Point of Disappearance, page 12
He could at least help Blanca with that, even if he couldn’t hand her Jeremy’s kidnapper.
When Tate got out of the shower, he checked his phone and saw a text from Jed. He’d sent it between classes, but he’d managed to contact Isaiah Whitecotton, Gabe’s cousin, and he was okay with meeting with him and Blanca this afternoon.
Blanca still hadn’t responded to him, so he called her—harder to ignore that.
She picked up on the third ring, her voice breathy. “Hi, Tate. I was going to text you back from the station. I just came from Mrs. Ruesler’s house.”
His heart lurched painfully in his chest. “How’d she take it?”
“I guess how you’d think she would. Relieved but tortured at the same time. That’s how I’d characterize it.” Blanca sniffled. “I obviously did get home okay, and I apologize for sneaking out of there this morning.”
Had she snuck out? She must have, as he didn’t hear her leave. “No worries. You have a lot on your plate today, and I’m adding more. Made contact with my friend Jed, and he set things up with Gabe’s cousin for this afternoon. Does that still work for you?”
“That’s great. Thank you.” He heard a car door slam and the rev of an engine. “I’m heading for the station right now. Sheriff Hopkins is going to officially reopen Gabe Whitecotton’s case. The bones show no cause of death yet, so who knows? Hopkins might try to frame this as another accident, but there’s no denying Gabe disappeared as a thirteen-year-old and his fifteen-year-old bones resurfaced.”
“The FBI is going to have to send more agents out here, Blanca. Our sheriff’s department can’t handle this.”
“I’m aware of that. Text me a time and location for Gabe’s cousin. I also contacted Dr. Summers and left him a message, reminding him we’d met on the search. So I’ll need to set something up with him, as well.”
“I’ll let you know when Isaiah wants to meet.”
They ended the call on an awkward note. At least Tate felt the awkwardness. Should he have told her he would’ve welcomed her into his room and his bed if she’d had the courage to open that door?
He whipped off the towel around his waist and tossed it into the corner. Now, that would’ve been awkward.
* * *
LATER THAT AFTERNOON after going through a few reports for work, confirming a meeting time with Isaiah Whitecotton and communicating that time to Blanca, Tate grabbed a jacket from the closet and headed out to his Jeep. He wanted to make a stop before meeting with Blanca and Isaiah.
He drove across the bridge at the falls and made a left turn. Blanca had made a comment the night of the search for Noah Fielding that Tate seemed to make a beeline for that area. He had because it was the same area where he and Jeremy had played, an area not far from the Samish reservation where Gabe had been living at the time of his disappearance.
He parked at the side of the road where small, indistinct trails led into the forest. Taking these trails wouldn’t necessarily get you lost. If you knew to follow the river, you could always make it back to the bridge. The same types of trails fanned out from the campsite where the Fieldings had pitched their tent—and lost their son.
Twigs snapped and leaves crackled beneath his hiking boots as he tromped into the woods. Even with winter approaching, the trees closed around him quickly, blocking the weak sunlight. He pumped his legs, one foot after the other, before he could think too clearly about what he intended to do.
He pushed through the underbrush, the bare branches scratching his hands and slapping against his thighs. When he reached the small clearing, he blinked. His gaze locked onto the tree.
With one hand in front of him, he walked toward it as if in a trance. He’d never been back to the tree where his attacker had left him. Closing his eyes, he ran his hand along the bark. What had happened that day?
He and Jeremy were riding their bikes. They’d gotten separated because he’d charged ahead without his friend, but he’d done that many times before. Jeremy was resilient. He never got lost in the woods.
They’d heard the whistling before but had laughed it off. Someone whistling some baby song in the forest didn’t scare them.
It should have.
He remembered heading down an incline and then flying through the air as his bike hit something. Is that how he’d gotten the lump on his skull? The doctors didn’t seem to think so. The next thing he remembered was someone calling his name and flashlights shining all around him. Jeremy was gone.
