Unholy Shepherd by Robert Christian (rooftoppers txt) 📕

stayed silent, and Maureen could tell that he was wrestling with something.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I was just thinking,” he said slowly, “and don’t think I mean anything by this, but, what if you didn’t see Benny in your dream? What if it’s another kid that just looked similar?”

“I don’t know why I know. I just know.”

Her interactions over the last ten days with the little boy and his mother had left a definite imprint in her mind. She didn’t doubt what she had seen this time. Manny’s explanation would have been easier for her to accept, but she couldn’t.

Main Street came into view. Maureen slowed down to the new speed limit and they continued east. Nothing seemed out of place. There were the usual number of cars parked at the meters, along with a few people walking the sidewalks. It was all normal. All too normal. She felt her stomach begin to churn. It wasn’t the drink from the previous night or hunger. It was the foreboding feeling that told her they were going to find what they were looking for, and very soon.

“Nothing going on here,” Manny said. “Maybe we should try Tasha’s job. She teaches aerobics and spin classes at the gym over on the east side. In that little strip mall off the grocery store on Glenbrook Avenue. You know where that is?”

“Yeah kinda,” she replied. She walked there once for groceries during her first week in Sycamore Hills, before resigning herself to do her shopping at the drug store on Main Street, since it was much closer to her apartment.

“Three lights up and take a right,” he said.

“Got it.”

Turning right at the third stop light, Maureen would have thought he was the one with the psychic ability. Two blocks up, there was a mob scene in the parking lot of the strip mall. She counted six police vehicles, including the black sedan that belonged to the Feds. As she pulled into the lot and scanned the crowd, she could see the boy’s mother with Agent Lorenzo, hand over her mouth, nodding along with whatever the female agent was saying. Reading back a statement, she decided. The crime scene investigator she recognized from the previous Saturday was inspecting the back seat of a black sedan, in which she could just make out a child’s car seat. Even at the distance she was, Maureen could recognize it as the one from her dream. Of the surroundings, she had no idea, but something gnawed at the back of her head, telling her that something was still missing.

“Wait here,” Manny said as the truck stopped. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

He opened the door and quickly hopped out of the passenger’s seat, crossing the parking lot while adjusting his tie and smoothing his jacket. Maureen could tell that he was making a beeline for Agent Layton, who stood slightly apart from the rest of the crowd, silently monitoring the scene.

“Oh, like hell!” Maureen shouted out loud after a moment. She was not going to be left behind. She got out of the truck to jog after Manny. He had been intercepted by the officer that she knew as the captain of the Sycamore Hills Police Department, and it looked like the two men were arguing.

“Captain, don’t tell me where I can and can’t be,” Manny was saying as she walked up behind him. He sounded like he was trying to keep the volume of his voice in check, but the edge that he got when he was about to explode was certainly present.

“Why don’t you just tell me what you’re doing here,” the captain growled back, “and I’ll tell you if you can continue on.”

It was like watching two dogs arching their backs at one another. Maureen just hoped that neither of them would bite. Fortunately, the two men were rescued from themselves, though not necessarily in a way that made her any more comfortable.

“Gentlemen, what seems to be the trouble here?” came the voice of Agent Layton. He strode up to the two men and settled himself between them.

“Captain,” he continued keeping his eyes on Manny, “why don’t you let me speak to the detective here.”

“Sir, I don’t think that—”

“Alone.”

The captain backed up a few steps before sighing and turning his back on them. Agent Layton motioned with his head, and he and Manny moved onto the sidewalk in front of the storefronts of the strip mall. Maureen joined them, but stood just far enough away from Manny to prevent any sense of intimacy from being detected. The agent stared at her for an uncomfortable moment, before turning to talk to Manny.

“So, Detective,” he said, “the captain raises a good question. What does bring you here?”

“We came to grab a few things at the grocery store,” Maureen jumped in quickly.

“That’s right,” Manny said. “Just stopping by the store.”

“I’m sure,” the agent said.

He clearly didn’t believe them, but she knew enough about the man from Manny’s talks of him and her own interactions to understand that he would turn his head to certain things if it meant he could use them to get the job done.

“So what happened here?” Manny asked the agent.

“Tasha Naismith called the police about an hour and a half ago to report her son as abducted. According to her statement, she had stopped in at the grocery store here and left her son in the car with the window cracked while she ran in for a power bar. She estimates that she was only gone for two minutes, and when she came out, the back door of her car was open and her son was gone. She ran back into the grocery store in a frenzy, begging for someone to call the police. Apparently, she was so distraught that she forgot she had a cell phone. The clerk and manager at the store have backed up her story.”

“Is there any security footage?” Manny asked.

“We’ve reviewed it already. It doesn’t show the parking lot, unfortunately, just