When they returned, Anna introduced herself, then sat at her desk and sifted through some files to find the one she was looking for. He leaned against the front of Anna’s desk, to the side so he didn’t block Anna.
Bosko said, “Can you tell me what this is about now?” Her tone was clipped, impatient.
Anna said, “We’ll get to that. We just have some routine questions for you first.”
Bosko crossed her arms. “Fire away.”
Anna said, “You’re originally from Stephenville, just north of Riverton?”
“That’s correct.”
“You work at Stevens Youth Shelter?”
She narrowed her eyes. “I’m not going to talk about my work at the shelter, and especially about any of the kids I help. It’s all confidential information, which I’m sure both of you know.”
Anna shot him a questioning look. He said, “I already told you that this has nothing to do with the shelter. It’s just for background information.”
Bosko glared at him. “Yes, I work at the shelter, as you already know.”
Anna said, “Tell me about your family.”
Bosko stiffened, sat forward. “Your partner said they were okay. Are they?”
Anna said, “They’re fine. Again, it’s just background.”
Bosko said, “I have a father, James, and a sister. Her name is Karina. She’s five years older.”
Anna said, “Your father’s a doctor?”
A hard look signaled her impatience. “There you go again. Asking questions you already know the answers to. You may not know his specialty. He’s a perinatologist. That’s—”
“A specialty for high-risk pregnancies,” Cullen cut in before she could explain. He leaned over, looked at a newspaper clipping. “I see your sister is a nurse. And a concert pianist. Very accomplished.”
“You bet, Sherlock.” She nodded at the clipping. “That’s probably about her latest recording, the one of Bach concertos.”
She played with her necklace again, and then her hand dropped to her lap. Her breasts, firm and round, molded to the thin fabric of her T-shirt. Swallowing hard, he looked away.
He said, “The local paper seems to like your sister. They give her a lot of publicity.”
“It’s her fresh-faced good looks. In Riverton, Karina’s a superstar.”
Looking at her Karina’s picture, you could tell they were sisters. But Nicole had more of her mother’s looks.
He said, “And you?”
“I’m not any kind of star. A chronic underachiever, as my father always said.”
Anna read from a file. “You last saw your mother, Lisa Bosko, when you were five?”
Bosko’s fingernails dug into the upholstered arms of her chair. She nodded. “If you’re looking for her, I can’t help you. She took off when I was five and I haven’t seen her since.”
Anna said, “You’re sure about that?”
Bosko lifted her chin. “Of course I’m sure. She’s most likely living quite happily somewhere with another family, unless she’d decided to ditch them, too.”
Anna said, “We’ve read a transcript of an interview conducted with your father when your mother first went missing. There was apparently some suggestion that you had some behavioral problems that caused difficulty at home.”
Bosko’s eyes were cold. “Correct. Apparently I was too much to handle. I don’t remember it myself, but I suppose I was too busy causing those problems.”
Anna said, “Were you interviewed?”
“Again, I don’t remember. I was five.”
He cut in, “Have you ever tried to find your mother?”
“Why would I? She didn’t want anything to do with me. As far as I know, she hasn’t contacted my father, either. But you should ask him.”
“That’s going to be a bit of a challenge. Your father and sister have left the country.”
“Left the country?” Surprise was evident in her tone.
“You didn’t know?” Clearly, they weren’t close. When she didn’t say anything, he continued. “They’re in Haiti, in a remote area on a relief mission. We’ve been trying to reach them, but the cell phone service is sketchy. They’re not due back for another week.”
She shrugged. “I can’t help you there. We’re not particularly tight, as you may have gathered. And I don’t know anything about my mother.”
Her eyes were dark, the color of deep mahogany, and spaced wide apart. Too wide apart, but they were balanced by a strong chin, and something about them suggested a sharp intelligence.
He said, “There’s bitterness in your voice.”
“You’re imagining things. I’m not bitter at all. I used to resent my mother but she moved on and so did I. To tell you the truth, I hardly even think about Lisa Bosko now, and I certainly don’t remember much.” She glanced at her watch. “But please be careful about approaching my father. He had a heart attack last year. He shouldn’t be bothered about this.”
Anna shot Cullen a look, then said, “What do you remember about the day she left?”
She said, “I came home from school and she wasn’t there. It was two decades ago. That’s all I remember. Are you trying to find her again? Is that what this is about? Why don’t you just tell me?”
He ignored her questions. “Did you see her leave?”
“No, I did not.” She spoke slowly, emphasizing her words. “But everybody knew she wanted to leave.”
“Why do you say that?”
“There was a note. Don’t you have it?”
He said, “We’ve seen a copy.”
Bosko put up her hands in mock surrender. “Sorry I couldn’t be of more assistance.” She stood up. “I have to get to work now. Good luck tracking her down.”
He said, “We have something to show you before you go.”
“I really don’t care what you have to show me.”
Ignoring her, he walked to a tall metal cabinet on the wall beside Anna’s desk, opened the door. On the top shelf was a clay sculpture of a woman’s head. Seeing it again, a chill ran down his spine.
