"Hang-up calls? No . . . oh my God." Her hand went to her lips. "I remember now. He called me that night. That's why I left the house. That's why I was in the car. Oh my God."
Kate squeezed her hand. "You remember. That's good. And now you need to remember he can never do that again."
Cooper looked down at JoLynn. "I've already got permission from Mr. Richter to get the ranch phone records. Now that we know Dugan called you and you left in a panic, he could have called other times. Maybe he even asked for Elizabeth."
And if so, I thought, that would bring the family into play, perhaps provide a connection between someone at the Richter ranch—someone other than JoLynn—and Kent Dugan.
Cooper was about to say something else, but Super Nurse Maxine Norman busted into the room like a rhinoceros, pulling Henry along by the hand. "Mr. Richter told me how many people were in here. You may have his consent to torture this poor young woman with your questions, but you don't have mine. Henry, get them all out."
Henry stood behind her and rolled his eyes.
"No problem. We're leaving," I said.
"They can stay, Maxine. Really, it's okay," JoLynn said.
But JoLynn was obviously exhausted and in pain.
Kate stood. "I agree with—" She squinted at the name tag pinned to Norman's olive-colored scrub top. "I agree with Nurse Norman. We can come back another time."
Norman said, "I know these other two clowns, but who are you?"
She smiled sweetly. "Dr. Kate Rose, a clinical psychologist consulting on this case at Mr. Richter's request. Can we call you about when might be a good time to visit JoLynn again?"
Kate's manner, which included her willingness to consult with Norman first, had an amazing effect.
Norman actually cracked a smile. "Our baby doll is doing much better. Just let my patient get more pain medicine in her system and a little rest and she'll be fine. Y'all can come back tomorrow."
Kate, you're a damn genius, I thought as we filed out of the room.
Back at my house after the hospital visit, Cooper and Kate huddled together and worked on some kind of todo list concerning the case—which probably included pressuring the phone company to release the requested information on the landline at Magnolia Ranch. I knew this because Cooper grumbled all the way to my place about how slow they'd been to cooperate.
I hadn't heard from DeShay about getting in touch with Officer Shauna Anthony and was about to search for her on Switchboard.com when Jeff called. He said he e-mailed me the completed police sketch, since he and Doris wouldn't be by the house until later tonight. Doris had her Saturday chores to do—things like laundry and cleaning her room. Jeff always spent time alone with Doris on his weekends off, and not out of guilt, like when he'd first brought her to live with him. He loved her, wanted to care for her. And that made me think of Elliott Richter. Same story, different version.
I hung up and hurried to my computer. I opened the e-mail attachment and printed out a few copies of the police-artist sketch, once again amazed at the picture. Unfortunately, this man's face was seared into my brain now and something else was going on in my head. This face bothered me and not only because of what he'd done. What was it?
I heard the ding indicating another e-mail message was coming through—a brief one from DeShay. "Going into autopsy, here's what you need."
It was Officer Anthony's phone number and address. I phoned her right away and told her who I was and what I needed. She preferred we meet in person to discuss an old case. She told me, "People want to e-mail and yak on their cell phones all day long, but I never liked that when I was working. Face-to-face is my way. Besides, I can speak to you much more coherently that way. I have some concentration problems. You'll understand when you get here."
She gave me directions and I left my office. In the living room, Kate and Cooper were deep in conversation.
I cleared my throat and they both looked my way. "Officer Anthony wants to meet in person. Cooper, you want to come along?"
"Not a good time, Abby. I finally found someone who could make things happen at the phone company. She promised to e-mail the Richter phone records to your computer. Take good notes, though."
Did the man not notice in the last week that I'm not the one walking around with a notebook in my pocket? But maybe he wasn't noticing anything but Kate right now, and waiting on those phone records was a great excuse to hang around her. No problem there. Not at all. I was happy to leave them alone.
