Baltimore [3.5] Broken Silence (2 page)

Daphne’s heart lightened. ‘Oh, I’m so glad.’ The recovery of Detective Stevie Mazzetti, one of the victims of the violence that had changed their lives forever, was cause for celebration for everyone who knew her. But for Daphne, the news was especially profound. Stevie had been shot saving Daphne’s life, a debt Daphne could never repay. That Stevie would never expect her to made her sacrifice all the more meaningful. ‘Tell her I’ll bring muffins when she’s settled.’

‘She’ll like that.’ JD’s eyes went sly. ‘Lucy likes muffins, too. You might come by to see the baby and bring her some. And if you put in a few extra for me, I’d make myself eat them.’

She laughed and swatted his arm. ‘Go. Tell your wife I’ll visit her soon too.’

‘I will. Now that you’re back, I have some cases to cover with you. See you later.’

‘But I’m not – ’

JD was already gone, off like a shot, headed for the elevator before she could tell him she wasn’t really back. Not yet.

Daphne hadn’t dared approach her own desk in the prosecutors’ offices today. The last time she’d tried, she’d been turned away a foot inside the front door by a well-informed and dutiful receptionist. Her boss, Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Grayson Smith, had made it known that she wasn’t to show her face there for two weeks, because, like it or not, she was on leave.

Daphne grimaced.
Leave
. The very word left a bad taste in her mouth. Her extremely well-meaning boss had called it ‘bereavement leave,’ but she knew the truth. This was mental health leave. Because of what she’d been through.

Trouble was, being on leave left her brain with nothing to do, so it remembered. Constantly. She suspected this was an intended outcome, to give her time to deal with her grief and shock. But she knew herself. She dealt by keeping busy, even if ‘busy’ only involved doing lunch.

Drawing a bolstering breath, she pushed open the door to Homicide and found it buzzing with activity. Having said ‘It’s good to be back’ several more times, she came to the corner of the bullpen commandeered by VCET – the Violent Crimes Enforcement Team.

VCET was a Baltimore PD/FBI task force and she could always tell which team members were the Feds. The severe black suits and ugly shoes gave them away every single time.

‘Daphne!’ Special Agent Kate Coppola beamed as Daphne approached her desk. ‘It’s good to have you back.’

‘I’d say it’s good to be back, but I’m not really. Not yet. I keep trying to go into the office, but my boss put me on leave.’ She hadn’t explained this to the other well-wishers, but, like JD, Kate knew details nobody else knew.

Because Kate had been there at the end, when the man who’d terrorized Daphne and her son had been . . . neutralized. A picture flashed in her mind.
His brains . . . On my hands . . .

Breathe. Think of the horses, imagine the barn
. Daphne had experienced panic attacks since she was eight years old, spawned by a childhood trauma that had spanned years. As a terrified child, caring for horses had brought her calm. As an adult with a job and a son to raise, she hadn’t always found it possible to be with horses, so she’d learned to picture herself there, to imagine the sounds and the smells . . . She reached into her handbag and pulled out a towel from the barn and brought it to her nose. Drew a breath and felt her pulse gradually slow.

‘I was so sorry to hear about your father,’ Kate said. ‘I heard they found his body after I left the scene. Are you okay?’

Daphne’s throat tightened. ‘If I said yes, would you pretend to believe me?’

‘I guess that was a dumb question. I didn’t realize you were still on leave. For how long?’

‘Until January 1.’ Daphne glared. ‘I tried to go into the office to do paperwork, but I’m not even allowed to do that. He wants me to rest. Can you believe it?’

Kate’s brows lifted. ‘What a silly man. It’s not like you had a gun held to your head by a mass murderer or anything. Or that you just found out your father didn’t run out on you and your mom when you were a kid, but was murdered. Oh, right, and by the same killer who kidnapped you as a kid and tortured and killed your cousin. And you found all this out while rescuing your son from being kidnapped by a guy who was in cahoots with the original killer. Why make you rest? Why not make you come back to a high-stress job prosecuting dangerous killers when just the sight of cops triggers a panic attack? I say we throw you right into the fray and let the nervous breakdowns fall where they may. Maybe we can all watch. Hell, maybe I could sell tickets and get rich.’

Daphne shot her a sour look. ‘If I’d wanted sarcasm, I’d have stayed home. My mother already gave me the same speech, except in a West Virginia twang.’

‘And you didn’t listen to her either,’ Kate said tightly.