Bosko glanced over. For a second, her expression didn’t change. Then the color drained from her face. She looked from him to Anna, then walked slowly, as if in a trance, and stood in front of the cabinet. One shaky hand reached out to touch the sculpture but drew back. Glancing at him, a look of vulnerability and fear swept across her face. She said, “Why do you have a bust of me?”
He said, “You should sit down.”
“I don’t want to sit down. Tell me.”
He said, “It’s a facial reconstruction, but it’s not you.”
Her confusion was understandable. The bust looked so much like Nicole Bosko—the oval face, high cheekbones, wide-set eyes, small mouth—it was as if she’d posed for it. A few things were off, the face too fleshy, the nose too short.
“Then who is it?” Realization dawning, she covered her mouth and her eyes went wide.
“It’s your mother,” he said. “Your mother is dead.”
CHAPTER THREE
Nicky clutched her chest, which felt heavy, as if crushed under a great weight. She couldn’t breathe.
Squeezing her eyes shut, hiding her face in her hands, she tried to block it all out. Blood rushed in her ears like the din of a white noise. Then her legs felt wobbly and she stumbled. Strong arms encircled her shoulders, guided her to a chair.
When she opened her eyes again, reality slapped her in the face as her mother stared at her. She hadn’t looked at a picture of her mother in a long time; over the years, Lisa Bosko’s face had become darker and blurrier. But, her initial confusion aside, there was no question the sculpture was of her mother. It was so detailed, so real, the work an artist. An artist who had taken a lump of flesh-colored clay and molded it into something that was eerily lifelike.
Except there was no life. Her mother was dead.
She wanted to stop everything right now, to go back in time, run away and never have to face this awful tr
uth. All those years she’d daydreamed of her mother having a happy life, secretly hating her, and it had been a fantasy. The truth was so much worse.
A new realization twisted her insides like a vise. Opening her eyes, looking at the reconstruction, it if was as if Nicky were gazing at herself. She’d even thought it was herself when she’d first seen it. Those were her eyes. Her lips. Her cheeks. People had told her she was a spitting image of her mother. Here was proof. It explained the look of shock on Fraser’s face in the park.
Hot tears stinging the corners of her eyes, she hid her face, tried to slow her thundering heart. Her mother was dead.
A minute passed, maybe more. Acid rose in her stomach as her brain tried to process what this meant. She’d give anything now for her mother to be alive. It wouldn’t matter if she had another family, if Nicky would never have the chance to see her again. If she could just be alive.
Her pulse took another kick. What about her father? This would kill him.
After several minutes, finally able to stop crying, she wiped a hand across her eyes and looked up. Ackerman picked up a glass of water off the desk and passed it to Nicky. Using both hands to steady the glass, she brought it to her mouth, swallowed a big gulp, and then snatched a tissue from a box Ackerman held out.
She had to get under control, be rational. Looking from one to the other, she said, “Tell me what this is all about.”
Ackerman now stood in front of the desk, Fraser near the cabinet. She said, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Nicole, but your mother’s remains were found three months ago.”
More tears fell. “Where?” She fixated on the black eyeliner Ackerman wore on her top lids. That and thick mascara made her look harsh, although her manner wasn’t. A short woman, somewhere in her forties and at least a decade older than Fraser, she was the good cop to his bad, it seemed.
“At an abandoned farm just across the border in New Hampshire.”
Grabbing more tissues, she blew her nose. “You’re sure it’s my mother?” It came out more as a statement than a question. How could there be any doubt?
Ackerman nodded. “No identification was found with the remains. However, there was enough usable DNA from the skull. It’s a long process, but that’s how we tracked you down. You shared fifty percent of the dead woman’s DNA, so we knew you were her daughter”
Fraser said, “Of course we had a bit of trouble finding you. Why’d you have the DNA test done?”
The question irked her. “It’s not against the law, is it, to have your DNA mapped? People do it all the time to test for diseases.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
His eyes looked assessing, betraying no sympathy. Some things you can’t hide.
Nicky struggled to remain calm. “I took a genetics course last spring. A couple of us in the class decided to do it. I certainly didn’t have any criminal intent.”
Anna said, “So why did you use an assumed name? You said you were Nola Deveau.”
“Because I didn’t feel comfortable giving a private company access to my genetic information. And I don’t like the fact that you now have it.” She took another sip of water, her hands still shaky. “How did you find out it was me?”
Ackerman said, “When we realized Nola Deveau was fake, we knew the mother couldn’t be identified until we had Nola’s real identity. So we tracked you down. If we hadn’t been successful, the image would have been released to the media.”
Nicky rubbed her face in her hands. “You said the remains were found a month ago? Who found her body?”
“Three months,” Ackerman said. “It was at an old farm in a little place near the border with New Hampshire called Lisette. It’s being developed for a subdivision. Surveyors found her.”
She shook her head, still reeling. “Lisette?” An image of an old house came to mind. It was fuzzy, just out of her grasp.
