by Ragan, T. R.
Sawyer put Aria on hold and picked up the call. “Hi. What’s going on?”
“You left me a text saying that you and your sister wanted to meet. If you give me your address, I’ll come to you since I have an hour before school. Is now a good time?”
“Now is perfect,” Sawyer said, trying to sound like she meant it. Sawyer rattled off her address and said goodbye before reconnecting with Aria. “Are you still there?” she asked Aria.
“I’m here. What did Paige want?”
“She’s coming over right now, but she only has an hour. Do we have all the yearbooks?”
“Most of them are in your living room, and I have one in my car. I’ll skip the coffee and doughnuts and be there soon.”
Sawyer got out of bed, slipped on a robe, and made her way into the main room where she picked up the remote and turned on the TV. The kitchen was her next stop. She needed coffee. Once she spruced up the place a bit and had a mug of hot brew in hand, there was a knock on the door. Sawyer peeked out the window, saw Paige, and invited her in.
“Have a seat,” Sawyer said. “Do you drink coffee?”
“I do, but I’m good.”
Sawyer took a swallow before placing her mug on a side table, then grabbed the pile of yearbooks and set them on the table in front of Paige.
“What are these?”
“My sister Aria and I—she’s on her way—decided we needed to focus our search and concentrate on schools and bus stops. So we’ve been gathering yearbooks from schools that the missing girls attended in hopes that you might recognize a teacher or a staff member.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Paige said.
“Exactly. And it shouldn’t take long since these aren’t high schools with two thousand students.” She picked up one of the yearbooks, opened it, and counted the number of administration and staff members. “Let’s start with the elementary school yearbooks first. This one has forty-five staff members, which includes the principal, librarian, office staff, and teachers.”
Aria arrived two minutes later with another yearbook. She introduced herself to Paige and then took a seat next to the girl, watching closely as Paige examined each picture.
Sawyer inwardly groaned when she saw Nurse Amy on the news as she arrived at Crossroads Elementary School.
Aria looked at the TV. “Yeah, they’ve been running a video clip of that same scene all morning.”
Sawyer watched Nurse Amy step out of her SUV. She was immediately swarmed by a mob of reporters with microphones. She didn’t try to run from the press. Instead, she waited for everyone to gather around before saying, “I’m going to sue the Sacramento Police Department for misconduct and emotional distress. I will not allow authorities to barge into my house and attempt to ruin my exemplary reputation.”
Behind Nurse Amy, a car pulled into the parking lot. Sawyer recognized the woman who climbed out as the lady who worked the front office. Sawyer watched the woman walk at a good clipped pace across the parking lot. As she passed by the chaos surrounding Nurse Amy, she glanced at the camera. Sawyer hit the “Pause” button on the remote so she could go to the bathroom.
“Take your time,” she heard Aria tell Paige as she walked away.
“I see the woman every night in my mind,” Paige told Aria. “If her picture is here somewhere, I’ll know her when I see her.”
Sawyer admired her confidence. When she returned to the living room a few minutes later, Sawyer recognized the cover of the yearbook in Aria’s lap. “Is that Ella’s yearbook?”
“Yes. I got it from her the other day. I figured we might as well collect as many as possible from within our fifteen-mile radius.”
When Sawyer glanced at Paige, she noticed a terrified expression on her face. Sawyer followed her gaze to the image frozen on the TV screen.
“That’s the sweater I told you about,” Paige said.
Sawyer looked closer. The woman’s button-down sweater was red with little black polka dots. “Are those ladybugs?”
“What are you two talking about?” Aria asked.
“She’s dyed her hair,” Paige said. “But that’s her.”
Sawyer’s adrenaline spiked. She looked at Paige. “You’re absolutely certain?”
“Two hundred percent.”
Aria was catching on, and she opened Ella’s yearbook and flipped through the pictures of staff members. “The woman on the TV screen is right here,” Aria said.
