Stutter Creek Read online

  Something wasn’t right. Amanda had never failed to call when she said she would. Barb was expecting to hear all about her midterms.

  She had spent a very restless evening, dialing the number of Mandy’s little green cell phone, hoping against hope that she had just left it at the dorm or let the battery run down, or even lost it, anything. Finally, she could stand it no longer. She had called Kami. Her older daughter immediately insisted they call The Water House Bar & Grill in Pine River to see if Mandy was at work.

  Barbara clasped her hands together tightly. “Are you sure, Kami? I wouldn’t want to get her in trouble with her boss.”

  “This is Mandy, Mom, not me,” Kami said. “Mandy wouldn’t simply forget to call you. Something’s wrong—if you don’t want to call her boss, I will. Just give me the number.” And just like that, it was decided.

  In The Water House Bar & Grill, Myra listened to Mr. Pope, the manager, speaking to someone on the phone. She thought it was Mandy’s mom.

  He was telling the person that Mandy had picked up some boy and hadn’t shown up for work. Then he stated that behavior like that would not insure Mandy’s job no matter how out of character it seemed.

  As he was reading the caller the riot act, Myra was on her way out the door, her shift finally over. She had worried about Mandy all evening. Now, she whipped out her own cell and tried calling Mandy’s phone one more time—for good measure. But she got nothing, not even voice mail.

  Myra stood there, chewing the cuticle around her thumbnail, one hand twirling the dark ponytail that had slipped almost completely free of its elastic band. “Mr. Pope,” she said, reaching toward him hesitantly. “May I speak to Mandy’s mom?”

  Her boss turned even more crimson than usual. “Not now, Myra. Besides, this isn’t her mom, it’s her sister.” He glowered down at her and she wished she could slip out the door or melt into the floor.

  “Please?” She straightened her spine as she spoke. “I—I think something is wrong. Mandy would never ditch work . . . ”

  Mr. Pope looked at the tiny girl again. “Myra, right?” he asked.

  She nodded, pulling her sweater around herself protectively. Myra was the newest employee. She hadn’t spoken directly to the “big” boss since her initial interview except to answer yes sir or no sir.

  Finally, he seemed to realize what it must have taken for her to speak up. He held out the phone.

  Myra could hear a woman’s voice saying, “Hello, hello? Are you there?”

  Taking a deep breath, she responded, “Hello, I’m a friend of Mandy’s here at the Water House, I think something has happened . . .” Then she told Kami everything that Amanda had said on the phone. She also told her she would go to the police station if necessary. Her voice trembled as she spoke.

  After they hung up, Kami called the Pine River Police Department. The tremble in the other girl’s voice frightened her badly.

  The officer on phone-duty took down her name, and Mandy’s name. Then he advised her to make the trip to the city the next day if they still hadn’t heard from Mandy. “We can’t report an adult as missing until twenty-four hours have passed—unless we have extenuating circumstances. ”

  Kami relayed the conversation Myra had told her about, especially the part about Mandy picking up a boy on the highway. That seemed to make him take her a bit more seriously.

  “You say she was on her way to work when this occurred?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Kami replied. She exhaled, relieved that he was beginning to see the urgency. “And she hasn’t been heard from since.”

  After a few beats of silence, the officer said, “And I don’t suppose she was in the habit of picking up stray men, er, boys. Right?”

  Exasperated, Kami blew her bangs out of her eyes and forced herself to remain calm before she answered. “She was valedictorian of her class, first in our family to go to college, she was doing great. She had never missed even one day of work so far—”

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m getting the picture. Which reminds me, when you come in, bring a good picture. We’ll get it on the air ASAP, provided she doesn’t turn up before then. She could’ve just had car trouble, you know. Could be walking into town as we speak.”

