summer; an elderly man with the beginnings of dementia who had gone for a walk and never come home.
If only to himself, Seth would admit that his gaze was most often drawn to Hope Lawson’s face. As a child, huge blue eyes had dominated a thin face with high, sharp cheekbones. A few pale freckles dusted a small nose. Moonlight-pale bangs cut straight across her forehead. Her grin revealed a missing tooth.
The artist had seen the promise of beauty in her, or something very like. The cheekbones were distinctive. More than anything, they gave him hope that she would be recognized.
Hope. Damn.
“Eve mentioned that she hasn’t seen you recently,” Mrs. Lawson remarked.
Another wince he didn’t let show. The Lawsons’ adopted daughter was responsible for his current cold case project. They’d been on several dates when she told him something of her family’s history. Intrigued, he’d done his research, gone to talk to her parents and made the decision to do his damnedest to find out what had happened to the little girl who disappeared sometime between getting out of the community pool after a summer swimming lesson and her mother arriving to pick her up.
He’d quickly got the idea Eve wished she’d never told him about Hope. She wouldn’t talk about the missing “sister” she’d never met, much less how she felt about her adoptive parents’ renewed yearning for their biological daughter. Any conflicted feelings she might have were understandable. Seth didn’t see any chance of the relationship going anywhere long-term, but she was an attractive woman and he liked her. No one else had caught his eye recently. Why not call and find out if she’d like to have dinner this weekend?
“I’ve been working long hours,” he told her mother, feeling guilty even though it was the truth. Among other things, he’d been working a murder/suicide perplexing enough to draw nationwide attention. There was no one to arrest after that bloodbath, but everyone would feel better if he could come up with some answers to explain the unexplainable.
In fact, he’d barely had time to keep up with the influx of emails he was receiving in response to his multiple postings of Hope Lawson’s story.
“Then I won’t keep you,” Mrs. Lawson said with dignity, rising to her feet. “I really shouldn’t have come by. I know if there was any news, you’d have called.”
“I would,” he said gently, standing, as well. “But I don’t mind you stopping by, either.”
She searched his face, then gave a small nod. “Good day, Detective Chandler.”
He stayed where he was and watched until she let herself out into the hall and was gone.
“You’ll never get rid of that one,” observed the detective whose desk was right behind Seth’s.
He grunted. “Am I doing her any favors? Hell, face it. It’s an intellectual exercise for me. For her...”
“It’s a heartbreaker.”
He turned to scowl at Ben Kemper, near his age, light-haired to his dark, a man Seth suspected was on a mission of his own, although Seth had no idea what it was. “Thanks. Just what I needed to hear.”
Kemper grinned. “An intellectual exercise, huh? That’s all it was?”
“Damn it, no! But I don’t have the same stake that woman does, either.” He scrubbed a hand over his head. “Shit. My best hope was a match in NamUs.” The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System hadn’t existed when Hope Lawson disappeared. A body found in one jurisdiction had in the past rarely been matched to a listing for a missing person even a few counties away. Now medical examiners, cops, even families could input information. A body found in a shallow grave in Florida could be linked to a woman snatched in Montana. As time allowed, some medical examiners’ offices were inputting old information. Or the improvements in DNA technology meant they were taking another try at finding a name for a body long since buried but never identified.
“Nothing, huh?” Kemper leaned back in his chair, his expression sympathetic.
“No.” He didn’t kid himself that meant Hope Lawson had grown up and was living out there somewhere under another name.
Kemper was the one to grunt this time. “You get a call back from Cassie Sparks’s school counselor?”
He and Kemper, often paired on the job, were working the murder/suicide together. Along with her mother, eleven-year-old Cassie had been shot to death by her father, who had then swallowed the gun. The fact he’d killed a kid—his own kid—had made the scene a difficult one, even for seasoned cops.
“Hell. No.” Seth frowned. “I’ll finish going through these emails, then head out to the school. I should still be able to catch her before they let out.” They were trying to find out every detail of the lives of all three members of the Sparks family. Unfortunately, Cassie’s very basic Facebook page had been unrevealing. Friends were denying any knowledge of problems with her dad. “You talk to the father’s boss again?” he asked.
“Sure. Best employee ever. Great attitude. We have to be wrong. Dale would never do anything like this.”
They’d been getting a lot of that. Too much, in Seth’s no-doubt cynical viewpoint, one shared by his fellow detective. No one who’d known the Sparks family wanted to admit they’d seen any crack in the perfect facade. It sucked to face the reality that you might have knowingly blinded yourself. Or to realize you weren’t nearly as perceptive as you’d imagined yourself to be.
“I hear a few of his coworkers have a favorite bar,” Ben continued. “I figure I’ll stop by tonight, see what they have to say after a couple of beers.”
Seth nodded. “Good.” He turned back to his monitor and skimmed down to where he’d left off on that last email.
Except you’ve got her hair wrong in the picture, and her nose, too. And her chin is kind of square, not pointy like that.
Uh-huh, he thought. But she was totally positive they had a match.
Delete.
Twenty minutes later, he logged out and pushed his chair back. “I’m off.”
Ben had a phone tucked between his ear and shoulder as he tapped away on his keyboard. He glanced up. “You coming back?”
“Probably not. I need to knock on some more doors in the Garcias’ neighborhood.” Raul and Maria had come home after a hard day’s work to find their brand-new Sony fifty-five-inch LED HDTV missing, along with the Dell Inspiron laptop the grandparents had bought the granddaughter just last week to take with her to college. Seth had little doubt the thief knew one of the Garcias. He had to have heard about one or both of those very nice purchases—the TV had a two-thousand-dollar-plus price tag. Otherwise, why had their house been hit when none of the others in their modest neighborhood had been?
Yesterday, people had been at work. He figured by the time he got there now, everyone would be reaching home. A kid might have said something to a parent about the guy she saw knocking on the Garcias’ door, then going around back. You never knew.
With a last look at the bulletin board, he thought, Too much to do, not enough time to do it.
And then, Damn, I’ve got to call