Paige glanced at the picture and nodded. She pushed off the couch to her feet, every part of her trembling. “I need to go home and be with my mom.”
“Go,” Sawyer said. “I’ll talk to the police, but they might need to talk to you.”
“I understand. Mom will understand too.” Paige looked at Sawyer, her eyes watery. “She needs to be stopped.”
“I know,” Sawyer said. “I know.” She couldn’t believe what was happening. Excitement swooshed through her. This could be the person she’d been looking for. Turning toward the wall with all the pushpins and notes and string outlining the bus routes, she recalled the strange vibe the woman had given off the day Sawyer had picked Ella up from school. The look the woman had shot her way had been strange and intense. Sawyer thought about the envelope left on her doorstep and the slashed tire.
“Her name is Melony Pershing,” Aria said, jabbing her finger at the picture in the yearbook.
“We need to do this right,” Sawyer said. “We need to find out who Melony Pershing is. I’m going to grab my laptop.”
Five minutes later they were both clacking away on their keyboards.
“She’s not on social media,” Aria said. “Don’t you have access to a bunch of database providers through your work?”
“Give me a minute.” Sawyer logged in, relieved that her account hadn’t been blocked. If she had been suspended, she wouldn’t have been able to log on. It didn’t take long to find what she was looking for. “Melony Pershing is in her forties, single, and she lives on 1624 Brace Way off Higgins Road in West Sacramento.”
“I think we should go to her house and at least knock on the door,” Aria said.
“No,” Sawyer said. “If I can’t give Perez probable cause, there’s no way he or anyone else will be able to set foot in Melony Pershing’s house, especially with Amy Lennox all over the news threatening to sue.”
“Paige Owens just identified Melony Pershing as the woman who tried to abduct her five years ago. I don’t understand why that’s not enough.”
“It might be enough to get a uniformed police officer to go to her house and talk to her, but it won’t be enough to get a warrant.” She kept typing, logging in to another database. “Bingo.”
“What did you find?”
Sawyer read aloud. “Melony Pershing changed her name after she moved to Sacramento. Her birth name is Deena Thatcher, and she was born in 1972. Her father died when she was three, and her mother passed away after falling down a flight of stairs. Deena attended North Central University, married Frank Finlay in 1995, and gave birth to Molly Finlay in 1998.” Sawyer looked at Aria. “Molly. Nurse Amy bought a dress for a child named Molly, and Paige said the woman who tried to grab her called out Molly or Holly.”
“What else does it say?”
“That Frank and Molly Finlay currently live in Minnesota, where Frank works as a Billing Representative at UnitedHealth Group in Hopkins, Minnesota.” There were addresses and phone numbers. Sawyer set her laptop aside and grabbed her phone. “I’m going to call him.”
Aria looked at the time. “I can’t believe I have to go to work.”
“You should go. I’ll keep you updated.”
“Call me if you need me. I’ll try to get someone to cover for me.”
After Aria left, Sawyer called Frank Finlay’s work number. She was feeling impatient, exactly what Palmer had said was one of her flaws. He might be happy to know that her confidence had taken a beating. She needed to be thorough. But she also needed to work quickly. Even if this was the same
woman who had attempted to kidnap Paige, that didn’t mean she had abducted Riley Addison.
“Frank Finlay speaking. How can I help you?”
“Hello,” she said, trying to calm her nerves. “My name is Sawyer Brooks. I’m an investigative reporter with the Sacramento Independent, and I need to talk to you about Deena Finlay.”
A long bout of silence was followed by, “What do you need to know?”
“I’d like to send you a picture via text to see if you can identify a person by the name of Melony Pershing.”
“Okay,” he said.
Sawyer used her phone to take a snapshot of Melony Pershing’s picture from Ella’s yearbook, then emailed it to him.
“That’s Deena, my ex-wife. Looks like she dyed her hair. What has she done now?”
“She’s been connected to the attempted kidnapping of a young girl.”