He crouched down and scrabbled through the dirt and leaves with his fingers, searching for clues that he’d missed almost twenty years ago. He leaned forward and rested his head against the rough bark of the trunk. It wasn’t his fault. He’d been a kid.
The whistling came to him again. This time he knew the tune. The words rasped in his throat. “Put your right foot in...”
His head jerked up, and he choked. He heard the whistle pierce through the trees...and it wasn’t his imagination this time. Before he had time to think, his body reacted, fueled by adrenaline and fury.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are. I’m not a kid anymore.”
Chapter Twelve
Blanca spied Tate’s Jeep on the side of the road, and she hunched over the steering wheel to get a better look. Had his car broken down? Maybe he’d decided to wait for her, so they could enter the reservation together.
She pulled up behind him but couldn’t see anyone in the car. She exited the sedan and called his name, cupping her hand around her mouth.
She took a tentative step to the edge of a trail. Even during the day, the forest presented a dark and menacing force. Shaking her head, she barreled ahead on the trail. She was dressed for it today. “Tate?”
A man’s shouting seemed to bounce off the trees, coming from everywhere, all at once. She pressed a hand to her galloping heart. “Tate? Is that you?”
More yelling met her question, so she plunged into the forest toward the initial sound. She dropped her gaze to the ground and could tell someone had recently taken this path. Tate had taught her to recognize the signs of flattened grasses and broken twigs on their first search through these woods.
When she got to a small clearing, she caught sight of a blur of blue amid the brown leaves and evergreen needles. Tate had worn that blue jacket before. Why was he running around the woods shouting?
“Tate! It’s Blanca. Where are you?”
A figure came crashing through the underbrush, stumbling into the clearing. Tate’s wild eyes darted back and forth, the detritus from the forest clinging to his jacket and sticking out of his hair.
“Tate? What’s wrong? Are you all right?” He looked like a madman with his head on a swivel.
“Did you hear it? Did you hear him?”
“Hear what? I didn’t hear anything or anybody, except you yelling. That was you yelling, wasn’t it?” She licked her lips.
Tate dug both hands into his hair, dislodging some of the leaves and dirt. “He was here. I heard him. I wasn’t dreaming it this time.”
She swallowed. “Dreaming what, Tate?”
“The whistling. I heard the whistling. The same song.” He threw his arms out to his sides in a frantic gesture.
Blanca stared past him at the lone tree in the center of the clearing. She put her hand over her mouth. This was it. This was the tree where Tate had been tied up.
She’d meant to come here. It had always been on her task list, but after meeting Tate, she never believed he’d agree to join her.
“A-are you sure?” She glanced over her shoulder, almost expecting to see the whistling man behind her.
“You don’t believe me?” His shoulders sagged, and he leaned against that very tree that had changed his life. “I’m sure, Blanca.”
“I believe you, but why? Why would he come back to this spot with you here? Why would he want to remind you of what happened?” Did she believe him? It made no sense.
He flapped his arms, as if he intended to take flight. “What does it matter if I remember? I didn’t see him. I can’t ID him. That’s clear, or he would’ve taken care of me years ago. He couldn’t risk my memory returning and my pointing him out on the street. He’s not worried about that.”
“You think he’d be worried about you catching him whistling alone in the forest? If he is the one who stole the case files from my hotel room, he knows you heard whistling.” She pulled at a piece of skin on the side of her thumb, the sting making her regret it immediately.
Tate bent forward and grabbed his knees so suddenly, she thought he was having a medical emergency. She took a step toward him, but he began talking.
“Maybe he didn’t even know I was here. Maybe he’s out trolling for another victim.” He lifted his head as he continued to expel his breath in short spurts. “That’s his precursor. His warning. The whistling.”
Tate’s words triggered something in her brain, and she gave voice to the thoughts that had floated through her head last night after she’d given up on the idea of seducing Tate.
