Who was this guy, and what was he doing? The Watcher had seen him twice now, and had gotten a bad feeling both times. He looked too sharp, and everything about him screamed cop. The last thing he needed right now was some kind of investigator getting close to him. First they’d ruined his garden and now there had been an article buried back in the paper about a skeleton being identified as a kid who’d gone missing seven years ago.
The Watcher felt like pacing, but right now he couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself, especially not with this guy around. It was bad enough that woman from the crime lab was nosing around. Now she had some kind of investigator working for her, and they’d gotten way too close to suit him. He was having a hard time controlling the urges now, and the girls were getting bolder. Yesterday one of them had stared at him as if daring him to take her on. Soon, he thought. It’s going to happen soon. Now, what could he do to get these two nuisances out of the way first?
Whatever idea he came up with, it would have to be subtle and quiet. His life right now was set up the way he liked it. He had a decent job, relationships he was happy with, and he didn’t want to mess that up. As long as the girls stopped staring at him he’d be okay.
“You were right,” Josh said in a near whisper. Kyra nudged him with her elbow, making him stop talking before the beaming clinic manager got close enough to hear him.
He hadn’t believed her when she’d told him what to take to the clinic as a present if he wanted the manager to smile at him. “Paper towels? I was thinking a rose, or coffee, or chocolate or something.”
“Trust me on this one,” she’d told him. “Clinics that run on a shoestring never have enough supplies of any kind. Coffee won’t thrill her nearly as much as a box of file folders or the paper goods they most likely go through with lightning speed.” His wary look last night had told her that he didn’t think she was right, but when they’d gotten in his car this morning, there was a twenty-four-roll pack of paper towels in the backseat.
“Bringing gifts and right on time,” the manager said, sitting down at her desk and not looking at all like the unhappy person Josh had described yesterday. Kyra tried mightily not to look smug, merely smiling back at the woman and not even thinking I told you so.
“Gifts and my boss,” Josh said, rising to greet the clinic manager. “This is Dr. Elliott from the state forensics lab. She’s the one who is in charge of the department that’s identified Gen and Serita.”
“Were you the clinic manager that long ago, Ms. Underwood?” Kyra was pretty sure of what the woman’s answer would be, but part of it caught her off guard, anyway.
“Not the manager, but I did work here,” she said as they all sat down in the chairs around her battered desk. “I’m an RN, and back then I was running parenting classes and some other programs. I remember Gen and her son. I was so surprised when she stopped coming to the clinic because she really seemed to care about that child.”
“She did,” Kyra said, feeling sorrow creep up on her. She willed herself not to cry and instead focused on the metal surface of the desk.
“I would think there would be a high turnover in a clinic,” Josh said, saving her from showing how choked her voice had become. “Besides you, are there any employees that have stayed that long?”
“Dr. Perry has been here for ten years. I think he’s planned on retiring the whole time and just can’t bring himself to do it, because he knows how hard we’ll have to look to replace him. And the ultrasound and X-ray clinician, Ramon Garcia, has been with us that long, I think.”
Kyra saw Josh lean forward just a little, and his eyes lit up. He’d told her last night about his feelings regarding the man he pointed out in the lobby when they arrived this morning. Kyra tried to keep her own opinions to herself, but if Josh pressed her she’d be forced to admit that there seemed to be something a little “off” about the man.
“Would I have seen Mr. Garcia in the waiting room yesterday?”
“Probably. We don’t have enough staff to give him someone to call his patients in for testing, so he does that himself.” Ms. Underwood looked down at the file folder she had brought to the desk with her when she met them. “But you were asking last night about these five women. I can’t tell you much, but I do have some information for you.”
“We’ll be happy to take what you can give us.” Now Kyra was the one leaning forward, praying silently that maybe now they could identify the third victim.
“I found something on three of them. I’m afraid that in one case it isn’t good news, but it removed Amy from your possible victims. Apparently she committed suicide five years ago.”
Kyra’s heart sank. “I’m sorry to hear that. And the other two?”
“Better, at least a little bit. Maria turned up in Texas under a different name and Jade was referred by our clinic to a battered woman’s shelter just three years ago. So that leaves two of your original five still unaccounted for.”
“And both of these two were in the foster care system at the time of their disappearance,” Josh said, a rising note in his voice. “Thank you, Ms. Underwood. You’ve been very helpful.”
The woman seemed to do a slight double take. “You’re welcome. Does this mean you’re not going to press me for information on these two?” She held out the information sheets on the remaining young women.
“If we need to, we can get a warrant so that you won’t be in a compromising situation,” Josh said. “You’ve done what you can legally and I truly appreciate it. Why should I push it?”
Ms. Underwood looked over at Kyra. “Yesterday Mr. Richards told me he was from the FBI. Was he putting me on? I’ve never met a federal agent even halfway this pleasant.”
“He’s a rarity,” Kyra said. As she got to know Josh more with every passing week, she was discovering just how unusual he really was. And in almost every way, unusual was good. On the way back to the office she wanted to find a way to tell him, but she couldn’t think of a way that sounded right with somebody that they had both agreed was just a colleague, a friend.
