One Cold Night

Alexei Bruno,” Dave said.
    Andrews shook Bruno’s hand, which took the greeting with an outsize squeeze; Dave imagined with some satisfaction that Bruno’s big grip would override the hard metal bite of the ring. Andrews didn’t flinch. From behind them, a throat deliberately cleared.
    “Oh, right,” Andrews said, stepping aside. “This here is Officer Rufus Braithwaite.”
    Braithwaite was slight and pale, with bright orange hair. He reminded Dave of Opie from The Andy Griffith Show he’d watched on TV as a kid. Braithwaite nodded in greeting but didn’t speak.
    The detectives piled into the back of the dark blue patrol car. Andrews automatically took the wheel and Braithwaite sat in the passenger seat, arms folded, lips set together in silence. Dave sensed a tension between his local hosts but couldn’t decipher it and didn’t particularly want to; it was an annoyance, considering the reason for their visit. Andrews turned on the siren and the patrol car pulled out of the field, racing into the silence of a country road. Now and then, a car swished past them in the opposite direction.
    Strauss spoke first. “We understand you’ve been to the house.”
    “Yes, sir, went right over there after I caught the call,” Andrews answered. “The Stutley place’s been rented out a while now, tenants coming and going.Now this current tenant, name of David Strauss, no one seems to know him.”
    From the backseat, Dave watched a smile flicker across Braithwaite’s face. Andrews, however, didn’t seem to catch the connection between the Stutley tenant’s name and that of the man sitting in the backseat of the patrol car. Dave glanced at Bruno, who winked.
    “Red car full of garbage, old candy wrappers and some such,” Andrews listed what he had found at the scene. “Traces of yellow paint, blood. This Strauss fellow is not what you’d call a model tenant.”
    One corner of Braithwaite’s mouth edged back up and he pushed it back down. Andrews meanwhile kept on talking, his rounded nose flexing as he spoke, eyes on the road. As they drove, Dave counted five apple orchards. Five orchards in just under four miles.
    “How many orchards do you figure you’ve got in the area?” Dave asked the front seat.
    “A whole lot,” Andrews answered. “Big business, this time of year. Cider, donuts, pumpkins, pies, you name it.” His collar was too tight, rippling the back of his neck. Beside him, Braithwaite nodded but held his silence.
    “Do they all have stands on the side of the road? Or are some just orchards, tucked farther back?”
    “I’d say most if not all have retail close enough to the road,” Andrews answered with the bravado of someone pitching his town to a skeptic, as if Dave were there to buy real estate. “The orchard business brings revenue to the area. They want you city folk to know they’re there — the bigger the better. Am I right, Rufus?”
    Braithwaite raised his eyebrows, didn’t smile, and nodded once. “Yep.” He shifted his gaze between Dave and Bruno. Dave waited a moment, but the mansaid nothing more. Andrews turned the steering wheel right, then left. They slowed down on the long, unpaved entry to the Stutley house.
    As they drove along the dirt road that sliced through well-established woods, Dave felt his pulse escalate. Lisa had been here, not too long ago, on this very road.
    The large white house appeared in a clearing at the end of the drive. A cadre of police and neighbors were entering the woods in groups, calling out Lisa’s name.
    Andrews stopped the squad car well behind a red car parked near the house. Dave was sure he had seen that red car before, but in the quick redux of déjà vu the sense of recognition blurred with the present. He was sure and he wasn’t sure; he would have to examine the murky recollection later.
    Techs had already been over the car, so Dave and Bruno were free to inspect it. Strands of long blond hair had been found in the trunk, and there were visible traces of yellow paint on the driver’s gas pedal and on the rubber floor mat. The lab would have to verify that the hair was Lisa’s and the paint matched the crime scene in Brooklyn, proving that the abduction had taken place in front of the factory, but they had already established that Peter Adkins’s fingerprints were all over the car and that it was registered in his name. The sloppy trail of evidence and the revelation that they were probably dealing with two men, not one,