She heard a deep intake of breath and then silence before he asked, “What else do you need to know?”
“Everything you can tell me about your ex-wife.”
“We met at North Central University in Minneapolis. Deena worked at the bookstore. She was the smartest and the sweetest girl I’d ever met,” Frank said. “I’m going to give you the condensed version. Does that work?”
“That would be perfect.”
“After we married it was as if a light switch had been turned on because suddenly all Deena talked about was having a baby.” He paused. “Unfortunately for us it wasn’t that easy. Fertility treatments are expensive. It cost us our savings and our sanity, but three years later, Deena was pregnant. In 1998, our daughter, Molly, was born.”
Sawyer had put him on speakerphone and took notes as he talked.
“We tried to have more children,” Frank said, “but the years passed quickly and we couldn’t afford to do the same procedure as before. Molly was about three or four when Deena became paranoid and possessive of Molly and me.”
“How so?” Sawyer asked.
“She thought I was having an affair. I couldn’t talk to family or friends without Deena accusing me of talking to a mistress who didn’t exist. She didn’t like Molly being away from her, so she began to homeschool our daughter. The poor girl was with her mom 24-7.”
“Did Molly have friends her age?”
“No. By the time Molly was ten, Deena wouldn’t let her out of her sight. If Molly talked back or didn’t keep her room pristine, she wasn’t allowed to talk to her friends on the phone. Deena wanted full control of both our lives. Tired of Deena’s paranoia, I began working long hours. Everything changed, though, when Deena accused me of having an affair with a woman at work. I called her insane, and she slapped me across the face. That was the first time I can remember her becoming violent. She started hitting Molly too, so I divorced her and went to court to get full custody of Molly.”
He stopped when someone, possibly a coworker, opened the door and said a few words.
“I have to go in a few minutes, so I’ll talk fast.”
“Okay,” Sawyer said. “I’m listening.”
“Molly has always been an exceptionally smart child. She knew there was a chance the judge wouldn’t believe me, so she used my cell phone to record her mother in action: locking Molly in closets, hitting Molly with a hairbrush, and purposely burning her with a curling iron. All that and the judge still gave Deena a chance to have visiting rights if she agreed to go to counseling.”
“Did she agree?”
“No. She was angry. She began to leave dead animals in my car and in the mailbox. I noticed her following me and my daughter to and from school. I didn’t know for sure, but I sensed that if I didn’t do something, Deena might try to kidnap Molly, and that scared me more than anything.”
“Did you get a restraining order?”
“Yes. The papers were served. I filed the proof of service and waited. On the date of the court hearing, Deena didn’t show up.”
“So that’s when Deena moved to Sacramento,” Sawyer stated.
“Is that where she is?”
“Yes. As far as I can tell, she changed her name to Melony Pershing and moved to Sacramento in 2009.”
“Sounds about right,” he said. “I have to go, but if there’s anything else, feel free to text me, and I’ll get back to you when I can.”
After the call ended Sawyer logged in to the database where she’d found the most information on Melony and began piecing it all together. Melony’s first job after moving from Minnesota was a secretarial position at Silver Valley School in Elk Grove where she worked from 2010 to 2015. That was the school Cora O’Neal had attended.
Breathless, trying not to get ahead of herself, Sawyer got up to look through the yearbooks. The Silver Valley School yearbook was dated 2014, one year before Cora disappeared. The staff members’ pictures were close to the front. Melony Pershing’s name was listed in the margin to the left of the page, but there was no picture.
In 2015 she got her California Substitute Teaching License and began working as a substitute teacher. Deena got a full-time job in the front office of Crossroads Elementary in Sacramento, Ella’s school, less than a year ago.
Another interesting tidbit was that Molly Finlay was ten years old when her parents divorced and eleven when her mother left.
It was time to talk to Palmer.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Sawyer drove to work, relieved when she was able to walk into the building without being questioned by security. She kept her head down as she made her way to Palmer’s office. His Jeep was parked out front, so she knew he was here. She also knew he wouldn’t be pleased to see her.
