Stolen Daughters

by Carolyn Arnold

  Stolen Daughters

  A totally gripping and addictive crime thriller

  Carolyn Arnold

  Books by Carolyn Arnold

  Detective Amanda Steele

  The Little Grave

  Stolen Daughters

  Brandon Fisher FBI series

  Eleven

  Silent Graves

  The Defenseless

  Blue Baby

  Violated

  Remnants

  On the Count of Three

  Past Deeds

  Detective Madison Knight series

  Ties That Bind

  Justified

  Sacrifice

  Found innocent

  Just Cause

  Deadly Impulse

  In the Line of Duty

  Power Struggle

  Shades of Justice

  What We Bury

  Life Sentence (prequel romantic suspense)

  McKinley Mysteries

  The Day Job is Murder

  Vacation is Murder

  Money is Murder

  Politics is Murder

  Family is Murder

  Shopping is Murder

  Christmas is Murder

  Valentine’s Day is Murder

  Coffee is Murder

  Skiing is Murder

  Halloween is Murder

  Exercise is Murder

  Matthew Connor Adventure series

  City of Gold

  The Secret of the Lost Pharaoh

  The Legend of Gasparilla and His Treasure

  Standalone

  Assassination of a Dignitary

  Pearls of Deception

  AVAILABLE IN AUDIO

  The Little Grave (Available in the UK and the US)

  To survivors of abuse…

  Prologue

  Dumfries, Virginia

  Thursday, April 1st, 5:25 AM

  Her lifeless eyes stared up at him. All was quiet. The struggle gone.

  His rage had subsided, replaced by tranquility and bliss. He had risen above his past and shown mercy when the world had shown none to him.

  Inspired, he tapped a kiss to his fingers and pressed them to her forehead. “Rest in peace.”

  He closed her eyelids and got to his feet.

  His gaze still upon her, he felt himself to be the very embodiment of love and forgiveness. He was… The Merciful.

  Yes, he liked that.

  Excitement vibrated through his entire body, but he had to move. There was more work to do.

  He took the jerry can and soaked her body with fuel. Satisfied he was finished with her, he continued pouring as he walked down the hall, then stairs, to the main level.

  He stopped in the middle of the house, a few feet from the puddle of fuel, his gas can now empty. He pulled a matchbook and struck one to flame. He watched it dance on the tip for a second or two before tossing it onto the accelerant. It ignited with a blast of heat.

  He hustled through the door into the backyard, a smile on his face. The darkness of early morning and his black clothing were his cover. The neighborhood, too, was one in which people saw and heard nothing—and they certainly didn’t talk to the police. Besides, most people would still be in bed.

  And by the time anyone smelled smoke, the place would be ash. The girl along with it.

  One

  Washington, DC

  Thursday, April 1st, 10:00 AM

  Amanda Steele’s phone rang, and she looked down at it on the conference table in front of her. She was seated in a room at a prestigious Washington law firm with her mother, and her mother’s lawyer, Hannah Byrd.

  Hannah stopped talking mid-sentence and looked at Amanda.

  Caller ID told her it was her boss, Sergeant Malone. When Malone called, it often meant someone was dead. She looked apologetically at her mother and Hannah. “I’m sorry, but I need to take this.”

  “No problem,” Hannah assured her with a smile.

  “Thanks.” Amanda answered and listened as Malone told her she was needed back in Dumfries immediately. A young woman had been pulled from a house fire in the east end, and the circumstances looked suspicious.

  “Sorry, I know that you’re probably in Washington right now…” Also a family friend, Malone knew about the meeting and the reason for it.

  “No, don’t mention it. I think we’re almost finished anyway.” She sought out Hannah’s gaze, and the lawyer nodded. “I’ll get there as soon as I can.” She hung up and looked at her mother, feeling swamped with guilt. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “You’ve got a case.” A conclusion, not a question. But her mother was familiar with the demands on those in law enforcement, and it was one reason Amanda and her mother had driven there separately. If something came up, then it would free Amanda to leave.

  “I do.” Amanda was torn. She wanted to get out of there but couldn’t quite get herself to move.

  “Go,” her mother prompted.

  “Will you be all right if I…?” Amanda pointed to the door.

  “I’m a grown-ass woman, so, yes. Go. Besides, Hannah will take care of me.”

  Amanda hesitated a few seconds longer, then stood and tapped a kiss on her mother’s forehead. She thanked her and Hannah for their understanding and left.

  Stepping outside, she appreciated the warm, fresh air and the freedom—not that it could erase the reality that her mother was facing a murder charge. A murder charge, the thought repeated in her head.

  She’d had a few months to come to terms with it and still hadn’t. Maybe it was really because she didn’t want to accept it. After all, Julie—Jules—Steele had been an upstanding citizen all her life… well, until this point.

  She’d raised Amanda and her siblings—a brother and four sisters—and was now a grandmother to four. She was also the wife of the former police chief of the Prince William County Police Department.

