The Girl in the Mist (Misted Pines 1)

“It’s obscene.”

I turned my head to see a blonde woman of around my age wearing a lovely sweater, well-cut trousers and stylish, low-heeled booties.

She was glaring at the mural.

“I started a petition,” she told the mural. “Gathered quite a number of signatures. Took it to the town council.” She turned to me. “But the hippies had their own petition, and they had more signatures than me. And by that, I mean they had only seven more signatures than me. So that monstrosity remains.”

She tossed a manicured hand toward Aromacobana.

I allowed myself a moment to ponder this small-town reflection of the state of our country.

Since she seemed to require a response from me, I noted, “It’s a little on the nose.”

“It’s inDEcent.”

I felt it made a strong statement, but I didn’t feel it was obscene or indecent.

Therefore, I chose not to reply.

“I’ve not read your book,” she announced.

I could have guessed.

“I hear it’s very good,” she went on. “It’s just that I don’t read those types of books. I don’t read to think. I read to escape.”

“What types of books do you read?” I asked.

She turned back to the mural, and like so many of our kind, she sounded abashed when she admitted, “I like romance.”

“Do you read Priscilla Lange?”

She turned to me, her face now animated. “You?”

Naturally I did, since I wrote them.

I smiled.

She leaned in conspirative, now that we were HEA sisters.

“They’re racy,” she told me. “Racier than my norm, but it’s not trashy.”

I hated the word “trashy” in all its uses, particularly when it was used to describe romance novels. I had equal acrimony for the word “smut.”

I didn’t share that and decided to accept the compliment she didn’t know she was giving.

“Agreed.”

“I never miss one of her books.”

“I don’t either.”

“I wish she published more than one a year.”

I said nothing.

Her tone grew warm and serious. “It was a beautiful gesture, what you tried to do for Alice.”

I dipped my chin.

Her gaze wandered off, I would know, with what she said next, in the direction of the sheriff’s department.

“Sheriff Dern is a disaster,” she decreed.

I again made no reply.

Her attention came back to me. “I mean, considering…” an appropriate pause, “what I heard happened to her. It probably wouldn’t have helped. The reward. But we’ll never know. And everyone is talking about it. Why he didn’t announce it. I mean, it doesn’t help to share that at the little girl’s funeral for God’s sakes.”

“Yes,” I said.

“And of course you know about the dogs.”

The dogs?

“Sorry?” I asked.

“He should have called in the dogs. Like, right away. We don’t have this kind of thing happening here. So we don’t have a K-9 unit. The next county over has them. I heard that, before they even left the station to go to Dale and Audrey’s, Harry said call for the dogs. For no good reason but to point out he’s in charge, to put Harry in his place, Leland didn’t call for the damn dogs. And then it was hours before they called for those dogs.”

I felt my mouth tighten.

She didn’t miss it and hissed out, “Yes.” Then carried on, “And you’re very aware Cade should have been called in even before the dogs. I mean, the man himself found Percy Gibson and led the cops in Wichita to the Rooftop Gunman.”

That made my entire body tighten.

Holy hell.

It seemed like sometime in the midst of all my obsessive keeping track of what happened to Alice, or in all the time since, I should have Googled Bohannan myself.

I had no idea.

Though I knew about both.

Percy Gibson was known as Ted Bundy Lite (because, you know, the media is so cruel and clever with those kinds of things). In the end, he’d been convicted of killing seven college women from three different colleges in two different states. But it was considered by the authorities there might be more, they just couldn’t find them, and he wasn’t talking.

The Rooftop Gunman in Wichita had had a Son of Sam-type spree, though thankfully much shorter. He’d taken aim from random roofs in the city eight times in three and a half weeks before he was caught. In the end, he killed three people and wounded seven.

He’d committed suicide by cop.

He’d been a veteran army sniper.

The government had swiftly and boisterously lauded how quickly he was caught with the local and federal authorities working together, making so much noise about that, it hid the fact that they did not take this as further evidence they needed to do more to take care of our veterans.

He was not Percy Gibson, Ted Bundy or David Berkowitz.

He was a man who served our country who deserved better well before whatever demons he’d acquired had the chance to accomplish their takeover.

“I mean, you have that kind of local resource, a girl vanishes into nothing, you call on it, don’t you think?” she asked me.