They made use of snowmobiles and snowshoes, horseback and four-wheel drive. The new snowfall measured four and a quarter inches—any remaining evidence at their crime scene was buried. The tracks leading them to Beatrice’s body were no longer viable. The time on the clock was running thin. King had had the girls nearing twenty-four hours. Numbers showed them that the victims of kidnapping rarely survived to first light.
Civilian volunteers traveled in pairs with instructions not to pursue. If a knock wasn’t answered in a home clearly occupied, they were to report it by radio and move on. If the door was opened to a man resembling the photo of Dr. King, they were to issue an invitation to that evening’s choral presentation of The Night Before Christmas. Show no surprise, no recognition, no fear. The small group of citizens culled for the job were trained military or first responders. There were twenty-four of them, mostly men, many of them retired. Law enforcement worked solo. Nicole borrowed from local and regional departments until she had a total of thirty-eight parties on the search. They fanned out from the Lake Road, a point parallel to their crime scene, and moved east, away from town and into the suburban tracts from which Beatrice had most likely fled. Several homes were known to be empty, the windows dark and the driveways neither plowed nor shoveled in several snows. They checked those off and moved them to a list of least likely. The homes where lights blazed but there had been no answer to the knocking of the searchers, she made her priority. And while she searched, she thought.
Beatrice Esparza running, chased and brought to a stop on Lake Maria. The killer taller than Beatrice. He had lifted her off her feet and looked into the girl’s eyes as she died. Killer and watcher … male and female … it seemed most likely from the prints left behind. Evasion, lies, once-tight alibis rendered useless.
Dr. Esparza. Joaquin. Mrs. Esparza. They’d each had motive and opportunity. And at that moment, techs were measuring shoes in the Esparzas’ hotel room. UGGs had been found—size eight—belonging to Alma Esparza. But there were probably a hundred more pairs fitting the evidence in hotels scattered around Blue Mesa.
Was Alma Esparza the watcher? It didn’t hurt Nicole to think so.
Or maybe Joaquin, cast into the shadow of his sister, the shining star, had tired of being overlooked and underappreciated? Of being—though the eldest—held in constant comparison to a little sister who did everything better? Jealous, enraged, and broken, had Joaquin eliminated the source of his pain?
Or had Dr. Esparza killed his daughter, his discovery and all it promised lost when Beatrice refused to cooperate?
Michael King had access to roofies, but with his daughter’s life on the line, he’d had every reason to keep their victim alive. Beatrice had been a live link to a cure. But if the man had been angered at being locked out of the bidding war and lost his cool, it was possible he had murdered Beatrice.
And if he had killed Beatrice, what of the youngest Esparzas? Were the girls still alive?
Nicole received yet another report of lights on, no answer, and turned the Yukon north. She traveled the Lake Road half a mile and parked in the street, engine idling as she slid from behind the wheel and regarded the house. Small, but perched atop a small rise with the front windows facing the frozen sheet of Lake Maria. The home had an unobstructed view of the lake, rare with the road passing between them. Nicole knew the house was a rental, a two-bedroom, single-bath, which made it low-budget when it came to tourist choices—still, it rented weekly for what Nicole paid out monthly on her mortgage. It never stood empty during ski or summer season.
This wasn’t the place. It was too small for a man of King’s stature, too open, and it lacked the feel of a crime scene. Still, she walked up the shoveled path and rang the bell.
She heard movement, a shuffling of feet. The tread wasn’t heavy, and she thought there were probably children behind the closed door.
“It’s Sheriff Cobain,” she announced, tapping the star pinned to her jacket just below her left shoulder. “It’s okay to open the door.” She was greeted with silence. “Look,” she tried, “I’m going to step back so you can see me from the front window.” She did so and removed her department cap so that her hair, mussed from the wool but still in its ponytail, was visible and her overall look less threatening. She was in uniform now, but she held up her arm and turned toward the street, where the Yukon stood in the gray afternoon, light bar turning and exhaust pluming at the back. “That’s my police cruiser.” She tapped her left shoulder. “This is my badge. That’s a gold star.” The metal was cold, even through her glove. “I just need to make sure you’re okay, and I need to see you and talk to you to do that.”