“I still don’t like the way Garcia looks at his patients,” Josh said at a stoplight. “But that’s not enough to check to see if he has a record.”
Kyra sighed. She didn’t want to admit that she wasn’t all that fond of the technician’s expression, either. “No, it isn’t. And we have work to do to see if the bones we’re calling Abigail could be either of those missing young women.”
Josh grimaced. “I don’t know whether to hope that it is or that it isn’t. The truth is that those bones belong to someone, and if we know who she is, she’ll eventually get a decent burial and any family she might have will know what happened to her.”
Kyra sat back in her seat, even more surprised than she was in the clinic manager’s office. This was a whole different attitude than Joshua would have expressed a few weeks ago. She breathed a silent prayer of thanks as they pulled into the parking lot of the lab and she got ready to go to work.
Several times in the next few days Josh surprised her with his compassionate attitude. There was still no definitive piece of evidence that told them who the last body belonged to. What they did have pointed to the girl either being Lisa Phipps or Nikki Carter. One had been thirteen when she disappeared, the other fifteen. After more than seven years there was little left of either child’s existence to try to figure out which one it might be.
Kyra looked at the information they had on the two, searching one more time to see what they could have missed. One thing nagged at her from the information sheets—what was it? Both had gone to the medical clinic she and Josh had checked out. Each had disappeared while they were still in the foster care system. Lisa had a father living at the time of her disappearance, but he’d been in state prison serving time for killing her mother. Nikki had been in foster care since shortly after her eighth birthday, bouncing through several placements.
Nikki’s longest stay was at the group home where Marta lived right now. Kyra tried to think about what the girls had said about the home on their last movie date. In a few moments it came to her; the group home parents, Diana and Gary Griffith were still the same ones who’d been there seven years ago and even a few years earlier than that. Marta had said Diana was “okay,” which was grudging praise for her.
Kyra wondered if Diana was the kind of foster parent who saved something from every child whose life she shared. If Kyra was fortunate, she would be. It wouldn’t take much to say whether or not their missing girl was Nikki. “Time for another trip out in the field,” she told Josh as she entered her office. “This time I want to be the one who gets the last piece of the puzzle.”
“Fine with me,” Josh said. “As long as I don’t have to work with bones while you’re out investigating, I’m good.”
“Don’t worry, I wouldn’t do that to you,” Kyra said, suppressing the laugh that threatened at the mental image of Josh in the lab. “In fact, why don’t I give you the information on Lisa’s father and have you and Terry go out to the state prison where he’s housed and collect a sample so that we can clear the identity of this body one way or another?”
“Okay. Where are we going?” Josh didn’t look thrilled, but he wasn’t arguing, either.
Kyra looked down at her information. “Cumberland. It’s about a hundred-and-twenty-five miles from here. If you two get going in the next hour, you can be back here before rush hour this evening.”
“Great. Do you want to tell Terry or shall I?”
“I’ll do it,” Kyra said. She wondered what on earth the two men would talk about for six hours or more together in a car. Maybe, she hoped, they would find a shared interest in the same kind of music, or sports radio or something. In any case, she’d picked the best assignment for herself this time.
“She’d be twenty-one now.” Nate Phipps spoke quietly, more thoughtful than Josh expected him to be. He had the pallor of someone who’d spent nearly fifteen years in a maximum-security prison, and the physique of a man who spent many hours working out. His short hair was sprinkled with gray that Josh knew hadn’t been there when he started his sentence, and there were creases around his eyes that had never come from smiling.
“Who, your daughter?” Terry said, storing the buccal swab in its tube after swabbing the inside of Phipps’s cheek and carefully labeling it before storing everything in a heavy plastic zipper bag.
“Yeah, Lisa. She was five when I went in here. I wouldn’t be able to recognize her today if she walked by. And don’t call her my daughter. That’s what me and Dani fought about.”
Josh couldn’t believe that the man could sit here that calmly and discuss his wife’s murder, even if it had happened so many years before. It explained why Phipps hadn’t argued any about giving them his DNA; he didn’t think it would tell them anything even if the bones they had were Lisa’s.
“So you didn’t think she was yours?” Josh tried not to let the contempt show in his voice. Apparently he didn’t do a very good job of it if the man’s expression was any indication. Twin grooves furrowed his heavy brows as he scowled.
“No, I didn’t think she was mine. She didn’t look anything like my family. Even the women in my family are big-boned, strong with dark hair. Lisa, she looked just like her mother, a little thing with pale hair. And she was sick all the time.”
Josh could see Terry open his mouth as if he was going to argue with the prisoner. He shot the technician a look to try to tell him to let the subject alone. Either Terry understood him or he came to the same conclusion on his own, because he shrugged but stayed silent. “We’ll let you know what we find out in a couple of weeks, Mr. Phipps,” Josh told him.
“I already know what you’re going to find,” the con said in a flat voice. “No matter what, that isn’t my kid down in Pikesville. End of story.” He must have meant what he said, because even though the man was shackled to the metal table in the small room, Josh could see Phipps try to get up to signal the guard.