“He wouldn’t take another boy. It’s too soon.” Pulling up the collar of her jacket to cover her cold neck, she crouched on the ground. She picked up a stick and started stirring the leaves and dirt into a pattern. “Think about the incidents, Tate. Jeremy went missing in 2003, Andrew Finnigan in 2010. If you remembered correctly, Gabe disappeared in 2017, and now Noah Fielding. Notice anything about those years?”
Tate had finally caught his breath. Spreading his legs in a wide stance, he crossed his arms. “Those incidents are all seven years apart.”
She nodded, glad he’d picked up her train of thought so quickly. “Seven years between each abduction. Why? What happens every seven years? Is there some event on the island or the bay that occurs every seven years?”
“Not that I can think of.” His hands bunched the material of his jacket. “But seven is a notable number, isn’t it? There’s symbolism to the number seven in the Bible and in other religions, mythology, superstition. It could be anything.”
“You’re right, and it’s his pattern.” She tossed aside the stick and dusted her fingers together as she rose to her feet. “Now I’m beginning to wonder what happened in 1996, prior to Jeremy’s abduction. Will we find another missing boy?”
“If this has been going on for the past twenty-eight years, we’re not looking at a young man.”
“Unless we’re looking for more than one perpetrator. Maybe it’s some kind of satanic cult. I’m sure they’d be interested in the number seven.” She clenched her teeth to stop them from chattering. “It’s cold, and we have a meeting with Isaiah Whitecotton.”
“Right.” Tate turned his head to glance over his shoulder at the tree before striding toward her. “Let’s get out of here.”
When they got back to their vehicles, Tate pointed up the road. “You can follow me, but if I see another car on this road, all bets are off. I’m stopping anyone in the vicinity.”
“Got it.” Blanca slipped into her car and gripped the steering wheel as she waited for Tate to lead the way. That encounter in the woods, whatever it was, still had him tightly wound. If he’d heard the Whistler for the first time in twenty years, that just might be it. Had he, though?
His Jeep pulled onto the road in front of her, and she pulled in behind him. They’d already passed the sign announcing they were on Samish land, but the reservation lay a few miles ahead. She had her DNA kit and hoped Gabe’s cousin would agree to a buccal swab.
When she’d announced at the station today that the remains Tate had stumbled across during the forest fire cleanup belonged to Gabe Whitecotton, missing since 2017, she’d raised more than a few eyebrows and had elicited a venomous look from the usually friendly Sheriff Hopkins. If the bones did belong to Gabe, that news would put another nail in the coffin for Hopkins, even though he had agreed to reopen the case.
Tate made a turn off the main road, and Blanca followed him, passing the wooden sign between two columns of rock welcoming her to the Samish Nation reservation. Small, wooden houses scattered the landscape with mobile homes set farther back from the road. Tate drove past the meeting house in a log cabin, smoke twirling from the two chimneys. A red cross marked the medical clinic in a low-slung building, and Tate crawled past the nation’s police station and jail.
After winding toward the edge of the reservation by the tree line, Tate pulled beside a children’s playground. A man about their age, a long ponytail hanging down his back, pushed a boy and girl on the swings. When Blanca got out of the car, the kids’ squeals made her smile.
Tate waited for her, and they approached the man, Tate’s hand raised in greeting. “Hey, Isaiah. It’s Tate Mitchell. This is Blanca Lopez with the FBI.”
Isaiah ducked around the pumping legs of the children and stuck out his hand. “Good to meet you both. Jed instructed me to play nice, but it’s better for me to meet with the FBI out here than in my house with my family around.”
Blanca inclined her head. “I get it. Thanks for agreeing to see me.”
“If what Tate said on the phone is true, that those bones he found are Gabe’s, then there’s nothing I’d rather do than to settle this.” He stepped back behind the swings and gave each child another push. “Gabe was my little coz, you know? He looked up to me, and I never could figure out why he’d just take off like that without telling me.”
