Hoot gave her a brief description, but she shook her head and told them she could safely vouch that her mother wasn’t acquainted with any such individual.
“I just want her to be found and brought home,” she said, sniffing into the handkerchief. “If God doesn’t grant me that prayer, at least I’d like to know what happened to her.” Looking at them tearfully, she asked, “Do you think you’ll ever find her?”
“We’re going to do our best,” Begley pledged, pressing her hand between his.
A few minutes later, as they pulled away from the cozy cottage, he remarked, “Nice lady.”
“Yes, sir.” Once again Hoot was shivering inside his coat, waiting for the sedan’s heater to warm up. He didn’t remember what it felt like to have dry, warm feet. “Whistler Falls Lodge, sir?”
“For lack of someplace else.”
Ordinarily, having to spend the night in one of Gus Elmer’s cabins without benefit of public utilities would have been a daunting and dreary prospect, but Hoot was so exhausted he actually looked forward to it. “Do you think he could put together a meal for us?”
The question about dinner didn’t register with Begley, who was deep in thought. “Here’s the thing,” he said, musing out loud, “we’ve deduced that Tierney is our most likely suspect.”
“Why else would he be keeping such close tabs on the disappearance cases, hoarding all that information we found in his rooms?”
“Precisely, Hoot. That certainly lent credibility to your hunch about him. We’ve also surmised—and accurately, I think—that his motivation is to be the savior of women in need. Correct?”
“Yes, sir.” Actually Begley had surmised it, but Hoot had agreed, and so far, they’d uncovered nothing that would invalidate that theory.
“This is my problem,” Begley continued. “Where would a shy widow lady who only went to the beauty parlor and Sunday school ever meet Tierney? She wasn’t a kayaker, that’s for damn sure.”
“No, sir.”
“Mrs. Calhoun has a small number of acquaintances, and her daughter had never heard of Tierney. So how did he get to know Betsy Calhoun well enough to select her as his next victim? Two diverse people like that, where did their paths cross?”
“I think that could be asked of all the victims with the exception of Torrie Lambert, whom he literally happened upon, and Millicent Gunn.”
“Carolyn Maddox is plausible,” Begley said. “A stretch, but plausible. Maybe he met Laureen Elliott in the medical clinic where she worked. He could have had the flu or something. But a timid widow and an adventurer?” Begley shook his head. “Doesn’t compute.”
Not in Hoot’s mind either. He mulled it over for several minutes. “Suppose Tierney read her husband’s obituary in the local newspaper. Remember the transponder he ordered from the catalog? Maybe he surveilled Mrs. Calhoun and realized what a lonely and dejected lady she was.” The explanation sounded lame even to him. Begley wasted no time shooting holes in it.
“He’s too active a man to keep surveillance over someone. Besides, that would take a lot of time, and he’s not always here. I suppose he could have bumped into her in the parking lot of the bank. Maybe her car had stalled and he rendered help. Something like that. Saw instantly her loneliness and need. She was another random selection, like the Lambert girl.” It was credible, but there was no conviction in his voice. He stared through the windshield while tapping his left-hand fingers on the console between the seats.
“Are you having second thoughts about him, sir?”
“I don’t know, Hoot,” he grumbled.
“If he’s not Blue, how do you explain all the materials he’s collected on the disappearances?”
“First thing I’m going to ask him.” He smacked his lips with irritation and muttered something about the goddamn case, and why the fuck couldn’t he get a handle on it. Hoot didn’t catch every word, but that was the gist of it.
Suddenly Begley turned to him. “Heard any more from Perkins?”
“No, sir. But trust me, he’s on it. As soon as he learns something, he’ll be in touch.”
Begley gazed up at the sky. “I hope to hell a chopper can get here tomorrow. I don’t know how long I can keep our jealous
police chief at bay.” He snorted his contempt for Dutch Burton. “However, as long as that road is blocked, he can’t get any farther up the mountain than we can.”
“And Tierney can’t get down.”
“Right, Hoot. We’ve got that going for us. And that’s the sum total of anything good I can say about this whole frigging mess.”
• • •
Wes went into the high school gym’s weight room ahead of Scott. They had to rely on the windows for light. The gloom was oppressive. There were no soft surfaces to absorb the cold. “Once you get going, you’ll warm up.” Wes’s voice bounced off the tile walls, making it inordinately loud.