After the events of this past week, I sure didn't want to be tailed. Staying away from the freeways made rearview paranoia far less stressful—far fewer cars to deal with. The drive to Anthony's retirement community—a gated neighborhood west of the 610 Loop, with welltended lawns and small brick homes—took a good thirty minutes longer than it might have.
I navigated the treelined road that wound around a golf course and passed the community pool. Since it was close to six p.m., and the hottest part of the day was over, the chaise lounges and umbrella tables were filled with men and women who'd probably saved their pen nies to live here among the pines. No one looked under sixty.
That's why I was surprised when Shauna Anthony answered the door, supported by a cane. This woman couldn't be older than late forties, early fifties.
"Abby Rose," I said. "Thank you so much for seeing me right away."
The woman's skin told me she was black and yet her beautiful dark eyes indicated she might have Asian blood, too. And then I noticed a golden retriever sitting like a statue behind her.
"Aren't you a pretty young thing?" Shauna said. "I would have come to you, but I don't drive much anymore. Come in and meet Oliver."
But Oliver's concern was for his mistress, not meeting a stranger. Shauna hobbled around to face the other direction and the dog was close by her side as she slowly made her way through the tile foyer to a living room beyond. I passed a riding scooter, much nicer than what I was used to seeing in the supermarkets. I remembered Penny mentioning health issues. Looked like they were pretty big ones.
Two brocade wing chairs flanked a low, round oak table. A tray with a pitcher of iced tea and two glasses sat there along with a floral china dish of shortbread cookies. Slices of lemon gleamed in the sweating pitcher, and a bowl of sugar and spoons completed this welcome.
The dog hovered near Shauna, eyes on her face. She said, "I'm fine, Oliver. Would you mind pouring the tea, Abby? My hands aren't obeying my commands today. Damn MS steals your life inch by inch."
Shauna—she'd insisted on the phone that's what I should call her—settled onto the leather sofa facing the wing chairs and Oliver pressed close to her legs. After I fixed us both tea and eyed the cookies hungrily without taking one, I sat across from her.
"I'm not always like this," Shauna said. "I'm in a flare-up right now."
"I—I didn't know. We could meet another time or—"
"No. It's rare for me to be on the giving end of anything these past two years. Seems all I can do is take from others now. My friend next door fixed the tea and if you don't eat her cookies, she'll be offended." Shauna smiled.
"I'll have a couple to go," I said with a smile.
Shauna said, "That's a promise." She then pointed my way. "Visit Abby, Oliver."
The dog came over and sat in front of me, head cocked, liquid brown eyes on my face.
I petted his silky soft head. "What a beautiful animal."
"Oliver has been a godsend," she said. "He's always close. Even knows how to bring me my cell or the other phone if I fall down."
My gaze fell on a photograph on the end table to Shauna's right. I was guessing the black man and the Asian woman in the picture were her parents. The man wore an HPD uniform.
Shauna caught me staring and said, "He was shot by a crackhead on the east side ten years ago. Died at the scene. My mother took her own life six months later."
I swallowed hard and managed to utter those inadequate words, "I'm so sorry."
"Don't be.
They both made choices, choices they left me to live with. I'm okay with it all now. MS is good for something. It's taught me that most bad things that happen are not my fault. My father's murder and my mother's suicide? Those horrible events were out of my control. And getting MS? Not my choice, either."
Choice, control and loss. That's what this case had been all about and still was. And here was someone who knew a great deal about those things. "If you get tired," I said, "let me know. I can come back."
"Your line of work is adoption inquiries, right?" Oliver returned to her side and rested his head in her lap.
"Yes," I said with a smile. "Did you check me out after I called?"
"You don't think I'd let any old stranger walk into my house and ask me about my job?"
I should have known. Once a cop, always a cop. "You worked with CPS on several cases?" I said.
"True. Funny how a woman who never married and who never had kids would be suited to that job. Guess I didn't feel obligated to take them all home like some other officers I knew. Is this about an adoption that took place after we removed an abused child from a home?" She looked at Oliver and patted the sofa beside her. The dog jumped up beside her and lay down.
