One Cold Night

the order — she no longer accepted special orders without them — but there had been a request for a special note: The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
    Susan picked up the office phone and speed-dialed Dave’s cell. She didn’t know how far their network reached, and in the lull after she dialed she could almost hear that dreaded canned recording telling her the call could not be completed.
    “Ring!” Susan chanted into the phone. “Ring!”

Chapter 25
    Wednesday, 5:30 p.m.
    Dave’s cell phone started ringing — he saw from caller ID that it was Susan — just at the moment Officer Braithwaite took a step into the bedroom and said, “Excuse me, Detective Strauss?”
    “One second,” Dave told the officer as he answered the call.
    Susan spoke quickly but clearly, telling Dave about a basket of chocolate apples, specially ordered online, that had been undeliverable to an address in Gardiner a few weeks ago.
    “Whoever placed the order asked for a special message on the card,” Susan said. “‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.’”
    The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. There it was again.
    “You said the intersection of routes Forty-four and Fifty-five?” Dave asked her. “Nothing more specific?”
    “That’s all I’ve got,” Susan said. “Do you have any idea where that is?”
    “I’m going to find out.” With Braithwaite standingthere, Dave kept his voice low; and as if in response to his quiet control, the volume of Susan’s voice rose suddenly.
    “I’m sick with worry, Dave! I’m so sorry about everything. It’s all my fault, all of this. Please tell me you’re going to find her!”
    His eyes settled on the messy bed with its streak of blood. He looked at Lisa’s peeled-off socks, crumpled on the floor. “Yes, I’m going to find her,” he said. “I will. I promise.” But even as he said it, he knew this promise could turn out to be unkeepable.
    “Dave... ?”
    “Sweetie,” he said softly. “I’ve got to go now.”
    Braithwaite had stood patiently by, pretending not to listen.
    “Officer,” Dave asked him, hooking his phone back onto his belt loop. “Do you know the intersection of routes Forty-four and Fifty-five?”
    His pale, freckled face lit up. “As a matter of fact, I do. That’s what I wanted to tell you just now. There’s an apple orchard tucked back off that intersection, and since you were asking before about out-of-the-way orchards, well, I thought I ought to mention it.”
    “What orchard?” Dave snapped. He had asked about apple orchards fifteen minutes ago.
    “That would be Childress Farms.” Braithwaite sounded confused, possibly even hurt, by the new, hard tone in Dave’s voice. “It’s one of our smaller orchards and it’s a ways off the road. It’s the only thing there besides a gas station that’s been out of business for years now.”
    “How far do these woods go?”
    “About two miles in, I’d say.”
    “If you walked through, where’s the closest orchard?”
    “Childress Farms.” Braithwaite’s voice had fallen nearly to a whisper.
    Dave stepped briskly past Braithwaite on his way out the door. “Let’s go.”
    In the yard, Dave told Bruno where he was going. Bruno stayed behind to search the woods while Dave, with Braithwaite, hurried into the squad car and drove off the Stutley property.
    “Faster,” Dave ordered Braithwaite, who was driving too carefully along the dirt road. Everything this man did was heavy with caution, and it irritated Dave, but he needed the local cop for his knowledge of the area. In the side mirror, Dave watched Bruno diminish in size as he lit a cigarette and followed Bob Andrews into the woods to join the search party.
    Braithwaite pressed harder on the gas. He said nothing, probably ashamed, and rightly so. What else was he withholding for just the moment Dave learned it another way?
    The straight asphalt road along Route Forty-four sliced through cornfields on either side; fields of dried, wilting stalks whose bounty had long been picked or perished; fields beginning their seasonal decay. Death into life into death, Dave thought, suddenly aware of the tightening coil of his desperation. He knew they could be too late. The thought of actually losing Lisa exploded in his mind, and the browning fields beside the road seemed to evaporate into a haze. There was no God. He was certain now. And thinking of it this way surprised him, because he had never entertained the