So it was possible Shannon Blaine had been abducted before reaching the Lake Shore Motel. Or that she’d never made it out of her house alive.
“Got it,” I said. “Any thoughts about what might have happened to Shannon?”
He shrugged. “I hear they’re entertaining all kinds of theories. That she’s got amnesia and is wandering around the woods. Some pervert grabbed her. She ran off with another guy. Or even that the husband’s behind it all.”
“Is there one theory you favor more than the others?”
“Nope. I just hope they find her. She looks like a real nice lady.”
I wondered if he ran his gaze up and down her body as he’d done to me.
“Just one last question, if you don’t mind, Mr. Dobbs. Did you ever see her running with anyone else? A female friend? A guy?”
“Nope, always alone.”
I thanked him again for his time and pulled out a business card, asking him to please contact me if anything else occurred to him. While I’d been talking, I’d kept one eye on the lit parking lot, and there was still no sign of the blond jogger. She should have been here by now.
“Oh, Mr. Dobbs,” I said, turning back to him. “I met a woman on the road who looked a bit like Shannon and she said she was staying here. Do you know who I’m talking about? Blond. In her early thirties.”
He pursed his thick pink lips and shook his head slowly back and forth.
“No, nobody like that here.”
Okay, that was weird. Perhaps the blond jogger simply had remembered her motel being at the end of Wheeler whenit really wasn’t, or else she had lied to me because her place of lodging wasn’t any of my damn business. And, of course, it wasn’t.
From the Lake Shore I headed south on route 9N, passing seemingly endless motels, fast-food restaurants, and retail outlets, as I approached the village of Lake George, the center of town. It was time to crank out my post for the day, but I found myself in a quandary. Thanks to Cody ghosting me and the sheriff postponing the press conference, I had almost nada to show for my half day on the scene. I felt like a reporter covering a royal wedding who’d managed to snag only a quote from the guy who’d groomed the horses.
And that wasn’t a good thing.Crime Beatwas hardly in the same league asVanity Fairor theNew York Times, but the writing was good for a true-crime site and the reporters seemed to be scrappy, ready to turn over every stone in their research. Dodson Crowe would be expecting a certain quality from my first piece of reporting for him, and I needed to deliver.
Finally, just as I pulled into the village, I had a brainstorm: I’d write my post from the first-person point of view. Though I’d used that approach in my book, it wasn’t a styleCrime Beatwriters typically employed. In this case, though, I thought I could make up for my lack of good quotes by offering plenty of impressions, even the chilling moment when I’d spotted the blond jogger on the road.
I found a spot for the Jeep right off Canada, the main drag in town, and after grabbing my laptop, I searched on foot for someplace to park my butt. The village was prettycharming, with one- and two-story commercial buildings, many with rustic-style peaked roofs. A few shops were still open, with racks set outside and souvenir T-shirts flapping in the evening breeze.
After finding a café, I settled in a booth, ordered a sandwich, and banged out the post. I described the fraught scene at Dot’s, the palpable fear of the local residents I’d interviewed, Kelly’s hopes that her sister was simply in a disassociated state, and my frustrations over being stood up by Cody even though I assumed it was for a good reason. I’d swiped one of the flyers with Shannon’s photo earlier that day, and from time to time as I typed, I stared at those riveting green eyes.
Where are you, Shannon? I wondered. Where in the world did you go?
Though I wasn’t going to allow my imagination off the leash yet, it was time to review, and perhaps reconsider, the probabilities in the case. According to Kelly, her sister hadn’t appeared to be under emotional duress or suffering from severe mommy burnout, so that weakened the idea of Shannon simply splitting on her own. As for the injury angle, it seemed unlikely to me that Shannon had done a face-plant on the road and was now wandering the woods with a head wound.
That left stranger abduction, a decent possibility, despite Kelly poo-pooing it.
And it also left Cody. Now that I’d seen the guy’s good looks in the flesh, it wasn’t hard to imagine him as a magnetfor women, someone who could have cheated on Shannon and wanted out of the marriage without a lot of ugly strings attached. Though two sheriff deputies had conducted a brief search of the Blaine house after Cody reported his wife missing, I was sure law enforcement was now itching to make a more thorough inspection, not only of the house but also of the family garage and vehicles. They would want to conduct tests with luminol, which highlights traces of blood even if there’s been a thorough attempt to bleach them away.
But they couldn’t do it simply because of that itch. They needed either Cody’s permission or a search warrant indicating there was probable cause that a crime had been committed there.
I didn’t add any of this speculation to the post. It was too soon for that. But tomorrow I was going to see what I could learn about any girlfriend in the wings, either from the moms at the school or employees of Baker Beverage.
Over a cappuccino I reviewed what I’d written, cleaning up grammatical errors and polishing the prose as best as possible in the little time I had. Finally, I attached it to an email to Dodson and hit send. I had to admit that I felt a little giddy delivering the first daily reporting I’d done in ages. I just hoped that he wouldn’t have an issue with my first-person tactic.
By the time I left the café, in danger of someone sweeping under my feet, the combo of caffeine and deadline jitters had left me wired, as if tiny firecrackers were exploding inmy bloodstream. I decided to walk for a while and attempt to unwind. Though most of the shops had finally closed for the night, a handful of restaurants remained open, and there were still a few folks ambling along Canada Street.
A couple of blocks later I found myself in front of a small tavern. Through the front window, I could see it was half full with what looked like a local crowd, dressed for early fall in plaid shirts and turtleneck sweaters. I decided to spring for a glass of wine.
There were a few empty stools at the bar, and I slid onto one and ordered a California cabernet from a friendly, bearded bartender. A string of colored lights had been strung above the row of bottles behind the bar, and it gave the place an enchanting, almost magical look.
As I glanced around I realized that the row of picture windows on the rear wall faced the lake. Since it was dark now, all I could see was a slim necklace of lights, which were probably affixed to the ends of piers and boat docks. Maybe there’d be a chance for me to come back here for lunch one day and really take in the lake. I’d read that the first Europeans to come upon it were Jesuit priests, one of whom dubbed it Lac du Saint-Sacrement, though after winning the French and Indian War, the British renamed it after King George II. But long before either the French or the British were around, the Mohawk Indians called it Andiatarocte, meaning the place where the mountains close in.
I’d taken only a sip of wine when I heard my phone ping,and I grabbed it from my purse. A text from Dodson. Bracing myself, I opened it.