Ackerman said, “What is it?”
“I think I went there. With my mother.”
“When?” Ackerman said.
“When I was little, I think my mom took me there.”
“Just you and your mom?”
“Yeah, Karina was in school. My mother liked photography. It was a hobby. She liked taking pictures of abandoned buildings. I remember seeing an album of her photographs a few years back. My father must have kept them.” More memories surfaced and she gave a small smile. “She never went anywhere without a camera. I do remember that about her.”
Fraser, standing beside the cabinet, said, “Do you remember being in the town? Or at the farm?”
She considered this. “The farm. There was a big white house. It was falling down. There was some furniture still in the house. A sofa, a doll’s carriage. I think there was a barn, or maybe it was a big shed.”
“Did you ever meet anybody there?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think so. I’m not even sure this place was in Lisette.” She thought about it some more. “But I think I remember Mom talking about Lisette. It was close to her own name, Lisa.”
Drying her eyes again, she felt their eyes on her. “I’m surprised she lived so close. I always figured she’d moved to the other side of the country, so nobody would recognize her.”
Receiving no response, Nicky said, “Are you trying to locate her new family? Maybe they live near Lisette. Or maybe they just came for a visit.”
Fraser said, “It’s doubtful there was a new family.”
Her stomach twisted. “What do you mean?”
He cleared his throat. “Her remains were there a long time. It’s hard to say exactly how long, but it could be twenty years. The skeleton helped us determine the age.”
The twist deep in her gut became a gnawing pain. “Twenty years? That can’t be. Why wasn’t her body found earlier?”
“The grave was fairly deep and it seems nobody had gone near the property for quite a few years. But it was sold recently and plans were made for the subdivision. Some excavation had begun.”
Standing up, clutching her stomach, she walked over to the sculpture. Fraser took a step back to give her some space. Why hadn’t she realized earlier? The reconstruction was of her mother when she was still young, maybe just a bit older than Nicky was now. The artist had scratched two faint lines across the forehead.
It was of her mother as she had looked when she’d gone missing.
An icy chill settled in her stomach. “Did she kill herself?”
Shaking his head, Fraser looked down. “She was murdered.”
* * *
Cullen grabbed Nicole Bosko’s arm. Her face had gone three shades whiter and she looked unsteady on her feet.
“You should sit down,” he said.
Glancing at him, her nostrils flared. In the next instant she lunged at him and banged her fists on his chest. “Why didn’t you just tell me? Why did you have to pull this charade?”
He grabbed her wrists, but she wrenched them free, then stepped back.
She looked from Anna back to him. “Did you think I had something to do with her death? For God’s sake, I was five years old. I might have been a bad kid, but I wasn’t that bad.”
Anna said, “We’re not suggesting that at all.”
Bosko sat down, glared at them. “In a minute, I’m going to walk out of that door and I hope to never see either of you again.” She clenched, then unclenched, her fists. “But first, you owe me an explanation. How did she die?”
He said, “There was evidence of a trauma to the skull.”
She swallowed, grabbed a tissue to wipe her eyes, and then met his eyes. “Who did it?”
“We are trying to find that out.”
“This happened about the time she disappeared?”
“Correct,” Fraser said.
He could almost see the wheels in her head turning as she stared at the far wall. Clearing his throat, he waited for the next question.
Wet eyes met his again. “She didn’t try to run away at all, did she?”
* * *
“I’ve got ten minutes. Run me through this.”
The police chief, Joan Mullen, had summoned Cullen and Anna to her office after they’d finished interviewing Nicole Bosko.
Anna said, “Lisa Marie Bosko was reported missing on a Saturday nineteen years ago this September. She was thirty-one. She’d apparently left a note saying she was going away. At the time it was a missing person case. There was a search but it turned up nothing.”
“Why’d they search if she left a note?” Mullen’s tone was brusque. In the job just three months, she’d quickly developed a reputation as a smart but hard-nosed boss. Cullen and Anna weren’t the only cops hoping she’d loosen up after she’d been in the job a while.
Anna cleared her throat. “She was only supposed to go for two days, according to the note. It said she wanted time to think some things over. It didn’t say what those things were.”
Mullen said, “Are they sure it was from her?”
Anna said, “Her husband said it was her handwriting and that was confirmed. It didn’t look like it was written under duress.”
Cullen said, “The whole thing was out of character. The husband, James Bosko, denied any problems in the marriage. They’d celebrated their anniversary the day before she left. He’d taken the day off work. Anyway, she didn’t return on Friday and he called the cops the next day.”
The chief peered at them over wire-rimmed glasses. “They check him out?”
“They didn’t find anything. He was putting in long days at the hospital—except for the day he took off before she disappeared—then was home with the kids at night. But that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have hired somebody to kill her. We plan to look at him very closely. It’s not going to be easy, but if there’s something there, we’ll find it.”
Anna said, “The older daughter called him on the Wednesday when she came home from school and found her mother gone.”
Extreme Pursuit (Chasing Justice #2) Page 2