“Maybe nail down digit order, vehicle color, four-door versus two-door, that kind of thing. To get a sense which hits are good.”
“How did it go?”
“The car was blue or black. And the seven on the tag might have been a one.”
“Skinny’s not happy.”
“That’s an understatement. Then Tinker showed up. They’ve been locked in a dick-measuring contest ever since.”
“What’s Tinker doing?”
“Going through the Leal file and answering the hotline.”
“Any interesting calls?”
“The usual wingnuts. A teacher wanting to discuss the immodest dress habits of today’s youth. A man ranting about Muslims. A woman pointing the finger at declining church attendance.”
“Awesome. How’s your search going?”
“I finished with Gower. That Rodas is one thorough guy.”
“Umpie.”
“What?”
“His name is Umpie.”
“Then I worked through Koseluk and Estrada. Reports, statements, phone messages, tips. Nothing. I left Donovan for you.”
“Now what?”
“I’m turning the heat up on Pomerleau, following up queries I sent to Quebec, Vermont, and statewide here. This time I’m requesting they run possible aliases. I made a list of names.”
“How?”
“People aren’t all that creative. They tend to use something that’s easy, usually a variation on their own name or initials. Ann Pomer. Ana Proleau. That sort of thing.”
“It’s worth a try.”
“Next I’ll work the DMV, social security records, tax rolls. It’s a long shot, but what the hell.”
“A long shot is better than no shot at all.” How often had Ryan and I said that over the years?
The background squabble grew more heated. A door slammed. I wondered whether Slidell or Tinker had stormed out.
Ryan ignored the spat. “When Pomerleau slipped the net in ’04, we sent her picture out over the continent.”
“Right.” I actually snorted. “A mug shot taken when she was fifteen.”
“Granted. But the image generated dozens of calls.”
I remembered. Pomerleau had been sighted in Sherbrooke, Albany, Tampa, Thunder Bay.
“Your point?” I asked.
“We’re running out of road here.”
“And?”
“Maybe there’s something there.”
I nodded. Pointless. Ryan couldn’t see me.
“We need to go to Montreal.”
CHAPTER 15
I CHECKED WITH Larabee. He had no problem with my being away for a few days.
Before leaving the office, I booked two seats on the 8:25 nonstop to Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau. Then I phoned to arrange for cat care.
My neighbor was unavailable but suggested her granddaughter, Mary Louise Marcus, who lived just blocks from Sharon Hall. I called. Mary Louise was available, at a whopping ten bucks a day. She promised to come by at seven to meet me and Birdie.
On my way across uptown, I stopped at Bojangles’, Slidell’s favorite, and bought enough food for a family of six.
It was after two when I arrived at the LEC. Slidell was at the computer, lips pressed to his teeth, head wagging slowly from side to side. Tinker was sticking pins into a map of North Carolina spread on a corkboard that hadn’t been there before. Today he looked like someone sponsored by Wiseguys R Us. Black jacket, black shirt, shiny lavender tie.
Ryan was speaking on his mobile. I heard the name Manon, guessed he was trying to locate the Violette family. His quiet French rode on air brittle with suppressed hostility.
I tossed my jacket on a chair and waited. After concluding his call, Ryan briefed me.
Slidell had made zero progress with his license plate search. The guy in IT had recovered only snatches of data from Leal’s computer, none of it useful. Barrow was having no luck locating Nance’s laptop. The age-progressed image of Pomerleau wouldn’t be ready for days, maybe a week. Ditto DNA sequencing from the hair found in Leal’s trachea. The tox screen was going nowhere.
I placed my bags on the table. “How did Slidell react to the amelogenin shocker?”
“His commentary was unconstructive.”
“Lunch,” I announced.
Slidell’s eyes rolled up to peer at me over the screen. I could almost see the smell of deep-fried grease hit his olfactory lobes.
As I began spreading paper plates, plastic utensils, and cardboard cartons of chicken and sides, Slidell heaved to his feet. Behind me, I heard Tinker cross the room, keys jangling in a pocket or on a belt loop.
