“So, tell me, why is a four-year-old girl writing in Latin in her closet?” Detective Tennison asked.
Kendra looked at Brett, who just shrugged. They had gone back inside the house, after talking for a few minutes in hushed tones to avoid being overheard by the reporters had grown annoying.
They were in the kitchen now.
“No idea,” Kendra said. A thought came to her. “Religious family? Did they go to church? Whenever I think of Latin, I think of the church.”
Tennison mulled this over.
“No, not that I’m aware of.”
“Some secret, maybe? Any signs of sexual abuse?” Kendra continued.
“No, nothing that the ME could identify.”
“Journals? A diary?”
Brett answered this query.
“She was only four, Kendra.”
Kendra grimaced.
“Yeah, well, four-year-olds don’t usually write in Latin, either.”
Brett held up a hand defensively.
“Hold on a sec. What makes you think she wrote it?”
Tennison nodded.
“Good point; I doubt a four-year-old can even write like that.” He shrugged. “Maybe. Just to be sure, I’ll get one of the uniforms to find some of her schoolwork, compare the writing.”
Kendra turned back to the detective, pushing aside thoughts about the words and instead concentrating on Steph.
“What about her past? Records of problems at daycare? Extended time with an uncle? Stepbrother? The file indicated that Roger was in his late thirties… a grandfather, perhaps?
Tennison shook his head.
“No to any of that… at least as far as the uniforms could dig up. But, here’s the thing: I can’t really find much of a record of the Blacks from anything before about three years ago—before they moved here. This house? Not theirs… they rent. Even their two cars are new leases.”
Kendra made a face, and her eyes darted about the kitchen. It was a modest house, nothing elaborate or extravagant; melamine countertops, snap-and-go cabinets. Not dirty or grungy or poor taste, just nothing too expensive.
“What are you reaching for here, Kendra?”
Kendra ignored Brett’s comment.
“What did the Blacks do for a living?”
Tennison answered without hesitating—at least her instincts had been right about one thing to this point: Detective Tennison was a good detective.
“Roger Black was a scientist—worked as a mid-level manager a couple of counties over for big pharma. Miriam Black worked as a part-time chef at Eagle’s Nest Golf Course.”
Kendra squinted one eye, as was her habit when she fell deep into thought. She stepped around the pile of blood, and headed away from the kitchen toward the family room. It was clear that the eyes of her partner and the detective, as well as that of a uniformed officer—the one I berated yesterday?—were on her, but she didn’t care.
She needed to get away again, to think. Less than a minute later, she was alone, staring at the mantle above the fireplace. There were three pictures in matching gold frames—Mom, Dad, Daughter—but these didn’t interest her. It was the fourth, the crude drawing of a lake or a pond, with what looked like thin sticks or trees poking upward on either side, that kept her attention. On the left hand side, with the proportions all out of whack, stood what looked like three girls, with hands like chicken feet sticking out from brightly colored dresses. There was also some sort of fire by the side of the lake, thin strips of orange and yellow and red, reaching halfway up the page. It was clearly Steph Black’s art from school or daycare, a piece that for whatever reason her parents had thought special enough to frame and put on the mantle.
Kendra felt a strange pang in her gut then, something that she hadn’t felt in a long while. It was so strange, so foreign a sensation, that she actually gulped.
Guilt—I feel guilty.
She blinked once, twice, and then a third time, trying to right herself.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
For a second, she thought maybe it was just a manifestation of self-doubt at having completely struck out with her initial analysis of what had happened here.
This was no normal murder/suicide.
But while this fact was irksome, it wasn’t all that was bothering her. After all, she had been wrong before, of course—every agent had an off day—and yet she never felt like this.
Kendra shook her head and allowed her eyes to defocus as she forced her thoughts back to the case; the facts of the case, not her personal opinions or bizarre inclinations.
Man, late thirties, working as a manager at big pharma. Wife working at a golf course as a chef… she wanted or needed to work?
