving her father’s store.

‘I’m afraid anything I tell you isn’t firsthand. I was only fifteen months old at the time. But now that my father’s passed, what I can tell you is that it haunted him they never found the boy. Not that he said as much when he was alive.’ She smiled softly and picked up a pen, which she twisted between her fingers. ‘In fact, he hardly spoke about it at all with any of us. He might have with Mom, but not me or my two sisters. I guess he was protecting us from it or something. But other people would bring it up sometimes and you’d see it in his face. It would be like he’d stepped under a cloud. And on the anniversaries, those appeals they’d do – he’d be out there helping with the reconstructions, or handing out fliers, answering questions, whatever they needed him for.’

‘You said he didn’t talk about it much with you and your sisters,’ Cass asked, ‘but did he ever give you, or did you ever get, any sense of how he felt about Alex’s visit to the shop that day? Whether he had a conversation with him, whether he remembered anything in particular that in hindsight might