“We need to think about highways.” Tinker spooned mashed potatoes onto his plate, added gravy, slaw, and a biscuit. “Nance was dumped at Latta Plantation, not far off I-485.” To Slidell, “You gonna paw every piece?”
Slidell continued digging through the chicken, maybe even slowed, eventually emerged with two legs and two thighs.
Tinker stepped up and helped himself to a breast. Took a bite before continuing with his train of thought. “Gower was left just off a state highway, Vermont 14, I think Rodas said.”
“Pure genius.” Spoken through masticated drumstick. “We’ve determined that vics are transported by car. We can forget tossing all those choppers and yachts.”
I ignored Slidell’s sarcasm. “Koseluk was abducted in Kannapolis, Estrada in Salisbury. Both lie along the I-85 corridor.”
Tinker looked at me with his flat little eyes. Swallowed. “I’m having a hard time putting those two in the show.”
“Leal was found under I-485,” I added.
“Amelogenin says she’s not in there, either.”
“Not necessarily.”
Tinker did something that combined a shrug with a “Give it to me” finger curl.
“Pomerleau could have an accomplice. Or—”
Slidell cut me off, voice dripping with scorn as he addressed Tinker. “Low number of vics make it easier to tie the bow? Buff up the image?”
“Or perhaps you’re projecting, Detective. Talking about yourself,” shot back Tinker.
I feared the smart-ass tone would goad Slidell to smash Tinker’s plate up into his face, Stooges-style. I glanced at Skinny. His lower lids were crimped and twitching, sparkling grease coating his upper lip and chin.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Now Slidell was the recipient of Tinker’s flat-eyed stare. For a moment their gazes locked. Skinny turned away first. “That’s it. I ain’t working with this troll.” Wrapping his poultry in a napkin, Slidell strode from the room.
Tinker finished eating, wiped his hands digit by digit, and returned to his map.
I raised my brows at Ryan. He raised his at me.
I pointed at the chicken.
Ryan shook his head.
Realizing I’d never answered Slidell’s question about a cellphone for Nance, I asked Ryan if he’d come across any mention of one in the file. He had not.
While clearing the lunch debris, I told Ryan about our flight reservations. He hesitated a moment, then thanked me. Asked how much time we had. I suggested we leave the LEC by six. He nodded, grabbed his phone, and started punching digits.
Ryan hadn’t been back to Montreal since Lily’s death. I wondered what storm was swirling inside him. Didn’t ask.
After positioning one of the empty boards between Nance and Koseluk, I pulled the ME107-10 file from my purse and began posting information. Biological profile. Estimated time of death. Date of discovery. Location. Scene photos of the skeleton and associated articles.
Tinker abandoned his pushpins to eyeball my display. Which was meager. “Seriously?”
“Clothing was still in place on some of the bone clusters. Missing articles were probably dragged off by scavengers.”
Tinker nodded, noncommittal.
“A lot fits the pattern.”
“Where was this kid?”
I showed Tinker on his map. He stuck in a yellow
pin, indulging me.
It took a moment to decipher his coding system. Green marked the intersection where Nance was last seen alive, red the place her body was found. Stoplight colors for a murder solidly connected to another by DNA.
Blue indicated LSA sites for girls “not in the show,” yellow the places Estrada and Leal were found.
The rainbow pins flowed north along I-85, circled Charlotte on the I-485 beltway, and dropped south toward the South Carolina border. One red and two blue pins marked inner-city locations.
One yellow pin sat off to the southeast by itself.
Tinker read my thoughts. “Estrada’s body wasn’t anywhere near I-85.”
“It wasn’t far from NC-52.” I studied the configuration, willing a pattern to make itself known. “Estrada was at a campground near the Pee Dee National Wildlife Refuge. Nance was at Latta Plantation.” I was juggling aloud, twisting and turning pieces to make them connect. “ME107-10, my Jane Doe, was at the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden. Gower was at a quarry.”
“Break out the champagne. We got us a nature lover.”
Smiling coolly at Tinker’s smarmy cynicism, I resumed posting ME107-10.