Nicole watched a small face appear behind the window closest to the front door. Girl age eleven or twelve. Her top teeth sawed at her bottom lip and her eyes were flared, alert, moving over Nicole and the Yukon. Another child appeared beside her—male, maybe eight years old. The girl pushed him back. Nicole waved to her.
“Are your parents skiing?” she tried.
The girl didn’t answer. The boy reappeared, smiling, and waved to Nicole.
“It looks like your parents prepared you well. Don’t answer the door. Don’t talk to strangers. I appreciate that. It makes you safer and my job easier.”
The girl didn’t crack, and the standoff was showing no signs of abating when Nicole noticed a white Subaru moving toward them, headlights on and defrosters pushing back the condensation on the windshield. It fishtailed slightly on the icy road, probably speed sparked from the flashing lights in front of the driver’s home. It turned into the driveway, and a man stepped from the car before the engine was cut.
“What’s wrong?”
He was tall, and his stride quickly ate up the distance between them. A woman scrambled from the car behind him and ran toward them.
Nicole held up her hands in a calming gesture. “Nothing is wrong,” she promised. She even smiled a little as she said, “Your kids look fine, from where I stand.” She indicated the front window where both children now stood, the boy bouncing on his toes, the girl relieved.
“They’re your children?”
“Yes. Yes,” the mother assured Nicole, and headed to the door.
Nicole followed, the father beside her. “I’m Sheriff Nicole Cobain, Toole County.” she explained. “We’re searching the area for two children.” Missing children always softened people, and she felt the tension in the man’s body slowly ease. “House to house along the lakefront. When your kids didn’t answer the door for the first team I rolled out.”
The mother had the front door open, and the boy rushed her. The girl allowed her mother to pull her in close.
“You guys okay?” the father asked. He stepped onto the front porch and held the door open so he could take a look at his children. The boy smiled at him and asked if he’d conquered the mountain.
“There are missing children?” the mother asked, turning to glance at Nicole.
“Yes, two girls, ages eight and ten.”
The mother’s face contracted, and the father looked out across the rolling hills and the wide expanse of the lake.
“How long?”
“Close to twenty-four hours.”
His expression turned incredulous. “Impossible,” he said. “You must know the rate of exposure and human mortality. If they’ve been outside this whole time—”
“We believe they’ve been indoors,” Nicole said. “What do you know about exposure rates, Mr.…?”
His lips thinned, the corner of one turning in as he chewed on it, but his gaze was level, considering. “Doctor,” he corrected. “Dr. Martin Gatling. And left outdoors, the children could have survived six to eight hours in these weather conditions—with the usual winter clothing.”
She felt the lock turn and the tumblers fall into place. Gatling. She had connected a dot.
“What kind of doctor are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“My specialty is nuclear medicine.”
Nicole had never heard of such a thing. She applied nuclear to two things—weapons and family—and she was pretty sure most ordinary people did as well.
She let her confusion ripple across her brow. “What is that?”
“I serve a very narrow field within the bigger scope of the discipline,” he said. “Nuclear medicine is most often used to assess the presence of malignancy rather than biopsy for it.”
“How is that done?”
“Instrumentation and radiopharmaceuticals.” He tried to redirect her, “You said you were looking for two little girls.”
She ignored his question. “Do you know Dr. Enrique Esparza?”
“Of course,” Gatling replied. “He and his daughter—they’re the reason we’re here. Short notice too. Three days, and at Christmas.”
Nicole felt her pulse kick up a notch.
“Who do you work for, Dr. Gatling?”
“Magellan Pharmaceuticals.”
Ding. Another dot connected.
“And your supervisor is?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Is your supervisor Dr. Michael King?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know him by any other name?”
“Other name?” His tone twisted with annoyance. “No. Why would I?”
“We believe Dr. King is keeping the children. The two missing girls, they’re the daughters of Dr. and Mrs. Esparza.”