The Silent Dolls: An absolutely gripping mystery thriller (Detective Ellie Reeves Book 1) Read online

  The Silent Dolls

  An absolutely gripping mystery thriller

  Rita Herron

  Books by Rita Herron

  Detective Ellie Reeves

  The Silent Dolls

  Contents

  Prologue

  1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  8.

  9.

  10.

  11.

  12.

  13.

  14.

  15.

  16.

  17.

  18.

  19.

  20.

  21.

  22.

  23.

  24.

  25.

  26.

  27.

  28.

  29.

  30.

  31.

  32.

  33.

  34.

  35.

  36.

  37.

  38.

  39.

  40.

  41.

  42.

  43.

  44.

  45.

  46.

  47.

  48.

  49.

  50.

  51.

  52.

  53.

  54.

  55.

  56.

  57.

  58.

  59.

  60.

  61.

  62.

  63.

  64.

  65.

  66.

  67.

  68.

  69.

  70.

  71.

  72.

  73.

  74.

  75.

  76.

  77.

  78.

  79.

  80.

  81.

  82.

  83.

  84.

  85.

  86.

  87.

  88.

  89.

  90.

  91.

  92.

  93.

  94.

  95.

  96.

  97.

  98.

  99.

  100.

  Hear More from Rita

  Books by Rita Herron

  A Letter from Rita Herron

  Acknowledgments

  *

  This series is dedicated to Christina Demosthenous, my fabulous editor who asked for a female detective series just when I had one sitting in my computer waiting! Timing is everything!

  Prologue

  Somewhere on the Appalachian Trail, Georgia, twenty-five years ago

  Tears trickled down her cheeks as she curled up inside the tiny cave-like space.

  She rubbed her fingers over the little wooden doll the man had carved. He said he’d made it just for her.

  Then he’d told her there were more dolls and a beautiful dollhouse with furniture and fancy clothes to dress them in. All she had to do was crawl through the tunnel.

  She hated the dark. But she’d wanted to see the dollhouse so bad she’d wiggled on her belly through the narrow space and followed him.

  Now she lay on her side, the darkness all around her. Alone. The ground was cold. Hard. Jagged with rocks. Her fingers touched something wet and sticky. She pulled her hand back, but something brushed her leg. A spider! She shrieked, moved as far away from it as she could, but her back hit the wall.

  She’d tried clawing her way out, but the dirt and stone was too hard. And she couldn’t find the opening. He’d put something in front of it. Maybe a piece of wood? Or some tree limbs?

  He’d said he had to leave for a while, but he was coming back. Then they’d play a game. But she didn’t want to play a game with him, and she’d told him so.

  He’d yelled at her to be quiet. Told her not to cry or scream. Not to be a baby.

  But she’d cried and screamed anyway. Her throat was raw, her eyes felt swollen shut.

  She wanted her mommy and her daddy. She wanted to go home.

  There wasn’t a dollhouse in here. Or any more dolls.

  He’d lied about that. Had he lied about coming back, too?

  1.

  Day 1 Missing

  March 1, 4:45 p.m., Crooked Creek, Georgia

  Another day. Another criminal to find.

  Detective Ellie Reeves crawled beneath the barbed wire fence, gun aimed, eyes scanning the old farmhouse. Smoke billowed from the barn and the scent of chemicals filled the air, a sign that her information was right.

  The abandoned barn was being used to cook meth.

  Bastards. The mountains had once been safe from crime. Now they offered countless places to hide.

  She tugged the barbed wire from her jacket where it had caught, then stood up and ran toward the building, crouching between bushes and weeds as she approached. A beat-up truck and a puke-green sedan were parked beneath a cluster of trees, where the dealers thought they were hidden from sight.

  Definite evidence of a meth lab: piles of trash outside; two-liter plastic soda bottles; discarded boxes that had once contained cold pills; windows on the house wide open to release the toxic chemicals.

  The acrid, urine-like scent.

  She checked her watch. Should wait for backup. She’d called it in on her drive here. But there was no time. The cavalry would have to come later. She had to be at her parents for dinner in half an hour.

  Her father said it was important. Non-negotiable.

  And when Randall Reeves requested her presence, she responded.

  Gun drawn, she darted toward the barn door and peered inside. A skanky-looking guy in his twenties with a goatee stood by a smoking pot, a burly older man counting cash into a tin box. Frying pans and a propane tank were in full view. Acetone, pseudoephedrine, coffee filters, and bottles with rubber tubing lined metal shelves. The stench nearly knocked her over.

