by Lisa Jackson
A reminder.
At least for now.
But the loss of his unborn child was different. No memento for a kid who hadn’t come into the world. Just heartbreak.
The desk wouldn’t be empty long. He’d been advised that Delacroix would soon occupy the space, that she, a junior detective, efficient but still a newbie to the department, would be his new partner.
“A temporary move,” Sergeant Sanya Jones, her words emphasized by the slightest of Jamaican accents, had told him. She’d transferred from Miami several years ago and ran the department with an easy smile and an iron fist. “Let’s just see if it works out.”
He’d wanted to argue, not so much that he had anything against Delacroix other than she was a little wet behind the ears, but because neither Delacroix nor anyone else would be able to fill Sylvie Morrisette’s beat-up boots.
God, he’d miss her.
There was a sharp rap on the half-open door to his office. Reed looked up to spy Jade Delacroix poking her head inside. “Got a sec?”
“Sure.”
In a pair of jeans, black T-shirt and jacket, Delacroix slipped into the room. Her badge was visible, clipped to her waistband, and she carried a slim iPad with her. She let the door close a bit behind her, but the noise from the outer hallway still drifted into the room.
“Take a load off.” He motioned to the vacant chair and desk. “I hear this is yours now.”
“Yeah, I guess.” She glanced at Morrisette’s chair but didn’t move to it. Instead she remained standing, fidgeting and looking uncomfortable. “I, um . . . I just wanted to say I’m sorry. You know. About Morrisette.”
“Me too.” He’d been getting the same sad faces and quick condolences from everyone he’d met at the station.
She plowed on. “Yeah . . . and well . . . I heard, you know, about the baby. The miscarriage. That’s . . .” Biting her lip, she glanced out the window and squinted behind her glasses. Her jaw was tight, her auburn hair catching in the light. “That’s rough.” She was nodding, as if agreeing with herself, as if she’d suffered a similar experience or at least known someone close who had.
“Yeah, thanks.” That unhappy news, too, had swept through the department. Most people had heard that he and Nikki had been expecting, so again, he’d dealt with more than a handful of condolences. Hopefully, this was the last and they all could move on.
“So, what’s up?” he asked, effectively changing the subject as he leaned back in his desk chair. “You got something on the Beaumont victims?”
“A good possibility. Narrowed things down,” she said, adjusting her glasses.
He waited. This was good news. The morgue and ME were overworked, as was everyone after the hurricane, but they’d rushed the autopsies of the decayed skeletons through.
“Dental records confirmed that the girls in the graves are the Duval sisters.”
“Really?” He’d wondered, as had others. He’d known about the missing girls. Almost anyone who had lived in Savannah in the last twenty years had heard their tragic story: three sisters who had disappeared after going to the movies.
“IDs verified on the older two girls,” Delacroix explained, flipping open her iPad cover and checking her notes. “Holly, the oldest, was twelve at the time and the middle sister, Poppy, was ten.”
He said, “But there were three.”
“Yes, Rose, the youngest.” She glanced up at him. “Still missing.”
He felt the muscles of his back tense. “How old was she?”
“Almost five.” Again she looked at her screen.
“So we can assume the youngest was supposed to go in that last spot, the empty grave. That had been the killer’s plan.”
Her lips tightened. “Possibly.”
Of course there were other options, but that seemed the most likely. “Do we have cause of death for the two?”
“Not completely confirmed, but the guess is strangulation.” Her jaw grew hard. “Fractured hyoid bones in both bodies.”
“So they were dead when they were placed in the tomb.”
“And staged,” she said, reminding him of the victims’ interlocking fingers.
“Right.” He rubbed the back of his suddenly tense neck. He’d dealt with his share of sickos. It came with the territory, but the crimes against children really got to him. “Has anyone notified next of kin?” The worst part of the job.
“Happening now,” she said. “The mother still lives in the area. Her name is . . .” Again she referred to the screen.
