“What does that mean?”
Reed studied the searchers in the forest, pushing shoulder to shoulder through the underbrush. “If Jeremiah was inside that truck, then either someone brought him here to the lake after kidnapping him, or someone abandoned the truck here to throw us off the scent and make us search in the wrong place. Either way, I don’t like the fact that he’s done with it.”
I understood the implications.
If the kidnapper was done with the truck, then it was possible he was done with Jeremiah, too. Neither of us wanted to say it out loud, but I began to fear that we would never find the boy alive.
Sunday was already off to a bad start, and as Agent Reed and I stood near the waters of Shelby Lake, it only got worse. I heard the ping of a text arriving on my phone. It was Monica Constant sending me a message. I checked it and then gave Reed the news.
“The police in Stanton have found a body.”
Chapter Twenty-One
No, it wasn’t Jeremiah.
The body was Paul Nadler, the ninety-four-year-old Alzheimer’s patient who had wandered away from his nursing home on Friday morning. We’d feared for months that something bad would happen to Mr. Nadler when he made one of his escapes, and something finally did.
A river runs through the heart of Stanton. It’s not a big river like the Mississippi; it’s more of a creek that ebbs and flows with the rainfall. On Friday, when Mr. Nadler disappeared, it would have been a trickle under the Oak Street bridge, but on Saturday night, the heavy storm would have swelled it into a torrent racing through the land south of town.
The Oak Street bridge was only four blocks from Mr. Nadler’s nursing home. Anyone sitting under the bridge deck would have been invisible from the street, so it wasn’t a surprise that no one had found him. The Stanton police suspected that he’d died down there, and the next day, when the rains came, his body had been picked up by the swollen currents and tumbled downstream. An organic farmer driving into town for the Sunday open-air market had spotted Mr. Nadler’s body two miles south of town on the grassy riverbank beside the highway.
Nadler was dressed the way he’d been when he wandered away on Friday, in a blue button-down dress shirt, a plaid blazer with patches on the elbows, pleated tan slacks, and natty wing tips he’d probably owned for thirty years. His leather wallet was found still buttoned into his back pocket, and it contained twenty-six soggy dollars, a frequent-buyer punch card from a long-closed Stanton restaurant, and a laminated photograph of his late wife. His face in death was utterly peaceful.
The discovery of a dead body so soon after Jeremiah’s disappearance triggered Agent Reed’s rule that when two unusual things happen in close proximity, it was important to look for connections. As a result, the FBI forensics team took control of the death investigation and was planning to oversee the autopsy. However, there was no sign of foul play and no violence to the body other than the postmortem injuries of the river currents. To me, it looked as if Mr. Nadler had gone to sleep under the bridge and never awakened. All in all, in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t seem like a bad way to leave this world.
Even so, it made me sad. I was sad for Mr. Nadler dying alone. I wondered what he remembered of his life when he left and whether he had any thoughts about his family or friends. Most of all, I was sad because when I looked at the body on the riverbank, I didn’t see Mr. Nadler’s face. I saw my father’s face. I saw my proud, strong father stripped of who he was, unable to pick up a fork and tell you what it was used for. I had a vision of the future, and it filled me with dread.
“Do you need me here?” I asked Agent Reed.
“No, not for a while. Do you have somewhere you need to be?”
“I thought I would walk the route from the nursing home to the river bridge and see if Mr. Nadler left anything behind.”
“Okay. That’s a good idea. Come back here when you’re done.”
But I could tell he knew that this man’s death meant more to me on a personal level than I was sharing. I was sure Violet had told him about my father, and it wasn’t a big leap from there.
I drove alone into the heart of Stanton, past the chain restaurants, past the Walmart. I found the three-story senior apartment building where Mr. Nadler had lived. It didn’t look much different from the outside than a building where twenty- and thirtysomethings would live. Two cars from the Stanton Sheriff’s office were in the parking lot, and no doubt they were breaking the bad news to the residents and staff.
I parked in front of the building and crossed the street. There was a mailbox, a bus stop, and a McDonald’s on the opposite side. One of the times Mr. Nadler had disappeared, he’d been found in the children’s playland inside McDonald’s, jumping with the kids in the bouncy castle.
Oak Street ran next to the McDonald’s through a leafy suburban neighborhood. As I walked on the sidewalk, the sun came and went through the trees. Death shouldn’t have been stalking such a perfect Sunday morning. Ahead of me, I could see the river bridge. It took me only a few minutes to get there on foot. I walked halfway out onto the bridge, then looked down over the railing at the swift waters below me. In the hours since the rain, the level had already dropped, but it was still a miniature version of whitewater rapids rushing around gentle curves toward the southern end of town. When I looked behind me, I could still see Mr. Nadler’s apartment building a few blocks away.
I retraced my steps to the riverbank and made my way down the grassy slope, which was wet and slick. A concrete walkway bordered the river, but the water level had risen above it. I peered under the bridge itself, trying to see between the support posts. Staying above the waterline, I side-stepped along the sharp slope of a retaining wall under the bridge deck. I was surprised to find someone sitting there, only inches away from the rushing water.
It was Dr. Lucas from the raptor center. He hadn’t noticed me yet. He was staring at the current as if he were hypnotized.
“Well, hello,” I said.
He looked at me when he heard my voice. I’d startled him, and he had to place me in his memory. “Oh. Hello. It’s Shelby, isn’t it? This is a surprise.”
“Yes, I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. How’s my owl?”
“I expect it to make a full recovery. The injury to the wing wasn’t serious.”
“That’s good. I’m glad to hear it.”
He took note of my uniform. “I’m sorry, Jeannie didn’t mention that you were with the police.”
“Mittel County, not Stanton. There was a body found downriver this morning. I’m here with the FBI to make sure there’s no connection to the missing boy from Everywhere.”
“Yes, I know about the body,” Lucas replied.
“Oh?”
“He was my grandfather. Paul Nadler. That’s my name, too. Lucas Nadler.”
I carefully slid down onto the concrete slope next to him. The river slapped loudly against the stone. It was darker and cooler here in the shadows of the bridge. “I’m so sorry. You mentioned your grandfather last night, but I didn’t make the connection. I don’t think Jeannie ever mentioned your last name.”
“Yes, that’s the vet world. I’m always Dr. Lucas, never Dr. Nadler. I prefer it that way, to be honest. It’s more personal.”
“Well, I apologize for pulling you away in the middle of a family crisis. I mean, to take care of the owl.”
“No, I was glad to do it. I needed to think about my work for a while and not about Grampa Paul. I’ve been a wreck since Friday, not knowing where he was. At least something like this reminds you how people pitch in to help. The police and the people at the facility have been great. Jeannie, too. The two of us drove all over town looking for him.”