We worked the next couple of hours without saying much. After finishing my Jane Doe board, I began with the other girl about whom we knew almost nothing.
Ryan was right. Little effort had gone into finding Colleen Donovan. And paperwork wasn’t Pat Tasat’s strong suit.
I went through the interview summaries. The aunt, Laura Lonergan, a tweaker and sometime prostitute. The director of a homeless shelter. A dozen street kids. A hooker named Sarah Merikoski, aka Crystal Rose, who’d filed the MP report.
At some point I heard Slidell slouch in and settle at the computer. I continued reading.
It seemed a cliché. But clichés become what they are due to constant validation. A case either broke quickly and was solved in the first frantic days when witness memories were vivid, evidence was fresh, and theories abounded, or it lingered, dried up, inevitably grew cold. The longer the drought, the deeper the freeze.
Such was not the case with Colleen Donovan. Twenty-four hours. Forty-eight. A year and a half. It wouldn’t have mattered. Right out of the gate, there was nothing to indicate what had happened to her or why. Or when.
If anything had happened to her. No proof of a crime existed. No blood spatter on a hotel room wall. No treasured belonging left behind in a shelter. No wallet or purse recovered from a trash can. No whispered fears about a john or pimp.
One thread ran through every witness statement. Life on the street is harsh and unpredictable. Kids come, kids go. Everyone but Merikoski, an old-style streetwalker and Donovan’s self-appointed tutor on the workings of the sex trade, felt Colleen had taken off on her own. Even Merikoski had misgivings.
A lack of evidence meant no narrative. No narrative meant no suspect.
No big bang break.
As I worked through the chronology, I was vaguely aware of Slidell leaving his keyboard. Of raised voices by the corkboard.
A few calls had come in from the public, not many. A kid named Jon Sapuppo reported seeing Donovan on a bus on Wilkinson Boulevard two weeks after Merikoski walked into the LEC to file her report. A clerk claimed he’d sold Donovan cigarettes at a gas station on Freedom Drive.
It registered in my brain that the scrum by the corkboard was gaining in volume. Still I ignored it.
The calls tapered off, stopped by the end of February. In August the aunt called to ask where the case stood. That was it.
“… questioning my integrity?”
“I’m questioning your effort.”
Slidell and Tinker were at it again.
“You stick to the cold ones,” Slidell snapped. “Leave Leal to me.”
“Once burned, twice shy, eh, Skinny?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
I turned in my chair. Slidell was glaring at Tinker, arms down, hands balled into fists.
“Don’t push too hard? Play it careful?”
“I’m pushing full-out. There ain’t much to push.”
“You background the guy who spotted that car?”
“He’s got cataracts and a prostate the size of a squash.”
“How’s that computer search going?”
“It’s going.” Slidell’s tone sounded dangerous.
“You get Donovan’s juvie file?”
“Yeah. She lifted a watch at Kmart. Got caught in a sweep with an ounce of weed in her purse. Oh, and her big one. She fell while shit-faced and had to have her head stitched.”
That stilled Tinker a moment. “This Pomerleau. She works your turf, what, five years, and you can’t roust her?”
“I’m following every lead, you worthless piece of—”
“Are you?”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I’m just wondering. It took a while to put that other thing behind you. Maybe you decide to play it safe on this one. You don’t screw up, everyone forgets. Pretty soon you’re a rock star again.”
“You’re a fucking moron.”
“Or is your beef something else?” Tinker’s mouth curled in an oily little grin. “Something more personal.”
Slidell gave Tinker a long, hard stare, his face so red it was almost purple.
“You had to know Verlene would eventually trade up.” Tinker jumped his eyebrows, Groucho-style.
“Bloody hell!”
I shot to my feet. “Do I have to turn a hose on you two?”
Slidell looked at me. Shook his head in disgust to say I didn’t get it. “I’m filing a complaint on this asshole.” He pivoted and stomped from the room.
I checked my watch. Ryan had reviewed all the other files. Was now focused on Montreal.
