Frowning, the chief considered this in silence. On the desk in front of her, crime scene photos showed skeletal remains in an excavated area of about a dozen square feet near the barn. The grave had been a couple feet deep, suggesting the killer had been in no hurry.
Anna said, “Fast forward a couple of decades and her remains turn up at a farm near New Hampshire.” She explained how Lisa Bosko was identified through a DNA match with a daughter.
He said, “We just interviewed Nicole Bosko and I think she may be able to remember more about what happened.”
The chief raised her eyebrows above the thin red frames of her glasses.
He said, “She remembered visiting the farm where her mother’s body was found as a little kid. There are probably other things she can remember. It could be key.”
“How old was she?”
“Five. It’s quite possible there are more memories there.”
The chief frowned. “What if she was lying about remembering going to the farm with her mother? Doesn’t she have a record? She may not be trustworthy.”
Anna said, “About ten years ago she and a boyfriend crashed a boat. I remember it. There was a lot of talk at the time. It was a minor scandal in Riverton, a big embarrassment for her father.”
Mullen drummed a pen on the desk. “The father and sister are coming back when?”
He said, “In a couple of days. We’ve read over their transcripts from the time Lisa Bosko went missing, but there wasn’t much there. I’m not sure we’ll be able to get more out of them now, but we’ll sure as hell try.”
Anna said, “We know Nicole Bosko was interviewed, but the transcript of the interview was missing from what we got sent. We’ll be getting another box in a day or two, so we hope it’s in there. She must have made some reference to a man her mother talked to on the phone—this was just before she went missing—because the father and sister were asked about it but said they didn’t know anything. We’ll follow up with them as soon as we can reach them.”
The chief took off her glasses, grabbed a tissue, and cleaned them. Finished, she set them on the desk. “What if there’s nothing more to remember? Or what if she doesn’t want to help find out who killed her mother? The last time she saw her was supposedly twenty years ago.”
He and Anna exchanged a look. Anna said, “I think she wants to. She was pretty upset. She was pretty angry at her mother for leaving, but now that she knows her mother was murdered, she’ll want to help.” Anna gave him a quick look. They didn’t want to tell Mullen that Nicole Bosko might be very reluctant to get involved.
Mullen was frowning again. “Back up for a sec. When was Lisa Bosko last seen?”
Anna said, “Wednesday morning. She saw the girls off to school in the morning. The older one was picked up earlier, because she had some event. The younger one was the last to see her mother. She told us today she remembers nothing of it, but she was probably interviewed, so we’ll look at the transcript, see if we can jog her memory.”
Cullen said, “The girls came home from school and apparently the mother wasn’t there. Her car was in the driveway. They called the father and he came home and said he found the note in an envelope on his bedside table. It said she would be gone two days. The father called the cops on Saturday. The search started that afternoon and continued for five days, but they didn’t find anything. There was a big search, because the husband had connections and put a lot of pressure on.”
Anna said, “The house was in a forested area near a lake. The husband still lives there.”
Mullen said, “Did they search the lake?”
He said, “Divers went in but they didn’t find anything.”
Anna said, “At the time, there was some talk she’d been having an affair but it was never confirmed.”
Mullen perked up. “What if it was true? What if she was having an affair and the guy picked her up? Maybe she thought they were going away together but instead he killed her.”
Cullen said, “If there was a guy, maybe Nicole knew him. She and her mother spent a lot of time together because she didn’t start school until that fall. I’m sure if we question her some more she’ll be able to remember something. She may even have met the guy.”
Anna said, “Or maybe she knows something about the father. They’re definitely not close.”
He said, “We have to track down witnesses, see who’s still around, and interview them again. Like Anna said, we haven’t been able to reach the other daughter and the husband, but we’ll keep trying.”
The chief stood up. “I’ve got a meeting. Come up with something fast, okay? Something concrete to justify spending resources on this. You’ll be pulled off it if and when you’re needed elsewhere.”