“Margaret,” he remembered.
“Yeah.” Nodding, she kept her eyes on her device. “Margaret, but no longer Duval. She’s remarried. Her name is . . . Where is it? . . . Oh, here we go: Margaret Le Roy. Her husband is Ezra. He’s a minister at the Second United Christian Church. It’s off of Derenne, not far from the hospital and medical center.”
“I know it.” Reed pictured the building with its prominent white spire and tracery windows cut into sand-colored bricks. “What about the father of the girls?”
“Harvey Duval,” she said. “He moved. Out of state. Now in . . . let me see.” Deftly Delacroix moved her cursor and said, “Okay. He’s in California.”
“Who isn’t?” he asked.
“Right.” She smiled, some of the tension breaking. Leaning a hip against Morrisette’s desk, she said, “Harvey landed in Fremont, which is a big tech center, I think. Southeast from San Francisco, closer to San Jose. Anyway, Harvey was in insurance. For a time after the girls disappeared, he and Margaret hung together and lived here in Savannah. But then the marriage fell apart and they split.” She was reading her notes, skimming details. “So the talk was that he wanted to get over the disappearances and try to move on. She, Margaret, couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. She became obsessed.” Delacroix looked over the tops of her glasses, pinning Reed in her gaze. “I can’t say that I blame her. Anyway, the upshot is that they divorced and she lost her job as an RN at Oswald General Hospital, because finding her daughters was all she could think about. She was coming in late and having trouble concentrating and, well, that’s not hard to imagine given what she was going through.” She scanned the notes. “Anyway, the upshot is that he moved away, to the West Coast, and she stayed. She began working as a private nurse and part time at a clinic here in town.”
“And all the while kept hounding the department,” he said.
“Yep, never stopped reminding us that the case hadn’t been solved, didn’t want it to go cold, which, of course, it did.”
That was right. He’d heard some of the staff in the Missing Persons department complain. Also, every year on the anniversary of her daughters’ disappearance Margaret had taken out a full-page ad in the Sentinel in an effort to renew interest in the case and keep the public informed, all in the hopes that someone—anyone—would have some information leading her to her children.
Reed got it. The woman had lost her three daughters in one fell swoop. But there was more to the story. Something about a brother, he thought. Something that was suspicious.
“Who was the lead?”
“Detective in charge of the investigation?” she said, then answered before he could confirm. “Charles Easterling, retired the next year, after the Duval girls went missing, and died three years ago at eighty-three. Congenital heart disease.”
“Who was assigned?”
“Someone named Woodrow Stevens, who moved to Chicago last year.”
“Woody,” Reed said.
“And now, it looks like you’re up.”
Waving Delacroix into the visitor’s seat, he leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers. “So give me the rundown. Fill me in on what actually happened the day the girls were last seen.” He hadn’t been a police officer yet when the girls had been abducted twenty years earlier, but he’d heard bits and pieces over the years. The case had never been kicked to Homicide because no bodies had ever been located and the mother had stalwartly insisted the girls were alive. That they�
�d been abducted. That they just needed to be found.
To add credence to her beliefs, there had been sightings over the years, calls from people who had sworn they’d seen one or more of the Duval sisters in different parts of the country, one as far away as Alaska if he remembered correctly.
With the aid of computers, police artists had come up with images of what the girls would look like today as young women, and so, over the years, every once in a while, there had been reported sightings of Holly or Poppy or Rose.
When Reed had first met Nikki, she had recently interviewed a woman who had sworn she’d seen all three girls with an older couple when she’d been visiting Disney World in Orlando, though, as with the other rumored glimpses of the girls, the story hadn’t panned out.
None had.
Until now.
“Okay. The rundown. And by the way, I sent you copies of everything I’ve got.” She glanced up. “Check your e-mail.”
“Will do.”