"No, this is about something else. Do you recall picking up a nine-year-old girl from the bus station over a decade ago? Apparently she'd been abandoned there."
Shauna's features changed from warm and welcoming to troubled. "How could I forget?"
Oliver raised his head, looked at Shauna and whined.
"What can you tell me about her?" I said.
Shauna licked her lips and reached for her tea with a shaky hand. "Medicine makes my mouth so dry." After she took a sip by holding the glass with both hands, she said, "God, that was an awful night—raining like hell. The child was soaked and I wondered if those blue lips came from being cold or from being sick."
"You thought she was sick?" I said.
"I did. And after I took her to medical and we stripped off those wet clothes, we saw that big scar down her chest, so I thought I was right. She sure didn't like getting a physical—cried through the whole thing, which sure brought her color back. The doc said all the crying was probably because she'd seen the inside of one too many hospitals. She'd had recent heart surgery."
"Did she talk about being sick?" I said.
"That girl wouldn't talk about anything. Someone left her alone, chilled to the bone, in that hellhole bus station, so I couldn't really blame her. At first, anyway."
"She wouldn't talk? Are you saying she had a choice?" Back to that choice thing again, I thought.
Oliver relaxed, again resting his head in Shauna's lap. "I remember thinking when I went home after that night shift, after spending hours with the child and getting nothing but a wide-eyed stare, that she knew her name, knew her parents, knew it all—and she'd been told to keep her mouth shut."
"Really?" I said. "That didn't come through in the report."
"Because I had nothing to support my conclusion. I'd questioned hundreds of kids by that point in my career and they always gave something away, but not her." She shook her head. "Not her. I heard later some shrink said she had amnesia. Bullshit, if you ask me."
"I understand no local hospital had treated her heart condition," I said.
"True. I went to every Houston-area hospital myself, carried her picture with me. Questioned doctors and nurses. That child became my mission. No one had reported her missing. No one cared that she'd be going into the system. Made me sick, to be honest."
"Did you ever get any leads?" I asked, realizing I was glad I came here. Shauna was right about face-to-face interviews. She cared about JoLynn. No police report or foster-care file could have conveyed this woman's concern.
"Leads?" Shauna said. "Well, her clothes and shoes were from Kmart, could have been bought anywhere. We sent her picture and description to every major lawenforcement agency including the FBI, and I personally checked databases for more than a year after we found her. Nothing came up. She wasn't wanted. She'd been . . . discarded. That makes me angry to this day."
"And this little girl helped erase her own past by keeping quiet," I said. "Why? Was she afraid?"
"Probably. It was so frustrating. Even the necklace was a dead end," Shauna said. "I had this gut feeling it would lead me somewhere, but I never caught a break."
"The necklace?" I said.
"I'm not sure I even mentioned it in my report. I was afraid a superior might accuse me of wasting time on an investigation that was going nowhere. She was already safe in foster care. But I did some digging around on my own, knowing how important the necklace seemed to the girl. The night I picked her up at the bus station? She wouldn't let go, kept twirling her finger in the chain. Cheap chain, but attached was a beautiful silver piece— a tiny owl sitting on an open book. I'd never seen anything like that owl. I sent the picture with her wearing it all over the place."
"Where did you send it?" I asked.
"Faxed it with the information I sent to the FBI, sent a copy to all the missing-children organizations. We're talking eleven years back, so we weren't quite as connected to the Internet then. Especially patrol officers like me."
"What about local jewelers?" I asked.
"I didn't have the time or authorization to pursue something like that, but every time I went to the mall, or to a Sam's Club or even Target, I checked the jewelry cases. I haven't looked in several years, though. I don't get to those places much anymore."
Oliver whined, rolled his head so Shauna could stroke under his chin.
"This picture of the necklace? I didn't see it in her file."
Shauna smiled. "Not the necklace alone. Her wearing the necklace. If you have any of her foster-care pictures, you've seen it. I enlarged several photos and circled the necklace when I sent off info about her."