Daphne realized the Fed really was upset. Puzzled, she squeezed Kate’s hand. ‘I’m okay, really. The panic attacks are nothing new. I’m used to dealing with them. Look, I’m here because I needed to get out of the house. I was going stir-crazy.’

Kate forced a smile. ‘Most women would go shopping, but you came in here to slum with us, all dressed up and making the rest of us look dowdy.’

‘Sugar, that suit and those shoes make you look dowdy. I got nothin’ to do with it.’

Kate snickered and the tension was broken. ‘It’s true, so true.’

‘Plus, I had to get dolled up. I’m having lunch with Joseph.’

Special Agent Joseph Carter was the new head of VCET, handpicked by his predecessor who was retiring soon. Joseph was also Daphne’s . . . Well, she wasn’t sure what to call him. At thirty-five, divorced and with a grown son, she felt too old the use the term ‘boyfriend.’ The fact that he’d led the investigation that saved her son and solved the mystery of all those missing girls and her father certainly made him important to her. But that wasn’t the reason she loved him. What she felt for Joseph was a connection . . . a
knowing
that went deeper than anything she’d ever experienced before.

They’d agreed they wanted a long-term commitment and for both of them that meant marriage, but they weren’t rushing. For now, that he slept in her bed and that her closet had an entire section of severe black suits and ugly shoes was more than enough.

Kate leaned closer. ‘Everyone’s commented on how pleasant Joseph’s been lately,’ she whispered conspiratorially. ‘Whatever you’re doing,
sugar
, keep on doing it.’

Daphne’s cheeks heated at the memory of the things she and Joseph had done. In some ways it seemed like she’d known him forever, even though they’d been together only a few weeks. In other ways . . . like in bed . . . it was all brand spankin’ new.

‘I’ll do my best,’ Daphne promised.
And then some
. ‘Is he here?’

‘Yeah.’ Kate sobered abruptly. ‘He’s in observation six. He wants you to meet him there.’

Startled, Daphne frowned. That was the room they used to interview children. ‘Why?’

‘You’ll see when we get there.’

‘You’re going too?’ Daphne asked, and Kate nodded grimly.

‘Yeah. For the record, I voted against bringing you in on this, but I was overruled.’

‘On what? Overruled by whom?’

‘On a damn stressful case that’s kept me up for four straight nights. See, I happen to agree with
your
boss. You need to rest. But I was overruled by
my
boss. Joseph thinks you can handle it. You might want to keep that barn towel handy, sugar.’

Monday, December 23, 12:30
P.M.

‘She’s so small,’ Daphne murmured, standing at the observation glass. The little girl was blonde. Fair skinned. Petite. She looked like a tiny fairy sitting at the child-sized table. She was hunched over, her head down. Her hands were bandaged. Her body language screamed trauma.

A woman, likely a social worker or a therapist, sat at the table with her, busily coloring a picture and cheerfully chatting. But the child never looked up, never made eye contact.

Daphne didn’t have to ask why Joseph had asked her to meet him here. The instant she’d laid eyes on the girl, she’d been transported back in time to another interview room in a different police department. A different child in a different circumstance, but in many ways the same. There had been a therapist at that table, too, one who’d cheerfully chatted as she colored a picture.

But, like this little girl today, when Daphne had been the traumatized child sitting in an interview room, she hadn’t said a single word. It would be eight long months before Daphne spoke at all. Years more before she started to heal.

Daphne had to clear her throat. ‘What’s her name?’ she whispered hoarsely.

Joseph stood at her side, his arm pressed against hers. ‘We don’t know,’ he said gently.

She knew that he knew where her mind had gone. How deep her emotional wounds were. That he’d ask her to relive her own trauma after what she’d so recently endured . . .

It gave her strength. Made her love this man more than she already did. Joseph knew she wasn’t weak, that she didn’t need to be coddled. He knew what she was made of.

‘What do you call her?’

‘Angel,’ he said. ‘She was wearing a necklace with an angel pendant when she was found.’

‘She’s only about six years old.’

Daphne had been eight when she’d sat at the table with the cheerful therapist. It was another lifetime.
It was yesterday
, she thought, because the horror of what had happened to her never really went away. She’d been kidnapped with her cousin, locked up by a monster who terrorized her and tortured her cousin. Daphne’s escape had been a miracle. Her cousin hadn’t made it.

‘Six was our guess,’ Joseph confirmed. ‘Kate? You want to fill Daphne in on the details?’