  Amanda got into her Honda Civic and headed to the Dumfries address Malone had given her. It would take about forty minutes, give or take depending on traffic, to get there from Washington. But she didn’t need a GPS to tell her that. She knew the route and every backstreet in Dumfries, where she’d grown up. It was a small town of under six thousand—not exactly a booming metropolis—but it was a desirable place to live given its close vicinity to Washington, DC. The flipside was that crime levels were probably higher than what other small and more isolated communities might see.

  While her father had been police chief for the PWCPD until his retirement five years ago, Amanda was currently a detective with Homicide stationed out of Central District Station in Woodbridge—another small town about ten minutes from Dumfries. Maybe one day she’d reach the position of chief, but given the trajectory of her life during the past six years, it might be a while before that happened.

  She pulled down a side street, headed toward 532 Bill Drive, and had to park a block away. Dumfries PD had the area cordoned off to allow the firefighters room to work. She didn’t see any sign of her partner, Trent Stenson, who Malone had told her would meet her on scene. She did see her friend, Becky Tulson, who worked with the Dumfries PD, though.

  The same age as Amanda at thirty-five, Becky had her shoulder-length brown hair pulled back into a ponytail, which accentuated her heart-shaped face.

  Amanda parked and got out of the car. The smell of smoke clung heavy in the air and tickled her throat.

  She looked down the street at the mangle of emergency response vehicles. There were a few fire engines with the Dumfries Triangle Volunteer Fire Department, a medic’s truck, an ambulance, and a police cruiser. They were all parked haphazardly in front of a two-story house that didn’t look like it was in too bad of shape, considering it had been on fire.

  She approached Becky, w
ho was guarding this end of the scene. There would be another officer posted at the other side.

  “Hey,” Becky said, “how did everything go?” Amanda had told her about the planned meeting with Hannah this morning to discuss her mother’s defense strategy.

  Amanda let out a deep sigh. “Honestly? It’s a long road ahead, and there are no guarantees.”

  Becky put a hand on Amanda’s forearm. “I’m here. You know that?”

  “Always.” Amanda smiled. “You haven’t seen Trent, have you?” She looked around again, but it was possible that Trent had parked at the opposite end of the scene.

  “Not yet.”

  As if on cue, a PWCPD department car pulled up near Becky’s cruiser, and Trent shut off the engine and got out.

  “Ladies.” He smiled at them both. He was a couple of years younger than Amanda, with blond hair and blue eyes. She imagined he might be a charmer when off the clock, but she had no romantic interest in him. One, having a partner on the job was complicated enough without making it personal; and two, she was seeing someone else. Logan Hunter. Their relationship was rather new, sometimes awkward, and entirely casual. Probably all because he was the first man she’d dated since her husband died in a tragic car accident almost six years ago, along with their six-year-old daughter.

  “About time you got here,” Amanda said. “I came from Washington and still beat you.”

  “Hey.” Trent shrugged. “Got here as soon as I could.”

  “Primping takes time?” she teased.

  “Well, I can’t be showing up looking like riffraff.”

  She waved goodbye to Becky and started down the sidewalk with Trent toward 532, looking at the neighboring houses as she went. Most of them were in need of maintenance with sagging porches, chipped and peeling paint, and curled shingles. This part of town was where dreams came to die.

  Two doors down from the scene, they ran into Officer Deacon with the Dumfries PD.

  “I got the call,” Amanda said, holding up her detective badge more out of habit than necessity. Both she and Trent had met Deacon before. He simply gestured for them to carry on.

  Amanda took in 532 Bill Drive in more detail. A two-story century-old clapboard home. It was pretty much intact from what she could see from the outside, but the windows were boarded. She’d guess that was the case before the fire. The front door appeared to be lying on the grass, leaving a gaping hole in the structure where it used to be.

  “Whoa, whoa. Hold up there.” A man in dress shirt, tie, and slacks approached. He reminded Amanda of an old dog with his hooded eyes. He had a ruddy complexion but was trim and had an obvious exercise regimen, given the lay of his shirt across his chest and his thick arms. His hair was mostly gray with some cracked pepper.

  Amanda held up her badge, and Trent followed suit. “Prince William County PD, Homicide Unit,” she said. “And you are?”

  “Fire Marshal Craig Sullivan. I’m in charge of this scene, ma’am.”

  He was older than she was, but she didn’t take offense to the term ma’am like some women. It did sting a little today, though, with her thirty-sixth birthday only five days away.

  Fire marshals were essentially arson investigators, but they were also a bit law enforcement. Some even carried guns, but they focused on their area of expertise—the cause of fires and gathering all pertinent evidence to that end. Amanda and Trent’s relationship with Sullivan would be somewhat of a unified command structure. He’d stick to matters pertaining to the fire, and she and Trent would focus on the victim.

  She shouldn’t have to point all this out to Sullivan, though. “We’re here about the dead girl,” she countered, not about to get into any battle over jurisdiction, and her stomach souring at the word girl. It brought back her more recent encounter with a local sex-trafficking ring.

  “She’s in there.” Sullivan pointed toward the medic’s vehicle. “Firefighters found her when clearing and hauled her out for medical attention. The medic attempted CPR but was given permission to call time of death by the attending doctor at the hospital. Hence, the body’s still here—and now an ME is on his or her way from Manassas.”

