Ashes, Ashes, They All Fall Dead (26 page)

“He was two hundred miles away visiting family at the time. Alibi checked out.”

“What about the man who reported the accident?” Matt asked.

“You take me for a rookie, son?”

Matt coughed as if to cover a smile. “No, sir.”

“Then it won’t surprise you to know I put the witness through a full workup. Tested him for GSR, had him stripped down butt naked and tested every piece of clothing he had too. Not a trace of gunshot residue. He’s not the one who pulled the trigger.”

“What do you remember about Sissie?” Tessa asked.

Latham’s faded hazel eyes zeroed in on her. “She looked a lot like you, spitting image. I could have sworn I was seeing her ghost when I walked up. I’m not surprised she was your sister. Same red hair, pale complexion. She didn’t have a purse on her, no ID, which of course seemed odd. I’ve never met a woman who’d leave the house without her purse. Her clothes struck me as odd too. She wore a long dress, all the way to the ankles. Nothing fancy, not one of those prom dresses or anything like that. More like a church dress. Real plain, cotton, covered every inch of skin from her neck down. Even her arms were covered. It was smack-dab in the middle of summer. Didn’t make sense that she’d cover herself up like that.”

“Sheriff, are you saying you had no suspects at all?” Tessa asked.

Something flickered in his eyes, but then it was gone. Tessa didn’t know what that look meant.

“I spent two months following up every angle I could think of. I called every law-enforcement agency within a hundred miles of here to see if they had any missing-persons reports for two young girls with red hair.” He glanced at Stephens. “Nothing turned up.”

“No one reported either of the girls missing?” Tessa asked.

He gave her a sympathetic look. “No, ma’am. They didn’t. Not for lack of trying on my part. I did interviews with the local TV station and the paper and put out law-enforcement alerts, even contacted the FBI for a hit on any of their national databases. Nothing turned up.”

Once again they were at a dead end. Tessa had more questions now than when they’d started.

“I don’t suppose you could get us copies of the case file, could you?” Matt asked.

He’d been noticeably quiet during her interview of Latham. She’d assumed he was letting her take the lead since she was the FBI agent assigned to the case. But now she wasn’t so sure. Tiny tension lines had feathered around his eyes as he waited for Latham’s response.

Latham shook his head. “That accident report was all I ever entered in the computers years later when we were digitizing our old cases. You’ll have to check with the current sheriff to have him pull the hard-copy file, if they still have it. Sorry I couldn’t help you folks. Good luck with your search. I hope you find that young girl.”

He shook Matt and Tessa’s hands, but when Stephens held his hand out, Latham ignored it and walked back to his SUV.

Stephens colored slightly and dropped his hand. Latham pulled onto the highway and soon disappeared around the curve.

Matt eyed Stephens with open curiosity. “I thought you and Latham were friends, but it didn’t seem that way.”

“We’ve had a few run-ins over the years. I wouldn’t say we were ever friends.” He glanced at his watch. “I passed a pancake house a couple of miles down the road that didn’t look too bad. Want to grab some breakfast and toss some ideas around?”

Tessa hesitated. “Honestly, Detective. I think I speak for both Matt and me when I say it was a surprise to see you here today. Murray’s not exactly down the street. And you didn’t seem all that interested in this case when we were in your office yesterday.”

His jaw tightened. “Believe it or not, Special Agent James, I felt guilty when you two left. I know I probably seemed callous about that fire, and the deaths of those girls. But I was having a bad day. My arthritis was acting up, and it didn’t help when I crawled around in that annex looking for that file for you. You didn’t catch me at my best. That’s why I drove up, to make sure Latham answered your questions, and to see if there was anything else I could do to help. Now, about that breakfast?”

Tessa forced a smile. “Sounds great. We’ll meet you there.”

She waited with Matt as they watched Stephens drive away.

“I don’t trust him,” Matt said.

“Me either. What about Latham? Do you trust him?”

“Right now, I’m not inclined to trust anyone.”

M
ATT ATE A
piece of bacon while he and Tessa waited for Stephens to finish writing on the map he’d brought in from his patrol car.

Stephens turned the map around and slid it toward them.

