Walk a Crooked Line (Jo Larsen Book 2) Read online

  OTHER TITLES BY SUSAN McBRIDE

  Detective Jo Larsen

  Walk Into Silence

  The Debutante Dropout Mysteries

  Say Yes to the Death

  Too Pretty to Die

  Night of the Living Deb

  The Lone Star Lonely Hearts Club

  The Good Girl’s Guide to Murder

  Blue Blood

  The River Road Mysteries

  Come Helen High Water

  Not a Chance in Helen

  Mad as Helen

  To Helen Back

  Women’s Fiction

  The Truth About Love & Lightning

  Little Black Dress

  The Cougar Club

  Young Adult Mystery

  Very Bad Things

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Susan McBride

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477848647

  ISBN-10: 1477848649

  Cover design by Ray Lundgren

  To the survivors who fight their worst fears and never give up:

  Your lives are precious. Your voices have meaning.

  You are not alone. You never were.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  Sunday

  It was a long way up.

  She put her hands on the rungs of the rusted ladder and peered through the twilight at the old water tower. The wind whistled across its underbelly, drowning out the hum of late-summer cicadas. A loose chain clanked, metal banging metal, the sound at once tuneless and mournful. Beyond the looming silhouette, the moon’s crescent yellow winked at her, then disappeared behind a cloud, as if turning its back on her, too.

  Kelly sucked in a deep breath. Her canvas sneakers soaked up the damp of the overgrown grass as she hesitated.

  What was she waiting for? She wasn’t afraid. She’d climbed the tower before. They all had. It was what kids did around here on their very first dare and then a dozen times after until it wasn’t a big deal anymore.

  But this time, she needed a poke.

  She closed her eyes and replayed the words in her head that she couldn’t shake no matter how hard she tried to forget them.

  You’re a slut. You’re worthless. You’re a liar. No one wants you. No one loves you. No one will miss you when you’re gone.

  That saying about sticks and stones breaking bones and names never hurting? It was a bunch of crap. Words burned like fire, just as they were meant to.

  “I give up,” she whispered to the wind, uncurling her fingers from the ladder to wipe at tears with the back of her hand. “You win.”

  It would have been enough to break her heart, if her heart hadn’t been broken already. Everyone she’d trusted, everyone she’d loved—they’d all left her, hadn’t they?

  Her dad was gone. He’d split a long time ago. He had another family in a different city, a wife and kids he loved so much that he even forgot to call on her birthday. Her mother barely seemed aware that she existed, and even when she did, all she seemed to do was spew lame advice. “You’re young, Kel,” she’d say, only half listening. “You’ll get over it. Live and learn.”

  Maybe she was just fifteen, but she’d learned enough already. Like the fact that grown-ups sometimes weren’t, and parents didn’t always put their children first. Even people who swore they cared about you cared about themselves more. And if they wanted to—if they needed to make themselves feel better about their own crappy lives—they could take everything that was you, all that was shiny and bright, and snuff it out in an instant, like turning off a light.

  She stopped brushing tears from her cheeks. Instead, she let them fall.

  Like everything else, it wasn’t worth the fight.

  She inhaled the muggy air, filling up her lungs, and then she began to climb, not glancing down, not changing her mind. She just kept going up and up and up.

  By the time she reached the catwalk, the faint purple of twilight had been swallowed by darkness. With a grunt, she stepped onto the gridded path that ringed the tower. A slim guardrail was all that stood between her and the sky. The faded black letters that spelled out PLAINFIELD across the barrel flaked beneath her touch as she trailed her fingers, moving forward. Someone had spray-painted TY + ANNA in white, and Kelly found herself wondering who Ty and Anna were. Were they still together? Somehow, she doubted it. Nothing good ever seemed to last for long.

  She turned around to the night, gray clouds scudding across a navy background. A few stars began to twinkle like fireflies, tapping at the darkness. Instinctively, she reached out a hand, imagining that she could touch them.

  How tall she felt, how high above it all. Windows glowed in the homes lined up in neat rows beyond the pasture. From where she stood, they appeared the size of dollhouses. Between them, headlamps swept away down the road. No one knew where she was. No one gave her a second thought. Her mother wasn’t even home.

  The wind plucked at her hair, tossing it into her eyes. Kelly shivered. It was colder up here than on the ground, or maybe those goose bumps were nerves. She glanced down. The grass below looked pitch-black—more a void than a cushion. She hoped it was soft, not that it would matter.

  She gripped the railing and hitched herself up.

  Her phone rang, and the catwalk clanked as her feet slid back down. She reached into her pocket, tugging out her cell to see who it was.

  Mom.

  For an instant, her heart seemed to stop. She thought of not answering but changed her mind and picked up. She didn’t even say hello.

  “Oh, God, Kel, I’m sorry.” Her mother started off apologizing, something she did so often that it felt meaningless. “I completely lost track of time. Did you get yourself some dinner?”

