and let himself relax into the peace that being in this place evoked in his soul. A table with a cross and an open Bible on it sat at the front of the room, and he led her to seats directly in front of the display.
They sat without speaking for a while until she finally broke the silence. “This is much better than the E.R. It’s quieter and more peaceful. Thank you for bringing me here.”
“I’ve been in this room a lot in the past few years.”
She turned her head, a questioning expression on her face. “Oh? How so?”
He sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “This is where we bring families when they’re waiting to hear if their loved ones will survive after a violent crime. It’s a peaceful place, and we hope it can afford the families some measure of comfort.”
Tears pooled in her eyes. “Is that why you brought me here?”
“Partly. But I wanted to ask you about the shooting, too. I don’t want to cause you any more stress than you’re already under, but I thought it might be easier to talk about it here than in the hustle and bustle of the emergency room.”
She nodded. “I think it is, but there’s something I need to know, too.”
“What’s that?”
She inhaled a deep breath. “From the moment Uncle Dan picked me up I could tell something was wrong. He kept looking in the rearview mirror, and it seemed he almost suspected something was about to happen. When the EMTs were loading him in the ambulance, he opened his eyes long enough to tell me to call you. He needed to tell you something.”
Seth frowned. “Did he say what it was?”
She shook her head. “No. But he had to be restrained on the gurney because he was so determined there was something important he had to tell you about the case, he said. Has he been helping you with a case you’re working on?”
Seth’s stomach curled with fear at Callie’s words. After a moment he shook his head. “No, I’ve been helping him with a case for the past year or so.”
“I don’t understand. What kind of case would he need help with? He’s not a policeman anymore. He’s a judge, and judges don’t investigate cases.”
Seth stood up and paced to the far wall before he turned and walked back to stand in front of her. Dan had mentioned several times that Callie knew nothing about the case he’d worked on for years because he knew she would be upset he was investigating a murder. It had been something he didn’t share with many of the people in his life. Seth happened to be the exception to the rule. But it was time Callie knew, especially if that case was the reason Dan was in surgery fighting for his life.
He dropped back in his chair and nodded. “I guess it’s time you learned about the burden Dan has carried for years. He knew you would try to persuade him to give up if he told you about it, so he never did.”
Callie clasped her hands in her lap and swallowed hard. “What kind of case is it?”
He spread his hands in a helpless gesture and shook his head. “I can only tell you what Dan has told me. This case dates back to when he was on the police force.”
She sat up straighter, her eyes wide. “On the force? But that was years ago.”
Seth nodded. “Twenty-five years, in fact. One morning he was called to the banks of the Mississippi River just south of downtown where a woman’s body had washed up. She looked to be in her early thirties, and she’d been shot. There was no identification on the body, but Dan felt sure that as pretty and as well dressed as she was, someone would report her missing.”
“Did they?” Callie asked.
Seth shook his head. “When he didn’t hear anything, he went by the medical examiner’s office and learned she didn’t fit the description of anyone who’d been reported as missing in Memphis. That made him wonder if she was from somewhere else. He asked about her personal effects, and they gave him an envelope that only contained a locket she was wearing. Inside was the picture of a little boy who looked to be about five or six. Then he asked to see her body. That’s when something strange happened to him.”
“What?”
“He said he stood there and looked down at her and there was something about her face that reminded him of your mother.”
“My mother?” Callie’s question was barely more than a whisper.
“Yes. He said your mother had died a few weeks before, and you had just come to live with him. You’d cried the night before for your mother, and he wondered if the little boy in the picture in the locket was crying for his mother. So he made a pledge to the dead woman that he wouldn’t rest until he’d found her family and returned her body to them. When no one ever came forward to claim the body, Dan bought a burial plot and a tombstone and had the woman buried at his own expense. For the past twenty-five years, every time he read or heard about a missing woman, he’d check it out to see if it was his victim, but it never has been.”
“He had her buried and a tombstone placed at her grave?”
“Yes.”
“What name did he put on the tombstone?”
“Since he didn’t know her name, he decided to give her one. He thought she deserved more than Jane Doe. She needed a special name, so he put the name Hope on her tombstone.”
“Hope?”
“Yes. He said it was a name that fit his feelings toward her—hope that he could return her to her family. Through the years, every time he grew discouraged and ready to give up, he’d visit her grave. Seeing that name on her tombstone would remind him that somewhere there had to be somebody hanging on to the hope that their wife or mother or daughter would be returned to them. And he’d promise her again that he wouldn’t give up. He would find her killer, and he’d return her to her family.”
Callie nodded. “That sounds like Uncle Dan. He’s got such a good heart. All he wanted to do was help someone, and now it looks like his good intentions may have put him in danger.” She was silent for a moment. “I can’t believe Uncle Dan never told me about this case.”
“It became a very personal cause with Dan to return her to her family. He knows you have issues over your father’s death and his involvement in law enforcement. He wanted to distance you from the things in his life that haunted him so you could be happy in the life you’d chosen. He tried to do everything he could to make that happen.”
“I know.” She unclasped her hands and rose to her feet. “And yet all that time he was trying to make my life better, he was obsessed with returning this woman to her family. I wish I had known so I could have made it easier for him.”
Seth stood and faced her. “Don’t blame yourself, Callie. This is the way he wanted it. But now that things have turned dangerous, you need to know what’s at stake. I only hope if he has found out something, he’ll be able to tell me what it was. I’d like to bring closure to the case that Dan has never been able to walk away from—and I’d like to see whoever did this to Dan brought to justice.”
She nodded. “I hope you can. What happens if he dies? Will anyone else take the case?”
“I
