he’s at the top of my list,” Jack said as he pulled onto a dark street. “And frankly, a black guy like Darnell Conway on High Street would get noticed, too, especially eighteen years ago. Isn’t that why you profiled the killer as white?”
Evelyn didn’t answer as she gazed out the window at Darnell’s neighborhood. The houses were small and close together, the yards overgrown; beware of dog signs were posted everywhere. Every house was in need of a coat of paint, most needed new roofs and every yard could have benefitted from an attempt to landscape. The sun was setting, making it hard to see, but Evelyn would bet there wasn’t a single flower on the entire street. From the broken plastic kid’s slide in the front yard of one house to the car without wheels up on cinder blocks in the next, the whole street was depressing.
The house Jack pulled up to was the best of the bunch by far. Darnell Conway might not have planted a garden, but he’d at least mowed his lawn. As they walked up to the front porch, they discovered he definitely believed in security. Next to Darnell’s beware of dog sign was a security company sign; the lock on the door meant business, and all the shades were blackout-style.
Jack raised his eyebrows. “Seems like he’s got something in here he wants to keep locked tight.”
Evelyn nodded, frowning. “I noticed that.”
“And judging by the lack of barking, I’m thinking most of those dog signs are for show.”
“It is pretty silent,” Evelyn agreed, glancing around. The kind of neighborhood where no one saw anything.
“Well, let’s see what he has to say.” Jack lifted his hand to knock on the door, but before he could, they heard bolts sliding back.
Three bolts slid free before the door swung open to reveal Darnell Conway. Evelyn knew he was in his late forties, but he looked younger, with smooth dark skin and close-cropped hair. It was only his deep brown eyes that showed his age. And something about the anger lurking in the depths of those eyes made the hair on the back of her neck stand straight up.
Was he the Nursery Rhyme Killer? Had he taken Cassie eighteen years ago? Had he stalked Evelyn, intending to grab her, too?
Did he recognize her now? It was hard to tell, because Jack reached in his pocket and held up his police shield, drawing Darnell’s instant attention.
It had been twenty years since Darnell had first been investigated by police, when he found the body of his girlfriend’s daughter. But as soon as he saw Jack’s badge, hatred and fury raced across his features, so fast that if she’d blinked at the wrong time, she would have missed it.
Judging by the way Jack’s eyes darted to hers, he hadn’t blinked, either. “Mr. Conway, I’m Jack Bullock, Rose Bay PD.”
“What are you doing in Treighton?” Darnell asked, his voice as smooth and even as his expression.
Jack motioned to her. “This is Evelyn Baine, FBI.”
Darnell’s eyebrows twitched, and then his lips did the same. “FBI, huh? Anything I can help you with?”
If her name meant anything to him, she couldn’t tell. Damn it.
“Can we come in?” Jack asked.
From what little Evelyn could see of the house behind Darnell, she realized the inside was a hell of a lot nicer than the outside. Not just clean and tidy, but expensive furnishings. So, why live in this neighborhood?
Darnell’s gaze flicked to Jack, then to her. “No.”
“We’re investigating the disappearance of Brittany Douglas,” Evelyn told him.
“Never heard of her.”
Jack scoffed. “Her abduction has been all over the news.”
“I drove up the coast for a few days. Got back yesterday.”
“She was abducted yesterday.”
Darnell’s eyes, hard and shuttered, settled on Jack. “Like I said, never heard of her.”
“She’s twelve years old,” Evelyn said.
Darnell didn’t blink, just stared at her.
“That’s only two years older than your girlfriend’s daughter was when she was killed.”
Darnell’s expression shifted into fury. “Are you implying something, agent?”
“You found her, didn’t you?”
“So what? I wasn’t arrested twenty years ago and there’s a damn good reason. I didn’t kill Kiki’s kid. Leave me alone and get the hell off my property!”
He slammed the door so hard Evelyn took an instinctive step back.
“That went well,” Jack said dryly. But as they got back into the car, he asked, “You think he did it?”
“I think we’d better take a close look at him. And fast.”
Tomas had never gone home last night, but he’d fallen asleep at his desk sometime after six. The call that had woken him less than two hours later had initially seemed like a crank call, a person who refused to give his name reporting “something suspicious” in the marsh. But when asked to explain the term suspicious, the person had said it looked like a body in a trash bag.
Brittany had been missing almost thirty-five hours now. The profiler had been on scene since yesterday and the CARD agents since the night before that. They’d given him the statistics, so he knew it was way too likely the caller was right.
The thought made him slow instinctively as he tracked through the marsh, and his foot sank into the goop at the bottom. Tomas yanked the top of his knee-high plastic boot until it popped free and pushed onward. Ahead of him, Jack Bullock moved forward with seeming ease.
And that was ironic. Except when taking a police call, Jack had probably never visited this part of Rose Bay. Tomas could actually see the house where he’d spent most of his formative years.
It was raised on wooden stilts at the back for when the marsh waters rose, and the exterior was stucco. When he was a boy, there had been a deck off the back, but it was gone now. His parents had finally moved once their last son left home, and since then, the house had gone through a series of owners. From this distance, it looked forlorn and neglected.
“Can you imagine?” Jack huffed, gesturing at a shack up ahead of them. “Who’d want to live there?”
Tomas kept quiet, deciding to assume Jack didn’t know he’d grown up a hundred yards away. As for the shack, it was unoccupied and had been for more than a year. “It’s empty. Let’s check it out when we’re finished here, make sure no one used it to hide Brittany.” More likely, they’d just find someone’s drug stash, but it was worth a shot.
Jack turned to say something else, then cursed as one of his feet slid out from underneath him. He caught