  She braced her Glock, pushed the barrel through the opening of the door and inched closer. A quick visual sweep and she saw a shotgun on the far side of the room on a rickety table.

  They’d never reach it in time.

  She kicked the door open, gun aimed. “Police. Put your hands up.”

  The men startled. The burly one grabbed the cash while the scruffy one, as predicted, ran for the shotgun. She fired a bullet that pinged off the ground by his feet, and he screeched and threw his hands up. The other guy ducked and tried to roll, but knocked over the cashbox, bills floating into the meth-infused air like green confetti. He scrambled to retrieve them, but she strode over and slammed her boot on his hand just as he clawed at a hundred-dollar bill.

  A siren wailed outside, getting louder by the second. Goatee guy dove for the shotgun, but Ellie nailed him in the knee, and he went down with a loud howl, knocking a tray of chemicals to the floor. Voices and shouts echoed from outside, and one of the Crooked Creek deputies, Heath Landrum, raced inside, gun drawn. Ellie’s captain was behind him, his face scowling as he took in the scene.

  “Fuck, Detective Reeves,” Captain Hale shouted. “You know better than to open fire in a meth lab.”

  She did, but she couldn’t let the jerks escape. Still, she saw what he was upset about. Chemicals had spilled, and the cook pot was beginning to spark.

  “Shit. Let’s get them out of here.” She snagged the one with the goatee and let Deputy Landrum haul the bigger guy outside.

/>   Just as they made it to Landrum’s squad car, the place blew up, shooting flames and sparks into the darkening sky.

  2.

  After an ass-chewing from her boss, Ellie sped toward her parents’ house. She expected another earful for being late from her mother. And another for not stopping to change her clothes. Dirt stained her jeans from crawling on the ground, the barbed wire had ripped her shirt sleeve, and she smelled of sweat and burned plastic from the fire.

  Vera Reeves preferred women to dress for dinner. She should have given up on Ellie accommodating her a long time ago. Still, she kept nagging and hoping and nagging and hoping that, one day, Ellie would become a girly girl. That she’d finally trade her shield and gun for a wedding ring.

  Not going to happen. Ever.

  She was a tomboy and police officer through and through.

  But tonight, Vera would not rain on Ellie’s parade. Her father was planning to announce his retirement, and Ellie expected him to back her in the upcoming sheriff’s election. She’d wanted this all her life.

  When she was a little girl, she begged him to let her ride along when he went on calls. In high school, when the other girls were primping and infatuated with boys, she’d worked in his office, filing, answering the phone, studying old case files and crime-scene reports. She’d also been obsessed with crime shows and binge-watched FBI’s Most Wanted.

  Gravel spewed from the tires of her Jeep as she spun up the drive to her family homestead. After running a hand over her disheveled ponytail, she dusted off her jeans and t-shirt as she climbed out. She dragged on a denim jacket to cover her holstered gun.

  With the steep mountain ridges jutting up in the background, the bare tree branches and dark storm clouds cast an eerie grayness over the land. The national forest was spread out for hundreds of miles, with thick wooded areas, deep gorges, sharp ridges and towering cliffs.

  When she was five, she’d gotten lost in the midst of the towering trees and tangled vines and had been terrified. The darkness and cold had closed around her during the night as the hours creeped by, slowly and steadily suffocating her. She still had nightmares where she was struggling to breathe as she crawled through a long, deep cave that smelled of a dead animal.

  A cave with no way out.

  When her father finally found her the next morning, he’d given her his compass, so she’d never lose her way again. Over the next few months, he’d taught her how to read maps. After that, the Appalachian Trail, the AT as it was known, had become her second home.

  Her father had always guided her, protected her. Had never let her down.

  He never would.

  She noticed a black Range Rover parked to the side of the house. Damn. Her father’s lead deputy, Bryce Waters, was here.

  In elementary school, she’d actually been friends with Bryce. Their fathers fished together, and she and Bryce had tagged along, rowing their own canoe. They’d ridden bicycles all over town, played softball, and built a fort from scrap wood her father kept in the garage.

  But once he hit puberty, Bryce changed. Started showing off. Desperate to be popular, a homely tomboy like her had cramped his style.

  Then in high school… She shuddered at the memory. Didn’t need to think about that right now. It was ancient history.

  When she was elected sheriff, she’d make it clear that she wouldn’t tolerate his bullshit or drinking on the job, not like her father did. She didn’t give a flip how many women he screwed. She just didn’t want to hear about it. And he was definitely the type to kiss and tell.

