It took nearly the whole ninety-minute drive down to Red Deer for me to regain enough detachment to examine what I’d learned so far. God, those two short interviews had been gut-wrenching, and I was only witnessing the mothers’ anguish second-hand. They were living it, twenty-four hours a day with no respite.
And so were Kane and Alicia.
I shuddered and concentrated on following the directions to Willa Buxton’s house.
It was after ten PM when I rang the doorbell of a tidy semi-detached two-storey in a neighbourhood where the landscaping featured children’s bicycles on the lawns and basketball hoops in the driveways.
The plump thirtyish woman who answered the door greeted me with a smile almost as luminous as Moonbeam’s, but her blue eyes were bracketed by lines of patient sorrow. The effect was eerily similar to Jesus’s expression in the large painting on the wall behind her.
“Willa Buxton?” I asked at the same time as she inquired, “Aydan Kelly?”
We both laughed, and she reached out a welcoming hand. “Well, now that we know who we are, please come in.”
“I’m sorry to bother you so late…” I began as I stepped into the vestibule and shed my shoes.
“No, it’s no bother at all.” Her smile turned bittersweet. “I rarely go to bed before midnight. I sleep better when I’m exhausted. Please come in and sit down.”
She ushered me into a tidy pink living room decorated with articles of faith ranging from needlepointed scripture verses to a large and lugubrious wood carving of a haggard Jesus nailed to the cross. His hollow mournful eyes reproached me, and I looked away with relief when Willa asked, “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Thank you, that would nice,” I agreed, then promptly regretted my choice when she vanished to the kitchen, leaving me in a staring match with Jesus.
He won. By the time Willa returned, my gaze was fixed on my curling toes.
“Now, you said you were investigating the disappearance of several boys the same age as my Noah,” she began briskly, saving me the awkwardness of broaching the topic. “How may I help you?”
I sipped the hot tea, wishing I could take comfort from it. “Would you please tell me exactly what happened? Any little detail might be important, so please say anything at all that comes to your mind, no matter how minor it seems.”
“Certainly.” She leaned back in her chair and took a pensive sip of tea as if gathering her thoughts. Then she laid out a detailed description of everything that had happened when her son disappeared. It all matched the police report, and I sighed. Nothing new here, either.
“So… how long had you and your ex been apart when this happened?” I asked. “Were you on good terms?”
“Oh, yes. We divorced about a year before Noah… went missing. So almost two years ago now. We…” Willa’s gaze wavered. “We… had our differences, but we parted amicably enough.” Her chin came up, her blue gaze direct. “Dirk is a good man. An honest man. I was glad he stayed involved with Noah, and the camping trip was my idea. He could never have harmed Noah. The murder charge against him is wrong.”
There it was again. The same unshakeable belief that both Leila and Alicia shared.
“How can you be so sure?” I asked. “Didn’t the police find Noah’s blood on his sleeping bag?”
“Yes, but only a small smear. Noah was subject to nosebleeds, so that’s probably what happened. We explained that to the police but they… wouldn’t listen.” She leaned forward, clasping her teacup in both hands. “And there’s more. Dirk believes that he was drugged. He can’t remember anything from that night. He remembers putting Noah to bed and then sitting by the campfire for a while…”
“Was he drinking?” I interrupted.
“No. Dirk is AA. He’s been clean and sober for nine years. He drank some soda, then began to feel very tired and went into the tent and fell asleep. When he woke up in the morning, Noah was gone. He called the police immediately and began searching, but… a few days later they arrested him. He was so frantic… we both were…”
Her voice trailed off in a quaver and she blinked rapidly for a moment, reaching over to touch her fingertips to the rosary that lay on the table beside her. Then she swallowed some tea and went on, her voice level.
“He was so distraught over Noah that he didn’t even think to tell the police about the drugged sensation until after they charged him. Then when he did bring it up, of course it looked as though he was trying to cover himself. The police did a drug test at his request, but it came back negative. According to the internet, drugs like Rohypnol cause similar symptoms to what Dirk experienced, but they are undetectable within a day and he wasn’t tested until nearly a week later.”