His door was shut. She knocked, then walked in without waiting to be invited inside.
The look on his face said it all—hard, flinty eyes and a vein in his forehead that became engorged when he was upset. He dropped the pen in his grasp, clasped his hands together, and said in a controlled and steady voice, “I thought I told you to take some time off.”
She held up the manila file in her hand. “It couldn’t wait.”
“Of course it couldn’t.”
She slid the file across the desk next to a stack of papers in front of him.
He didn’t make a move to open the file. “You look like shit.”
“I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“That makes two of us.”
She sat down in her usual seat in front of his desk and said, “I believe I know who took Riley Addison.”
“Jesus, Sawyer.” He rubbed his fingers across his forehead. “You’ve got to stop this. It ends now. Don’t make me say or do something I’ll regret later.”
Her phone vibrated for the second time since she’d walked into Palmer’s office. She ignored it. “Go ahead and fire me,” she told Palmer. “I don’t care. If you don’t want to come with me, that’s fine. Because it won’t stop me.” She breathed in through her nose, trying to collect herself. “What if I’m right this time, and Riley Addison is alive, hidden away inside a lunatic’s house? I don’t think you want to go through the rest of your life knowing you could have done something but chose not to.”
His face reddened. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I have work to do.”
“These are the moments that define us, Palmer. It’s not about winning some stupid award,” she said. “It’s not about sitting at a desk and finding ways to inform the public. It’s about moments like this . . . right here, right now. We might be able to help one little girl.” She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to get rid of the image in her head of her friend Rebecca pounding on the cement walls in the crawl space under her feet. She opened her eyes and sucked in a breath of air. “What if it’s not too late?”
Palmer picked up his pen and looked at a stack of papers piled in front of him as if he were going to go back to working on whatever he was doing when she’d interrupted him.
She sat there and watched him to see what his next move might be. Palmer was the kind of person who needed to let things
settle before he made a decision.
“What proof do you have this time?” he asked. “Or is this another one of your hunches?”
“It’s both. It’s always both, Palmer. You know that. That dress Nurse Amy bought—”
Palmer groaned. “The dress again? Really?”
“Hear me out,” she said. “Nurse Amy bought the dress for a friend’s daughter named Molly.”
He sighed.
“The friend works at Crossroads Elementary school and goes by the name Melony Pershing,” Sawyer went on. “Paige Owens said that the woman who nearly abducted her called out the name Holly or Molly when she ran.”
“It’s not enough,” Palmer said. “Not even by a long shot.”
“I’m not finished. Melony Pershing isn’t even her real name. Her ex-husband was afraid she was going to take their daughter, so he got a restraining order. That’s when she changed her name and moved to Sacramento. She was working at Silver Valley in Elk Grove, the school Cora O’Neal attended. She then got her substitute teaching license and worked at many of the same schools that the missing girls on my list attended.”
“What’s her real name?” Palmer asked.
“She was born Deena Thatcher and then became Deena Finlay after she married. I talked to her ex-husband this morning. He said she’s dangerous.” She gestured with her chin to the file on his desk. “It’s all in the file. You’ll also see my notes about Bob Upperman, a man who was at Mark Brennan’s house the day Riley went missing.”
Her phone vibrated. This time she glanced at the screen. It was a text from Harper: Ella is missing.
Her heart plummeted. “I’ve got to go.”
“Sawyer, wait,” Palmer said, but she didn’t dare turn back. Instead, she swept through the door to his office and ran, her mind filled with images of Ella being tricked into climbing into Melony Pershing’s car. Ella knew the woman, probably even trusted her. Her niece was ten years old with light-colored hair and blue eyes.
Why hadn’t she warned Ella the last time she’d seen her?
Rebecca’s image flashed in her mind. She thought about the envelope left on her doorstep, the slashed tire, the look Melony Pershing gave her when she went to pick up Ella from school.