Blanca asked, “You didn’t think he ran away when he disappeared?”
“I don’t know.” Isaiah shrugged and tossed his ponytail over his shoulder. “Not like he hadn’t done it before. Hell, not like I hadn’t done it before. Plenty of young bucks on the rez itching to leave it. You know what I mean? But to leave without saying goodbye...”
He gave the kids another shove, and the girl’s little feet reached for the sky.
Had Gabe played on this swing set? It looked old enough. She cleared her throat. “Did your family look for Gabe when he left?”
“All over Discovery Bay. I even went to Seattle.”
“Did Gabe have a cell phone?”
“He had a phone. He’d turned it off, and nobody was ever able to trace it.” Isaiah had stepped to the side, lost in thought while the arc of the little girl’s swing dwindled, and her mouth formed a pout.
“Let me.” She stepped behind the swing, pulled back on the rusty chains and let it go with a push. “I’m sorry, Isaiah.”
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he asked, “What makes you think those bones are Isaiah’s? Aren’t you here for a DNA sample?”
“That was me.” Tate raised his hand. “When Blanca told me the range of the disappearance and age of the bones, I put it together. Had to be Gabe.”
“And you’d know, brother.” Isaiah pinched his bottom lip with his calloused fingers. “What is going on? Now this tourist missing from the campsite. You think it’s one person, or a series of coincidences?”
“That’s what I’m here to figure out.” Blanca patted her bag. “Can I get that sample now? It’s just a swab inside your mouth. If you think the kids might be scared or bothered by it, Tate can take them to the slide.”
“Yeah, yeah. Good idea.”
Isaiah grabbed the chains of the boy’s swing while Blanca stopped the girl. “Do you want to follow Tate to the slide? Your dad—” she glanced at Isaiah, who nodded “—is going to be right here.”
The little boy charged ahead while the girl grabbed Tate’s hand and followed.
Blanca covered her smile with one hand.
“He’s pretty good with kids.” Isaiah jerked his head toward Tate, climbing the steps of the slide.
“His nephew has been living with him recently.”
“Right. His sister Astrid’s kid.”
Blanca clicked her tongue as she unwrapped the buccal swab kit. “These small towns.”
By the time she finished with Isaiah and secured his sample in her bag, the kids had abandoned Tate at the slide and were barreling toward their father with demands for hot chocolate.
“Thanks again, Isaiah. I’ll keep you posted.” She wiggled her fingers at the children. “Bye, kids.”
Tate took the bag from her. “I’ll carry this for you. When do you think we’ll have the results?”
“I’m going to send it to Gwen today. She’ll put a rush on it for me. This is getting tangled.” She popped her trunk with the key fob, and Tate loaded the bag inside.
“When are you going to lay it all out for your boss?”
“I’m on it.” She hugged her purse to her chest. “I’m going to write up something for him tonight and send it off tomorrow, but I’ll call first.”
“Do you think he’ll take you off the case? Add more agents?” Tate scuffed the toe of his hiking boot into the dirt.
“I don’t know.” She twisted her fingers in front of her. But she had a good idea.
“I mean, you’re the one who uncovered links between all these cases. That has to count for something.”
“You’d think so.” She filled her cheeks with air and puffed it out. “Can I follow you out of here? Not sure I can get back to the bridge in the dark.”
Tate tipped his head back, taking in the clouds that were speeding up the darkness of sunset. “At least it’s not raining—yet.”
Blanca climbed into her car and waited for Tate to make a U-turn back to the entrance of the Samish land. She knew in her gut the same person or group of people were responsible for the kidnapping and perhaps incarceration of these boys. She wanted to see this to the finish line.
As Tate took the curve in the road that would put them on a straight line toward the bridge, Blanca followed his taillights. A light sprinkling of water glistened like diamonds on her windshield, but she didn’t know if the rain had come, or they’d entered the area called Misty Hollow by the falls. It seemed too early for Misty Hollow and the bridge.
