took the bag and analyzed the shards. She went back to the doll and gently ran her fingers over the fractured porcelain. The split was well opposed and should come together nicely. The restoration of the cheek and forehead could be made to look flawless. The eye socket was another issue. It would take all her skill to restore, and she’d likely need help from the one person who was better than Rory at restoring dolls. The shattered portion, Rory was sure, would be found on the back of the head. The repair there, too, would be challenging due to the hair and the small bits of porcelain she held in the ziplock bag. She didn’t want to remove the doll from the box until she was in her workshop for fear that more porcelain might fall from the shattered area.
She nodded slowly, keeping her gaze on the doll.
“I can fix this.”
“Thank God,” Mr. Byrd said.
“Two weeks. A month, maybe.”
“As long as it takes.”
“I’ll let you know the pricing after I get started.”
“I don’t care what it costs. As long as you can fix it.”
Rory nodded again. She placed the ziplock bag containing the shattered pieces into the box, closed the lid, and relatched the lock.
“I’ll need a phone number where I can reach you,” she said.
Mr. Byrd fished a business card from his wallet and handed it to her. Rory glanced at it before sticking it into her pocket: BYRD INSURANCE GROUP. WALTER BYRD, OWNER.
Rory attempted to lift the box and leave when Mr. Byrd put his hand on hers. A stranger’s touch had never been well tolerated, and Rory was about to recoil when he spoke.
“The doll belonged to my daughter,” he said in a soft voice.
The past tense caught Rory’s attention. It was meant to. Rory looked at the man’s hand on her own, and then met his eyes.
“She died last year,” Mr. Byrd said.
Rory slowly sat down. A normal response might have been I’m sorry for your loss. Or, I see why this doll means so much to you. But Rory Moore was anything but normal.
“What happened to her?” Rory asked.
“She was killed,” Mr. Byrd said, taking his hand off Rory’s and sitting down across from her. “Strangled, they think. Her body was left in Grant Park last January, half-frozen by the time she was found.”
Rory looked back at the Kestner doll resting in the box, the right eye shut peacefully, the left eye open and askew with a deep fissure running through the orbit. She understood what was happening, and knew why Detective Davidson had been so adamant that she take this meeting. It was a classic bait and switch that Davidson knew Rory would be helpless to resist.
“They never found him?” Rory asked.
Mr. Byrd shook his head, dropping his gaze to his dead daughter’s doll. “Never had so much as a lead. None of the detectives return my calls anymore. It feels like they’ve simply moved on.”
Rory’s presence in the library that morning proved Mr. Byrd’s statement false, since it was Ron Davidson who had convinced her to come.
Mr. Byrd brought his gaze back to her.
“Listen, this is not a setup. I reached for Camille’s doll the other day because I was badly missing my daughter and needed to hold something that reminded me of her. I dropped the goddamn thing and shattered it. I couldn’t bring myself to tell my wife because I feel so guilty, and I know it would send her into a fit of depression. This doll was my daughter’s favorite possession through her childhood. So please believe me that I want you to restore it. But Detective Davidson told me that your work as a forensic reconstructionist is heralded in the City of Chicago, and beyond. I’m prepared to pay you anything it takes for you to reconstruct the crime and find the man who wrapped his hands around my daughter’s neck and choked the life from her.”
Mr. Byrd’s stare became too much for Rory to handle, penetrating the protective shield of her nonprescription glasses. She finally stood, lifted the Kestner doll box off the table, and secured it under her arm.
“The doll will take a month. Your daughter, much longer. Let me make some calls and I’ll be in touch.”
Rory walked out of the library and into the fall morning. She felt it as soon as Camille Byrd’s father had used the past tense to describe his daughter, that subtle tingling in her mind. That nearly imperceptible, but now ever-present, whisper in her ears. A murmur her boss knew goddamn well she wouldn’t be able to ignore.
“You’re a real son of a bitch, Ron,” Rory said as she exited the library. She had been on hiatus from her job as a forensic reconstructionist, a scheduled break she forced herself to take every so often to avoid burnout and depression. This most recent pause had been longer than any of her others, and was starting to piss off her boss.
As she walked along State Street and back to her car, with Camille Byrd’s shattered doll under her arm, Rory knew the vacation was over.
CHAPTER 3
Chicago, October 2, 2019
HER PHONE BUZZED FOR THE FIFTH TIME THAT MORNING, WHICH she again ignored. Rory stared at her reflection in the mirror as she pulled her dark brown hair back and tied it off. She was not a morning person and on principle did not answer her phone before noon. Her boss knew this, so Rory felt no remorse for ignoring him.
“Who is incessantly calling you?” a voice asked from the bedroom.
“I’m meeting Davidson.”
“I didn’t know you decided to go back to work,” the man said.
Rory walked from the bathroom and slipped her watch onto her wrist. “Am I going to see you tonight?” she asked.
“Okay, we won’t talk about it.”
Rory came over and kissed him on the mouth. Lane Phillips had been her, what? Rory wasn’t traditional enough to label him a “boyfriend,” and this far into her thirties, she thought the description sounded juvenile. She’d never considered marrying him, despite that they’d slept together for the better part of the last decade. But he was much more than her lover. He was the only man on this planet, aside from her father, who understood her. Lane was . . . hers, that was the best Rory could do in her own mind, and they were both okay with that.
“I’ll tell you about it when I have something to tell. Right now, I don’t know what I’m getting myself into.”
“Fair enough,” Lane said, sitting up in bed. “I’ve been asked to appear as an expert witness on a homicide trial. I’ll be testifying in a couple of weeks, so I’m meeting with the DA today. Then I’m teaching until nine tonight.”
When Rory tried to back away, he grabbed her hips.
“Are you sure you won’t give me any clues about what Davidson lured you back with?”
“Stop by tonight after your class and I’ll catch you up.”