  The officer’s voice held no conviction. The fact that she apparently had a cell phone and didn’t call to report a flat or other car trouble didn’t bode well as far as the he was concerned. And that part about picking up a boy . . . that sounded like a bad joke. He would have to get a statement from the friend, but first, he was going to contact the Highway Patrol and get a duty report from the unit responsible for that stretch of highway. Maybe the trooper had seen something, an abandoned car, perhaps. “First things first,” he muttered to himself, “that’s what my mama always said. First things first.”

  ***

  Beth was so glad to finally be at the cabin. It brought back so many great memories, especially the memory of John, a huge young bear of a man. He had been wandering close to their cabin when her dad had spied him and called him over. His hair was dark blond hair and his eyes were the color of seawater.

  Thinking of those eyes now made her recall the protective way he would “spot” her every time she was about to do something daring, like swinging from the ancient knotted rope out over the lake. She hadn’t even known it was there, but when he showed it to her, she’d clambered up onto the giant boulder to reach it before he could test it first.

  Remembering the way he’d stood, arms crossed over his bare chest, waiting for her to let go or return to the bank—poised to leap in and pull her out if necessary—those were the memories that had brought her back each and every year until she’d met and married Sam.

  Beth rubbed her arms and put away the past. John had been eighteen and she barely fourteen. He had been like a big brother to her, gentle but annoying. They had fished with her dad and camped out in the woods. They’d built shelters and climbed mountains, all things tomboy that Beth had loved back then. It had been absolutely . . . magical. And then he had simply disappeared. He’d never known how her feelings for him had changed over the course of that summer. They’d gone from platonic to knight-in-shining-armor crushy, and she had never told him.

  The next trip to Stutter Creek, a few months later, she had cajoled her dad into taking her all the way up the mountain to John’s cabin, but it had been deserted. He obviously hadn’t been there in a long time. She never saw him again. He had told her he had an aunt in Houston, but his parents had died in a car crash when he was seven. He’d never mentioned his aunt’s name; all Beth knew was that her last name wasn’t the same as his.

  When John finally did return to the mountain, he had immediately checked out the old Brannock cabin, but of course, it was empty. He supposed he should have been more forthcoming about his childhood way back when; how his aunt had taken him in after his parents death. And, also, how he’d always felt it was somehow his fault that she was so distant and disinterested. It wasn’t that his aunt was cruel; she’d just been a career woman who didn’t want children. Maybe if he had told Beth all that, then she would have understood why he had never returned to his little cabin near Stutter Creek. Even though he’d bought the property with his parents’ insurance money, and even though he’d built his little cabin right in the middle of it, once he’d met Beth, his desire to live alone and hide from the world had disappeared. And yet, he never felt that he could admit that fact to anyone.

  That was when he’d decided he needed to see some more of the world before he let himself become a hermit. Years later, he finally admitted to himself that he had “lit out for the territories” mostly because he felt guilty as hell for having fallen for a fourteen-year-old girl.

  He had set out to find a girl his own age. Someone with whom he might share the same sort of connection as the one he’d felt with Beth. In his journal, he’s admitted that he was afraid something wrong with him. Why else would he have enjoyed such platonic, tomboyish things with a little g
irl and her dad? He had never enjoyed himself or felt so at ease in his whole life as the summer he spent with them at Stutter Creek.

  Later, after he’d joined the Army and seen life behind enemy lines, he’d come to believe that it wasn’t just Beth that had made him feel so different; it was Beth and being part of her relationship with her dad. He’d never realized how much he had missed out on when his own parents passed away. Eventually, John convinced himself that his feelings for Beth had just been brotherly, and he’d squashed down and ignored the fact that from then on he compared every girl he met to her.

  ***

  Locking the car after her last trip with the ice chest, Beth stopped and listened to the forest. She’d always felt very lucky to have the National Forest as their back yard. It literally backed right up to their land. There would never be a subdivision or a dividing of their acreage. Her dad had lucked out when he’d bought the little five-acre plot so many years earlier.

