First Touch Page 4

  “It’s a great old show.” I took another bite of sandwich, wanting to ask more questions about his family. Maybe we could even explore that little something that seemed to come alive every time we were together. He had to feel it as strongly as I did.

  His next words killed that idea and buried it twenty feet under.

  “Look, what you said really upset Mr. Craigwell. You’d better not be yanking us around.”

  The bite of sandwich turned bitter in my mouth. I set the rest on the napkin in my lap. “Why don’t you just take me home?”

  “So there isn’t any tree.” His voice mocked me.

  “Oh, there’s a tree, and it’s going to look exactly like that picture you probably have of it on your phone, but even then, you’re not going to believe.”

  He was quiet a moment. “Okay, let’s call a truce. I’ll pretend to believe what you say, until I have proof that you’re lying.”

  It was better than nothing. I held out my hand. “You have a deal, Shannon. I can call you that, can’t I? Now that we’re best buds and all.” At some point I was going to call him that aloud anyway, so I might as well give him warning. I might have tried harder to call him Detective Martin, if he didn’t insist on treating me like a criminal.

  “Do I have a choice?” he asked.

  “Not really. I call most everyone by their first name.” Which was actually true, so maybe it wasn’t only because of his imprints. I’d learned that kind of familiarity from my flower child upbringing with Winter, of course. A little ache began in my gut at that thought because not calling him father was still a huge regret for me. That, and taking him with me that day on the bridge.

  His mouth quirked in a brief smile. “We’re only about ten more minutes away from where the Craigwells live. I’ll let you know when we reach their neighborhood.”

  “Okay.” I continued eating his sandwich, though it had lost its flavor.

  We entered a residential neighborhood and had gone several blocks in silence when I started feeling déjà vu. “Stop,” I said.

  He glanced at the rearview mirror before slamming on the brakes. “What?”

  I hopped out of the car, my back facing the way we were going. Shannon climbed out as well and stood staring at me over the car.

  “This all looks familiar, but it’s backward from Alice’s imprint.” I pointed across the street. “That’s the boy’s house. Caleb. From here she turned right.”

  “So back the way we came.”

  “Just to the next street. I think she planned to loop around to her house.”

  “Okay.” He disappeared inside the car, and by the time I was back in my seat, he was looking through the file he’d brought with him.

  I leaned over when he found what he was looking for: a list of names and addresses.

  “Ah,” I couldn’t help saying. “So she does have a friend named Caleb.”

  He nodded. “That’s the only reason you’re here right now.”

  “Oh, and I thought it was because you had the hots for me.” I rolled my eyes as I said it, but was that a little color washing over his face?

  “Riiiight. Well, it looks like Caleb does live here.”

  A little thrill of triumph spread through me, but my smile was brought to a quick halt as Shannon’s brows drew more tightly. I bet he was once again thinking I had something to do with Alice’s abduction. Sighing internally, I sat back and remained silent.

  “This is already a block away from the Craigwells,” he said as he turned the car around and followed my directions.

  But after turning, nothing looked familiar. I shook my head. “Sorry, there were two imprints. The earlier one was when she saw the boy, and the next didn’t start until after the man jumped out in front of her.”

  Shannon nodded, though I could still see the mistrust in his eyes. “We’ll keep going then, like she might have.”

  Even if she’s not what she says she is, she knows something. Much as I hate the idea, she could be involved. I have to follow this to the end. I owe it to Alice.

  I yanked my hand away from the silver mug in the console between us, killing the imprint.

  Shannon slowed the car, his gaze going briefly to me and then back to the road. “What?”

  I held out my wrists. “Why don’t you just take me in and lock me up if you think I’m involved. Hook me to a lie detector or torture me. Whatever you need to. You know, normally people thank me for telling them what I see.”

  “Where is this coming from?” He pulled over to the curb.

  “From your stupid coffee mug!” Inside me, anger was building. “Look, it’s hard enough seeing what that little girl did, and feeling that pervert’s thoughts. I’m trying to help here, and having you glare at me like I’m responsible isn’t helping. What more proof do you need?”

  I reached out and touched his keys. Those were always great at holding imprints. “So apparently you hate some thin guy in sloppy jeans who comes around the precinct. Enough to want to punch him. Oh, and you really don’t want to visit your parents this Christmas.” There were other imprints but they were faint. I touched his steering wheel.

  My head turned to the woman in the seat next to me. More gorgeous than she realized. And smart and witty. I couldn’t seem to tear my gaze away from those unusual eyes. Too bad she was so not my type.

  In the imprint, the attraction Shannon felt for me was every bit as strong as what I’d experienced for him when he’d walked into my store. What was wrong with this guy that he could be attracted to someone he so obviously disdained?

  “And on this, you’re attracted—”

  “I get it,” he said pulling my hand from his steering wheel. “Look, this is all new for me. I’m doing my best.”

  “Well, your best stinks.” I sat back, folding my arms so I wouldn’t touch anything else. “A truce means you keep your suspicions to yourself.”

  “I thought I had.” His words came almost under his breath.