A clue had been right there all the time and I hadn't even noticed. "Would you like to see a picture of the girl you worked so hard for? She's twenty now, uses the name JoLynn." I reached into my bag for that photo Roberta Messing placed on a missing-persons Web site a year ago.
Shauna's dark eyes brightened and Oliver's head popped up. "Are you kidding? I'd love to see what she looks like."
I brought her the picture.
She stared for several seconds and her eyes filled. "She's a beauty, isn't she?" Then Shauna met my gaze. "You never said why you're asking about her after all this time. Two years ago, the cop in me would have asked that question right up front. But now? I suppose I'm simply grateful someone cares."
"A man tried to kill her . . . and now he's been murdered. And don't worry—JoLynn has a solid alibi, so she didn't retaliate. But both the police chief I'm working with and I believe the answers to this case—why that man wanted her dead and why he in turn was killed— may lie in JoLynn's past, the same past she refused to share with you."
"Oh my God. After all these years, she's in danger again? Because I got the sense her fear was more com plicated than being lost." Shauna rested back against the cushions. "I should have tried harder. I should have—"
"Choices, remember?" I said. "Even children have the right to make them. She shut you out."
Oliver was on alert now, sitting on the sofa with his total focus on Shauna. God, what a wonderful dog.
She looked up at me, her eyes brilliant with emotion. "Promise you'll finish this job, Abby? The one that I couldn't?"
"I give you my word. And you and Oliver will get a full report."
Oliver barked when I said his name, and before I left with a Ziploc full of cookies, I hugged Shauna and shook his paw.
27
I returned home after dark to a house that smelled like teriyaki. Jeff, Doris, Cooper, Kate and even Aunt Caroline were sitting around the kitchen table. If Cooper Boyd didn't have my aunt's complete attention, I might have heard what a terrible niece I was, how I never gave her a first thought, much less a second. After all, I'd failed to call and check up on her.
But
Aunt Caroline was all smiles, as flirty as any seventy-five-year-old woman can be—in other words, a seventy-five-year-old in complete denial. Did she think she had a chance in hell with Cooper?
A new jigsaw puzzle was laid out on the table and Jeff was sitting close to Doris to help her look for pieces to fit into the barnyard scene. Doris fell in love with cows after coming to Texas, so I was guessing that's why she chose this particular puzzle.
Cooper smiled at me sheepishly—sheep, cows . . . it was a regular farm in here—and I got the feeling he was guilty about not accompanying me to visit Shauna.
"Did Officer Anthony help?" he asked.
"Maybe." I hung my bag on its hook by the utility room door. "She gave me a small lead, as well as some insight into JoLynn. Don't know if I can get any further than she did with the lead—which went nowhere for Shauna."
"Give Cooper a chance to figure it out," Aunt Caroline said. "He's former FBI. They know how to solve everything."
Jeff looked at Aunt Caroline with a knowing smile and said, "You are so right, Caroline."
His sarcasm was lost on her because she said, "You are most certainly correct, Jeffrey."
"Jeffy knows how to solve, too," Doris said. "He says that's his job. But I don't know what solve means. Can we look on the Internet, Abby?"
Aunt Caroline actually had a momentary lapse in narcissism and said, "I never meant to imply that Jeffrey is not a very excellent police officer."
Doris certainly gets right to it, I thought.
Jeff grinned. "Don't worry about it, Caroline."
"Did you eat, Abby?" Kate, true to her family role, deflected attention from another awkward moment courtesy of Aunt Caroline.
"I ate a few cookies." I held up the now half-empty bag of shortbread.
I don't know who eyed that bag more hungrily, Doris or Aunt Caroline. Kate noticed, because she took the bag from me and handed it to Doris. "You ate all your stir-fry, so here's dessert."
Aunt Caroline watched as Doris opened the bag and dug in. She wanted those cookies, but knew she couldn't steal one with Kate watching. Cookies and diabetes don't exactly go together and Aunt Caroline needed to learn that lesson.
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