  The gusty March wind whipped through the trees as she climbed the steps to the front porch, a sign that winter was hanging on with a vengeance. The rocking chair creaked back and forth, back and forth, as if someone had just been sitting in it.

  Ellie turned, but there was no one there.

  Odd, how sometimes the mountains and wilderness offered solace, while other times sinister shadows floated through the dense mass of rocking trees as if they were haunted. Each year attacks on females increased, and the death toll seemed to rise.

  It was well-known in these parts that the mountains were home to all sorts. Some folks who sought refuge in the hills and ridges were mentally ill or hiding from the law. Others were simply recluses or eccentrics who balked at society and chose to stay off the grid. Her father called them the Shadow People.

  According to Ms. Eula Ann Frampton, the woman on the hill who claimed she talked to the dead, some were pure evil.

  Shaking off her morose thoughts, Ellie rapped on the door before opening it. Her heart raced with anticipation, and she expected the scent of her mother’s celebratory burgundy beef stew or pork tenderloin to fill the air. Instead, there was nothing but the hint of pine cleaner, indicating her mother’s maid had come today. Vera Reeves’ house had to be kept as immaculate as she kept herself.

  Maybe this was just a family meeting, and dinner wasn’t included.

  She kicked the worst of the mud from her boots onto the welcome mat before she entered, although nothing but a good scrubbing could remove the Georgia red clay.

  Voices rumbled as she headed down the hall toward the living room, where she could hear glasses clinking. Her heart fluttered in anticipation, and she wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans as she stepped through the doorway.

  Her mother sat in the velvet wing chair by the floor-to-ceiling brick fireplace, a martini in one hand. Her father held a tumbler of whiskey as he stared into the fire. When he turned, his shoulders were squared, posture rigid. His hair looked mussed, his clothes rumpled, and dark circles rimmed his brown eyes. He didn’t quite make eye contact, his lips pressed into a thin line.

  She’d seen that look before when he was working a troubling case, one that kept him up late at night, unable to sleep, unable to stop.

  Something was wrong.

  Had he changed his mind about retiring? Had there been a horrific crime in the town? Was he ill?

  Before she could ask, Bryce rushed toward her, a bourbon in his hand, the amber liquid sloshing over the rim of the glass. Tonight, his green eyes glowed with excitement, and he’d combed his wavy sandy-blond hair back from his forehead. He was good looking and he knew it.

  She pulled her gaze away. A snake lived under that skin.

  “Guess what, Ellie?” he said. “Your dad’s going to endorse me for sheriff!”

  Ellie went bone still, frozen, as if she’d stepped into the wrong house. Wrong family. Wrong everything.

  Bryce’s smile suggested he was oblivious to her feelings. Or maybe he wanted to rub the announcement in her face as payback for what she’d done to him years ago.

  Probably the latter.

  Her father’s hands tightened around his highball glass. “Honey, I wanted to talk to you first, but Bryce got here—”

  “You’re backing him instead of me?” The betrayal made it difficult for Ellie to breathe.

  “I thought you’d be happy for me, Ellie,” Bryce said, his tone all innocence. An innocence designed for her parents. Bryce was a chameleon. He seamlessly changed skins to suit the occasion and whoever he wanted to impress.

  He damn well knew she wouldn’t like being thrust aside by her own father, and he was gloating. “You can transfer and work in my office with me,” he said with a wink.

  Oh, hell, no. She’d never work in the same office as Bryce Waters.

  He knew that, too.

  But that was a conversation for later. Her father was running this show.

  “What the hell is going on, Dad? You know I’ve worked my butt off for this opportunity. And I’m more qualified than Bryce.”

  “Wait just a minute,” Bryce said, feigning hurt. “I’m qualified.”

  Her mother, dressed in an elegant, green silk pantsuit, swept across the room in a cloud of Chanel No. 5. “Watch your manners, Ellie.” She offered her daughter a glass of merlot and patted her stylish brown bob into place, a sign she’d kept her standing appointment at the Beauty Barn today. G
ray would never see her hair. “Let’s toast the occasion. Bryce is the right candidate. Being sheriff is a man’s job.”

  Ellie pushed the wine glass away. “It is?” she said, barely hanging onto her temper.

  “You could always run against me,” Bryce suggested with an eyebrow raise. “Except you know I’m pretty popular in these parts.”

  Ellie shot him a look of disgust. “You may have Dad fooled, Bryce, but I know exactly who you are.”

  Bryce’s eyes narrowed. Curiosity flared on her father’s face, and for a moment she thought he might question her comment. But he didn’t.