Cullen rubbed his temple. Already, she wanted to shove the case to the back burner. No doubt she’d ride their asses the whole way. “Somebody has to pay for killing this woman,” he said, clenching his fists as frustration swept through him. “And there’s always the chance the killer’s still out there.”
Never mind that whenever he saw Lisa Bosko’s reconstruction she seemed to be speaking to him, telling him to find out who killed her. How do you explain that? Or how do you explain that he’d become a cop because of cases like this. That still haunting him was the face of a friend’s sister who’d disappeared, never to be found, when he was a teenager.
Mullen held up her hand to stop further protest. “I know, I know. But the stats on cold cases make this a long shot. I’d rather spend my money on fresh cases. They have a way better chance of being solved. So find something. Fast.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Outside the police station, the sun had gone into hiding again and the streets of Riverton were bleak and gray. Nicky had refused Cullen Fraser’s offer of a drive, not wanting to spend another minute in his company, opting instead for a cab that dropped her off at her apartment building fifteen minutes later.
She trudged up to her third-floor apartment, went to the bathroom and washed up, then borrowed a cell phone from a woman she knew on the second floor to call the shelter. Michelle was already back. Nicky let out a huge sigh, then explained what had happened. She kept the details to a minimum and her boss gave her a week off, assured her Michelle would be well looked after and promised to have someone drop off her phone.
An hour later, when a coworker came by with the phone, Nicky accepted her condolences but didn’t let her into the apartment. It wasn’t polite, but they’d never been more than acquaintances and now wasn’t the time to become BFFs.
She tried calling her sister, but got voice mail and left a message asking her to call. She took a bath, slipped into pajamas, and sat on the sofa. It was evening, already dark, but she lacked the energy to get up to turn on a light. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t do anything, it seemed, but cry. For all her efforts over the years to forget her mother, Lisa Bosko’s face was in sharp focus now and memories came flooding back. Her mother singing her to sleep, hugging her father, digging in the garden. And taking photographs, always taking photographs. Now that she was letting herself remember, she couldn’t turn the tap off.
In bed that night, Nicky tossed and turned. The lifeless eyes on the sculpture stared at her accusingly. A sleeping pill might have been a good idea, but she didn’t have any and it seemed like a copout, anyway. At four in the morning, she got up and checked her phone. Nothing from Karina. Did she know? How would her father react? Remembering his stoicism in the years after her mother disappeared, her stomach twisted.
In the living room, she fired up her laptop computer and found a brief news item about the discovery of her mother’s body. An excavator operator had found remains while digging on the property of an abandoned farmhouse in Lisette. The report struck her as brutally impersonal and she felt her throat go scratchy.
She closed the page, decided to see if there were any stories from twenty years ago, when her mother went missing. Ten minutes later, she found a photocopy of a short item from an old newspaper. But the story,
headlined SEARCH ENDS FOR MISSING RIVERTON-AREA WOMAN, didn’t tell her anything new. After five days, finding nothing and with no hint of foul play, police had called off the search. There was a headshot of her mother, cropped from a family photo, but no quotes from her father. How hard had they searched? It was impossible to tell from the story.
Fifteen minutes later, unable to find anything else, she shut the computer down. There were so many stories of missing people, many of them children, but adults too. Sometimes people were found alive, sometimes bodies were identified, but often there was nothing. Many other families were left waiting, never learning the truth about what had happened. She swallowed a lump in her throat.
She must have dozed because the next thing she knew it was morning and the sun was creeping across the parquet floor in her living room. At eight, she showered and got dressed, made coffee, then called her friend Emily Blackstock, who promised to come over as soon as she could, sometime before noon.
At nine, her cell phone rang. It was a strange area code and she considered not answering it, but then realized it could be Karina.
“Hi, Nicole.” It was Karina.
Nicky sat down, felt tears well up. “Hi.”