“Those are the coal mines operating right now in this general area. Pine trees are common pretty much everywhere, so I don’t think you can narrow your search based on any specific kinds of trees. Then again, I’m not a plant guy, so who knows? But if someone worked at one of those mines, it’s certainly possible they could get coal dust and pine sap on their clothing and bring it home. That would explain the residue on the letters you mentioned.” He popped the last of his bacon in his mouth and chased it with a diet soda.

“It was particulates, not residue,” Matt said. “Which means the dust was fine, so fine it couldn’t be seen. Same thing for the tree sap. I’m thinking that means the person who left the contaminants on the paper probably wasn’t a miner, or he might have even been a former miner who continued to live in the area around a mine. I see three of these mines have towns nearby. That might narrow our search.”

Stephens shook his head. “If you want to narrow it down based on the coal dust being in the air in a town close to a mine, then ignore those circles I just made. Active mines are highly regulated. It’s unlikely someone who hasn’t actually been down in those mines would come into contact with the particulates you mentioned.”

“So, we should look at inactive mines,” Tessa said. “Mines that weren’t as heavily regulated back when they were in operation, years ago?”

“That makes sense.” Stephens circled three more places on the map. “Those are the only old, closed-down mines I know of around here. But there might be more.”

“You seem to know this area very well,” Tessa said.

“Not as well as I’d like. I have friends in Madisonville, so I come up this way every now and then. Be careful that you don’t actually go near any of those old mines. Stick to the nearby towns for your investigation. Those mines are closed for a reason, and not always because they run out of coal. Sometimes the mines are too unstable. There might be pockets of gas that’ll suffocate you, or explode if there’s some kind of spark.”

“Trust me,” Tessa said, “I have no intention of going into a coal mine.”

Stephens reached for his wallet, but Matt stopped him. “I’ve got this. You’ve been a big help.”

Stephens nodded his thanks and stood. “Much obliged. I hate to leave y’all with this on your own, but I have to get back and it’s a bit of a drive. You’ve got my number.”

As soon as Stephens was gone, Tessa said, “Now are you going to tell me why you’ve been so distracted all morning?”

Matt sighed. “That obvious, huh?”

“There’s a glowing neon sign above your head.”

“Really? What does it say?”

“That you’re keeping something from your partner, and she doesn’t appreciate being kept in the dark.”

“All that fits on one sign?”

She narrowed her eyes.

“Okay. You’re right. We need to talk. But not here. Let’s go.”

T
ESSA STOOD IN
the middle of the pay-by-the-hour motel room. She clasped her purse against her side.

“Stop looking like you’re afraid you’re going to catch some kind of disease. This was the closest private place I could find,” Matt said.

“But I
am
afraid I might catch a disease. This place is gross.”

He rolled his eyes and grabbed the straight-backed chair shoved up under the desk that doubled as a chest of drawers. “Here, this looks relatively clean.”

She gingerly perched on the edge.

He sat on the foot of the bed across from her.

She barely refrained from shivering with revulsion. She wasn’t getting anywhere near that bed. “Hurry and tell me what you’ve been holding back so we can get out of here.”

He pulled a folded piece of paper out of his suit jacket pocket and handed it to her. The serious look on his face put her on alert. Suddenly the condition of the motel room didn’t seem quite so important.

At the top of the paper, big bold letters declared
MISSING
. Underneath that was the name
REBECCA MILLER
. And underneath that was a picture of a young girl, about seven or eight years old, with green eyes and bright red hair. Tessa shook her head in confusion.

“I don’t understand. This is me, but my name isn’t Rebecca. It can’t be. I had the bracelet. My name is Tessa. Isn’t it?”

“That’s not a picture of you. It’s Sissie. Look at the date.”

“But . . . this flyer is from . . . before I was born. I don’t understand. We were abducted together, weren’t we? Wait, no, that wouldn’t work with the date here. None of this makes sense. Was I . . . abducted by the same person, years later, when Sissie was older? Did you find a flyer for me too?”

He shook his head. “Keep reading.”

She skimmed the rest of the flyer. “Priceville. She went missing from Priceville, South Carolina? But that’s where—”

“Where Jim Crawford was killed, yes. Last night, when I realized you and your sister had been abducted, I called Casey and asked him to perform a database search focusing on the South, looking for missing-persons reports for green-eyed, red-haired sisters who went missing within a year or more of the accident where Sissie was killed.”