  Manassas, about thirty minutes north of Dumfries, was where the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was located.

  Amanda nodded and stepped toward the vehicle but turned back to Sullivan. “When did the fire start?”

  “I’d estimate around five thirty, give or take. It was called into nine-one-one at five fifty by a neighbor a few doors down and across the street. We had it out by six twenty.”

  It was going on eleven now, but it would have taken time for the fire marshal to do his thing and for the death to be called. Then she and Trent had to arrive, along with the ME—who still hadn’t shown up. Two things stood out to her. “You guys have a fast response time.”

  “On the high end, we can be on scene within five minutes. We strive to get out of the firehouse within forty-five to sixty seconds from the time of alarm. When it’s residential, well, our drivers might press a little heavier on the gas. We know we’re dealing with people’s homes and lives are at stake.”

  That might have been a little more information than she needed, but it was interesting. Now for the second thing she’d noted. “The person who placed the call to nine-one-one did so rather quickly after the fire was estimated to have started?”

  “Yep.”

  “Do you have this person’s information?”

  “I can get that for you.”

  “Thanks.” She also wanted to get her hands on the 911 tape.

  “Do you figure it was arson?” Trent asked.

  Sullivan seemed to acknowledge Trent for the first time. “I’m trained to look at the evidence without any preconceived notions about intention or foul play. As homicide detectives, you’d look at everything with an eye to murder. But, with all that said, from what I see so far, I have no doubt in my mind the fire was set on purpose. Evidence is still being gathered from inside the home, but my initial impression is that accelerant was used. I’ll still need to confirm what that was, but the girl is wet and smells of gasoline. The medic noticed it when performing life-saving endeavors.”

  She turned to Trent. “We’ll need to speak to the person who called nine-one-one. They could have seen the firebug, maybe even been the firebug.”

  “Nah.” Sullivan winced and shook his head. “Not to tramp on toes here, but a firebug, by their very nature, loves to watch the fires they set. They’re not going to call and have them put out.”

  Amanda glanced over a shoulder to some people crowded across the street. Could one of them be the arsonist?

  “Before you ask, we got pictures of everyone,” Sullivan said.

  She slowly drew her attention back to the fire marshal. The person who called in the fire may not have started it, but they could have seen the person responsible. She gestured to the boarded windows. “Did you do that or—”

  “No, it was like that.”

  “But not the front door?” Trent flicked the tip of his pen toward the discarded door on the lawn.

  “No.”

  They’d have to look up the property records, but Amanda would assume it had defaulted to the bank, given the boarded windows. If so, the previous owner might have set the fire to spite the bank—the girl an unexpected casualty—but then that didn’t explain the gasoline on the body. “Do you know how long the home sat unoccupied?”

  “Can’t say I’ve gotten that far.” Sullivan’s eyes darkened. “I can tell you that it seems squatters used the place. Not much garbage, but there are a few mattresses upstairs. The girl was found on one.”

  Amanda took in the property, its long grass and the gate at the end of the driveway. “Guessing there’s a back door?”

  “Yeah, and it’s definitely the access point they would have used—the people crashing here and likely the firebug. A large padlock was found on the back porch, and there’s evidence it was cut off. Now, the seed of the fire—”

&nbs
p; “The seed?” Amanda queried, not quite sure what he meant by that terminology.

  “The origin of the fire, where it started,” Trent jumped in to answer, shrugged under their gazes. “My uncle was a firefighter before he retired.”

  “Huh.” Sullivan regarded Trent, this time with respect lighting his otherwise dull-gray eyes. “As I was about to say, the seed of the fire was in the middle of the main level and seemed to follow a trail toward the stairs. That’s what the burn marks are telling me anyway.”

  Amanda nodded to acknowledge Sullivan’s conclusion and said, “Could you take us to the victim now?”

  “Sure.” Sullivan led the way down the walk toward the medic’s vehicle.

  As they moved, Amanda’s heart thumped a little off rhythm as she prepared herself to see the burnt remains of a young woman. Her mind was also churning with what exactly had taken place at 532 Bill Drive. A body doused with gasoline, left in a house set ablaze… that sounded like murder to her.

  Two

  “Hey, Marshal Sullivan.” A uniformed firefighter came over just as they reached the medic’s vehicle. He was dressed in full gear, his helmet in hand. Soot was smeared on his cheeks and forehead. He gave Amanda and Trent a brief look but focused on Sullivan. “Is it good for us to head out?”

  Sullivan gave a small bob of his head, then said, “Actually, I’d rather you stick around for a bit.”

  A small pulse tapped in the firefighter’s cheek.

  “These are Detectives Steele and Stenson with the PWCPD.” Sullivan gestured toward them.

  The man leveled a cool gaze at her, but he removed a glove and held out a hand. “Spencer Blair.”

  He had a strong grip, not surprising, but the way he was staring through her made the seventy-degree weather feel like a cold front was moving in. “Blair?” she asked to ensure she heard him right. She knew someone else with that last name.