She had never been to Eagle’s Nest Golf Course, of course, but the fact that it had a chef and not a cook was telling. It wasn’t likely to be a greasy spoon like the one that Brett had met her for breakfast that morning. Which had her leaning toward the former. And Roger was a manager at big pharma… Kendra had been to enough Torrance, West Virginia-type small towns to know that real estate around here was cheap. Dirt cheap. Which also had her leaning toward Miriam wanting to work, as opposed to having to work.
So why the fuck are they renting?
Something just wasn’t adding up.
A thought suddenly struck her, and she hurried back to the kitchen.
“Tennison, you said that Roger Black was a manager at big pharma? He would most likely need a higher degree for that… a Master’s at least. See if you can comb the records, check the local colleges, the ones with research programs—chemistry, biology, pathology, micro—see if you can find a record of Roger Black. If that doesn’t work, keep expanding outward… first statewide, then if you have to, nationwide.”
The past, there is something about their past.
Tennison, who had since taken a small flip pad out of his pocket, started scribbling something down. She admired the man, she realized.
Not many detectives, regardless of age, still wrote freehand. Most used a cell phone or tablet.
But not Detective Tennison.
Her eyes drifted to Cherry, who was giving her a strange look. It was one she had seen many times before, but no matter how many times she saw it, no matter how many years she worked with him—going on seven now—she just couldn’t get used to it.
Cute and charming, but annoying—it annoyed Kendra that he always looked like he was contemplating life while taking a shit.
Before she knew it, her eyes landed on the bloody words on the fridge: You can’t have her.
She nibbled on her lower lip.
Who can’t have her? And what is with mater est, matrem omnium?
A quick Google translate revealed that it loosely translated as mother of one, mother of all.
A lot of help that was.
Mother of all? Mother of Steph Black? It was her mother that killed her?
Kendra took a deep breath.
“You know what? Do a DNA test on the girl, compare it to the parents,” she instructed.
Tennison stopped writing and stared at her through his puffy eyelids.
“You think—”
“Don’t know—just in case.”
The man seemed to contemplate this for a moment.
“I don’t actually think we can do that here—we have a population of only—”
Kendra turned to Brett, and the man’s expression immediately changed from confused to serious. He reached into the back pocket of his pants and pulled out his wallet. Then he removed a white business card.
“Can I borrow your pen?” he asked Tennison, who immediately handed it over. Agent Cherry wrote something on the back and handed both the card and the pen over to the detective.
“Call the man on the back… Agent Grover. Tell him that you are sending some samples for DNA testing. Also, make sure to check the glass of milk for fingerprints, and see what you can find if there is anything else in it.” He appeared to think this over for a moment. “Can you guys do that?”
“In it? What do you mean?”
“Look for sedatives, opiates, anything that shouldn’t be in milk.”
Tennison nodded.
“Yeah, that we can do.”
“My number is on the other side of the card, and you already have Agent Wilson’s, right?”
Tennison said that he did, but a look of confusion crossed his face.
“Wait, you guys are leaving?”
Cherry’s response caught both the detective and Kendra by surprise.
“Leaving in the morning,” he confirmed.
Kendra repeated the words in her head, but they had transformed into a question. Thankfully, Tennison was the one who asked what was on her mind, sparing her the embarrassment of asking it herself.
“Why are you leaving? You just got here…”
“Nothing else we can do for you.” He pointed at the business card. “Call Agent Grover.”
A tired-looking Tennison held up the card to acknowledge that he understood.
“Where’re you going?” he asked in a voice that suggested he wasn’t expecting an answer.
But Brett replied, and quickly.
“To find a missing girl.”
Kendra walked over to the detective and shook his hand. His grip wasn’t nearly as strong as it had been when they had met yesterday.
As she and Brett turned to leave the house, her eyes fell on the words on the fridge again.
“I have a dozen reporters outside, what do I tell them?” Tennison asked from behind them.
This time, no answer was forthcoming.
You can’t have her.
Kendra shook her head.
Who is you?
What’s with the milk?
And why the fuck is a four-year old writing those words in Latin?