He grabbed a cup of locker-bottom coffee, placed the driver’s license information on his desk, and logged on to the police department’s mainframe. He began a database search for one Cricket Dickinson, twenty-nine, of 3448 Jinni Lynn Court, Bloomington, Indiana. It sure didn’t take long to find her. Everything was right at the top of the search results, like it had been placed there for his convenience. Interesting.
She was an IU graduate, a self-employed vitamin and supplement distributor, a registered voter, YMCA member, good credit, and legal guardian to her nephew Chris Dickinson, a four-year-old enrolled at a Montessori preschool down the street. According to tax records, she owned a three-bedroom bungalow at that address, which she’d purchased two years earlier for two hundred ninety-eight thousand dollars.
Fine. It all looked perfectly fine. And that was what bothered him. Why did a chick with such a tidy little life give herself a quickie dye job and leave town? How did she find herself a thousand miles from home, on Bayberry Island during festival week, hiding from the police chief? What made her so frightened that she couldn’t admit she was his summer love from eighteen years before?
Why was she even here?
At this point, Clancy knew that was the only thing he was sure of—Cricket was Evie, they were one in the same. No doubt in his mind. Her touch, her kiss, her laugh, how she fit in his arms, the way he felt when he was with her . . . those things were real. The rest of it? He shook his head as he scrolled through the database search. The rest of it made no sense.
There were a couple possibilities. She could be an innocent, law-abiding woman hiding from a spouse or boyfriend who had harmed her. The kind of domestic dispute Clancy had responded to just that morning was more commonplace than people wanted to admit, and Evie could simply be another woman who had reached the point of no return, unable to take one more punch or one more degrading comment. It would have taken planning and advanced IT skills, but maybe her new identity had been in the works for a long time.
Or, she may be on the run for reasons far more sinister. Maybe she embezzled from her business, or orchestrated a pyramid scheme out of her home and the SEC caught up with her. Possibilities like that were endless.
Clancy’s mind did a double take. On the run. The way she moved down the ferry gangway. The long, lean, muscular legs. Those shoes.
He opened a new window on his laptop and searched for the make and model of running shoe she’d been wearing. It retailed for one-fifty, and just as he thought, it was the go-to shoe for serious women runners. Clancy smiled. Now this was a subject he knew a little bit about.
He logged on to a members-only Web site that tracked amateur race results from all over the country, members and nonmembers, everything from 5Ks to ultra-marathons. First he checked Indiana races—no finishing times for a Cricket Dickinson were listed. He broadened his search. He saw nothing at first, but kept digging. There she was! San Diego’s Rock ’n’ Roll half marathon, 2009, where she finished twelfth in her category—the seventy and up age group.
Huh?
He tried for another half hour and though he encountered the senior citizen version of Cricket Dickinson a few more times, he didn’t find his Cricket. She simply did not exist in the data-hoarding world of running, which implied that her lies were several layers deep. And that bothered him. A lot.
Clancy was so tired his body hurt. He took the Jeep home, played with the dogs for a few minutes, grabbed a quick shower, then collapsed in bed. His mind wasn’t racing with unanswered questions anymore. It was heavy with dread and regret for what had to be done come morning. When Evie boarded the first ferry—and he was sure she would—Chief Flynn would be waiting for her with a boatload of questions.
She wouldn’t be leaving Bayberry until every one of them had been answered to his satisfaction.
* * *