“He must have been the one who told you about the blue ribbon, the nickname Blue.”
“I never asked him to discuss his cases, but I listened when he did.”
“What else did he tell you about the Cleary disappearances?”
She responded with a cool, steady stare.
“Come on, Lilly. If you’re convinced I’m Blue, you won’t be divulging anything I don’t know. Did Dutch know the significance of the blue velvet ribbon?”
“Its significance to Blue, you mean?”
He nodded.
“He had a theory about it.”
“What was it?”
She was hesitant to discuss what she knew about the cases with Tierney. But if she did, she might learn something. “The first to disappear, Torrie Lambert, is the only one who isn’t a local resident.”
“She and her parents were vacationing in Cleary,” he said. “They went on a guided hike to enjoy the autumn foliage. She and her mother quarreled. In typical fifteen-year-old fashion, the girl stalked off to pout alone. She was never seen again.”
“That’s right.”
“Stop looking at me like that, Lilly. I came to Cleary shortly after the girl disappeared. The story was front-page news for weeks. I read the accounts like everybody else. Anyone could tell you what I just did. What’s Dutch’s take on the ribbon?”
“That’s all they found of her,” Lilly said. “The other hikers in the group, including her parents, thought she would eventually catch up with them. When she didn’t, they became concerned. By nightfall they panicked. After twenty-four hours they concluded that this was more than just an adolescent snit, that she was no longer missing by choice. Either she had been injured and couldn’t make it back, or she was hopelessly lost, or she’d been taken.”
“Rescue teams searched for weeks, but winter came early that year,” he said, picking up the story. “The girl—”
“Stop calling her ‘the girl,’ ” she said testily. “Her name is Torrie Lambert.”
“Torrie Lambert vanished as though the ground had opened up and swallowed her. Not a trace of her has been found.”
“Except for a blue velvet ribbon,” Lilly said. “It was discovered in some underbrush. Across the state line in Tennessee.”
“That’s what led the authorities to believe that she’d been kidnapped. To get to the spot where the ribbon was found, she would have had to walk ten miles over some of the most rugged terrain east of the Mississippi,” he said.
“Her mother identified the ribbon as the one Torrie had been wearing in her hair that day.” She stared into near space for a moment, then said quietly, “Mrs. Lambert must have gone through pure hell when she saw that ribbon. Torrie has very long hair, almost to her waist. Lovely hair. That morning, she wore it in a single braid and had plaited the ribbon into it.”
Shifting her gaze back to Tierney, she said, “So, whatever else you did to her, you took the time to unbind her hair and remove the ribbon.”
“Blue did.”
“I wonder,” she continued as though he hadn’t contradicted her. “Were you careless, or did you leave the ribbon behind deliberately?”
“Why would it deliberately be left behind?”
“To throw off the search parties. Mislead them. If so, it worked. After the ribbon was found, trained track dogs were brought in. They quickly lost the scent.” She ruminated for a moment. “I question why you didn’t take the ribbon as a trophy.”
“Blue had his trophy. He had Torrie Lambert.”
His tone made Lilly shiver. “So the ribbon is only a symbol of success.”
Tierney took a last quick sip of coffee. “I’m done. Thanks.”
She took the mug from his hands and passed him two of the crackers, one for each hand. He demolished the first in one bite. When he bent his head to eat the second, she noticed the bandage. “Does the head wound hurt?”
“It’s tolerable.”