Page 5 of A Touch of Murder
Barret was furious but also confused. How was it possible? He'd been sure Adam Wrecker was a fake. It wasn't possible to read an item the way he claimed to be able to. It didn't make sense. He'd been able to ignore the glove and Mrs. Anderson. For all he knew, Adam knew Howard Steerson and was aware of his temper and history. Or it could have been something he'd set up with Mrs. Anderson somehow. There were ways to explain it.
But there was no way to explain what had happened with the handcuffs. Barret thought for sure the cuffs would stump Adam. He'd expected Adam to talk about some arrest that had been made or something police-related with the cuffs. What he did not expect was for Adam to get images of Barret's grandmother from the cuffs.
Still, it made sense if one was to believe in what Adam could do. Barret had given Adam the cuffs because they'd been brand new. Never used. Today had been the first day he'd put them on his utility belt and left the older pair at home. They'd never been around anyone's wrists, never involved in an arrest, and as far as Barret knew, he'd been the only one to touch them. Sure, the manufacturer or shipping agent might have touched the box they came in. Someone had to put them inside the box. But that hadn't been what Adam had gotten from the cuffs. Nope. He'd got Barret's grandmother.
"What happened back there?" Vance asked as he started the car.
"Nothing," Barret snapped. "Let it be."
Vance pulled the car onto the road and tapped his fingers against the steering wheel. "You know, I believe that guy can see things. I've heard others around town talk about him. Alan Jefferies's wife, Janice, went to see him. She'd found a key inher mother's jewelry box when she died and didn't know what it went to. Alan said that after holding the key, Adam told her where to find a lockbox hidden underneath the floor in her mother's bedroom. No one in the family knew about it, but it was there. Just where Adam had said it would be."
Barret didn't want to ask, but his curiosity got to him. "What was in it?"
"Some old jewelry, a few letters from when her father had been away during the war, and some pictures. But the big thing was a journal. It turned out that Janice's mother had been married for a few years before meeting Janice's father. He ended up being killed in a farming accident. The two older sisters Janice had always thought were from her father turned out to be half-sisters, adopted by her father years later." Vance shook his head. "It's a crazy story, but it all came to light because of a simple key placed in Adam Wrecker's hand."
Barret sighed, trying to wrap his head around everything. It was impossible. At least he thought so until today. He had no way of explaining how Adam had seen what he did. The teddy bear, the apron, hell, even the scent of lavender weren't things he could possibly know about, and they weren't random things that someone would just come up with. Not when dealing with a pair of handcuffs handed to him by a police officer.
"There are stories like that all around town. People come from all over the country to see Adam. Today was the first time I've met him, but his reputation is widely known." Vance pulled into the parking lot of the police station. "I get it's hard to believe, but you can't deny there's something going on. He can see things somehow."
"So, you believe what he said? Trina Wilson is dead and lying in a morgue somewhere in the state?" Barret asked.
"Guess we're about to find out. I'll get online and look at Jane Doe cases that have been listed in the last few weeks. It'stoo late to do much tonight, but in the morning, we can start calling around. I'm guessing it's not too close to Hidden Falls or we would have heard about it. Might not even be here in Idaho. Could be one of our bordering states. Adam didn't say."
"So, you believe she is dead?" Barret asked.
"If we look at statistics, most young women are killed quickly. My guess is someone saw an opportunity, took it, did whatever horrible things they intended to do, then got rid of the body." Vance held the door to the station open for Barret. "It's obvious the parents misunderstood what Adam told them. We don't have the body, but someone does. You can't blame those parents for getting confused after hearing the news that their daughter is dead."
"But what if she's not? What if Adam was wrong? He can't just go telling people their loved ones are dead without having any evidence to back it up. If he's wrong, these parents have been through hell because he wants to play the all-seeing psychic. He should be arrested for playing with emotions that way."
"But what if he's not wrong? He's been doing this for years. You'd think if he was telling people things that weren't true, we'd have complaints about him. We don't. The Wilsons were the first to ever come to us about Adam Wrecker, and they weren't coming to complain about him. They were coming to complain about us. They believe Adam and want to know why if her body's been found, we don't know about it."
Everything Vance was saying was true. They didn't have any reports about Adam Wrecker. Barret had looked before they'd headed over to talk to him. The guy didn't even have a traffic ticket on record. "Let's see what we find." He headed to his desk. The department wasn't big. The front office had a small counter where their dispatcher and secretary greeted people as they came in. Farther back was a huge room with desks for each officer cluttered throughout the area, and in the back of thebuilding they had several holding cells, a locker room for them to shower and change, and a break room where they could sit and eat. It was simple, just the way Barret liked it. He'd worked for a large agency years ago and hated all the politics. Here in Hidden Falls, he knew everyone that worked for the police force, unlike where he'd come from where he only knew a handful of the hundreds who worked every shift in different departments.
"What's got you frowning like my teenager coming home after curfew?" Captain Russel asked.
"Nothing." Barret wasn't in the mood to discuss anything. The last thing he wanted was to find out that others agreed with Vance and believed that Adam Wrecker had some woo-woo magic and could see things from holding an object.
"We were talking about the Wilson case," Vance told the captain.
"That damn case. I've got people searching every campsite, every recreation area, and going through every camera we have in this county. The girl just disappeared." Captain Russel sighed hard. "I've put every resource we have on her case."
Barret nodded but said nothing. He'd wait until they'd looked through Jane Doe reports and contacted morgues in the area before discussing what Adam Wrecker had told them. If they found something because of Adam's information, then they'd have to take a hard look at him as a suspect. "We've all been working it." Barret pulled the file he had on the case from his desk. "She's not around here. We've turned over nearly every rock in the area looking for her. If she was here, we'd have found her."
"I agree, but that just means we need to focus harder on the crime scene so we can figure out who the hell took her. If we find who took her, we'll find where they took her," Captain Russel told him. "I know the family came in her yelling at us, but damn it, I'd be yelling too if it was my child missing. Right now, I can'tworry about that. I just got a call that Jefferson's cows are out on the highway again. Rodgers and Murphy, you two want to head out and handle that? Tell Jefferson if he doesn't fix his fences, we're going to start fining him and impounding his livestock."
The two night shift officers stood and headed for the door.
Captain Russel looked over at Barret. "Why are you and Vance still here? Didn't your shift end an hour ago?"
"We had to run to the jail after arresting someone on a probation violation. I've got to file the report on that, then I'm headed home." Barret turned on his computer.
"And I'm following up on a possible lead on the Wilson girl." Vance didn't look up from his computer. "That psychic guy on Main Street told us he thinks the girl's been found and is in a morgue somewhere. I'm looking through the Jane Doe files from the last two weeks to see if she's one of them and we missed it somehow."
"The psychic? You mean that guy that touches objects?" Captain Russel took a seat on the corner of Vance's desk. "How'd he get involved?"
"The family went to see him. Seems we missed a bracelet in the girl's car that she always wore. They took it to him. He says she's dead and been found but couldn't tell where." Vance finally looked up. "Barret thinks the guy's a con artist, but I've heard too many stories to dismiss what he says."
"I agree with Vance. He's not a con artist. I can't explain how he does what he does, but I've never known him to be wrong about something," Captain Russel told them.
