One of the officers smiled and began removing the handcuffs from Cane. “I know who you are. If you want the paperwork that goes with these clowns, be my guest.”
The other officer followed suit. Rainey wanted to hug him when he bent to look Barron in the eye. “You’re too young to be out here. Get off the street kid.” He stood and playfully rubbed the top of Barron’s head. “And don’t run from the police. That’s how you get hurt.”
“Thanks,” Barron said to Rainey after the policemen walked away.
“Where have you guys been?” Rainey asked. “I tried to reach you all morning. Conner sent Wendy a message saying you were missing.”
Cane answered, “We had to run from that cop that keeps harassing us. His name is Lilly too. Any connection to the old man?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Rainey answered.
“Anyway, my phone battery is dead and I lost the charger cord,” Cane said.
Rainey motioned to them. “Come with me and we’ll fix that problem.”
When Rainey opened her car door, Cane said, “Damn girl, this ride is bitchin’.”
“I’m not a girl, I’m a woman. I have a name. I’m not your homie, so don’t talk to me like one. I’m the person that just got you out of handcuffs. Show some respect for yourself and me. Give me your phone.”
Cane handed Rainey his phone, but he couldn’t keep his mouth shut, “Who pissed on your donut? You’re all cop when Wendy ain’t around. And what are all these cops doing here?”
Barron chimed in with his softly spoken question, “Where’s Wendy?”
Rainey placed Cane’s phone in the rapid charger she pulled from the console of her car and handed it to Cane. “Hold this.” She pushed the button on the key fob to open the trunk. The boys followed her to the rear of the car. “Wendy is missing. She was taken from her house this morning,” Rainey said while digging through a leather bag in the trunk.
Cane commented further on the car, “This ride is legit. Is this the 2013 SRT8?”
Barron, though smaller and younger, showed no fear when he elbowed the much larger Cane in the ribs. “Didn’t you hear what she said? Wendy’s in trouble.”
Rainey smiled at Barron and answered Cane. “It’s a special order pursuit model. I’ll be happy to explore your fascination later.” She pulled some cables from the bag and closed the trunk lid. Moving back to the driver’s seat, Rainey shook the accumulated ice pellets from her hair and sat down. She held out her hand, “Give me your phone.”
Cane handed the phone to her, watching as she removed it from the rapid charger and plugged cables into the car and the phone. Rainey fired up the laptop attached to the console and talked while she worked.
“Wendy needs me right now, but I need you guys not to disappear. I can’t take you myself, but if you let me, I’ll have someone come drive you to a safe place. You’ll be fed, given clean clothes, and a place to sleep until we can figure out a permanent solution to your problems. Your other choice is state custody.”
Barron was not concerned with his own predicament. “What happened to Wendy?”
“Someone took her this morning. She’s been missing now for over seven hours. I thought the picture had something to do with it, but that’s not the case. I don’t have a clue who took her or where she is.” Rainey smiled at Barron. The little guy was visually distressed about Wendy. She asked him, “Got any ideas?”
Rainey worked on the laptop while listening to Barron’s response.
“I stay here sometimes, out in the storage building. She put a heater and some blankets in there for me. Wendy doesn’t want anyone to know. She said she’d get in trouble for not turning me over to state custody.”
Rainey nodded. “She would.”
“I only came here when I’d been cold so long I couldn’t feel my toes. Wendy left peanut butter, crackers, and some bottled water out for me. Sometimes she left a few bucks. She put a heater in there when it turned cold.”
Cane punched Barron playfully in the arm. “So, this is where you disappear to. You said you had a date taking care of you.”
Barron, head down and ashamed, replied, “I didn’t want anybody to know I couldn’t make it on my own, but I only do tricks when I got no other choice.”
Cane laughed and wrapped his arm around his little friend’s shoulder. “Connor goes home to get fed and get clothes once a week, more if his dad is gone. Get what you can where you can, little man. Street rules.”
Barron smiled up at his friend and then turned back to Rainey. “Sometimes when Wendy knew I was here, she’d bring me hot chocolate or warm food. The last time I came by, the place was trashed. I cleaned it up and told her about it. I didn’t want Wendy to think I did that to her stuff.”
“Did she seem concerned?” Rainey asked, still occupied with Cane's phone.