“So he thinks somebody drugged him and took Noah, but he doesn’t remember anybody else being there.”
“Yes.” Willa clutched her teacup. “And that’s what I think, too. That’s why I was so eager to talk to you when you called. It’s…” She swallowed, blinking rapidly. “It’s too late for Noah…” She drew a breath and straightened her spine. “It’s been a year. Whether he was kidnapped or simply wandered away and got lost in the woods, he’s almost certainly dead by now. And I believe he’s in a better place. He’s safe and loved in the arms of Jesus, far beyond any love Dirk or I could offer. But Dirk doesn’t deserve to go to prison. And if a serial killer is preying on young boys, we need to do everything we can to stop him.”
“Tell me more about Dirk,” I prompted. “What kind of man is he? Does he have a lot of friends? Where does he go and what does he do for recreation? Does he belong to any clubs? Who might want to hurt him? Or hurt you? Tell me everything you can think of.”
“Oh…” she said breathlessly. “You… actually believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, praise the Lord!” Unshed tears glittered in her eyes. “Thank you, thank you!” She drew a deep breath. “All right. Dirk. He’s… stubborn. Set in his ways. He can be… rather… narrow-minded. Very traditional in his views on marriage. That’s…” She dropped her gaze to study her teacup. “That’s actually what caused our divorce. I was a lapsed Catholic, while he was quite devout. That caused… friction… in a number of areas. Like birth control…”
A tear trickled down her cheek and she wiped it away as though wiping away tears was as much a reflex as breathing.
“If only I hadn’t been so stubborn,” she whispered. “Noah was our only child. Not that any other child could ever replace him, but…”
She shook herself back to the present and met my gaze again. “Our views on child-rearing and roles within a marriage were different, too. I know…” She raised a guilty gaze to the accusing Jesus. “I know the Bible says wives should submit to their husbands, but… I’ve never believed that was literal, and I didn’t want to raise Noah to believe that, either. Dirk… thought the husband should be head of the household and have the final authority in everything. So… after many, many arguments, I filed for divorce. He was scandalized, of course.”
Willa turned the cup around and around in her hands, studying it as though she’d never seen it before. “But in the end he agreed to an annulment and divorce. He’s a good man. He is.” She shook her head. “But when Noah was taken it was like a punishment from God. I went back to the church. Prayed as I’d never prayed before, shamelessly bargained and pleaded, but…”
She sighed and reached for the rosary. “Every day I do penance.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. “I don’t believe God punishes people that way.”
She met my gaze with those sad patient eyes. “I didn’t used to believe it, either.” Then she straightened, visibly putting aside her sorrow. “But you asked about Dirk and his habits and friends, not my crisis of faith. Let me see, where shall I start…”
Half an hour later I knew more about Dirk than I did about myself, and none of it seemed useful. No known enemies, no bad habits, no unusual behaviour before Noah disappeared. Exhaustion dragged at my body and a tension headache thumped spitefully at the base of my skull.
When Willa ran out of information at last, I extracted a promise from her to call if she thought of anything else and staggered back to my car.
Falling into the driver’s seat, I checked my watch and groaned. After eleven, and I still had a two-hour drive to get home.
I punched Kane’s number into one of the burner phones, pressed the speaker button, and started driving.
Kane answered on the second ring with a terse, “Kane.”
“Hi, it’s Aydan,” I said.
“Thank God.” His words came out on a rush of breath, and he added in a muffled voice as if talking over his shoulder to Hellhound, “It’s Aydan.” Returning to regular volume, he said, “We’ve been trying to reach you since six.”
My heart sank. “Shit, I’m sorry! I couldn’t carry my phone because I, um… had a situation…” I got to the point. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing; and what kind of situation? Are you safe?”
“I’m fine. What do you mean, nothing? Why were you trying to call me?”
“Hellhound had some questions for Willa Buxton after he’d finished interviewing her ex.”
“Damn. I just left there, but I can turn around. She won’t be in bed yet.”
An involuntary shudder shook me. She still had an hour to go under the wooden gaze of her vengeful God.
I braked and took the next right turn. “What were his questions?”
