stepped from the rain into the cold darkness of the barn. The shape under the large faded canvas tarp was obviously a car. He could see one of the tires. It was flat.
He stood, listening to the rain falling through the hole in the roof patter on the tarp. Clearly the car had been there for a long time. Years.
Wind lifted one corner of the canvas and he saw the back bumper, the Montana State University parking sticker and part of the license plate, MT 6-431. The wind dropped the tattered edge of the tarp, but Cash had seen enough of the plate to know it was the one a statewide search hadn’t turned up seven years ago.
He’d been praying it wasn’t her car. Not the little red sports car she’d been anxiously waiting to be delivered.
“When I get my car, I’ll take you for a ride,” she’d said, flirting with him from the first time he’d met her.
How many times over the years since she’d disappeared had he heard those words echo in his head? “I’ll take you for a ride.”
He closed his eyes, taking in huge gulps of the rank-smelling barn air. Her car had been within five miles of Antelope Flats all these years? Right under their noses?
The search had centered around Bozeman, where she was last seen. Later, even when it had gone statewide, there wasn’t enough manpower to search every old barn or building. Especially in the remote southeastern part of the state.
He tried to breathe. She’d been almost within sight of town? So close all these years?
Cash opened his eyes, scrubbed at them with the heel of his hand, each breath a labor. He turned away and saw Humphrey’s huge bulk silhouetted in the barn door, the hood of his dark raincoat pulled up, his arms dangling loose at his sides.
“It’s her car, isn’t it?” Humphrey said from the doorway.
Cash didn’t answer, couldn’t. Swallowing back the bile that rose in his throat, he walked through the pouring rain to his patrol car for his camera.
He knew he should call for forensics and the state investigators to come down from Billings. He knew he should wait, do nothing, until they arrived. But he had to know if she was inside that car.
Rain pounded the barn roof and fell through the hole overhead, splattering loudly on top of the covered car as he stepped past Humphrey to aim the camera lens at the scene inside. He took photographs of the car from every angle and the inside of the barn before putting the camera back in the patrol car.
On the way to the barn again, he pulled the pair of latex gloves from his pocket and worked them on his shaking fingers. His nostrils filled with the mildewed odor of the barn as he stepped to one side of the car, picked up the edge of the tarp and pulled.
The heavy canvas slid from the car in a whoosh that echoed through the barn and sent a flock of pigeons flapping out of the rafters, startling him.
The expensive red sports car was discolored, the windows filmed over, too dirty to see inside except for about four inches where the driver’s side window had been lowered.
He stared at the car, his pulse thudding in his ears. It had been summer when she disappeared. She would have had the air-conditioning on. She wouldn’t have put the window down while she was driving. Not with her allergies.
The rain fell harder, drumming on the barn roof as several pigeons returned, wings fluttering overhead.
He walked around the car to the other side. The left front fender was dented and scraped, the headlight broken. He stepped closer, the cop in him determined to do this by the book. Kneeling, he took out the small plastic bag and, using his pocket knife, flaked off a piece of the blue paint that had stuck in the chrome of the headlight.
Straightening, he closed the plastic bag, put the knife and bag in his pocket and carefully tried the driver’s side door.
The door groaned open and he leaned down to look inside. The key was in the ignition, her sorority symbol key chain dangling from it along with the new house key—the key to the house she’d told everyone they would be living in after they were married.
The front seat was empty. He left the door open and tried the back. The rear seat was also empty. The car would have been brand new seven years ago. Which would explain why it was so clean inside.
He started to close the door when he saw something in the crack between the two front seats. He leaned in and picked up a beer cap from the brand she always drank. He started to straighten but noticed something else had fallen in the same space. A matchbook.
Cash held the matchbook up in the dim light. It was from the Dew Drop Inn, a bar in Bozeman, where she’d been attending Montana State University. Inside, three of the matches had been used. He closed the cover and put the matchbook into an evidence bag.
Shutting the back door, he stood for a moment knowing where he had to look next, the one place he’d been dreading.
He moved to the open driver’s side door and reached down beside the front seat for the lever that opened the trunk. He had to grip the top of the door for a moment, steadying himself as he saw the large dark stain on the light-colored carpet floor mat under the steering wheel.
The tarp had kept the inside of the car dry over the years, the inside fairly clean, so he knew the stain on the mat wasn’t from water. He knew dried blood when he saw it. The stain was large. Too large.
As he pulled the lever, the trunk popped open with a groan. He drew the small flashlight from his coat pocket and walked toward the rear of the car, the longest walk of his life.
The bodies were always in the trunk.
Taking deep breaths, he lifted the lid and pointed the flashlight beam inside. In that instant, he died a thousand deaths before he saw that what was curled inside wasn’t a body. Just a quilt rolled up between a suitcase and the spare.
Cash staggered back from the car, the temporary relief making him weak. Was it possible Jasmine had been on her way to Antelope Flats? All these years he hoped she’d run off to some foreign country to live.
Instead she’d been on her way to Antelope Flats seven years ago. But why? His heart began to pound. To see him?
Or at least that’s what someone wanted him to believe. Wanted the state police to believe.
He thought of the blood on the floor mat, the car hidden just miles from his office, from the old house he’d bought that Jasmine called her engagement present.
He rubbed a hand over his face, his throat raw. Jasmine wasn’t living the good life in Europe, hadn’t just changed her mind about everything and run off to start a new life.
He turned and walked back out into the rain, stopping next to Humphrey’s pickup. The older man was sitting in the cab. He rolled down the driver’s side window as Cash approached.
“I’m going to call the state investigators,” Cash said, rain echoing off the hood of his jacket. “They’re going to want to talk to you.”
Humphrey nodded and looked past him to the barn. “Did you find her?”
Cash shook his head and started toward his patrol car, turning to look back at the barn and the dark shadow of Jasmine’s