“Okay.” Rather than sitting at Morrisette’s old desk, Delacroix settled into the visitor’s chair, her fingers skating over the keys of her device as she brought him up to speed.
In essence, the three Duval sisters, curly-headed blondes with bright blue eyes, disappeared nearly twenty years earlier. They’d gone to the movies at a theater five blocks from their house with their older half brother, Owen, who had dropped them off, then claimed when he came to pick them up after the movie had let out, they were gone. He insisted he searched for them to no avail. Witnesses had seen the girls at the movie, but no one remembered their half brother. He was supposed to stay with them throughout the flick, but he swore he bribed them with candy for their silence so he could duck out early. When he returned and went home, the parents were frantic and called 911 to report them missing.
“Owen became the primary suspect or ‘person of interest,’” Delacroix said, lifting one hand and making air quotes with her fingers, “and actually he still is, but he had an airtight alibi with a girlfriend and since there were no bodies and no one saw him with the girls, no witnesses, he walked. The press crucified him, of course, but he’s always maintained his innocence.”
“And where is he now?”
“He moved to Atlanta not long after the girls disappeared and since then relocated to Jacksonville. People assumed he left Savannah to get away from the scandal and persecution, but who knows? Same for the move to Florida, no one knows why he landed there.
“However, the interview notes seem to indicate that his reaction, to the girls going missing, wasn’t expected. Instead of being upset and worried, or even feeling guilt or regret for losing the girls, he seemed angry and distant.”
“Anyone talk to him since the bodies were located?”
“Not from the department. I can’t say about his mother. She got the word about the IDs this morning, so she could’ve called him or texted him or whatever. And then there’s this,” she added, her lips tightening a bit, “he hasn’t exactly kept his nose clean. A girlfriend, Maria Coronado, filed charges against him for assault about seven years ago, that was when he was still in Atlanta, but then changed her mind, dropped the charges and the case never went to court. From the looks of it, the cops were called to their shared apartment twice and then the arrest, but, like I said, Coronado changed her mind.”
“Let me guess, they got back together?”
“For a while, then he split for Jacksonville.”
“Without her.”
“Uh . . . doesn’t say, but I’ll check. And he may have moved since. I checked with the Jacksonville PD, and they cruised by his apartment. Looks vacant and has a FOR RENT sign in the window.”
Reed thought that over. “His mother might know.”
“You’d think.”
“Anything on the biological father?” He rubbed his chin, feeling the stubble from his five-o’clock shadow. “I know Harvey adopted him early on, but was the real father ever around?”
“No info on that. Yet.”
“Huh.” Reed made a mental note. “What about Owen Duval? Anything new?”
She shook her head. “Nothing serious. A few traffic tickets, one for expired plates and one for running a red light. And a neighbor complained that he played his music too loud and too late, that was when he was in Atlanta with the girlfriend, but since then, nothing.” She looked over the tops of her glasses at Reed. “At least that we know of.”
“Right. Let’s find him,” Reed said. “See what he has to say for himself.”
“You got it.”
“And I want to run down the girlfriend who gave him the alibi as well. Do we know where she is?”
“Still working on that. Her name is Ashley McDonnell, or was, she could be married by now.”
“What about anyone else close to the Duval girls? Friends? Cousins?”
“Lots of people interviewed way back when. I’ve got a list and I’ve sent it along with all the case files to you—e-mail.”
“Okay.”
She said, “Here’s something else: There were only two security cameras at the theater at the time, one at the ticket booth outside and then one in the lobby. Neither one showed anything out of the ordinary, no abduction during the intermission between films—it was a doubleheader that evening.”
“But there is some footage?”
“Yeah, we’ve got a copy.”
“Let’s look it over.”
“What about other security cameras in the area?”
“Nothing. Back then there were few street cams or security cams outside, so there was nothing to go on. An Amber Alert was issued, but you know, technology wasn’t anything like it is now and the alert system hadn’t been in existence all that long, so the Duval girls fell through the cracks.