  I glanced at his carefully blank face, and despite my anger, laughter threatened to bubble through the chokehold I felt on my neck. He was right. He couldn’t help what he imprinted on his mug.

  “It’s normal to be upset,” he said. “This case gets to me too.”

  Maybe he was right. Maybe it wasn’t him or the way he seemed to turn my insides to liquid when he looked at me. No. It was that poor frightened little girl and how helpless I was to protect her.

  “Let’s go on,” I said.

  A half block later I saw it: the tree. It loomed on the opposite side on the right, where Alice wouldn’t have had to cross the street to ride by it. It wasn’t quite as large as it had been from Alice’s point-of-view, and the twisted knots were more interesting than scary, but it was definitely a large tree that should be cut down before the exposed roots filled the entire yard. Even now, it had ruined the grass in a large circumference around the tree and bits of missing grass over the rest of the lawn showed more roots surfacing.

  Shannon glanced over at me, following my gaze. He pulled to the right curb, a good distance away from the house with the tree.

  “It happened closer to the tree,” I said.

  “I don’t want to cover any tire tracks that might be there. Or anything else. Long shot, maybe, but you never know.”

  “Oh.”

  We climbed from the car and started up the sidewalk. As we approached the spot where the man had stepped out in front of Alice, I purposefully began replaying the imprint. My breath came faster. Fear crawled over my skin.

  I stopped maybe twenty feet from the house with the tree. “Here,” I said. My voice was faint. I felt Shannon’s gaze on me, but I didn’t look in his direction. I was trying to notice anything else that might have been in the imprint.

  Nothing. I let it go.

  Shannon crouched on the edge of the sidewalk, where he fished something from the gutter with the tip of a pen. He held it up.

  A little girl’s crown. Alice’s crown.

  I t
ried to swallow the lump in my throat.

  “Where was his car parked?” Shannon asked.

  I walked until I was parallel to the tree. “About here. He must have been following her and passed her to park.”

  We both stared down into the road, but there were no marks or other features to distinguish this bit of road from any other on the block.

  Shannon pulled out his phone, “I need a forensic team at my location. I also need several teams to help me canvass this area. We’ll need to visit every house within a two-mile radius. Maybe more. Yeah, I’m sure. Clear it with the chief if you need to. Thanks.”

  Shannon put the crown in a plastic bag in the trunk of his car, where he also retrieved plastic orange posts and began setting them up in the road from beyond where I said the car had been parked to before where the man had stepped out in front of the girl.

  “After three days,” he said, “there probably isn’t anything to find besides the crown, but I’ll let them determine that.”

  In fact, the street was empty but for a few pieces of trash and faded tire marks. I was doubtful they’d find anything. Shannon had begun tying hazard tape between the posts when the crime scene investigators arrived.

  “I want every piece of trash or anything else you find examined,” he told them, handing over the crown. “Anything that can help us locate the girl.”

  Red-headed Peirce Elvey arrived next with six other officers. “Any identification yet on that drawing?” Shannon asked him.

  “Nothing in the database,” Peirce said. “Maybe someone will see it on the news.”

  Shannon nodded, glancing at the tree that stood silent sentinel to the scurrying around. “Maybe the neighbors know something.” He gestured to the owners of the house with the tree, who had come out on their porch and were staring. The people across the street were doing the same. “Let’s start asking. You all have the drawing, right?” The officers nodded and scattered toward the different houses.

  “Think they’ll find anything?” I asked, remembering a case on the news where a man had joined in a search for a missing child in his neighborhood, only to have police later find the child dead in his basement.

  “We can only hope. We’ve been to a lot of these houses already.”

  “If he lives nearby, someone will recognize my composite of him.”

  Shannon didn’t reply, and I wondered if that was him trying to placate me so I wouldn’t start yelling again. I didn’t plan on it.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “I’ll join the others—after I take you home.”

  Disappointment shot through me, though that was silly when of course I wouldn’t be going door-to-door with him. I started toward the car, and he followed.

  “Actually, I would like to talk to that boy sooner rather than later,” he said. “He didn’t come forward about seeing Alice. If you don’t mind waiting for a moment in the car, I’ll do it now.”

  “I’m fine with stopping now, but I don’t want to wait in the car. I want to see him.”

  Shannon stared at me, his expression severe. Not a good look for him. He was going to say no. “Okay,” he said, surprising me. “But I do all the talking.”

  “Thanks,” I said, promising nothing.

  Chapter 5

  Caleb’s parents were home, and they were only too happy to call him into their living room to speak with us. The house smelled like roast and fresh rolls, and though I wasn’t exactly hungry, it comforted me.

  Caleb’s round, freckly face paled as his mother explained that we were with the police. He looked the same as in Alice’s imprint, though his brown hair was shorter than three days ago.

  “Don’t worry,” Shannon said. “They’re easy questions.”

  Caleb sat down on the couch next to his mother, who wrapped an arm around him.

  “So this is about Alice Craigwell,” Shannon began. “You know she’s missing, right?”

  Caleb’s head went up and down.

  “We suspect that she was taken by a man a little while after she rode by your house on her bicycle. Do you remember seeing her?”

  Caleb nodded.

  “Was there a car following her?”