  Over the years she would intermittently talk her dad into hiking up to John’s old cabin again, but he was never there. It just became more and more decrepit, as if the forest was in a battle to reclaim it, and the forest was winning.

  Inhaling deeply, Beth savored the tang of pine. The humid air was like a balm. Her dad had loved these piney woods, the fragrance, the wildlife, the isolation, and especially the little creek that bordered the property. In fact, it was this very creek, the crystal clear Stutter Creek, which gave the small nearby town its name.

  All her life, when they needed to get away, one or the other of them would utter the simple question, “Stutter Creek?” And in no time at all they would be packed and in the car. Eventually, she’d even mastered the art of “cabin” packing: pajamas, pair of jeans, couple tee shirts, cut-offs for swimming in the creek, bug spray, and some food. No makeup, hair dryer, curling irons, none of that. Just real life stuff.

  Her daughter, Abby, had been the same way. She’d thought Sam was, too. Now, she just didn’t know. Their whole life together seemed like little more than a sham. It was hard to even think about him anymore. It seemed like no matter which memory surfaced, she had to stop and examine it, to see if it had been tainted by the lie that was his infidelity.

  In other words, he had burst her bubble, big time. No longer was she the Cinderella who had married her prince and lived happily ever after. Now she felt more like the village idiot; one who had never known everyone else was making fun of her all along. It seemed as if everyone had known about the affair but her.

  All at once, standing in the driveway of her beloved cabin, Beth felt uncomfortable and exposed. She recalled the very thing that she had been trying to avoid thinking about—the boy. Or rather—the vision of the boy. She pushed away a maddening strand of hair. The night air was getting colder by the second. Her sweater was suddenly not enough. She rubbed her upper arms, trying to rub away the chill. Was someone watching her?

  Turning a slow circle, Beth scanned the close tree line. She let her mind see, the way her father had taught her, vision widening, almost blurred, able to see the whole picture at once. Gestalt, her dad called it. See gestalt. And so she did. But there was nothing there that shouldn’t have been. She was just getting herself worked up.

  Once again, she turned toward the cabin. It was a small log structure, two rooms and a bath. The back room was just large enough for two double beds and a tiny, built on bathroom that beat the heck out of the outhouse they used the first few years. The square of light from the picture window at the front of the house fell upon the scant snow like thin buttermilk.

  She stepped onto the porch just as a shadow crossed the window. For a split second, the snow reflected a dark shape moving across the light.

  Beth hesitated, hand on the old-fashioned knob. It’s just an insect, she thought, a large moth flying against the light fixture. It has nothing to do with the shadow-dream. Nothing! She exhaled, turned the knob and stepped inside. The cabin felt cozy. She could almost smell her father’s after-shave, the scent of wood smoke that always reminded her of him.

  If only he were here . . .

  She quickly unpacked her jeans and shirts. She’d added a couple of sweatshirts and flannel shirts due to the season, and of course the required T-shirts, and she folded them all into the deep drawers of the chest between the beds. Socks and underwear went into the upper drawer, and her jacket she hung on a peg driven into the wall.

  All done, she collapsed into the recliner in the living room/kitchen combination. The smell of her father was beginning to overwhelm her. His aftershave, the spicy aroma he’d worn year round, and the real smoky scent from the fireplace were surrounding her. She began to blubber, and this time the tears would not be stopped; they flowed freely, almost silently. She wiped them away on the sleeve of her shirt as she stared into the lovely, crackling fire. When she was finally done, she felt lighter, cleansed, almost hollow again.

  Leaning back, Beth put her feet up and told herself she should fix something to eat. And so thinking, she drifted off to sleep, the rough corduroy fabric of the old recliner pressing trenches into the side of her face.

  Outside the small cabin, a gentle breeze licked at the fresh snow, the moonlight illuminating the footprints of the fox in the driveway, and the footprints of a man near the creek.

