Survival Clause, стр. 76

She strode off toward the SUV, leaving me, Mullinax, and Rafe behind. Mullinax didn’t seem to mind—he stood there and stared after her, but didn’t make any move to follow. I scrambled to keep up, and behind me, Rafe didn’t bother to scramble, but managed to keep up anyway.

“What?” he asked Grimaldi when we were far enough from Mullinax that the latter wouldn’t be able to overhear. “There ain’t no hurry. Jurgensson died decades ago.”

Grimaldi shook her head. “Jacob Drimmel left here about an hour ago. He might have driven down the road where the car was parked while we were in the woods.”

Might have. But— “Why would Jacob Drimmel kidnap Agent Yung?”

And then the picture realigned in my head, and I added, “Oh, my God. But no… he couldn’t have raped and killed his own daughter. And besides, he’s not a truck driver. He’s a mechanic. He wouldn’t be driving up and down the interstate.”

“He would be if he worked for a trucking company,” Rafe said. “Some of’em keep mechanics on staff to work on the trucks between trips. And sometimes, if a truck breaks down on the road, the mechanic’ll drive out and try to get it started again.”

“Trucks have diesel engines?”

“Same as RVs.”

“But Laura Lee was his daughter. He wouldn’t…”

“Some men do,” Grimaldi said, her voice even. “But he needn’t have raped her. He might have been there, at the truck stop, for some reason, to talk to her or just because he was passing through. And he could have seen that she was turning tricks. If it made him angry, he could have killed her. She’d refused financial help, it was Frankie’s fault and he didn’t like Frankie, she wouldn’t listen to reason and come home with him… the motive doesn’t matter. He could have found a reason to kill her. And that could have been the trigger for the others.”

I suppose it could have. “So she had sex with someone else. But her father raped and killed the others.”

“It’s a theory,” Grimaldi said. “More to the point right now, is that he was here this morning, and drove home around the time Yung went missing. That’s reason enough to talk to him. If he didn’t take her, he might have seen something.”

Of course. “The outbuildings…”

Grimaldi didn’t even glance at them. “I like this better.”

I liked it better, too. “Let’s go, then.”

“I’m coming, too,” Rafe said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “I need a minute to let the team know I’m leaving.”

He handed me the baby and walked away. Grimaldi opened her mouth, and then closed it without speaking. I guess she wasn’t any more keen on seeing what would happen if she left without him than I was.

Besides, if what we suspected was right, and Jacob Drimmel did have Agent Yung, we might need help getting her away from him in one piece.

And anyway, there’s no one I’d rather have with me on an errand like this than Rafe. I don’t mean to disparage Grimaldi in any way, she’s very capable, but she isn’t Rafe.

By the time he came back, we had sorted ourselves into the SUV. I had crawled in next to Carrie and left him the front seat, partly because it was more comfortable, and partly because this was an official trip and he was more official than me. It wouldn’t look good for the lead investigator on the case to crawl out of the backseat while his wife lounged in the front.

Also, his legs are longer than mine.

“You sure you don’t want me to drive?” he asked Grimaldi when he slid into the front seat. “I can get there faster.”

She was already revving the engine. “I’ve got it.”

“Suit yourself,” He pulled the strap across his chest and had barely had time to buckle it before the SUV rocketed down the drive and into the trees. “Whoa.”

“Told you.”

She didn’t say anything else, just concentrated on driving. It wasn’t possible to speed down the narrow track, but Grimaldi did her best. Once we hit the paved road, she picked up speed. “Tell me where to go.”

“They live in Sunnyside,” I said, before Rafe could ask. “If you know a shortcut, now would be the time to say so.”

He nodded. “Turn right at the next intersection, then left, then right again. There’s not really a quick and easy way to get halfway around town, though. It takes the time it takes.”

“If we’re lucky,” Grimaldi said, turning right and left and right again, “he had to wait for his wife to leave before he could bring Yung into the house.”

“If he’s there at all. He could have taken her somewhere else.”

Grimaldi glanced at him. “Where?”

“How would I know? He didn’t bring the others home, though. And if it was him, he didn’t have an eighteen-wheeler with a sleeper cab where he could take’em, either.”

No, he hadn’t. “Any way to figure out who he worked for and what he drove? And whether he even did travel? We’re spinning this out of air, after all.”

“Not completely outta air,” Rafe said calmly, swaying with the motion of the car as Grimaldi made the second right on two wheels. We were on the backroads now, without having to deal with the traffic of downtown Columbia, and she could let the car go faster. “Remember what your uncle said? He played golf with Mullinax and Jurgensson—and Jacob Drimmel when he was around.”

“Meaning Jacob wasn’t always around.”

Rafe nodded. “Meaning Jacob mighta been traveling for work.”

“Why didn’t we ever suspect him before?”

“’Cause there was no reason to suspect him,” Rafe said. “He was the first victim’s father. No reason to think he’d be involved.”

“When she walked out of the restaurant with the trucker,” Grimaldi added, as she kept the SUV zipping around the curves, “Drimmel was at home with his wife. The DNA on her body was no match to anyone she knew. And of course nobody came forward to say he’d slept with