I crossed to the boards. Slowly worked my way down the row. I was looking at Shelly Leal’s school portrait when something said pssst in my head.
What?
I’d seen no pattern in Tinker’s pins. No geo-profile to suggest a terrain-motivated course of action.
Mama thought the LSA dates were significant. Was my unconscious telling me there was something more there?
Leal had gone missing ten days earlier, on Friday, November 21. I got my iPhone and pulled up a calendar for 2009. Felt a jolt of excitement. Nance had also disappeared on a Friday.
I checked 2007. The jolt fizzled. Gower’s LSA date was a Thursday. But so was Koseluk’s. Estrada had vanished on a Sunday.
I jotted the dates, returned to the table, and studied the list.
The pssst called out louder.
On a whim, I did some math.
For a moment I sat very still, staring at the numbers I’d generated. Feeling a lump at the base of my throat.
“Ryan.”
He looked up.
“Gower disappeared on October 18, 2007. Nance on April 17, 2009.”
He nodded, clearly puzzled by the chill in my voice.
“There’s an eighteen-month interval between the two abductions.”
Ryan nodded again.
“A little over two and a half years go by between Nance and Koseluk.”
Ryan ran the numbers in his head. “Twenty-nine months.”
“But if you slot in ME107-10, my Jane Doe skeleton, the intervals are cut to roughly fifteen months.” Ryan started to speak. I cut him off. “Koseluk vanished on September 8, 2011. Estrada on December 2, 2012.”
He saw where I was going. “Fifteen months in between.”
“Merikoski reported Donovan missing on February 1, 2014.”
“According to her statement, she hadn’t seen the kid in weeks.”
“Leal vanishes nine months later.”
“Remember Mama’s theory?”
“Each recent LSA links to the LSA of a vic in Montreal.”
We’d accepted the idea of the linked dates. But Mama had grasped the full significance of the pattern. Because Ryan and I hadn’t done the math that day, we hadn’t seen it. Or perhaps we’d
gotten channeled on the difference in ages between the earlier and the more recent victims.
As one, we now had the same terrible thought.
“The intervals are decreasing,” I said. “The next child could be taken this February sixth. That’s roughly two months off.”
PART II
CHAPTER 16
WE LEFT THE law enforcement center twenty minutes late. Fortunately, the girl who was going to catsit for me arrived at the annex precisely at seven. She was a gangly kid wearing the kind of cloche hat once favored by flappers. Birdie took to her right off. Ryan and I left them playing fetch with a red plaid mouse in the study.
I transit a lot of airports. Except for baggage retrieval, which takes longer than the average fall harvest, Charlotte Douglas is perhaps my favorite. Rocking chairs. Grand piano. Sushi bar. That night, forget it. We had barely enough time to grab takeout and dash to the gate.
The wheels left the tarmac right on the dot. Ryan and I had twelve hundred miles of East Coast to eat lukewarm barbecue and fries and plan our attack.
We knew we’d be on our own. The Service de police de la Ville de Montréal detectives who’d worked the case, Luc Claudel and Michel Charbonneau, were both unavailable. Claudel was in France, Charbonneau was on leave following knee surgery. Perhaps just as well. Given the jurisdictional rivalries between the provincial and city cops, we doubted much help would come from the latter on a ten-year-old file.
Angela Robinson was fourteen when she disappeared in Corning, California, in 1985. Hers had been one of the three skeletons unearthed in the pizza parlor basement in 2004. Stalled at every turn, Slidell had agreed to phone the Tehama County Sheriff’s Department to try to churn the waters out there. With little optimism. Almost thirty years had passed since Robinson’s abduction.
The other skeletons belonged to Manon Violette and Marie-Joëlle Bastien. The former was fifteen, the latter sixteen, when they vanished in 1994.
Ryan’s phone queries concerning Bastien had turned up zilch. She was from Bouctouche, New Brunswick, and in the two decades since her disappearance, her nuclear family had dispersed, leaving only a few cousins in the area. No one recalled anything about Marie-Joëlle except that she’d been murdered. And that her remains were buried in the cimetière Saint-Jean-Baptiste.