The sheriff looked at me as he struggled to keep my friend at bay. "Get a glove from Lilly," he told me. "Put it on, and go find something of Melanie's so the dogs can get a scent. Tell the deputies out there I said to get started."
I hesitated.
"Don't worry, Jack, I've got him," the sheriff said. "Go."
I took the glove from my wife and hurried into the house, heading straight to the bedroom closet. I hoped the shirt I pulled out wasn't one of Melanie's best, but there was no way I was going to dig around in their dresser drawers and risk going through her underwear. Anyway, the blouse didn't look like anything special, so I took it out to the officers along with the sheriff's instructions, and then headed back through the house.
Rob was sitting on the edge of the porch, a defeated expression on his face. The sheriff and Lilly were talking quietly off to one side, so I went over to Rob and sat with him.
"We'll find her," I said, putting my hand on his shoulder.
Rob didn't lift his head. "Come on, Jack," his voice dull and lifeless. "I'm not stupid. If someone is claiming to be Garret, they didn't take Melanie because they think I can pay some huge ransom. They want revenge—they'll kill her."
"Rob." The sheriff's voice made us both look up. "I just have a couple more questions that I need answered before we join the search party."
I could hear the barking of the dogs getting further away, and knew the deputies were pushing deeper into the woods.
"Was the front door locked when you came home?"
Rob thought for a moment and nodded. "It was."
"What about the back door?"
"It was locked too. I'm the one who left it open when I went out looking for Melanie."
"Was anything in the house disturbed or missing?" The sheriff jotted down Rob's responses on a notepad.
"I don't think so," Rob said. "I didn't notice anything."
"What about back here?" The sheriff gestured to the porch and back yard. "Was the gate open, or anything else that seemed out of place?"
"The gate was closed and latched," Rob said. "And it only latches from the inside." He looked up and down the porch. "And I don't notice anything unusual." His eyes darted down to where the Bible had been. "Except the Bible."
The sheriff held up an evidence bag with the Bible in it. "Have you ever seen it before?"
Rob shook his head. "It's not the one Melanie and I have." He jerked his head back toward the interior of the house. "The cover on ours is light gray. That one's brown."
"So whoever did this didn't just bring the note; he brought the Bible too," the sheriff said. "And nobody touched it?" He looked at Lilly.
"No."
"Good, I'll have Joann run it for prints," he said. "With any luck, we'll get a hit." He glanced back toward the woods. "But first, we need to find Melanie." He looked at Rob. "That's our first priority."
Rob and I both nodded, and I saw Lilly doing the same. But when I caught her eye, I could see that she didn't think this was going to end well. That, more than anything, scared the crap out of me. She was usually so optimistic, so full of hope. Even when things had gotten really bad, during my first year in Osborne, she'd always believed we would come out on top.
"The officers are taking the dogs in a circular pattern around the house," the sheriff said. "They'll keep expanding their radius as they go. But I'd like the four of us to just walk straight out into the woods, spaced far enough apart that we can still see each other."
One Way or Another
Start from the beginning