“A tip line was set up and at first all kinds of calls came in. Just like you’d expect. Everything from those that seemed legit to some of the most bizarre, but, as you know, none paid off. Eventually, sadly the case went ice-cold and if it weren’t for Margaret stoking the fires of interest every year, people would’ve forgotten all about it.”
“Until now,” he said, and she nodded.
“Until now.”
He stood and grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair. “Let’s go and see what Margaret Duval has to say.” His guts twisted at the thought of speaking with the grieving mother, but it had to be done.
“All right.” Delacroix snapped her iPad shut, retrieved her phone from the back pocket of her jeans and was heading out the door. A step or two behind, Reed circumvented a couple of detectives walking the opposite direction down the hall and caught up with Delacroix at the top of the stairs. As he reached her, her cell went off in her hand. She slanted a gaze at the screen, then sighed. “Crap.”
“What?”
“Wouldn’t ya know?” She started down the steps. “It’s the morgue. I asked them to keep the clothing and jewelry from the bodies and let me know when I could take a look. Examine the locket before they processed and bagged it.”
“That hasn’t been done?”
She sent him a glance over her shoulder and was jostled by a beefy uniformed cop hurrying up the stairs. “Backlog, remember? They were already behind when the hurricane hit. They rushed the autopsies and ID of the girls through and now want to clear them out. So I gotta go.” She slid him a glance as they reached the first floor. “Why don’t you go on ahead and I’ll meet up with you,” she suggested. “For all we know Margaret might not even be home.”
“She might be at the morgue already. You might run into her there.”
“Oh, God, I hope not . . . she shouldn’t see the bodies.” Delacroix’s eyebrows slammed downward over her glasses. Shaking her head, she added, “They’re just skeletons. Nothing a mother should ever view.”
He couldn’t disagree. “If I see her first, I’ll try to dissuade her.”
“Do that. Definitely. After I check out the locket, I’ll try to catch up with the father, Harvey, in California, talk to him o
n the phone. Then I’ll meet you back here. Okay?”
“Works for me,” he said as they reached the main door.
“Good. Later.”
Once outside they split up.
Reed climbed into the sweltering interior of his Jeep, slid on a pair of Ray-Bans, then started the engine. With the windows rolled down, he maneuvered through one detour, hit the Truman Parkway, melding into traffic and rolling up the windows as he remembered how Morrisette had an irritating habit of playing with the automatic windows. It had driven him crazy. Now, he’d have to get used to a new partner and all her idiosyncrasies. Delacroix? Would he be partnered with her permanently? Or would he have to get used to flying solo?
Maybe, for the time being, having some time alone was a good thing.
CHAPTER 10
With the cat curled up beside her, Nikki lay on her back in the bed and stared at the slowly turning blades of the ceiling fan. She felt awful.
Never had she liked lying around, she’d never even been one to sun herself on a beach and soak up rays or spend hours on the couch watching television or reading. She’d always been athletic and ready for action, so this . . . this ennui was getting to her.
Add to that a mountain of regret and guilt eating away at her brain.
Which hadn’t been helped by her husband.
She was still steamed at Reed. Oh, she got where he was coming from, she didn’t blame him for that, but it was time to move on. They were both incredibly sad at the loss of the child, but she couldn’t stand recuperating and doing nothing despite her doctor’s suggestion to take it easy. She grabbed her new phone, the one she’d picked up after her visit with Dr. Kasey. Somehow she’d managed to transfer all the data to her new iPhone, but she’d done it by rote as her thoughts had been with the baby she’d lost. Even now, she blinked back tears.
“You need to give yourself permission to heal, to take the time,” Dr. Kasey had said, her dark eyes kind, her smile understanding. But what the doctor and her husband didn’t understand was that Nikki was better off doing something, anything, and the fact that there was potentially the story of the century at her fingertips only added to her need to get up and get going.