Blood on Copperhead Trail. Paula Graves

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СКАЧАТЬ should have known better.

      Laney whipped around to face him as her mother walked on to the nurse’s station. “You’re not seriously following us into her room?”

      “I need to talk to her about what happened on the mountain.”

      “You heard the doctor. She doesn’t remember.”

      “Yet.”

      Laney’s lips thinned with anger. “I know it’s important to talk to her. But can’t you give us a few minutes alone with her? When we came here this morning, we weren’t sure we were ever going to see her alive again.”

      Old pain nudged at Doyle’s conscience. “I know. I’m sorry and I’m very happy and relieved that the news is good.”

      Laney’s eyes softened. “Thank you.”

      “But there’s still a girl unaccounted for. And anything your sister can remember may be important. Including what happened before they were attacked.”

      Laney glanced back at her mother, who was still talking to the desk nurse. She lowered her voice. “I don’t think we’ll find Joy Adderly alive. Do you?”

      He didn’t. But he hadn’t expected to find Janelle alive, either. Not after seeing Missy Adderly’s body in the leaves off the mountain trail.

      “I think we have to proceed as if she’s still alive and needs our help,” he said finally. “Don’t you?”

      She looked at him, guilt in her clear blue eyes. “Yes. Of course.”

      He immediately felt bad for pushing her. Her priority had to be her sister, not his case. “Look, I need to make some calls. I’ll give you and your mother some time alone with your sister if you’ll promise you’ll come get me in an hour to ask her a few questions. Just do me a favor, okay?”

      “What’s that?”

      “Try not to talk about what happened up on the mountain. Just talk about anything else. I don’t want to contaminate her memories before I get a chance to talk to her.”

      “Okay.” She reached across the space between them, closing her hand over his forearm. “Thank you.”

      He watched her walk to the elevator with her arm around her mother’s waist. As they entered and turned to face the doors, she graced him with a slight smile that made his chest tighten.

      The doors closed, and he felt palpably alone.

      Shaking it off, he walked back to the waiting room and called the police station first. His executive assistant was a tall reed of a woman with steel-gray hair and sharp blue eyes named Ellen Flatley. Apparently she’d been assistant to two chiefs of police before him and would probably outlast him, as well. She saw the police station as her own personal territory and had a tendency to guard it like a high-strung German shepherd.

      “There are two teams of eight searchers each on the mountains, but it’s a lot of territory and slow going.” She answered his query in a tone of voice that suggested he should have known these facts already. “Plus, the sun will be going down soon, and they’ll have to stop the search. The coroner’s picked up poor Missy Adderly’s body, God rest her soul. He said he’s going to call in the state lab to handle the postmortem, like you asked.”

      She didn’t sound as if she approved of that decision, either, but he couldn’t help that. Bitterwood had hired him to make those kinds of decisions. They’d hired Ellen to help him execute those decisions, not make them for him.

      “Thank you, Ellen.”

      Her frosty silence on the other end of the phone told him he’d apparently made another breach of police-department etiquette.

      “Can you give me the cell numbers for Detectives Hawkins and Parsons?” he asked.

      She rattled off the numbers quickly, and he punched them into the phone’s memory. “Will there be anything else, Chief Massey?”

      “Yes, one more thing. Do you know if Bolen’s been able to reach the Adderly family with the news about Missy?”

      “He hasn’t called in, but he headed over there about fifteen minutes ago, so I imagine he’s told them by now.” Her voice softened with her next question. “Chief, is there anything new on the other girl, Joy?”

      “No, not yet. You’ll probably hear as soon as I do, if not sooner. If you do hear anything, please let me know at once.”

      “Certainly, sir.”

      “Thank you, Mrs. Flatley, for your help.”

      There was a hint of a smile in her voice when she answered. “Just doing my job. Do you want me to forward your calls to your cell?”

      “No, just take messages, unless it’s urgent.”

      He ended the call, then dialed Ivy Hawkins’s number.

      She answered on the second ring, the connection spotty. “Hawkins.”

      “This is Massey. Catch me up.”

      “TBI crime-scene unit finally arrived. I sent some of them over to the trail shelter to get what they could find there, too. Parsons is with that crew. I’m sticking with the original scene, helping out with the grid search. But we’re running out of daylight.” Her voice tightened. “What’s the news on Janelle Hanvey?”

      “Better than we had a right to hope for.” He outlined what the doctor had told them, keeping it vague in deference to the girl’s privacy rights. “She’s awake and the family’s with her.”

      “I can be in Knoxville in about thirty minutes if you’d like me to question the girl.”

      “I can handle it.”

      There was a thick pause on the other end of the line, reminding him of the frosty reception he’d gotten from Ellen Flatley earlier. “Okay.”

      “Is there a problem, Hawkins?”

      “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

      He grinned at the phone. “Please.”

      “The job of chief of police is primarily a political position. You supervise, schmooze, shake hands with the town bigwigs and basically present a nice, trustworthy face for the public. Witness interviews, though—”

      “We’re not a big city. We all have to wear different hats. The town council made that clear when they hired me. And how often do you get two violent-crime victims in one day?”

      “Recently? More often than I like,” she answered drily. “But, understood, sir. We’re spread thin by this case already.”

      “Call me at this number if you need me.” Ending the call, he looked at the round-faced clock on the waiting-room wall. After five already. But still thirty minutes before he could go to Janelle Hanvey’s hospital room and ask the questions drumming a restless rhythm in his brain.

      Patience, СКАЧАТЬ