  Chapter Nine

  “I can’t just sit here, waiting,” Kami told her mother. “I’m going to pick up Corey and we are going to drive every inch of Mandy’s route from her dorm to her work.”

  Barb nodded, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “Do you have your cell phone?” she asked hesitantly.

  Kami smiled and held it up. “Don’t worry. I’ll call as soon as we find her.” Her voice cracked and she leaned over and hugged her mother tightly. “I’m calling Aunt Jean to come over and be with you while I’m gone.”

  Her mother started to interrupt, but Kami held up her index finger. “No, don’t argue. It’s a done deal. If Dad were still alive, I wouldn’t bother. But he’s not.” She hurried out the door, already pressing numbers on her keypad. Over her shoulder she called, “And don’t forget to lock your door!”

  Sixty-five miles away, in Yellow Bend, a tiny suburb of Pine River, Officer Frank Lujan was about to make a discovery that would have him questioning his decision to become a police officer instead of a firefighter like he had once intended.

  He’d only been a solo patrol officer for a couple of months, so when he saw an animal run across the street dragging something that looked like a human arm, he pulled the cruiser to the side of the road, slammed the gearshift into Park, and jumped out to give chase. It was only after the coyote dropped the arm that Officer Lujan realized it really was human.

  “I thought it was part of a store dummy,” he kept repeating when his backup arrived. “You know, one of those mannequin things. I didn’t seriously think it was . . . real.”

  He couldn’t say anymore. He was too busy attempting to regain his composure and figure out what to write on his report. Meanwhile, his backup had arrived and was on the radio calling for the Medical Examiner. After he signed off, he asked, “Which way did the coyote come from?”

  Officer Lujan pointed to the east. “I guess I should start searching in that field.”

  The experienced officer shook his head. “First we’ll cordon off the area. Then we’ll wait for further instructions.” He adjusted his utility belt. “Sarge might even want us to wait until daylight. Be less likely to trample evidence if we can see it.”

  The rookie understood the logic of waiting. But it really tested his patience to stand by, knowing that animals might be chewing on the remains of a human out there somewhere. He was very relieved when the Chief herself came down and told them a cadaver dog and its handler were being brought in as soon as possible.

  Lujan and another officer stood watch the rest of the night, and when day broke, the dog was brought out. Within four hours it had pinpointed the rest of the young woman’s remains. Dental records would be requir
ed to identify her. All they could tell for certain was that she had been a blonde female. There were traces of blonde hair still attached to her skull, and the Medical Examiner said the pelvis was definitely that of a woman.

  ***

  Beth was groggy and disoriented when she awoke around three a.m.. For a moment, she had the idea she had run off the road and was stuck in a ditch. She expected the strange little boy to show up at any moment, but then the moonlight through the picture window reminded her where she was. The light was still blazing from the overhead fixture as well, because she had never gotten any further than the recliner. The fire was also still going, but now it was smoldering, glowing instead of crackling brightly.

  After everything she’d been through, plus her experience beside the road, Beth was completely wiped out. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d eaten. As if on cue, her stomach rumbled loudly. Nothing like a little mental and emotional turmoil to work up an appetite.

  She pressed a hand to her middle and wandered to the fridge while mentally cataloging the interior, which she had so recently filled. She rubbed her eyes again. Tiny lights flickered at the edge of her vision. Tired, she thought, rubbing gently. Too much driving and crying. Ought to write a country song. She laughed morosely. The lights flickered again, briefly. She switched on the single bulb over the sink, turned off the higher watt fixture over the table. Too much glare, maybe? Colored sparks jumped away into the air just outside her normal field of vision. If she tried to actually see them, they were gone. If she went gestalt, they were there: bright darts of light like a rainbow of electrical sparks.

  “Damn,” she turned on the tap to splash water on her face. “Hope I’m not getting a migraine.” She’d had migraines when she was younger, none for years though. But with the stress she’d been under, anything was possible.