“Maybe you should tell me the whole story. From the beginning.” She leaned in close enough that Jack could smell the musky scent that he’d come to recognize as Dana.
He told her the whole story, from the moment Kate had frozen in the squad room when Ronald Parker went nuts, to the confrontation they’d just had. But he left out the fact that Kate thought Dana was involved in the murders they were investigating. He wasn’t sure why, but he didn’t want to tell her that part just yet. Because maybe Kate was right?
Jack shook his head to clear the thought away. Kate was wrong. “I don’t know what’s happening, but whatever it is, I don’t need it. I need a partner that I can trust. Or I need to work without a partner.” He stared out at the Gulf, ignoring the tightness in his chest. “That’s a more appealing option for me right now.”
“Jack, Kate’s struggling with power issues, I think. She’s tired of not being in control. And I think what you’re seeing is her trying to take control of your partnership by manipulating you. I see it in couples all the time.”
“We’re not a couple.”
“No, but you’re partners, which in some cases is a deeper relationship than a couple might have. It certainly comes with the same dynamics that a relationship has. And Kate certainly fits the mold of a relationship partner with control issues.”
Dana placed her hand on his face and he looked into her eyes. “You should definitely request a new partner. Or a change of some kind. You can’t trust her Jack. Remaining her partner could get you killed.”
THIRTY-TWO
“Dr. McNally, I just don’t know what to do.” Lisa sat in Dana’s office, head in her hands, sobs shaking her from head to toe. Dana made no move to comfort her. She sat, waiting for the girl’s grief to work itself out.
“I thought he loved me.” Lisa’s whine set Dana’s nerves jangling. It took an act of willpower to allow Lisa the time she needed to be ready to hear what Dana had to say.
“I know, Lisa. But I warned you this wasn’t going to turn out the way you wanted it to. Tim is incapable of love. He was interested in sex and nothing more.” Dana’s vision narrowed. She knew Leslie wasn’t going to listen and now it fell to her to protect Lisa.
“I just thought…” Lisa pounded fists into her thighs. “I’m so stupid. Stupid. STUPID!”
“Lisa. Enough. You’re not stupid. And you know that. You’re hurt. But the important thing is that you’ve finally seen Tim for who he is. He can only hurt you now if you let him.”
Lisa shifted in her chair. But she didn’t argue. Dana took that as a sign that maybe she was beginning to realize what Dana told her was true.
“I know you’re hurt. And angry. You have every right to be angry. But now you need to use that anger. Tim is a perverted fool. You need to use that realization to ensure he doesn’t hurt you or your mom ever again. You need to take control back from him.”
Lisa’s sobs had stopped. She stared over Dana’s shoulder at the wall across from where she sat, but Dana could see her posture changing. Lisa straightened, and held her head a little higher. She was beginning to realize who was really in control. And if the set of her jaw was any indication, she’d found determination. Dana could only hope it was the right determination.
*~*~*
Lisa straightened in her chair. Was Dr. McNally right? She chewed at the inside of her cheek. Could she really take control like that? If all Tim was interested in was sex, then she just might be able to. She might be able to show him just how much he’d hurt her.
“Lisa?” Dr. McNally’s voice was quiet, soothing. There was still something about this woman that she didn’t like, but Lisa found herself drawn to her. She was a strong woman. Beautiful. Put together. And she represented everything Lisa wanted to be if she could ever get away from her mother.
The mother that had been more of a child her entire life than Lisa had ever been. Sometimes she missed Aunt Susan so bad. At least the Aunt Susan she had known before Uncle Jack went off to whatever sand-ridden country he had fought in and left Aunt Susan and Lilly alone. Before her mother got Aunt Susan using drugs, and the whole world crashed down around her.
She’d lost her aunt, her cousin, and her uncle almost overnight. Aunt Susan used to do the girl-things with her that her mother wouldn’t. She would take her out to get her hair or nails done. She bought Lisa her first Homecoming dress. The dress that still hung, lifeless in her closet so similar to the rest of her life.
Lisa just wanted things to go back to normal. At least when Aunt Susan was around she felt like she had a family. Now, she just felt alone.
Lisa crossed and uncrossed her legs as she thought about everything that had happened in the recent past. Tim made matters worse. She used to think he loved her. He made her feel like he loved her. Then Mom caught them together. And Mom being the drama queen that she was, ruined everything.
No, not everything. Tim ruined a few things too. Mom was who she was. She’d always been the same way. But Tim? He was a snake. He pretended to be someone he wasn’t. He pretended to care about her, to love her. And he made her feel like she belonged somewhere in this world. With him.
Obviously, he was a pro. Anger worked through Lisa like a drug, warming her muscles. Her skin. Her face. Clarifying her thoughts in a way that she’d never expected anger could. Energy, the need to do something, buzzed through every nerve in her body.
“I’m fine, Dr. McNally. You’re right. He doesn’t control me. No one does. And no one ever will again.” Lisa sat straighter, a plan was forming in her mind. She would show Tim once and for all.