“You should have called.”
“I’m sorry. I tried but just got voice mail.” She sighed. Here she was, already apologizing for something she had no control over.
“We’re catching a ride to Port-au-Prince tomorrow morning. We’re at a hospital in Cap-Hatien now. There’s an afternoon flight to New York.”
“I’m glad you could make it out so quickly. Are you okay?”
There was a silence for a moment, and then her sister said, “It’s such a shock. Her taking off was one thing—”
“We can’t be sure she did take off.”
“Of course she did. There was a note.” Her tone was clipped, dismissive and it wasn’t hard to picture the frown that usually went with it.
Nicky decided to let it go. What if someone had forged it, or her mother had been forced to write it? But that hardly sounded plausible. This was real life, not a movie. She said, “How is dad?”
“He’s taking it pretty hard but he insisted on working this morning. There was a newborn having seizures. He had to help.”
Nicky pulled in a deep breath. Oh yeah, that was her father. A strong believer in putting others first, and carrying on no matter what. In the years after his wife’s disappearance, he hadn’t complained, opting instead to shut himself away in his study for an hour or two. The flip side was his reluctance to talk about her at all. Except one time when Nicky had come home from school, crying, because some kids had teased her about her mother, saying she’d run off with another man. Her father had said to ignore them; her mother was an honorable woman. She hadn’t understood the meaning of the word honorable but the fierceness in his tone had made his sentiment clear.
Karina said, “He wanted to talk to you, but I said we could meet up when we got home.”
Nicky gritted her teeth. It wasn’t a conscious decision on Karina’s part, but why did she always have to be the buffer between her and her father? Did she expect her to say something to upset him?
Her sister sniffled. “I almost forgot. He wanted to make sure you didn’t call Uncle Steve. He wanted to be the one to break it to him.”
“Of course.” Uncle Steve was her father’s brother, his only sibling, three years younger.
They talked for a few more minutes, and then Karina said, “We’ll take a cab from the airport. We’ll be in late, but we should be able to meet up. Can you come to the house?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Don’t do anything until we get there, all right?”
Nicky tensed. “What do you mean? What do you think I’m going to do?”
Karina said, “We have to stick together in this, that’s all. We’ll talk about it more when we get home. Just let me handle it from here on in.”
She frowned. What was Karina talking about?
Her sister’s tone softened. “Love you, Nicole. See you soon.”
Karina hung up before Nicky could respond. Sitting down, she swallowed the sharp taste in her mouth. Already, Karina was taking over, being the big sister. Some things were never going to change. But maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Nicky didn’t have a great track record of handling things. And at least Karina had her father’s best interests at heart. That was the main thing.
* * *
At her kitchen table that afternoon, Nicky watched her friend Emily Blackstock grate cheddar cheese onto a wooden cutting board. She said, “You don’t have to do this.”
Emily said, “Are you kidding? It’s the least I could do. Have you eaten anything today?”
She shook her head. How could she survive without Emily, her one true friend? They were so alike in so many ways. Emily had dropped by an hour earlier and in that time Nicky had shed a river of tears, not bothering to try to stop the flow. She’d let Emily hug her, even though she didn’t normally do hugs.
Emily said, “Have you spoken to your dad?”
“Not yet, but I talked to Karina for a few minutes this morning. They’re coming home tomorrow. She advised me not to do anything until they come.”
Emily pulled a face. “What does she think you’re going to do?” Emily had a rocky relationship with her mother and knew all about messy family dynamics. They often commiserated.
“Heaven knows. Only Karina has the power to make me feel like a total boob for no reason at all.” She took a sip of coffee. “I wouldn’t be able to do anything even if I wanted. My mind is mush. The same thoughts keep running through my head. I keep thinking about my mother and how unfair it all is.”
“You’ve never talked much about your mom.”