“We can do that for you,” Terry said, his lips pressed in a thin, cold line. He seemed to want to get out of the prisoner’s presence even more quickly than Phipps wanted to leave them. Josh knocked on the door and they exited, letting the guard know that Phipps wanted to go back to his cell.
“Guys like that leave a bad taste in my mouth,” Terry said later in the prison’s parking lot. “How about we pick up some food for the road, and a strong coffee? It’s another two or three hours back to the lab.”
“Sure.” Josh didn’t know what else to say. He wasn’t all that hungry, but the idea of coffee sounded good. Besides, he needed something to keep him awake on the trip other than Terry’s chatter. One more sentence about fantasy sports leagues and he’d be tempted to leave the tech by the side of the road.
When he got back to the lab, he tried to slip in quietly and do what he needed to do without having to talk to anybody, but it didn’t work. Kyra sat at her desk, musing over something on the desk.
“Hi,” she said, looking up. “I hate to even ask how your trip was.”
“I look that good, huh?” Josh felt impressed by her insight from just one look at him.
“Hey, I sent you to the state prison. That in itself can’t be good. And I have to think that Phipps wasn’t just a swell guy or he wouldn’t be in there.”
“Was your afternoon better?”
“I think so. Diane is the best kind of foster parent. She has something of every kid that’s ever been with them, both in her heart and with a few real mementos as well.”
“So she kept things from Nikki, then?”
“Yes. More than usual because she said Nikki was special somehow. She left hurriedly to go someplace else, and left a lot of her stuff behind.”
When Kyra looked up at him, her eyes were moist with tears. “Diane called it a lot of stuff, but it was a pretty small pile to represent all of somebody’s worldly goods. We got lucky, though. One of the things she left was a hairbrush.” She held up a clear bag with a pink plastic brush. “It was in a shoe box, protected all this time. We should be able to extract enough DNA from the hair to see if it’s Nikki on the gurney.”
“Good. According to Phipps, we won’t find out anything from his DNA. He claims to be sure that Lisa wasn’t his daughter.”
“Ouch. Is that what made you look beat up around the edges?”
The words were on the tip of his tongue to deny what Kyra said, but Josh stopped himself, thinking. “Yes, I think it is. Hearing him say that just brought back bad memories from my own childhood. After my dad died when I was ten, I spent five years hearing what a rotten human being people thought he was.”
He took a deep, ragged breath, feeling the story come out of him like something rushing out of a cage. “My mother moved us away from Chicago back to her hometown where nobody had heard about all the allegations against him, how he’d been a corrupt U.S. marshal who’d killed himself in disgrace. I never thought it was true, but if I dared say that, we’d get into arguments that would last for hours.”
“Last week you told me your mom killed herself because she couldn’t live with the shame of something. Was this why?”
Josh felt tears sting behind his eyelids, and looked down at the floor while he nodded. “Somehow, Chrissie, my sister, always blamed me for her death. She said if I hadn’t brought our father’s name up so often, she wouldn’t have been reminded. I sent Chrissie everything once the people who framed my father for their own crimes had been arrested and convicted. I thought maybe she’d call me or write me and apologize or something.”
“Didn’t she say anything?” Kyra’s voice sounded small and surprised. Josh wasn’t sure when she’d gotten up out of her chair to come and stand beside him. Now she put a hand on his arm. He didn’t push her away.
“I got a birthday card two months later. And at Christmas the same photo card as usual, she and her perfect family all dressed up in their red-and-green plaid, even a bow of it on the dog. No note, just the card.”
“Awww…” Kyra said, the tone in her voice saying more than a full sentence would have. Her arms were around him and she leaned against him. Josh buried his face in her dark auburn hair, trying to memorize the earthy floral scent of her shampoo. She felt so good, so accepting, and he wondered if this was anything like how God’s love felt to Kyra. It if was, he could see why she was so calm and peaceful most of the time.
“Can you teach me how to do that?” he asked, his voice cracking slightly.
“Do what?” Her eyes held puzzlement.
“Love somebody, act as if you don’t care who they are or what they’ve done but still love them, anyway?”
She looked up at him, seeming to search his face for several long moments. “I can try,” she told him. “But I’m pretty sure it’s a God thing. Think you can handle that?”
He leaned farther into her embrace, the wonderful scent of her. “Let’s see. All I know is that I want what you’ve got, and if that comes from God then maybe I’ll have to get to know God, better.”
As Josh said the words he felt something inside him dissolve. As they stood there in the office he was aware of tears on his cheeks, but he didn’t mind. The peace and acceptance that washed over him made everything else seem of little importance.
“Well, first you need to say thank-you,” Kyra told him, still holding on to him. “After that, we can work on other stuff, but for me at least, once you can say thank-you almost everything else gets easier by comparison.”
Somehow they ended up in chairs in the family waiting room for more than an hour, Josh never letting go of Kyra’s hand. Holding on to her as if she were a lifeline, Josh listened while she told him a story. It was the story, the only story that mattered, full of love and forgiveness, and by the end it sounded so simple Josh couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t really heard it like this years before.
But that didn’t matter because he’d heard it now, and in his heart Josh knew that nothing in his life would ever be quite the same again.