Laura had provided Henry Aggrawal with photographs of the children from the files, and the Gainesville anthropological center had done a computer reconstruction of the boy’s face using the intact skull. The reconstruction matched the photo of Devon Creighton. I stayed behind in the conference room after everyone else left to read the full report. But I discovered something was missing, and it wasn’t just that McClay had interrupted the description of the condition of the second body. I called Aggrawal and asked about the other child.
“That’s all there was,” he said. “Everything is in the report.”
“But there were three children.”
“There were only two at this site. The third must have been buried somewhere else. It’s all in the report.”
“I can see that.”
He started to hang up, but I stopped him. “Wait a sec. The bodies you did find. What ages would you put them at, again?”
“They were both eight to eleven.” He sighed audibly. “Like the report says.”
I looked at the photograph with the three children that had been used in the aging. “Henry, would you do me a quick favor?” I asked him to do a simple computer aging on the oldest child, who was maybe about ten years old when the picture he had was taken. “That ten-year-old would have been around fourteen at the time of the crime. So age her … seventeen years.”
I heard something in the close background, like he was doing something else while he was talking to me. His patience was wearing thin. He said, “Don’t you people ever talk?”
“What, who else asked you to do this?”
“Laura Coleman, the agent who was there with you when the remains were found. She’s been calling the whole time we were assessing the remains. She already asked for the same thing.”
“Okay, what was the result?”
“Result? Some woman. I just did what she wanted and sent it on. I assumed she’d share it with y’all. Ask her, I’m late to class. And figure out who’s in charge, for cripes sake.”
What was Laura doing? Now I was getting mad. Sure, I may have killed someone on impulse and felt good about it. But I’d never plotted it, never descended on someone out of cold vengeance. That makes a difference. I needed to go after Laura Coleman myself, and I still had so much doubt of Laura’s guilt that I went to Todd’s office and told him where we were going.
* * *
On the way over to Laura’s I filled Todd in on what I knew. That Laura had been in touch with Aggrawal the way I had about only finding two bodies at the site. That she had beat me to it. And that when I asked Aggrawal to age all the photos, he told me Laura had already asked him to do that.
“Sounds like she’s conducting her own investigation,” Todd said.
“Just stick with me in this, little brother.”
Laura’s car wasn’t in its parking spot, but you never knew. She didn’t answer the door, and that breaking-in business was getting to be typical of our visitations. I’d taken one of her keys, so I didn’t have to break in this time. Besides, second-floor with front entrance and a large kitchen window—I would have made more of a mess and possibly been spotted.
She wasn’t just being inhospitable, she wasn’t home. I looked around quickly and saw the unrepaired hole in the wall where she threw the medicine ball, and Marcus Creighton’s personal effects still littering her desk in a very un-Laura-like mess. I pointed it out to Todd, who went over and picked through it. “There’s a letter here,” he said.
“The one Alison Samuels wrote to Creighton,” I said without looking. “Laura has probably read it a dozen times and gotten madder and madder.”
“This letter isn’t to Marcus Creighton,” he said. He wandered in the direction of Coleman’s bedroom.
“Where are you going?”
“I got cause here,” he said.
I turned to look closer at the letter and saw that it wasn’t typed like Alison’s letter to Creighton, it was handwritten. On top of that, it had been torn up into small pieces and was taped back together. I remembered what Wally said about finding some “bits and pieces of stuff” under his bed and putting them into the box with the rest of the effects. It was my guess that Creighton must have ripped it up himself and Laura pieced it together. I read, Dear Kirsten.
In denial to the last, I thought. But then I was distracted by the photographs lying next to it. Hopefully the photographs I had come to find.
There were the photographs of the exploited child Alison Samuels had found on the Internet, and the photograph of the same child aged in reverse to about eight years.
The other photograph showed the three children from Creighton’s album, the one on the boat, that must have been taken a few years before the murders.
A final photograph was the one Laura must have requested from Henry Aggrawal. It took the boat photo and aged all three children about sixteen years. The photo showed Sara and Devon, the eight-year-old twins, as they would have looked upon graduation from college.
And there, at approximately age thirty, with longer hair and brown eyes, was Alison Samuels.
Todd came back into the room with a Victoria’s Secret gift box. The pink satin ribbon used to tie it was untied.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“It’s either perfume or where she hides her vibrator,” I said, covering the quaver in my voice with a joke.
“Neither,” he said, and opened it to reveal a very unladylike collection I’d seen before: pepper spray, rape whistles, a set of brass knuckles, and … wait for it … the stun gun.
“Well?” he asked.
“Coleman is really big into self-defense,” I said. I opened the desk drawer where the stuff had been before. She had moved it all to a safer hiding place. But her gun was neither in the drawer nor in the box. I took my cell phone out of my tote bag.
“Who are you calling?” Todd asked.
“Alison Samuels,” I said, showing him the photo. “This just got more complicated.”
“Why did Coleman have this photo?” he asked.
“Because Alison Samuels is Kirsten Creighton.” I stopped denying that Laura Coleman might have gotten herself into trouble and shifted into protecting whoever might get in her way. I heard Alison’s phone ringing and her voice telling me to leave a message. “Dammit, doesn’t anyone answer their phone anymore? Why carry a cell phone if you’re not going to answer it?”
I snapped my phone shut and picked up the Dear Kirsten letter. “Marcus knew it. He knew it all along, but he never told anyone. Not even Alison Samuels. Maybe this says why.”
I dialed another number. “Hey, Frank. Thanks for sending that report on the print ID so quickly. Yeah? Yeah? I figured. Thanks.”
I turned to Todd. “Let’s go.”
“I’m a little confused,” he said. “Where are we going and who are we going after, Laura Coleman, Alison Samuels, or Erroll Murry?”
“I think all of them,” I said. “Puccio was employed by Will Hench, so he sent that print ID to him first. Will Hench would have called Laura immediately. And because your Captain McClay leaked the news and also because Alison gets police broadcasts, I imagine they’ll both be going to the same place.”
Now it was Todd’s turn to take out his cell phone. I asked him who he was calling. When he told me, I said, “Sometimes backup is good and sometimes it gets people killed. Trust me on this, would you?”
“Protocol,” he said.
“I know, I know. But right now we don’t know why we’re calling backup or even where to direct them. I think it’s a strong possibility that Alison has found out about Erroll Murry and has gone to Vero for a confrontation.”
“I can’t picture Alison Samuels hurting a fly.”
“Maybe not. Maybe Kirsten Creighton would.”
“Where does Laura Coleman fit into all this?”
“To tell you the truth, I’m not positive anymore who Laura is after or why. Let’s see if Alison is home before we do anything else.”
We got back in his car and headed out, passing by Alison’s house again to see if her car was still there. It was not.
“Vero?” Todd said. “I got the location at the briefing.”
“Yup,” I said. “I’ll tell you what I know for sure and what I’m thinking on the way.”