“I got pretty good about putting her out of my mind. I still don’t remember a lot. I was pretty young. But it’s got to be awful for my dad and Karina. This is going to hit them so much harder. Especially my dad.”
“Your dad will be okay, Nicky. Karina will make sure of it. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“I’ll be okay.” She stood up and walked to the kitchen window, which looked out onto a parking lot three stories below. She’d been in this apartment nearly two years, the longest she’d stayed in any place since she was sixteen. She’d been thinking of moving on. The apartment was dingy and too small to have people over and she could afford a better place. She sighed. That seemed such a silly thing to have worried about now.
Turning back, she watched her friend flip two grilled cheese sandwiches in a frying pan on top of the stove. “How’s Matt?” Matt Herrington was her boyfriend.
Emily’s dazzling green eyes lit up as she put the sandwiches on two small plates, then carried them to the table. “He’s fine, busy, bugging me about setting a date.”
Nicky sat down. “Usually it’s the other way around.”
Emily got two glasses of milk, then joined her. “We were going to have it in December, but then my mother said she was going to Europe in late November. Apparently Frank has never been to Europe and they plan to tour around for a couple of months. Now I’m thinking we should just elope.” Frank was her mother’s fiancé.
Nicky nodded, took a bite of her sandwich. “Maybe you should. You didn’t want a big fuss anyway.” She chuckled. “Maybe if you dyed your hair black again and chopped it off like when you were on the run last year your mother would encourage you to elope.”
Emily laughed. “Now there’s an idea.” She narrowed her eyes. “I can see what you’re doing, by the way.”
Nicky, about to take a sip of milk, put the glass down. “What?”
“You’re trying to deflect attention. This isn’t about me. It’s about you.”
“We’ve talked about me nonstop.” At her friend’s look, she said, “I’m sorry. I’m not very good at discussing my feelings. I don’t have to tell you that.” Tears stinging her eyes, she said, “You haven’t seen a picture of my mom, have you? Come on, I’ll show you.”
&n
bsp; They put the dishes in the sink, then went to the living room and sat down. Nicky had pulled a shoebox containing family pictures out of the closer earlier, but hadn’t built up the nerve to go through them yet. She hadn’t looked at them in years, couldn’t even remember how she’d ended up with them. Removing a big elastic band encircling the box, she opened the lid to reveal several hundred pictures jammed in haphazardly.
She riffled through the photos, found one of her mother and looked at it for a long moment before passing it to Emily. “There aren’t many of my mother, but I have a few.”
Emily’s jaw dropped. “You look like her a lot. How old was she in this picture?”
“I’m not sure. She was barely thirty when she died.” Fresh tears wet her eyes. “It’s so awful, to think how some bastard stole her life. She was so young.” She grabbed a tissue, wiped her eyes. “I don’t know if I can forgive myself. I used to hate her, blame her for my problems.”
Emily put a hand on her arm. “You can’t blame yourself, Nicky. You didn’t have any idea what had happened. And you didn’t have it easy.”
“That doesn’t excuse it. And maybe I didn’t have it easy, but I did it to myself, didn’t I? It’s like my whole life has been a lie. I blamed everything on her. I mean, what kind of mother just abandons her family? I hated her for not even bothering to call, just to say hello. Now I know why.”
Emily hugged her, then drew back and looked her in the eye. “Don’t blame yourself. You had no idea. And it sounds like everybody just assumed she had taken off. Didn’t you tell me your father gave you the idea she might have left because of you?”
“Somehow I always felt that, but I’m thinking now maybe he didn’t. I was pretty messed up for quite a few years. Maybe I just talked myself into believing she’d left because I was such a handful.”
“But she left a note, didn’t she? I remember you saying something about that.”
“I don’t know what it said. There were rumors she’d had an affair. But nothing was ever proven.” She rubbed her temples. “I’ll have to ask my dad about it, see what he says. But I don’t think he believed those rumors.”
Extreme Pursuit (Chasing Justice #2) Page 3