An Ice cold Grave Page 0,3

comfortable set of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth. She didn't look like any true believer I'd ever encountered, yet she was the one who'd emailed us.

"I'm Harper Connelly," I said. "This is my brother, Tolliver Lang."

We weren't what she'd expected, either. She gave me a scan up and down.

"You don't look like a dingbat," she said.

"You don't look like a prejudiced stereotype," I said.

The dispatcher sucked in her breath. Uh-oh.

Tolliver was right behind me, slightly to my left, and I felt nothing but a calm waiting coming from him. He always had my back.

"Come into my office. We'll talk," said the tall woman. "My name is Sandra Rockwell, and I've been sheriff for one year." Sheriffs are elected in North Carolina. I didn't know how long her term was, but if she'd only been a sheriff a year, she must have plenty to go. Politics might not be as urgent a consideration for Sheriff Rockwell as they would be during election year.

We were in her office by then. It wasn't very big, and it was decorated with pictures of the governor, a state flag, a U.S. flag, and some framed certificates. The only personal thing on Sheriff Rockwell's desk was one of those clear cubes you can fill with pictures. Her cube was full of shots of the same two boys. They were both brown-haired like their mother. One of them, grown, had a wife and child of his own. Nice. The other one had a hunting dog.

"You-all want some coffee?" she asked as she slid into the swivel chair behind the ugly metal desk.

I looked at Tolliver, and we both shook our heads.

"Well, then." She put her hands flat on the desk. "I heard about you from a detective in Memphis. Young, her name is."

I smiled.

"You remember her, then. She's partnered with a guy named Lacey?"

I nodded.

"She seemed like a sensible person. She was no flake. And her clearance rate and reputation are impressive. That's the only reason I'm talking to you, you understand?"

"Yes, I understand."

She looked a little embarrassed. "Well, I know I'm sounding rude, and that's not my intention. But you have to understand, this is not something I'd consider doing if you didn't have a track record. I'm not one of these people who listens to that John Edward - not the politician with an s, but the medium - and I'm not one of these who likes to have my palm read, or go to séances, or even read a horoscope."

"I fully understand," I said. Maybe my voice was even dryer.

Tolliver smiled. "We get that you have reservations," he said.

She smiled back gratefully. "That's it in a nutshell. I have reservations."

"So, you must be desperate," I said.

She gave me an unfriendly look. "Yes," she admitted, since she had to. "Yes, we're desperate."

"I'm not going to back out," I said baldly. "I just want to know what I'm up against."

She seemed to relax at my frankness. "Okay, then, cards on the table," she said. She took a deep breath. "For the past five years, boys have been going missing in this county. It's up to six boys now. When I say 'boys,' I mean in the fourteen-to eighteen-year-old range. Now, kids that age are prone to run away, and they're prone to suicide, and they're prone to have fatal car accidents. And if we'd found them, or heard from the runaways, we'd be okay with that, as okay as you can be."

We nodded.

"But these particular boys, it's just - no one can believe they would run away. And in this time, surely some hunter or bird watcher or hiker would have found a body or two if they'd killed themselves or met with some accident in the woods."

"So you're thinking that they're buried somewhere."

"Yes, that's what I'm thinking. I'm sure they're still here, somewhere."

"Then let me ask you a few things," I said. Tolliver took out his pad and pencil. The sheriff looked surprised, as if the last thing she'd ever expected had been that I would ask her questions.

"Okay, shoot," Sandra Rockwell said after a brief pause.

"Are there bodies of water in the county?"

"Yes, there's Grunyan's Pond and Pine Landing Lake. And several streams."

"Have they been searched?"

"Yes. A couple of us dive, and we've searched as well as we can. Nothing's come to the surface, either. Both of those spots are well used, and anything that came up and a lot of things that went down would have been found, if