“Good. You’re a strong young woman, Lisa. Don’t ever let anyone control you. Always remain in control of yourself. You have the right to say no and mean it. You have the right to make other people understand they can’t push you around.” Dr. McNally stood up and placed the notebook she’d written in on her desk. “You’re okay now?”
Lisa took the cue and stood as well. “I’m better than okay. Thank you. I’m sorry I busted in here without an appointment.” She almost wanted to hug Dr. McNally. Almost. But there was something about the woman that still creeped her out.
THIRTY-THREE
Kate used the butt of her palm to bang on the thick door. She waited, hoping Conner wasn’t out working on location for some client. The familiar electronic buzz from within the loft seemed to eat all other sounds. She couldn’t tell if there was any kind of movement inside at all.
She was just turning to leave when Conner slid the heavy door open. Relief washed over her when she heard the door.
“I’ve been trying to reach you.” She walked into the loft without waiting to be invited.
“I know. I’ve been working. Sorry.” Conner’s voice was just this side of snarky, but it was enough to make Kate realize she’d slipped into cop mode.
She shook her head. “Sorry. This case is stressing me out. I shouldn’t take it out on you.”
“You should be stressed out.” Conner was serious. No hint of sarcasm tainted tone or her demeanor.
“What do you mean?” Kate’s internal alarms clanged louder than the Army All-American Marching Band.
“It’s probably better if I show you than if I try to tell you.” Conner led the way through the maze of computer equipment, cables, and cords.
When the trail opened up to the work area where Kate had last seen Conner, she stopped, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
The chair that Kate had sat in during her last visit was missing. In its place were three large whiteboards, butted up against each other. Names, dates, pictures, new stories, and yarn created a complex pattern on the board that she couldn’t even begin to make sense of.
“This is Dana’s life.” Conner swept her hand through the air to include all of the boards. “And it’s much more complicated than it looks on the surface.”
“It looks pretty complicated.”
“That’s exactly why you haven’t been able to reach me. I’m up to my elbows in
this puzzle. But.” She took a deep breath. “I think I have it figured out.” Excitement, tinged with some other emotion Kate couldn’t quite decipher, rang in Conner’s voice.
“You’re going to need to sit down for this.” Conner rolled her computer stool to a place in front of the boards and pointed to another chair. “And you’re going to want this.” She handed over a tablet of paper and pen.
“Dana McNally doesn’t exist.” Conner’s voice took on a serious tone, almost as if she were teaching a lecture. “It took me some time to figure out why she appeared out of nowhere. I’ve been piecing this puzzle together one small fact a time.”
Kate was still wrapping her brain around Conner’s initial statement. “What do you mean she doesn’t exist?”
“It’s an alias. An assumed name.” Conner adjusted the whiteboards a fraction. Just enough to make sure all of them were touching. “Bear with me. I’m going to explain it all, but you need to understand why she’s using this name. If I’m right…well, you’ll see.”
Kate nodded. Could this be true? She knew something was off about Dana, but she’d never dreamed that Dana wasn’t who she appeared to be. What kind of past did this woman have?
“I tracked Dana back through college. Well, I tracked her records back through college. But as I was looking at those records, something didn’t look right. I can’t explain it. Electronic records are electronic records. They aren’t like paper records that you can touch and feel.” Conner shook her head.
“Anyway. I tracked her electronic records through college, but something seemed off. I found her records, but there was no mention of her in alumni newsletters and lists. Nothing online to indicate that she’d actually gone to college at Mississippi State, nothing that pointed to her existence except those electronic records.
She pointed to another paper on the whiteboard. This one looked like a letter of some kind, but Kate couldn’t see it clearly enough to read it. “So, I called the college. They had the same records I tracked down, but there was not a single person on the campus that remembered her. No professors, no advisors. It was as if she were a ghost the entire time she went to school there.” Conner’s hand slashed from one spot to another through the air as she spoke.
“In the end, I had to go deep into the records and examine the code to find what was wrong.” She stilled and locked gazes with Kate. “The school didn’t generate those records. They were planted there by someone on a server outside of the school.”
Kate was confused. “What does that mean?”
“Dana”—Conner made finger quotes in the air—”never went to school at Mississippi State, Kate. She was never a student there, but she managed to make it look like she had been.”
“So she doesn’t have a degree?” Kate played the pen against her thigh like a drum stick. “How could no one have ever discovered that before?”
Conner held her hand up. “There’s more.” She pointed to a picture taped in the upper left corner of the far left whiteboard.
“Before college, there is no record of Dana McNally. Nothing. She just didn’t exist. But she did make a tiny, nearly invisible mistake. In the school records that she planted, she listed her hometown as being Saucier, Mississippi.”
“It wasn’t made up?” Kate still couldn’t wrap her mind around the school records, but she was beginning to catch on. She knew she should hold her questions, and Conner’s quick, frustrated glance confirmed that, but she couldn’t help herself. What in the world was going on here? Frustration ate at her insides as she tried to figure it out. She wanted to know what was going on, and she didn’t want to wait for Conner to explain it all.
“Kate, I know this is confusing, but be patient. You really do need to understand this. In a minute, it will all make sense.”
Contrite, Kate nodded again.
