brightened a little. “No, I guess I can still say Laura is a little shy.”
“That’s true,” Steve agreed, even though his practical cop’s nature felt like telling her that just because the figure on the bed wasn’t her sister didn’t mean Laura was alive. He prayed silently that when they opened the trunk of the car they’d impounded after the fire there wouldn’t be anybody in it.
Jessie hadn’t heard the change in his tone and he felt thankful about that. “Do you think you’ll be okay to drive home?”
She didn’t answer him right away. “Probably,” she said after a while. “I’m still trying to take in the fact that my sister is out there somewhere. After the last couple days, I’ve been getting myself used to thinking of her…not here.” She wasn’t the first person he’d seen who refused to say the word dead to talk about a loved one.
“How do you figure out who this person really is?” she asked, forcing him to pay attention to the process, as well.
“First we’ll call evidence techs from the county coroner’s office in to process her. We’ll take fingerprints and compare them to those on file in different databases. We’ll take blood and tissue samples to do DNA tests. And just to be sure we’ll need to take blood from you, as well, just to make the fact that this isn’t your sister official.”
Jessie nodded. He felt thankful that she wasn’t arguing with what he told her. “How long will the results of those tests take?”
“Days. Unlike the TV crime shows where they get their results in fifty-five minutes, real life works a little slower. I imagine you wish it didn’t.”
A half smile lifted one corner of her mouth slightly. “You’re right. The sooner we know who this is, or can at least prove it isn’t Laura, the sooner you might be able to find her.” The specter of whether the police might find Laura alive or not hung in the air between them as an unspoken threat. Steve decided not to pursue that for now.
The evidence technicians came into the room and Steve eased Jessie out so that the techs could do their work. Even now that they knew the figure on the bed was a stranger, he didn’t want Jessie to have to witness the things that would happen next.
“Is there anything else you want to tell me about your sister, or your own life?” The words were out of his mouth before Steve was quite sure why he’d asked them. Didn’t he already have enough to do? Still, his experience as an investigator made him value those hunches that drove him to ask a last question.
Jessie shrugged. “Not really.” Her expression said something else. There was information she kept to herself right now, but he didn’t know Jessie well enough to know how important her private information might be. Given her cryptic look it could be anything from a stash of unpaid traffic tickets to her sister being involved in criminal activity. What he’d seen of Jessie so far led him to believe that her secret might be closer to the traffic tickets, or something even more trivial. At least he hoped so; Jessie Barker intrigued him and for a change he wanted that feeling to come from something positive, not somebody’s criminal nature. Still, watching Jessie walk away gave Steve an uncanny feeling that something very serious was wrong.
FOUR
Jessie knew she should go back to work, but she couldn’t quite push herself to do it yet. Laura wasn’t dead, but she was still missing and no one seemed to have any idea where she might be. The condo felt so empty without her sister there. It took only two days for Jessie to realize how much Laura usually did around the place.
When the flowers on the kitchen countertop wilted Jessie threw them out, and had no idea where to get more. When she reached for one of her favorite coffee cups on the third day and couldn’t find it, it took another hour to figure out that the cups were clean in the dishwasher. Laura always unloaded it. How many of the little pleasures of her life were due to her sister? Almost all of them, apparently. Without Laura life was amazingly mundane. There was no loud music in the house when she came home from errands, the shutters stayed closed even when it was sunny. In three days the quiet got to her so much she began to think about going to the pound and adopting a dog. She had even decided what kind of dog; something large and very furry of vastly mixed breed that would answer to the name of Spike or Tiger.
She was online looking up the address of the nearest animal shelter when the phone rang. When the caller ID showed that it was the country sheriff’s department she picked it up immediately. “Deputy Gardner?”
“Yes. Ms. Barker? I have something to discuss with you. Would it be all right if I came over?”
Jessie turned away from the computer, her heart beating faster. Had they found Laura? “Certainly. Do you want to set up a time to meet?”
There was silence for a few seconds. “Actually, I’d like to come over now if you don’t mind.”
“All right.” They hung up and Jessie shut down her computer and went to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. Coffee was out of the question because she knew there was no milk in the house to offer the deputy. She sighed. “Maybe once I get the dog we can walk to the store together,” she said to the empty kitchen.
Deputy Gardner refused her offer of tea, and sat in the living room in the most upright chair available. “Have you gotten a lead on Laura? Do you know where she is?”
His brow wrinkled. “Not exactly.” He leaned forward in his chair. “Is there anything about your family situation that you haven’t told me? Anything that might change the way our investigation is going?”
Jessie’s palms began to sweat. She had only known this man for a week. There was no way she could trust him. “No. What does this have to do with finding my sister?”
“I’m not sure yet. But it has a great deal to do with identifying the victim in the morgue who isn’t your sister.” His eyes narrowed, making him look much more like an investigator than the compassionate man she had started getting to know in the hospital. “How much do you know about DNA?”
“Enough. I teach history, not science. But I’m sure you’re going to enlighten me,” Jessie snapped.
“I won’t go into deep detail. But we had a surprise with that sample we took from you to prove that the victim wasn’t your sister. It proved that all right, but it gave us another interesting fact. The victim shares half your DNA profile.”
“Only half?” She wanted to ask more, but it was all she could choke out. Jessie always thought fainting from shock was one of those things that only happened to Victorian women who wore whalebone corsets. Surely it wasn’t possible today. But suddenly she had this funny buzzing in her head and there didn’t seem to be enough air in the room.
“Only half,” Steve Gardner said. “Which makes the story you told me about losing your parents in a car crash just that—a story. Now I’ll repeat my earlier question. Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”
The buzzing was getting louder. “Only that I’m glad there’s no statute of limitations on murder because now I’m sure that someone killed my father.” After that her vision blurred and Jessie quickly lay down on the couch before she pitched forward into the coffee table. The last thing she remembered thinking was that when they found Laura she didn’t want to have to tell her that she’d ruined the veneer on the furniture, so she better pass out in a different direction.
Steve