Barron shook his head. “She said one of the other guys probably followed me. I try to be real careful. I only brought Cane because we were both running from that cop. He's a freak.”
“You don’t have to worry about him anymore. He was arrested about an hour ago for murdering your friends.”
Cane and Barron exchanged fist bumps. Rainey finished loading the application onto Cane’s phone. She unplugged it from her car and handed it and a charger to Cane.
“Here you go. Don’t lose this one,” she said. “I loaded an app on your phone. See that icon right there.” Rainey pointed at the screen. “If you are in trouble and need help, hit that and it will send a signal to me and tell me where you are. On the flipside, I can find you whenever I need to.”
“You lojacked my phone,” Cane said, seeming unsure as to whether he liked that prospect.
“I wasn’t lying to that officer. You are a material witness and I need to be able to find you later. I just don’t have time to deal with you right now. I need to find my sister.”
A ringtone announced the arrival of a text message on Rainey’s phone. She pulled it from her coat pocket. Before stepping out of the car, she grabbed the wool wrap Katie had given her for Christmas. She used it to shield her head against the sleet that fell heavier as the afternoon skies turned a deeper gray. Time was running out for Wendy.
Rainey closed and locked the door as she read the message from Brooks. “The phone that sent the email is on and right there with you.”
Rainey sent a return text. “I have him. Thanks. Any info on the Cashion family?”
Barron asked, “Is it about Wendy? Have they found her?”
Rainey could tell this kid really cared for her sister. She put a hand on Barron’s shoulder. “No, she’s still missing. I need to send you two somewhere safe. Will you wait right here for a man driving a black Escalade? He’s ginormous, so you don’t have to wonder if he’s the right guy. His name is Mackie.”
The boys nodded in agreement and Rainey made the call. Mackie would transport them to the Women’s Center. They were still young enough to be allowed into the segregated section for women with teenage boys. Some of the women at the center were too traumatized to be around anything resembling a man.
“Mackie is five minutes away,” she said, as she tucked her phone into one of her coat pockets and then put on the black leather gloves she retrieved from the other. “Don’t be assholes at the shelter. The people there will be trying to help you. No one is interested in putting you back into a bad situation. Okay? We’re cool?”
Barron stared up at Wendy’s house with flakes of ice in his long eyelashes. “I hope you find her. She’s nice, you know?”
Rainey slipped an arm over the young man’s shoulders. “Yeah, she is nice. I need to go look for her. Wait here for Mackie, okay?” She glanced over at Cane. “Don’t rabbit. Get off the street. This is your chance.”
Mrs. James approached, now wearing a heavy winter coat and hat. She carried two Styrofoam cups full of steaming liquid. “You young men look cold. I brought hot chocolate.”
Rainey introduced the teens. “Mrs. James, this is Wendy’s friend Barron and his friend, Cane. My associate is going to pick them up in a few minutes. Say thank you, boys.”
Cane and Barron responded quickly and in unison, “Thank you, ma’am.”
“You’re very welcome. I’ve seen this one around,” Rita said, pointing at Barron. “Wendy told me she allowed him on her property, so I wouldn’t call the police.”
“Ms. Bell,” a voice from the yard called out.
Rainey turned to see an officer beckoning her to come.
Rita solved her dilemma. “Go on. I’ll stay with the boys.”
“You two behave. People are trying to help you,” Rainey said, as she backed away from the teens.
Barron spoke up before she could turn away. “When you find Wendy, tell her I said, ‘It’s a deal.’ She’ll know what I’m talking about.”
Rainey smiled back at him. “I’ll do that, Barron.”
She turned her back on the boys and Rita James and hustled up the driveway, once again entering the last space in which her sister had been seen alive. One thought above all others rang in her ears.
Wendy is running out of time.
#
Rainey closed Wendy’s front door and immediately noted the silence. The crime scene techs completed evidence collection hours ago. The search dogs were loaded up and taken away. Only two officers remained to guard the scene. They did so from the warm interior of their patrol units.
The sleet had turned to freezing rain soon after Mackie left with the boys. Rainey waved to him from the yard, while listening to the team leader explain his reasoning for calling off the search.
“We pulled the dogs way out away from the house. They came right back here every time. The last traceable scent is at the back fence. Maybe he had an ATV or something back there. I can’t explain it. She just vanished from the face of the earth.”