  “Yeah,” she lied. Food was the last thing on her mind.

  “I thought I’d be home already. I wanted to be, I swear,” she ra
ttled on. “But things took much longer than I expected.”

  Didn’t they always?

  “I just checked the baby out of the hospital, and I want to see the family settled in before I leave. He hasn’t got long to go.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kelly said, and she meant it. She was sorry for the sick baby. Sorry for herself. Sorry for everything.

  “You sound funny. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m sure,” she lied again, trying not to cry as she hung up, not wanting her mom to make more promises about trying to get home soon. Promises she wouldn’t keep.

  No, I’m not okay. I’m really not okay.

  Kelly took one deep breath and then another.

  But she couldn’t hold it together.

  A sob broke through, and she started to bawl, choking on the snot and tears. Howling like a wounded dog, she pounded her phone as hard as she could against the metal tank. When the glass had shattered and bits of plastic broke and scattered, cutting her hand and bruising her knuckles, she threw away what was left.

  Then she pulled herself over the railing and leaped.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Monday

  “Is this it?”

  “Yep,” Jo Larsen told her partner, spotting the number on the brick mailbox and the long stretch of driveway beyond.

  Hank whistled. “Nice spread. You figure it’s one acre or two?” He let the car roll slowly forward, easing up to the front of the sprawling ranch house before he cut the engine.

  “Yes,” Jo replied equivocally. Hey, she lived in a condo. One acre or two didn’t matter. It pretty much looked like a park to her.

  “You can hardly see the neighbors.” Hank sighed, eyeing the expanse of green beyond the windshield. “If I stand outside between my place and the house next door, I can reach out and touch both with my fingertips.”

  “You’d better watch it, Hank. You’re drooling.”

  “It’d be great, you know, to have room for the girls to run around without playing in the street.” He turned to Jo as he unbuckled his seat belt. “But why not have a fence? They keep kids reined in, that’s for sure. I’ll bet they work for dogs, too.”

  “I’m guessing they can’t have fences in this neck of the woods,” Jo said. The Winding Brook subdivision was one of the oldest in their little town of Plainfield, Texas, just a hop, skip, and jump north of Dallas. It was one of the prettiest neighborhoods, too, full of mature trees that framed the flat blue of the sky. A creek even meandered through it, at least when there wasn’t a drought. “It’s probably some HOA thing.”

  “Why?”

  She shrugged. “It might ruin their scenic views.”

  Hank snorted. “Guess I’m lucky not to have scenic views to ruin. The joy of zero lot lines. At least I don’t have a big yard to mow.”

  “Silver linings,” Jo quipped as she let herself out of the unmarked Ford sedan. She crossed the pebbled drive, walking toward the front door just ahead of her partner.

  “Tell me why we’re starting the day playing Ace Ventura? We normally aren’t out scouting for missing pets.”

  “If the dog was stolen, it’s property theft,” she said, glancing at him as he came alongside her. She could see the dark stains beneath his armpits, due in no small part to the mugginess of the morning. “And it’s better than how we started last week. Or did you like giving a grown man a talking-to for damaging his neighbor’s siding with a potato cannon?”

  “Let’s see. Missing pup. Potato cannon.” Hank cocked his head. “Since I’m a glass-half-full kind of guy, I’ll say that dog swiping is an upgrade, and it’s probably less fatal than my usual breakfast in the Fort Worth PD.”

  “Eggs with a side of homicide?”

  “Pretty much, yep.”

  God knows, Jo didn’t want to go back to Dallas. Not that the city wasn’t a good training ground, but it had done a number on her psyche. Unfortunately, leaving for greener pastures hadn’t meant leaving behind the worst of human nature. Crime from inside the metro trickled its way into the outlying townships. In the past few years alone, they’d seen an uptick in hit-and-runs, identity theft, burglaries, and shoplifting, not to mention the opioid epidemic that was putting folks into caskets like cancer. Working for the Plainfield PD was a little akin to spinning a wheel of fortune on a daily basis. Detectives on a force as small as theirs tended to generalize, not specialize. They took the assignments they were given, whether they felt weighty or not, because everything meant something to somebody.

  “Better a swiped dog than an OD,” she reminded him and meant it. Just a week back, they’d found a car parked at a defunct gas station on the edge of town. The two adults in the front seats were unconscious, drug paraphernalia at their feet. The baby in back was crying, all of them drenched in sweat. If it had been afternoon instead of morning, all three would have baked through. So if her tone was a bit chastising, she didn’t care.

  “Yes, Mom,” her partner drawled, like the middle-aged smart-ass he was.

  “Behave,” she said. She stepped on the welcome mat and pushed the bell, glancing over at Hank’s hangdog face as they waited for someone to respond.

  It took less than a minute for the door to swing inward. An older woman stared out at them through sleek, black glasses.

