Chapter Twenty-Six: Silence

Lisbon looked up at the Sheriff, stricken. "Their daughter – Penny Jorsten – Do you know where she is? Could she have been here when all this happened?"

Sheriff Hamilton shifted uncomfortably in the doorframe. "We're, uh, still trying to determine that…"

Lisbon blinked. She stood up, plastic horse in hand. "'Still trying to determine?'"

"Grandparents are all deceased," he explained, "and we haven't been able to get ahold of the father yet. My people are trying to track down friends and other relatives, to see if anyone knows the girl's whereabouts."

"I don't think she's with her father. He was in for questioning most of the day, and we just let him go a few hours ago. There wouldn't have been time for him to come all the way out here and get her," Lisbon reasoned. "Unless he picked her up somewhere else…"

"At the very least Cardelli should be able to tell us whether his daughter was here today or not – if we ever manage to get him on the phone." The Sheriff's face grew stormy. "What the hell kind of parent leaves his cell phone off?"

"I don't know, but one of my agents has the contact info for a good friend of Cardelli's. We may be able to get through to him that way…" Lisbon set the horse on the sink and pulled out her phone.

"Well, until we do, we're going to have to assume she's missing, too," the Sheriff said grimly. "Hopefully, when we find Jane, we'll – "

Another officer appeared in the bathroom doorway next to the Sheriff. It was the middle-aged cop who'd first met Lisbon outside. He looked upset. Lisbon stopped dialing and waited.

"What is it, Michaels?" Sheriff Hamilton asked. "Did you find something?"

"Sir, one of the CSI guys outside swears that the bullet hole in the garage door was made by a forty-five…"

Lisbon and the Sheriff exchanged a significant look. A third gun. And only two holsters on Brody…

"Someone else was here," said Lisbon in a tone of dawning realization. "A second gunman. That's why we haven't found Jane. That's why he kept running – there was someone still chasing him…"

Fear lit the Sheriff's eyes. "This person could still be in the area. I need to warn my men…" He snatched the radio off his belt and spoke into it loudly. "All units, be advised – we believe there may be an armed suspect still in the vicinity. Proceed with extreme caution. Over." Then he began to check in with each individual officer:

"Officer Burke, do you copy? Over."

"Copy that, Sheriff," came the scratchy reply through the speaker. "Will proceed with caution, over."

"Officer Stanborn, do you copy? Over."

"I copy, sir. I'll keep my eyes peeled for the son of a bitch. Over."

"Officer Jones…"

And so it went, on down the list until the Sheriff got to Officer Kelly:

"Officer Kelly, do you copy? Over."

Static silence met Sheriff Hamilton's question. He tried again.

"Officer Kelly, I repeat, do you copy? Over."

Dead air.

"Officer Kelly, please report back, over."

The pause stretched out ten seconds, then fifteen. Lisbon's grip started to tighten around her phone.

The radio crackled suddenly, and Officer Kelly's voice filled the bathroom. "Yeah, I copy, sir – sorry, I was just checkin' something out. Didn't mean to cause alarm. I'll be sure and keep an eye out for a possible armed suspect. Over and out." His thick Texas accent sounded even thicker over the radio than it had on the phone earlier.

The Sheriff put his radio away and Lisbon sighed shakily. At least everyone was accounted for. Everyone except Jane. And Penny Jorsten.

Lisbon remembered that she'd been about to call Rigsby. She pressed "SEND" and brought the phone to her ear.

"Well, I'll have to call off Search and Rescue," said the Sheriff.

Lisbon disconnected her call before it even had a chance to ring. She stared at the Sheriff. "What're you talking about? We need them…"

"That we do, Agent Lisbon, but you know as well as I that we can't send them out with a gunman still on the loose. It'd be like sending a bunch of EMTs into the middle of a shootout. They're unarmed civilians. They'd be sitting ducks."

"Then we need more manpower," Lisbon insisted. "The more cops we have out there looking, the faster we can clear the area for Search and Rescue. Call in every officer you have, and – "

"I already did," he told her. "I've got Michaels and Darby here, working the scene, and the other six are all out searching. That's my whole department…"

Desperation started to rise in Lisbon's chest. It could take hours for anyone else from CBI to get here and help. "That's not enough. We're talking about a twenty-mile stretch of barely-populated road, not to mention the desert. Six deputies will never be able to cover that. Not by themselves. Not in the dark. And we don't even have a clue which direction—" The words suddenly froze inside her throat. Her gaze had fallen on the brown plastic horse.

The little animal looked back at her with shiny black eyes. Somehow, its mouth seemed more up-turned than before. Almost like a smile. A Jane-like smile…

"Agent Lisbon…?"

She met the Sheriff's eye. "I know which way they went."