  The boy’s face scrunched up as he tried to remember. “I don’t think so.”

  “She thought of you as one of her greatest friends.” The words came from my mouth before I could help them. “She kind of regretted having a girls-only birthday party. She knew you wouldn’t want to paint fingernails.”

  Caleb shook his head. “I like riding bikes, though.”

  “Was hers cool?” Shannon asked.

  This time a head shake. “No. It’s pink.”

  Shannon chuckled. “Right. So did you see which way she went after she passed your house?”

  Caleb hesitated, but then shook his head.

  “Why did you hesitate when I asked that?” Shannon pressed.

  Caleb stared down at his hands. His mother leaned closer to him. “Tell them, honey. It might be important. Did you see which way she went?”

  The boy nodded, his eyes fixed on her instead of us. “I thought I did. But when I tried to catch up with her, she wasn’t there, so I must have gone the wrong way.” He paused before rushing on, “Maybe I could have helped her.”

  “Oh, no, sweetie.” His mom tightened her hold on him. “This isn’t your fault.”

  Shannon was now on the edge of the recliner where he sat, looking ready to fly over the coffee table to demand more. “I want you to think back very carefully. When you followed her, did you see a man parked on the side of the road? He would have been in a light tan car.”

  Caleb nodded. “There was a man putting something into his trunk. I saw part of a bike tire.” The child’s eyes widened. “Was that her bike?”

  His mother gasped, her hand reaching for her husband’s, who sat on her other side.

  “We don’t know yet,” Shannon said. “But did you get a good look at him?” When the boy shrugged, Shannon added, “I’m going to show you a few drawings of people. I want you to look at them and tell me if you see the man, okay?” He pulled up his phone and started tapping. “It’ll just take me a moment to set this up.”

  “So,” I asked Caleb while we waited, “did you pass the car, or go back?”

  “I passed the car.”

  “Did the man see you?”

  “He nodded and smiled at me, but I just hurried by.” Caleb looked far calmer than his parents at this point. They’d probably set new rules for riding his bike now.

  Shannon stood and squatted down on the carpet near where Caleb sat. “I’m going to scroll through these images, and you stop me if you see the guy, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I watched Caleb’s face as he studied the drawings, and it changed after the fourth one. Shannon saw it too, and he paused.

  “Him,” Caleb said. “That’s the guy I saw.”

  Shannon shot me a look, and I knew it was the drawing I’d made with the sketch artist. “Good. Thank you, Caleb.”

  “Is that the man who took Alice?” Caleb’s mother appeared close to fainting. “I can’t believe it. He was that close. What if Caleb—”

  Her husband’s hand landed on her arm, his head shaking. “Don’t go there. You’re scaring the boy.”

  Sure enough, Caleb buried his head into his mother’s body and began sobbing. “I didn’t know,” he said. “They asked us if we saw anything. I didn’t know. I thought I turned the wrong way.”

  “It’s okay,” Shannon said. “You’ve helped us now.” He arose, extending his phone again to the parents. “What about you? Have either of you seen him around? At school, the store, the park?”

  They both shook their heads.

  Shannon managed to find a few more questions for Caleb and his parents before I finally said, “Could I see your son’s bike?” Maybe Caleb had seen the license plate that hadn’t been in any of the other imprints. It wouldn’t be the first time an imprinter had forgotten information th
ey had actually witnessed.

  A line of puzzlement creased the father’s face. “May I ask why?”

  The muscle in Shannon’s jaw clenched. “Ms. Rain is a consultant with the police department. She is what you might call a sensitive.”

  At least he’d found another name besides psychic.

  The father blinked. “Really? You actually use psychics? I thought that was only on TV.”

  “We use everything we can to solve crimes, and especially violent crimes. The clock is ticking on this one.”

  The father nodded. “Yeah. Three days. Not much chance of—” He glanced at his son and fell silent.

  We went out to the garage, but the only imprints on the bike had nothing to do with Alice or the man who had taken her. Maybe it was the father’s mocking smile that had me say to Caleb, “I think you’d better tell them about the garden gnome. It’s the neighborly thing to do.”

  Caleb’s mouth rounded to an O and the mother gave him a hard stare. “What does she mean?” she demanded. “You’d better tell me right now, or you’ll be grounded all month from your bike.”

  She was probably hoping he’d refuse at least until Alice’s abductor was captured.

  As we walked back to the car, I thought I saw a smile tugging at the corners of Shannon’s mouth. “So are you going to explain?” he asked.

  “He took his neighbor’s gnome in retaliation for not throwing back their ball when they were playing in the yard. Apparently, the man came over to talk to his parents instead.”

  Shannon shook his head. “Reminds me of how my dad used to yell at kids who crossed our yard to get through to the other block. He wanted privacy without kids popping in at every minute. Now he wishes he’d let them cross because he misses having kids around.”

  I laughed. “Privacy is something I never had much of until recently. Winter always had some stranger at our apartment. Can’t tell you how many months I slept on a mattress in his room so someone could use mine.” I missed those times now, and mostly hadn’t minded too much, even when I’d been a kid. We had so little when compared with the rich of the world, but we’d had everything that mattered.