“Has Buxton been clean and sober for nine years; did Noah get nosebleeds frequently; does Mrs. Buxton think he could have harmed Noah; and did she agree to the camping trip?”
“Yes, yes, no, and yes. The camping trip was actually her idea.”
“Good, that’s all we needed then.”
“Oh.” I braked again and pulled an illegal U-turn in the middle of the deserted residential street to get back to the main road. “So Buxton told Hellhound the story about how he thought he’d been drugged?”
“Yes. If not for the consistency with all the other ex’s stories, I’d say it was a classic case of a guilty man trying to weasel out of charges. But under the circumstances… hold on, I’m going to put you on speaker so Hellhound can hear.”
A moment later Hellhound’s gravelly voice came faintly over the speaker. “Hey, darlin’. Can ya hear me?”
“Hi, Arnie. Yes, I can hear you fine. So were all the exes drunk when the boys were abducted?”
“Yeah. ‘Cept Dirk Buxton. He swears he doesn’t drink anymore, an’ somebody musta been watchin’ him an’ drugged his soda when he went to take a leak. An’ when I leaned on that little punk Rico he admitted he was stoned fuckin’ stupid that night, but I didn’t get a killer vibe off him. He was really broken up about losin’ Ethan.”
“And Murphy was drunk, too,” I said thoughtfully.
“Yes.” Kane sighed. “There’s something else that’s been nagging at me about Murphy, though.”
“What?” I turned onto the main highway and accelerated toward home.
“His footprints in the middle of the road.”
I stifled a yawn of pure fatigue. “What about them?”
“They went up to his campsite, but there’s no trace of them coming down. They started at that spot in the middle of the road. And the autopsy report showed his feet were clean.”
“What?” I sat up straighter in my seat, my exhaustion temporarily forgotten. “So… he got out of a vehicle in the middle of the road and then walked back to his campsite? But if somebody else was driving him, why didn’t they drop him off at his campsite? And if there was no dirt on his feet, then the shoeless footprint couldn’t have been his. But how could his feet be completely clean? If he ran from his tent to his truck without his boots, there should have been dust on his feet.”
“That would mean the shoeless footprint definitely belonged to someone else, but I’m not sure that proves anything,” Kane agreed. “It might have been someone who camped there earlier. But the footprints in the road definitely imply that someone else was there. Someone Murphy knew.”
“So we need to talk to all the exes and get the names of all their friends and see if there’s any overlap,” I deduced.
“Already done,” Hellhound rasped. “No overlaps. All a’ them ‘cept Dirk Buxton had friends partyin’ with ‘em that night, but the cops already checked out all the friends an’ eliminated ‘em as suspects.”
“Shit. Even Rico’s friends?”
Hellhound chuckled. “He didn’t tell the cops about his buddies, but he told me.” A smile twitched my lips at the thought of Hellhound’s style of persuasion, but my amusement faded quickly as he went on, “I passed their names on to the cops, but I checked ‘em out myself an’ we’re prob’ly barkin’ up the wrong tree there. None a’ those little shitweasels fit the type.”
“Do we have a ‘type’?” I asked.
“We have some guesses,” Kane replied. “Since no bodies have been found, our killer is likely organized and intelligent. He plans his attacks in advance and removes the victims to kill them and dispose of their bodies elsewhere.” His voice wavered slightly on the word ‘kill’, and he cleared his throat before adding, “That’s why there may still be hope for Daniel…”
There was a moment of silence on the line and I imagined him gathering his composure. When he spoke again his voice was flat and emotionless.
“There are two basic types of serial killers. The mission-based type kills his victims almost immediately. If that’s the case Daniel is dead, and likely has been since shortly after he was abducted. But…”
He swallowed before continuing, “…the other type gains gratification from power and control, or has some psychosis that motivates him to prolong the lives of his victims, usually while torturing them. He may keep his victims alive for quite some time before ultimately killing them.”
Nausea choked me.
Not Daniel. I couldn’t think of those chubby cheeks streaked with tears, that innocent laughter shattered into screams and suffering.
I gulped air. In through the mouth, out through the nose…
Don’t throw up.
Do not throw up.