  “You’re Amanda Pearson?” Jo said.

  “I am.”

  “I’m Detective Larsen,” Jo introduced herself, then jerked her chin at Hank. “This is my partner, Detective Phelps. You called to report a missing dog?”

  “My God, it’s about time you showed up,” the woman said, sucking in her cheeks. “I talked to your desk sergeant last evening, and he promised to dispatch an officer, but no one came. I had to phone again this morning to get y’all off your fannies.” She looked ready to burst into tears. “Aren’t the first twenty-four hours the most important when a child’s been abducted?”

  “A child?” Hank repeated, glancing at Jo and looking confused. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I was under the impression you’d lost your dog. Did I miss something here?”

  “Duke is my boy, Detective,” Mrs. Pearson said flatly, “and he’s better company than most people I know.”

  “I understand,” Hank replied. “But I’m thinking maybe it’d be prudent to call Animal Services and some area shelters first, before involving us.”

  “I have called,” she insisted. “I’ve phoned Dallas County Animal Services, the Humane Society, the SPCA, and every other shelter I could find within a twenty-mile radius. That seems pretty prudent to me.”

  With that, she turned her back on them, leaving the door wide open.

  “She’s right, you know,” Jo said, stepping past him. “Humans suck.”

  “You get a cat, and suddenly you’re a fur hugger?” Hank muttered as he shut the door behind him. Then they followed on the woman’s heels, crossing the foyer and heading up the hallway through which she’d disappeared.

  When Jo caught up to her, Mrs. Pearson was standing beside an oak pedestal table. Sliding glass doors led out back to a deck and a green yard beyond that stretched toward the horizon, cut off only by a border of evergreens beneath a canopy of power lines.

  “I was told that Duke is a show dog,” Jo said, thinking of what little information she’d garnered from Dispatch when she’d started her shift.

  Mrs. Pearson seemed to gather herself, and her face softened as she plucked something from the breakfast table. “He was, and a very fine one, too.”

  “Is he worth a lot?” Hank asked.

  “Only to me,” the woman said, holding out a red leather strap from which metal tags dangled. “It’s his collar,” she told them. “I found it near the mailbox in front. Duke can’t possibly have removed it himself. Clearly, he was kidnapped.”

  “Dognapped,” Hank murmured, and Jo was thankful Mrs. Pearson didn’t seem to hear him.

  She was fiddling with the red collar, weaving it between fingers bare of jewelry save for a gold wedding band. “These days, thie
ves snatch pups from backyards to sell to laboratories or dogfighting rings. I pray that’s not what’s happened to Duke.”

  “Tell me about his glory days, ma’am. Did he win a lot of competitions?” Hank asked, giving Jo time to look around them while Mrs. Pearson filled them in on all the thousands of points and best-of-shows her dog had racked up through the years.

  Stainless steel dog dishes sat atop a rubber mat, one bowl filled with water, the other empty. A large bag of dog food rested in a corner. Colorful chew toys littered the floor. Collections of photos filled the sunny breakfast nook walls. A handful showed people of varying ages, which Jo assumed were Pearson’s adult children and their children. Others showed a lovely strawberry-blond dog earning ribbons at shows or merely rolling in the bluebonnets.

  “He’s a golden retriever,” Jo said, recognizing the breed.

  “Yes.” Mrs. Pearson perked up. “His full name is Golden Duke of Ducat. He’s a purebred from a very distinguished line, although these days he’s too old for showing or breeding. When he was in his prime, he was certainly valuable. But why would anyone want to take him now?”

  “Have you had any problems with neighbors?” Hank asked as he stepped over to the sliding doors and peered out at the yard. “Someone he bit?”

  She let out a dry laugh. “God, no. Duke never bit anyone.”

  “Someone who gets ticked off when the dog barks? Or maybe Duke dug a hole in their garden or pissed on their petunias?”

  “No, nothing like that. I get along fine with my neighbors. We keep to ourselves mostly, and they all have dogs of their own.”

  “Can we head outside and take a look around?” Hank already had a grip on the sliding door handle.

  “Sure,” the woman said, and Hank drew the door wide so she could lead the way.

  Jo followed them out onto the cedar planks, the scent of cut grass and honeysuckle filling her nose. From the raised deck, she surveyed the landscape. To her right was a thick copse of trees and shrubbery. A single river birch stood out, its pinkish bark a stark contrast to the brown and green around it. She could hear the faint rush of water somewhere in between.

  “So the creek’s over there?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Pearson said, pointing at the woods to the right that held Jo’s attention. “It separates my property from the Engels’. They’re retired and travel quite a bit.” She turned due north, drawing a finger through the air where utility lines cut across the blue sky. “That’s the back of my property,” she told them. Below the cables, trees and brush filled a bermlike barrier. “Beyond that it’s the Magees’ place.”