‘Not really,’ Kate said stubbornly. ‘I still think this is a bad plan. We have therapists, Joseph. We don’t need to drag Daphne into this. Besides, she’s on leave. She shouldn’t be here.’

Well
, Daphne thought,
now Kate’s rant about selling tickets to my nervous breakdown makes a helluva lot more sense
.

‘
Kate
.’ Joseph barked her name, his patience obviously frayed.

Daphne linked her arm through his, leaning into him. Calming him as he’d calmed her. ‘I’m okay, Kate. I promise there won’t be any nervous breakdowns. Tell me the details.’

‘Fine.’ Kate crossed her arms over her chest. ‘She was found four days ago sitting in a snowdrift near a burned-out car, on a secluded road west of the city. She was half-frozen and in shock. Covered in blood. Some of it was hers. Most of it wasn’t. There were two bodies in the car, a man and a woman, burned past recognition.’

Dear God
. This precious little girl had seen it happen. Daphne’s eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them back. There would be time for compassion later. Now this child needed another kind of help.

‘Their fingerprints were burned off too?’ Daphne asked.

Kate nodded. ‘Yes. The man had a bullet hole in his chest and another at the base of his skull. The medical examiner thinks the emaciated woman had been terminally ill.. We found no ID on the victims, or clothing for that matter.’

‘They were stripped nude?’ Daphne asked, horrified. ‘All of them? Even the little girl?’

‘No, the girl was fully clothed. It’s likely that the killer just didn’t want their clothes to identify them,’ Kate said. ‘The M.E. found no evidence of sexual assault.’

‘And the child?’

‘No evidence of sexual assault was found when she was examined in the ER,’ Joseph assured her, and Daphne’s stomach relaxed a fraction.

‘No plates on the car, a ’92 Olds Cutlass,’ Kate continued. ‘No purses or wallets. No scraps of paper or trash. It was completely stripped, the VIN sanded away.’

‘Both places?’ Daphne asked, knowing that most cars had the vehicle identification number embossed in two different places. The second place was usually harder to get to.

‘Both of them,’ Kate confirmed. ‘Somebody knew what they were doing and they’d come prepared. They doused the car with gasoline but poured polyurethane over the bodies, which made them burn faster. A passing motorist saw the smoke and called 911. Firefighters put out the fire, but the bodies were already charred. Angel was found by a firefighter who was checking the surrounding area for smolder. She hasn’t said a word since she was brought in. She can hear, we know that. There doesn’t appear to be any physical reason for her silence.’

‘The trauma is reason enough,’ Daphne murmured. ‘Assuming those were her parents, she witnessed the most horrific thing a child could see. Has no one reported her missing?’

Joseph exhaled heavily. ‘No one.’

‘Her prints aren’t in the missing-children database either,’ Kate added. ‘We put her picture up on the wire four days ago and no one’s stepped forward.’

‘Who’s the woman with her?’

‘Heidi Breckenridge,’ Joseph said. ‘She’s from social services. I’ve worked with her before. She’s good. But she hasn’t been able to get any response from the girl.’

‘How long had she been there in the snow?’

‘Several hours at least,’ Kate said. ‘She had frostbite on her hands. The doctors don’t think she’ll lose any fingers, so that’s one positive.’

Daphne stood still for a long moment, studying the child. ‘She sits like a little lady.’

‘She’s all hunched over,’ Kate said. ‘How can you tell?’

‘Look at her feet. She’s got them slanted to the side, crossed at the ankle. If she sat up straight, she might offer us a cup of tea. What was she wearing when you found her?’

‘Jeans, designer label. Brand new, as was the cashmere twin set.’ Kate shook her head. ‘What kind of six-year-old wears a twin set?’

‘The kind whose mother trains her to serve tea,’ Daphne said wryly, knowing the type. ‘What else?’

‘Prada boots. I priced them at Saks – they retail at almost four hundred bucks.’

Joseph pointed to a box on a table behind them. ‘The clothes she was found in.’

‘Wow.’ Daphne checked the makers’ labels on the clothes, each piece sealed in a plastic evidence bag. ‘This twin set alone would pay for two of your black suits, Kate. And the boots?’ She held them up to the light coming through the two-way mirror. ‘Faux fur trim, suede fringe. And . . . sand?’ Particles of sand had clung to the fringe. ‘An impractical choice for the beach. And odd that she’d been there at all, considering the weather. Is the lab checking the sand for origin?’