“Did you look out here? Could she have been taken in a car from the driveway?”
“Anything is possible. Her scent is all over this property. What I can tell you is she crossed the trail into the woods, but the dogs say she returned to the fence. We’re going to move down to the parking lot after this weather passes.”
“Thanks,” Rainey said.
Feeling dejected and at a loss as to what to do next, Rainey parted from the remaining law enforcement personnel and walked into Wendy’s house alone, where she stood now waiting for the answer to her question to reveal itself.
Who took Wendy King?
She pulled the wrap off and shook the ice loose before draping it around her neck. With her back against the front door, she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. The aroma of cinnamon filled her nose from the potpourri scattered on the carpet. Rainey recognized the scent from Wendy’s backpack along with a hint of her perfume. With her eyes closed, she could see Wendy grinning mischievously, coaxing her big sister into yet another adventure.
The ringing in her pocket broke the spell of silence.
She pulled out her phone and after checking the name on the screen said, “Okay, Brooks, make my day.”
“Rainey Bell, little Wendy landed next door to the gold medal winner of the Fucked-Up Family Olympics. Gary Don Miller, the live-in boyfriend, is a convicted sex offender. He did time for having a sexual relationship with his last girlfriend’s thirteen-year-old daughter. He found Jesus in prison. Has lived a stellar life since being released and works for the Towne Bakery.”
“That explains his early morning leaving,” Rainey interjected. “No parole violations, not even a traffic ticket?”
Brooks laughed. “No, he’s squeaky clean. Like by the book, never missed a day of work, in the church pew every Sunday morning clean. Call me cynical, but you know what that usually means.”
Rainey nodded though Brooks couldn’t see her. “Yes, he’s covering something up or fighting demons minute by minute. One misstep and he’s back to his old tricks. He’s either already violating or trying desperately not to.”
“He met Juanita Baily Odom Cashion through the prison pen pal program sponsored by her church. She visited him a lot toward the end of his sentence. Talk about bad luck with men. Juanita’s first husband, Barney, died tragically, but not before she ‘fell down the stairs’ a few times, or so say the ER reports, which the doctor thought was bullshit. Saved from her abuser by fate, Juanita then married John Cashion, Sr., who was medically discharged from the Army and deposited in a psychiatric hospital for several years, before he met and married Juanita. The medical profession provided him with every known treatment for schizophrenia and depression. Sadly it was not enough.”
Rainey interrupted the monologue. “I know about Senior. What happened to Junior? Where is Buddy Cashion?”
Brooks moved on to the son. “John ‘Buddy’ Cashion, Jr. spent his sixteenth birthday in the custody of the state and the next seven years in one psychiatric facility after another. He is a diagnosed schizophrenic. He lives in a halfway house and is able to hold a job as long as he takes his meds and stays monitored by house staff. The problem is, Buddy was not at breakfast. He did not go to work. A search of his room found a stash of his medications, untaken. Buddy Cashion is out of touch, figuratively and literally.”
“How do you know all that?” Rainey asked.
“I might have mentioned I worked for the FBI when I called the halfway house to check on Buddy.”
“I admire your initiative,” Rainey said. “Do you have a description?”
“Buddy Cashion grew to be a big boy. He’s six feet two inches tall and weighs two-eighty-five. Long, dark hair and beard in the last ID photo for the state. Hazel eyes. No tats. No scars.”
“Well, he is certainly large enough to have done the damage in this house,” Rainey commented. “What can you tell me about the Joanne Bonner case?”
“Not a lot. Joanne was a young nurse, age 26. She bought the home six months prior to her disappearance. She spoke with her best friend on the phone before going to bed. She was discovered missing the next day after she did not show up for a lunch date with her mother. Joanne Bonner was never seen again.”
“I’ll see if Sheila can pull the case file locally. Maybe we can talk to the original investigators.”
“There is a mention of Juanita Cashion in an article about Joanne Bonner’s dog. It seems that the dog was repeatedly taken to Joanne’s parents’ home a few miles away, but returned each time. Juanita Cashion is quoted as saying, ‘I’m not a dog person, but that dog is determined to lay out by my back gate. I suppose we’ll just let it stay here until it finishes grieving.’ They built it a house and fed it. The dog stayed until it died two years later. That’s so damn sad.”