Dead Woman Crossing by J.R. Adler (books on motivation .txt) 📗

and four a.m. Did you notice your granddaughter and daughter were missing?” Kimberley spoke a little softer, knowing she had to tread lightly.

“No…” Lisa cried out. “I should have known. I should have felt it. A mother’s intuition or something, but I was asleep.”

Kimberley paused in her note-taking and let Lisa sob. If there was any guilt Lisa was feeling, she needed to get it out.

“We had had a fight that morning. I was supposed to watch Isobel that day, but I got called into work. I work at the local grocery store. She was mad at me, and she stormed out of my house with Isobel. I figured she’d cool off, and I could make it up to her another day, like go out for lunch or spend a day at the zoo, just the three of us.” Lisa stopped talking as she cried. “There is no ‘another day’ now. When I didn’t hear from her for the rest of the day, I just assumed she was still mad at me. And she doesn’t live here, so it’s not like I knew she hadn’t come home.” Lisa threw her head into her hands again. “I should have known. I should have known.”

Kimberley closed up her notepad and placed her hand on Lisa’s back, rubbing it. “None of this is your fault, and it won’t do you any good to think that way. You have a beautiful granddaughter that needs you to be strong for her.”

As if Isobel knew what Lisa needed in that moment, she said, “Nana.”

Lisa looked up, her face soaked with tears, her eyes red, her face crumpled. Somehow, she found the strength to smile at her granddaughter. She found the strength to stand up. She found the strength to hold Isobel and to tell her, “Nana’s here.”

Lisa held her close against her chest, running her hands through her granddaughter’s hair, whispering words of reassurance and love into her ear.

Sam pulled a card from his pocket and handed it to her. “Mrs. Brown, please give us a call if you remember anything else that could help. No matter how small.”

Lisa took it from him and nodded.

“You’ll find my daughter’s killer?” she asked again, a final plea for justice.

“Of course,” Sam said.

Out in the car, Sam took a deep breath while turning the key in the ignition.

“I don’t usually do that,” he said, putting the vehicle in reverse.

“Do what?” Kimberley looked over at him, studying his face. He wrinkled his forehead and sighed.

“Make promises I don’t know if I can keep.”

“You didn’t. We’re going to find the person who did this. Unsolved cases aren’t really my thing,” Kimberley said confidently, although there was doubt in her mind.

Her last case that had this little to go on went unsolved. It was the case that ate away at her, shook her to the core. “Who’s the King now?” written in blood across the mirror flashed to the front of her mind. The bloody sink. The bathtub. The women. One after another. She rubbed her temples and squeezed her eyes tight, forcing the images to fade just as quickly as they appeared.

Kimberley reassured herself that this was different. This was one murder, not the work of a twisted serial killer, and this wasn’t New York City. This was Dead Woman Crossing, a small town, and people talked in small towns. She was certain one way or another, there’d be a break in the case.

Kimberley pulled out her phone and called the station. Barbara answered on the first ring.

“Custer County Police Department, this is Barbara. How may I direct your call?” she said.

“Hey, Barb. It’s Chief Deputy King.”

“Oh, yes. How are you?”

“Fine. I need you to pull up information on a Tyler Louis. Should be residing somewhere in Texas. Mid-twenties, and he works in the oil industry.”

“I’m on it,” Barbara said confidently. “Oh, yes. There’s a piece of apple pie waiting for you on your desk when you get back.”

“Thanks, Barb. You’re too kind.”

“I’ve gotta make sure you and Sam are eating. Gotta keep your energy up if y’all are gonna catch that maniac.”

Kimberley could practically hear Barb smiling.

“I appreciate it. We’ll see you soon.”

Kimberley ended the call.

“You know you could have asked one of the deputies to do that?” Sam raised an eyebrow.

“That binder Barb put together on the town troublemakers was the most detailed research I’d ever seen. She even had their likes and dislikes listed. I trust her to dig up everything on Tyler.”

Sam cracked a smile. “Yeah, Barb is something else. We’re lucky to have her.”

“She said there’s a piece of apple pie waiting on my desk for me.”

“Careful of the Barb Fifteen.”

“What’s that?”

“You’ll gain fifteen pounds thanks to Barb’s baked goods.” Sam patted his stomach, despite the fact that he was fit from what Kimberley could see.

Sam turned left onto the main road into town.

“Where we heading?” she asked.

“Over to Hannah’s house.”

Kimberley nodded.

Kimberley looked out the window, taking in more scenery of her new fiefdom. Leaving Arapaho and finding their way onto the small two-lane county roads showed Kimberley an almost endless expanse of fields of wheat, random smatterings of cattle, antelope, and a few trees here and there. In the dry environment of Oklahoma, the dust and wind dominated; only voracious weeds and the most virile of seeding plants could hold up to the abuse. The thing that struck Kimberley was how much it all looked the same, even after only a few miles, like she had seen the whole state in one drive. She knew there must be more though. Within that vast expanse of wheat, an entire world must be thriving and moving underfoot, because Kimberley saw countless hawks circling the plains, diving from time to time.

Sam put the vehicle in park on the side of the road in front of a small blue ranch house. Unlike Lisa’s home, the outside was well maintained with freshly painted white shutters and perfectly hedged bushes lining the front of the house. Kimberley and Sam got out