Tessa shook her head. “But Sissie was much older than the girl in this flyer. The police report said she was about sixteen. The flyer has to be wrong.”

Matt took both her hands in his. “The flyer is accurate. Sissie’s real name was Rebecca Miller. Her father, Tom Miller, called her Becca. She went missing when she was seven years old. Tessa, Becca was an only child. She didn’t have any sisters.”

She shook her head. “Yes, she did. She had me. I called her Sissie.”

“I know you did, and that’s probably what she told you to call her, just in case anyone ever asked questions. Sweetheart, Becca wasn’t your sister. She was your mother.”

Tessa’s stomach clenched. She jerked her hands free. “That can’t be true. You’re wrong. If she was my . . . if she was my mother, that means when she had me, she would have had to be . . .”

“She was nine years old when she gave birth to you.”

Tessa clamped her hand over her mouth and ran to the bathroom.

“A
RE YOU SURE
you’re okay?” Matt asked.

Tessa had thrown up her breakfast, and then she’d dry heaved over and over.

After brushing her teeth with the toothbrush and toothpaste Matt had hurriedly purchased at the motel gift shop and washing her face, she was now sitting across from him again, looking pale and in shock.

“I’m fine. Well, except for the fact that I’m the daughter of a child-rapist and a pedophile, I’m perfectly fine.” She shuddered and pressed her hand to her throat again. “Poor Sissie.” She swallowed hard. “Poor Becca. I have to call her by the right name. She deserves that. Becca Miller.” Her green eyes shined with unshed tears. “Tell me everything.”

He hesitated.

“Stop looking at me like you think I’m about to break into a million pieces. I’m tougher than I look, and I want to get the bastard who brutalized an eight-year-old little girl and forced her to carry his child. Tell me everything.”

He blew out a long breath. “All right. Once we found the flyer, that pointed the task force to Priceville. Your maternal grandparents—the Millers—are still there. You can imagine how upset they were when some agents interviewed them. All this time they’ve never known what happened to their daughter, but they held out hope she might still be alive. Now they know she was held for years, had a child, and was murdered.” He shook his head.

Tessa pressed her hand to her throat again. “Those poor people. I can’t imagine. I really can’t.”

“They were extremely helpful, once they calmed down enough to talk to the agents. And there are plenty of other people still in Priceville who remember when Becca disappeared. With everyone they interviewed, the task force kept hearing one name—Isaac Hoffman. By all accounts, he was obsessed with Becca. But he was much older than her, in his mid-twenties when she disappeared.

“Oh my God.” She wrapped her arms around her stomach and shook her head.

“Are you sure you want to listen to this now? We can find a nicer hotel, take a break.”

“No, no. Tell me all of it. You’re saying Hoffman is the one who abducted her, right?”

“It looks that way. He was always a little . . . off. The summer Becca disappeared, John Crawford warned Becca’s father about Hoffman. John said he saw him watching Becca and her friends at the playground and other places. The way he looked at her and followed her around worried him.”

“That’s why Casey thinks Hoffman is . . . the one. Because John Crawford was murdered?”

“Yes, partly,” Matt said. “But also because Hoffman disappeared the same night Becca did. No one in Priceville has seen him since, except for Crawford of course, assuming Hoffman killed him.”

Tessa shoved her fingers through her bangs and leaned back against her chair. “What else? Tell me.”

“Casey told me this morning that a maintenance worker was murdered at your apartment complex the night Tonya Garrett disappeared. His body was found this morning.”

Her eyes filled with sympathy. “The poor man. Wait, you wouldn’t tell me that unless you thought . . . the killer was the same killer we’re looking for. You think . . . you think he was there, at my apartment complex, looking for . . . me?”

“Yes. I do.”

She clasped her hands together. “So, what, he didn’t find me, so he grabbed Tonya instead? Is that what you’re saying?”

He put one of his hands on top of hers. “No one knows yet.”

She twisted her fingers beneath his and held his hand tightly. “What’s Casey doing to find this Isaac Hoffman?”