Her tone was sweet, curious even, yet her questions were precise… sharp. He knew what she was hinting at. “We are certainly exploring some ritual aspect to the case.”

“By we, you mean you and your one deputy?” She did this thing where she looked at her notes before she fired a shot across the desk.

Yes, he thought, they were a small police force. Just the two of them. “And help from the Virginia State Police.” He played with a frayed hem on his uniform so his hands had something to do. Inside, he was steaming. They were a small force, but they weren’t inept. He could see the outline of her article forming. “Would you like some coffee, Ms. Hixson?”

“No, thank you,” she replied. “Yes, the Virginia State Police.” She was thumbing through her notes. “Yes, here it is. Todd Sutton’s car—the 1976 Ford Mustang. According to them, it was wiped by a professional. You don’t think that’s strange?” She looked up at him.

He leaned forward, smiling again and hating himself for smiling. “May I ask where you got that information?” Behind his calm exterior, Ben was seething. There had been no prints of any kind found in or on the car. It had been wiped clean. Not just wiped; the state police admitted that the lab hadn’t seen anything like it. No fiber, hair, or DNA of any kind. That information was supposed to be confidential. How did this woman find it?

“You may.” She smiled. “I have my sources.”

Of course. “Then you also know that the state police thought it was a professional job.” At this point, since she knew what was found in the car, it didn’t matter. “By professional, they meant it could have been some type of hit, but they couldn’t rule out that Sutton himself just wiped the car clean and fled. After all, he did restore cars for a living. In the end, the state police’s report was inconclusive, but like I said, you know this already.”

“You don’t agree?”

He ignored her question. “The conclusion from them is that people sometimes simply disappear. Often there are underlying issues that you didn’t know about.”

“Drugs?” So, she had read the notes from the state police.

“Yes. If he had gotten in bad with the wrong people—owed them money, perhaps—then they’d send professionals… that could explain the car.”

“But you don’t believe that?”

“No,” he said. “I do not believe that Todd Sutton was cooking up anything in his garage.” Privately, Ben agreed with the state police that there was a logical explanation for these disappearances. It just required good, old-fashioned police work to solve it.

“But it doesn’t explain the other case. Was that car wiped clean as well?”