One Scream Away by Kate Brady

Author:Kate Brady
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Forever
Published: 0100-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 29

Copeland held off the task force meeting until Rick and Neil got back. When they walked in, the room smelled of stale burgers and french fries.

"It's about time you got here," Copeland said. "Did you get them?"

Neil handed over the Bankes family Bible and a receipt. After the interview with Goodwin, he'd called Copeland on a hunch and gone back for them.

Copeland opened the Bible. "Tell them," he said and nodded to the room. With the exception of Juan Suarez and Lexi Carter, everyone on the task force had assembled. But tonight, everyone was sitting. The fun had worn off.

Neil took a seat, too. "The sheriff who worked Jenny's disappearance said there was a rumor once that Chevy might have had an older sibling. The first page of the Bankeses' Bible is missing. I thought the lab should look at the next couple pages, that's all, see if there are indentations from something that might have been recorded on the missing page."

"And the receipt?" Copeland asked, studying it.

"It was in the kitchen drawer. It's for diapers. The ink's faded, so I can't read the date. But it was folded up with another receipt for gasoline from 1976. The date stuck in my mind because gas was only fifty-nine cents a gallon."

Harrison frowned. "Nineteen seventy-six is--"

"Two years before Chevy was born," Neil said. "So if the diapers receipt is from the same time..." He finished with a shrug.

"Any word on Chadburne?" Rick asked.

"Not yet," Copeland said. "She doesn't drive, so there's no license. We're checking Boise for a friend or family member who might have a picture of her. And I've got people trying to track down doll sales that might have been made to her husband. I don't hold out much hope on that score--the collection she's selling now could have been in his family attic for years. As for Hammond, we've cleared his wife--she was with a neighbor all day Wednesday, the day he died."

Neil nodded; no surprise there. As charming as Hammond's wife was, everyone knew Chevy had killed him. "What was missing from his store?"

"A shotgun and a twenty-two. And," Copeland added, "there was one drawer that had been broken into, the lock jimmied. We don't know what was in that."

"Silencers," Harrison speculated. "That's why no one heard a shot at the church."

Neil closed his eyes. Guns with silencers. That would change everything.

"Have a file," Copeland said, pushing a folder his direction and another toward Rick. "Harrison looked up the attorney who handled Peggy Bankes's will. It wasn't just the acreage and the house Chevy inherited. His mother added a codicil, leaving something to Chevy buried near the edge of the river. He got it on his twenty-first birthday."

"That's the day he killed Gloria," Neil said, straightening. "What was it?"

"We don't know," Copeland answered, "but a team will go look along the river in the morning. It's been a long time..." He came forward in his chair, hands on the table. "What I wanna know is this: Why now? Bankes has been out of prison for over a year.

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