Chapter 15 - The Fairgrounds
Jake’s first thought was not rational.
He saw blood and imagined everything.
Dana caught his arm.
“We do not know whose it is.”
Jake pulled away. “Take me there.”
Officer Grant stepped between them.
“No.”
“My son is missing.”
“And police are searching an active scene. You will not enter it.”
Jake’s face twisted.
Grant lowered his voice.
“You just told a judge what you do next matters. This is next.”
Jake stopped.
He hated the truth in that sentence.
They waited in a command trailer near the fairgrounds while officers searched old barns, ticket booths, storage sheds, and a wooded creek line.
A crime-scene technician called the blood preliminary.
“Small amount. Could be from a cut hand.”
Jake thought of Ben’s cracked fingernails and swallowed.
Then a K-9 handler found tracks behind an equipment shed.
One adult shoe.
One child sneaker.
They led toward the abandoned carnival rides.
Rain began to fall.
At 7:10, a deputy found a red hoodie snagged on a fence.
Jake recognized it from across the room.
“That’s his.”
Dana picked it up in a clear evidence bag.
There was a dark smear near the sleeve.
Jake sat down hard.
Then Ray, who had been standing near the trailer door, frowned.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“That hoodie’s wrong.”
Jake looked at him.
Ray pointed. “The one you bought was new. No white drawstrings. That one has white strings.”
Jake stared.
He was right.
Ben’s old red hoodie had white drawstrings.
The new one Jake bought was still folded in his halfway-house locker.
“So it is his,” Dana said, “but it’s the one he wore the day you got out.”
Jake thought back to the prison gate.
Ben. Sandwich. Black truck.
Todd could have taken the hoodie from the house.
“This is staged,” Jake said.
Dana’s eyes sharpened.
“What?”
“Todd wants police searching here.”
Officer Grant grabbed the map.
“If this is a diversion, where would he go?”
Jake closed his eyes.
He remembered Todd’s voice on the phone.
My sister waited four years...
He opened his eyes.
“Rachel’s grave.”
Dana was already calling units.
The cemetery sat eleven miles away.
A deputy arrived in six minutes.
His radio report came breathless.
“Fresh tire marks at the west gate.”
May you like
Jake gripped the table.
Then the deputy added, “I hear a child yelling from the maintenance building.”
