He looked down at her. “Hugh. Just call me Hugh. Or Cowboy.”
“Hugh.”
She repeated his name, feeling flattered that he’d asked her to use it. “I have to run up to the sheriff’s office. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“No problem. I’ll be a while here. Probably most of the afternoon. There’s a lot that needs to be checked out.”
“Well, if you need to leave, just make sure the church door is closed tightly. I’ll lock it when I get back.”
“You got it.”
The wind seemed to have gotten sharper, and some low clouds were moving in, concealing the sun. She hunkered deeper into her jacket and wished she’d worn slacks today.
The sheriff’s office was only a block away, in a corner storefront overlooking the courthouse square. She’d come here often in the past when the youth group took tours of the office and the courthouse, and she knew most of the people who worked here from church, but she still felt uncomfortable walking into a place that was populated mostly by men. She stepped inside and hovered by the door for a few moments until Velma Jansen, the dispatcher, noticed her.
“Anna! Come on in. Sheriff’s down the hall, first door on the left. He’s expecting you.”
Tate waved her in when she reached his office. He was a big man in his early fifties, with a rugged, permanently sunburned face.
“Come in, sweet pea,” he said. “Close the door and grab a seat.”
Closing the door proved difficult for her. Even after all this time, she couldn’t be comfortable in a closed room with a man. But beside Nate’s desk there was a window that overlooked the square, and the sight of people walking by eased her feeling of claustrophobia. She managed to take the chair facing him and folded her hands on her lap.
“What’s up?” she asked.
“That’s what I’m hoping you can find out. Lorna Lacey. You know her?”
Anna nodded. “She’s in the youth group. A dear, sweet girl.”
“Right. That’s what everyone says. In fact, when I checked her school record, I found out she’s never been in any kind of trouble.”
“I’d be surprised if it said anything different. She’s a natural peacemaker. Active, outgoing, popular—I’d say she’s what every girl her age would like to be.”
“Mmm.” Nate rubbed his chin and swiveled his chair so he could look out the window. “Well, something’s wrong. This dear, sweet girl set a fire in an empty classroom this morning.”
“Good heavens!”
He nodded and glanced over at her. “She set the fire and was still in the room. If a teacher hadn’t happened along the hallway just when he did, the school and the girl would both be gone.”
Anna was appalled. She couldn’t imagine anyone doing such a thing, but even less could she imagine Lorna Lacey doing it. That child was as close to an angel as a girl her age could be.
“You look chilled,” Nate said abruptly. “Let me get you some tea or coffee.”
“Tea. Please.” Still stunned, she was hardly aware that he had left the office. Her gaze wandered out to the square, which looked bleak on this graying day. The flowers that usually filled the flower beds were gone, having died in the first frost nearly a month ago. Even the people who usually sat on the benches had vanished, driven away by the bitter wind.
Lorna Lacey. A petite girl of thirteen with soft blue eyes and long blond hair and an irregular face that saved her from being beautiful. But she was attractive, very attractive, because personality bubbled out of her, and she had an infectious smile.
When Anna thought of Lorna, she thought of laughter.
But now she found herself remembering that Lorna hadn’t been laughing as much lately and had missed quite a few youth group meetings in the past year. Anna had ascribed that to the changing interests of adolescence, but now she wondered.
What could be wrong? She hadn’t heard stories of any kind of trouble either from Lorna or the other kids. The girl’s parents, Bridget and Al Lacey, seemed like nice people. Bridget was a little restrained, but that didn’t mean anything. Al greeted the whole world with a big smile, just like his daughter, and was well liked by everyone.
He was active in the church, coaching youth soccer and basketball, and was always ready to lend a hand where it was needed.
Nate returned carrying a couple of mugs. He set the one with the tea bag in it in front of her, along with a couple of packets of sweetener and creamer, and a plastic stirrer. Anna reached for the mug gratefully and cupped her cold hands around it, soaking up the warmth.
“Thank you,” she said.
“No problem.” He sat back in his chair, holding his mug, and resumed his study of the square. “Sleet tonight, I hear. Make sure you get home before it starts.”
“I will.” Neither of them, she guessed, really knew what to say about Lorna Lacey. “Are you sure Lorna started the fire?”
“She said she did. In fact, she seemed real eager to make sure we knew it.”
Anna hardly knew what to say to that. “But why?”
Nate shrugged and looked at her. “That’s why I want you to talk to her, Anna. I know people. You can’t work with all kinds the way I do every day without getting an instinct. Now, most of the kids who get into trouble around here, I could pick ’em out by the time they were eight or nine. Sometimes even earlier. The troublemaking starts young. Some of ’em outgrow it. Those with rotten families are the ones least likely to outgrow it. But what I have never seen is a thoroughly good kid from a good home turn bad without a reason.”
“Bad friends?”
He shook his head. “I’m a great believer in peer pressure, but most kids like Lorna, who are good through and through, withstand that kind of pressure and pick good friends. You know who she hangs out with. Any problems there?”
“I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“Me neither. So we got us a mystery, sweet pea. That child committed an act of arson, and all my warning bells are clanging that this isn’t the act of a pain-in-the-butt kid. It’s a cry for help.”
Anna nodded, agreeing. It had to be. “But help from what?”
“God knows.” Nate sighed and settled deeper into his chair. “I’ve gotta charge her with arson. No way around it. But what scares me more than arson is that I don’t think she intended to leave that room even when the fire got really bad.”
Anna gasped and nearly spilled her tea. She set it quickly on the desk. “Not Lorna!”
“That’s the way it looks to me.”
Even more appalled now, Anna looked blindly out the window. “She hasn’t been coming to youth group meetings as often.”
“No? Then maybe whatever this is wasn’t sudden. Maybe something’s been building for a long time. She could be depressed. That’s not uncommon at her age, but maybe she doesn’t know how to ask for help. Maybe she doesn’t even guess what’s wrong with her. Or maybe she got involved in drugs somehow. Or somebody just slipped her a mickey this morning and she’s on a bad trip. I don’t know.”
He sipped his coffee, then turned to face her fully. “What I know is, I got a kid in one of my cells who shouldn’t be there. It’s not like the handwriting has been on the wall for years. And I’m not gonna be happy until we find the root of this little problem. I don’t want that child to become an ugly statistic because we couldn’t figure out how to help her.”
“Certainly not!”
“So