Darcy lowers her head. Tangles of hair conceal the red around her eyes.
“I’ve failed everyone,” Darcy says, hitching.
Laurie lifts her chin.
“Like hell you have. You’re the strongest woman in my life. Nobody could hold it together as well as you have. But from now on you lean on your family and friends when you need help, not a bottle of pills.”
Darcy releases an injured sob. She’s hidden her demons for too long. Dragging them into the open humiliates her. Yet it frees her. Nothing to hide, nothing left to lose.
Laurie places a call, still holding Darcy’s gaze. After a moment, Darcy hears a man’s voice through the receiver.
“She’s ready,” Laurie says, ending the call.
“Who was that?”
A knock on the door follows before Laurie can answer. Rising to her feet, Laurie checks the peephole and opens the door. It’s Hensel, and he has Fisher and Reinhold with him. A fresh wave of embarrassment crashes into Darcy. She rakes the snags out of her hair as her former partner, dressed in a suit that looks like a million bucks compared to her wrinkled outfit, edges into the room.
“She’ll be fine now,” Laurie says, giving her a stare that warns Darcy not to let her down.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Waggoner is in the interrogation room awaiting Tipton and Reinhold,” Fisher says as a way of hello when Darcy accompanies Hensel into the briefing room at the sheriff’s office in Millport. The agent doesn’t pull his eyes from the map laid out on the table. He’s circled Cass Park and the falls, and Darcy is happy to see Fisher is on the same wavelength.
“There’s no official trail from Cass Park to the falls area,” Darcy says, leaning over Fisher’s shoulder. “But you can walk along the banks.”
Fisher gives an unconvinced groan.
“Problem is Sandy Young weighs 110 pounds. That no one heard her scream tells me he knocked her out, possibly drugged her. Let’s say our kidnapper is strong enough to carry her a half-mile, longer if a deputy is on his trail and his adrenaline is spiking. But all the way to the falls? Not a chance.”
“He could have taken rests,” Hensel says, tracing an invisible line with his finger toward the falls.
“I talked to a hydrologist out of the local weather office. He says that creek runs around a foot deep during the fall, but the region experienced a stormy summer and a tropical depression last month. The stage sat at three to four feet over the last two weeks, and that’s plenty deep enough to support a small craft.”
“Like a canoe or kayak,” says Darcy, picturing the creek under the moonlight.
“The wife and I take inflatable kayaks on the river back home. We get weird looks, but the inflatables hold up well, bouncing off rocks instead of smashing against them. A small creek with this many turns, I’d use an inflatable. But this creates another issue. The stream runs twenty miles, so the theory that this guy lives close to the falls has holes in it.”
Tipton and the FBI profiler emerge from the sheriff’s office. He holds a folder which he taps against an open hand as he blows the hair off his forehead.
“You want in on the interview?” Tipton asks Hensel.
“We’ll watch through the glass,” says Hensel. “Agent Reinhold will take my place. She’ll switch up the line of questioning, if she thinks he knows the kidnapper.”
Tipton nods and leads Reinhold across the hall. Darcy follows Hensel into a neighboring room barely large enough to hold the two chairs facing the glass. A reciprocal mirror divides the interview room from the tiny viewing room. While the interrogation room is bright, the lights are off in the viewing room to create the illusion of one-way transmission.
Darcy didn’t smell Hensel’s cologne earlier, but it’s overwhelming in the observation room. He twists the chair backward and sits down, arms resting on the chair back as he drums his fingers. To Darcy, the room feels ten degrees warmer than the rest of the building. Sweat beads over her brow. It’s the huge bearded man seated across from Tipton and Reinhold who spikes Darcy’s blood pressure. This isn’t the man who attacked her at Laurie’s house. The two men couldn’t look more different. Yet the possibility exists Waggoner is the kidnapper which means a child abductor and a serial killer could be stalking Scarlet River.
Tipton adjusts his hat while Reinhold flips open her notebook and clicks a pen. Waggoner sits with his arms folded, a confident, bemused grin on his face. His eyes wander to the glass. Though Waggoner can’t see past the mirror, Darcy’s skin crawls. He seems to be looking right at her, a mirage made more convincing when his tongue slithers out to lick his lips. It’s the same hungry leer he gave Jennifer.
“Something funny, Mr. Waggoner?”
Waggoner wipes the smirk off his face, but the challenging stare he gives Tipton says they can’t intimidate him.
“I understand you were at the Fresh Mart on the fourth of December,” Tipton says, clasping his hands together.
“So what if I was? That’s not a concern for the sheriff’s department.”
“Getting an early start on the week’s groceries?”
“Something like that.”
Tipton sneaks a peek at Reinhold, who jots a note on the pad.
“What did you buy?”
“Excuse me?”
“You shopped for groceries. So what did you buy?”
Waggoner shrugs and tips back in his chair. The chair back clicks against the wall.
“Food and stuff. That’s why people go to grocery stores.”
“Funny, the video footage from the store security cam shows you abandoned an empty cart in the produce aisle and bought nothing.”
“Now that I think about it, I bought groceries over at the Wal-Mart in Millport. Damn Fresh Mart is too expensive, so I took my business elsewhere.”
“So you just left?”
“Yeah, I left without buying anything. Are you gonna charge me with illegal browsing, or should I leave?”
Waggoner stands up from his seat, and Tipton glares at him.
“Sit down, Mr. Waggoner. I have an eyewitness who says you followed an underage girl and her mother through the store.”
“Well, now. I don’t have any recollection of that.”
“Says you confronted the mother in the parking lot and threatened her.”
Darcy’s back stiffens. If Waggoner tells Tipton she pulled a gun, she’ll lose whatever goodwill she gained today. The sheriff will be hard pressed to arrest her—she can claim self-defense—but the gun incident will complicate matters.
“Oh, that.” Waggoner waves the accusation away. “I was in the beer aisle minding my business. Never said a word to that woman. She confronted me in the parking lot and claimed I was checking out her daughter, which was bullshit. We shared a few choice words, but nothing came of it. Haven’t seen her since. Did that bitch claim I started the fight? Because it’s a lie.”
“Bitch,” Reinhold says, setting down the pen. “Do you frequently refer to women as bitches?”
Waggoner clicks his tongue.
“If the shoe fits.”
Reinhold removes a paper from the folder set between her and Tipton. She scans the page and sets it down so Waggoner can see.
“Two years ago, Sheriff Tipton arrested you for trying to coax a fifteen-year-old girl into your truck.”
“A gross exaggeration. I’ll bet your report also says the sheriff released me the same day because I didn’t do nothing wrong. Girl said she needed a ride across town. No harm in helping a local girl.”
“Picking up a hitchhiker is illegal.”