“The hometown wasn’t made up. People who use social engineering techniques, methods of fooling others by giving just enough correct information that they’ll believe all of the made up information, are very good at what they do. They often stick to the facts as closely as possible. It’s the easiest way to hide a lie. Dana knew that. And she did a very good job of it for a very long time.”
“On a hunch, I started checking out the facts listed in the school records. I finally hit on something when I started running the hometown of Saucier. Turned out that was really her home town. But I had to dig into high school yearbooks to figure it out.” She pointed to the paper again. Looking closer, Kate could tell it was a very young picture of Dana.
“This picture is of Dana when she was in high school. Only, she wasn’t born Dana McNally. She was born Marlene Campbell. Marlee to her friends.” Conner clamped her lips shut and stood still as an alligator sunning on a river bank.
Kate’s mind whirled. Dana wasn’t Dana McNally. She was someone else. She’d never been to college at Mississippi State University. She was a complete fraud. And she was responsible for seeing Lisa through what was probably the toughest time of her life. She had to call Jack. No wonder Dana had seemed off.
Kate reached for the phone clipped to her waist.
“Wait.” Conner’s tone was firm. “I’m not even close to done yet. There’s more. A lot more.”
*~*~*
By the time Conner finished explaining her journey to discovery and her theory of who Dana McNally really was, Kate was completely numb. Her brain cranked full speed trying to process everything she’d just heard and to figure out what to do next.
“So, you think Dana…Marlee.” She needed to quit thinking of this woman as Dana. Needed to convince her brain that what she thought was true, at least on some points, was not.
“You think Marlee had a sister named Dana. That’s where the name came from?”
Conner had perched one hip on the corner of her desk, which forced Kate to turn away from the white board to talk to her. That may not have been a bad thing. Kate was much more capable of thinking when she wasn’t focused on the complicated connections that traced the boards.
“I think so.” Conner tapped a few keys on her keyboard. “If I’m right about this, Marlee had a sister named Dana. And McNally?” She held her hands together in front of her chest. “That was her mother’s maiden name.”
“Anything else about the parents?”
Another series of taps on the keyboard. “Here’s where it starts to get creepy.” Conner shook her head. “Creepier, I guess.”
On the screen, a bold headline proclaimed: Couple Slain in Their Home. Two grainy black and white pictures appeared below the headline. One was of a haggard-looking woman. The other was a male version of Marlee, staring back from the computer screen. It gave Kate goose bumps.
Kate caught her breath and leaned closer to the screen. She examined facial features. They were Marlee’s. It was unmistakable.
She skimmed through the news story. Both stabbed. Father in the girl’s room. The mother in a hallway. And a single daughter survivor who was being treated at a mental health facility. An older sister had run away a year before and had not been located.
“Were there any follow up stories?” Kate added notes to the pages she had taken.
Conner shook her head. “None. I tracked Marlee through medical and public health records for about six months, and then she disappeared completely. Ran away from a foster family she’d been placed with. And she hasn’t resurfaced since.”
“Why do you think Dana is Marlee?” Up until now, Kate had been playing along, but she still couldn’t connect the dots. What connected the two? And if they were related, why would Marlee take on her sister’s name? Was she jealous? Maybe it was something else.”
“Dana disappeared when she was 15. There was nothing – no single thing – after her freshman year in high school. She never surfaced again. And even though there was a cursory search for her, no trace was ever found.” Conner stood from her perch and pushed up on the balls of her feet.
“What is it?” Kate had seen this posture before. Conn
er was full of nervous energy. She had something else to share.
“One more thing. A theory. First, there were reports of family abuse. Evidently, teachers called the Department of Human Services on more than one occasion. DHS never found cause to take the girls away, and they talked to the mother on more than one occasion.” Conner made a disgusted sound. “Just supports my theory that DHS has always been worthless.”
Kate ignored the comment. Conner had thought most government agencies were worthless for as long as Kate had known her. Getting her started on that theory would completely derail this discussion.
“What’s your theory?”
“No suspects were ever named in the deaths of her parents. No weapon was ever found. Nothing ever came of it. I think Dana, or Marlee, or whatever her name is, killed them.”
“Anything to prove that?”
“Nope. Just a gut feeling.”
“What about the sister?” Kate felt like a prosecutor, firing questions as fast as Conner answered the last one.
“I think she’s dead. I’ve tracked runaways before. Eventually, they turn up somewhere. Sometimes in a morgue in another state because they overdosed on drugs or got killed on the street. But I can usually find some trace of them. Not this girl.” Conner made a gesture with her hands to indicate a puff of smoke. “One day she was there. The next she wasn’t. That’s pretty difficult for a young girl to do. She would make a mistake eventually.”
Kate thought about what Conner said. It made sense. But in her experience, if someone wanted to disappear, they could. It wasn’t that difficult. And the most common slip up was financial. A person would use a credit card or their social security number somewhere and it would show up in public record. But teens didn’t usually have credit cards. Of course, she might have tried to get a job somewhere, then she would have needed a social security number or she wouldn’t have been able to keep the job very long.
Biloxi Sunrise (The Biloxi Series Book 1) Page 19