The Taking Of Carly Bradford. Ramona Richards

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      “Where?” Tyler demanded as Fletcher put the car in gear.

      “Downstream from where Dee found the shoes. That stream apparently runs behind a subdivision a few miles down—”

      “Ryan’s Point. It’s one of the older neighborhoods in Mercer. Some of the houses date back to the nineteenth century.”

      “A woman found it in her garbage bin. Said she’d noticed someone in her backyard earlier, but didn’t think anything about it at first. Then she went to take out the trash, opened the bin, and there it was. She knew it wasn’t hers and had seen enough of the news that she called the station. Wayne caught the call.”

      “Is he at the scene now?”

      Fletcher took another turn and speeded up. “On his way.” The older detective’s mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Said the woman told him she’d seen enough of those true crime TV shows that she knew not to touch anything. Maybe they are good for something.”

      Tyler snorted. “Now if they’d stop convincing jurors that DNA is the answer to everything. Who’s the woman?”

      Fletcher pulled a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and handed it to Tyler, who unfolded it. Directions to the house, scribbled in Fletcher’s bold, angular scrawl, cluttered most of the page. At the bottom, capital letters spelled out “Jenna Czock.” Tyler said the name.

      “You know her?”

      “I know everybody in Mercer.”

      Fletcher’s mouth twisted. “Small-town cop. I need to get you into New York sometime. I meant more than by sight.”

      “Nah, there are too many strangers in New York. Jenna runs the florist shop on Fourth, which she started after her divorce about twenty, twenty-five years ago, so my mother tells me. Jenna’s maybe mid-fifties, dark hair. I don’t know her well, but she sometimes eats lunch at Laurie’s the same time Dee and I do.”

      Fletcher glanced sideways at his friend. “You and Dee eat lunch together?”

      Tyler felt his cheeks burn. “I mean, we eat there at the same time. It’s not like—” He broke off, stumbling over the explanation and deciding to change the subject. He didn’t want to explain that he’d started timing his lunches so he’d be there when Dee arrived. “You need to turn here.” He pointed.

      “Directions said—”

      “This is faster.”

      Fletcher followed Tyler’s instructions, letting a few seconds of silence pass. “You know, I can be distracted, but I don’t forget.”

      “Take the next left. We need to focus on the case.”

      In the silence that followed, Patty stuck her head between the front seats and Tyler scratched her chin. “OK. Go ahead and say it.”

      Fletcher remained silent.

      Tyler filled in the empty air. “This makes Dee’s claim a lot more credible.” He pointed at another street.

      Fletcher turned the corner, still quiet.

      “Do you have any idea when I’ll stop screwing up this case? I should have jumped on those shoes and got them to the lab last night.”

      Fletcher glanced sideways again, then back to the road. “Don’t give yourself so much credit. You’re not screwing up anymore than the rest of us. This case is a jumbled mess and has been since Day One. You were right not to send the shoes last night. You know as well as I do how many false reports we’ve had about the shoes. It would be worse to jump the gun on these, especially given how fragile Nancy Bradford is right now. We need to find out if they are Carly’s before we stir anything else up.” Fletcher took a deep breath. “What I want to know is why pieces of Carly Bradford’s last known set of clothes are suddenly being scattered up and down the same stream of water.”

      Tyler’s gut twisted. “She’s dead, and her killer is getting rid of evidence.”

      “But if Dee is right, then the shoes were a mistake. They weren’t meant to be dropped. Her attacker was trying to get them back.”

      A sliver of hope rose again in Tyler. “But…once they were found and turned over to us, we’d know Carly might still be in the area. We’d renew our search for her. This time maybe even more intensively.”

      Fletcher turned the car into a subdivision and slowed, searching for the right street. “So the best way to keep us busy is to leave a trail leading in the wrong direction. A distraction.”

      Tyler stared at his friend. “She’s going to be moved.”

      Fletcher nodded. “Most likely. And if we’re not careful, it’ll happen while we’re peering into trash cans and following accident victims to the hospital.”

      Tyler let out a long sigh as Fletcher parked the car behind Wayne’s cruiser. “Then we need to move on the shoes quickly. I’ll call Rick when we’re through here.”

      “We’re definitely going to need his resources as well as any manpower he can spare.”

      Tyler nodded and got out of the car. Rick Davis was the FBI special agent who had worked with them on the initial investigation. The FBI didn’t usually investigate local cases of missing children unless there was absolute proof of foul play or immediate danger to the child. There had been no Amber alert on Carly for the same reason. Children who disappear into the woods don’t usually have help doing so. They get lost; they have accidents. Tyler, however, put in a request for the FBI to help with the case as soon as he was convinced Carly hadn’t just wandered off. His officers, the FBI and the local press turned the town into a fortress. The square-foot-by-square-foot search of the town lasted ten days. As the time passed, hope drained from the town and the officers. Rick and his team had finally left when they found themselves sitting around the police station one day doing nothing but reviewing old files and going through the interview transcripts yet one more time. There wasn’t even enough evidence for a profile of a suspect. The case had simply come to an absolute dead end.

      As if Carly had just vanished from the face of the earth. Until now.