“Several times,” Meredith said. “Aunt Kathy called that morning to say Alicia was missing and my mom packed her suitcase. Her car wasn’t too reliable, so she decided to fly.” Meredith frowned. “My mom was guilty about that decision until the day she died.”
“Why?” Alex asked and Meredith shrugged.
“Her flight kept getting delayed because of storms. If she’d driven, she would have arrived hours earlier and your mom would have still been alive. And if Aunt Kathy had been alive, you would never have taken those pills.”
“I wish Aunt Kim were here to know the truth,” Alex said sadly.
Meredith patted her hand. “I know. Anyway, Aunt Kathy called later, hysterical, and that’s when I started talking to her. Mom had left for the airport already and back then nobody had cell phones. I was the go-between. Mom called from a pay phone at the airport every half hour and I’d tell her what Aunt Kathy had said. The first time I talked to Aunt Kathy, she’d gotten a call from a neighbor saying some boys had found a body.”
“The Porter boys,” Daniel said.
Meredith nodded. “Aunt Kathy was leaving to check it out.”
“And that’s when she found Alicia,” Alex murmured.
“When did you talk to her again, Meredith?” Daniel asked.
“When she came home from finding Alicia, before she went to identify the body. She was… past hysterical. She was sobbing, crying.”
“Do you remember what she said?”
Meredith frowned. “She was crying that her baby had been left in the rain.”
Daniel frowned as well. “It didn’t rain the night before. There was thunder and lightning, but no rain. I checked the weather report after we talked to Gary Fulmore.”
Meredith shrugged. “That’s what she said. ‘Just asleep in the rain.’ Over and over.”
Alex tensed, remembering the phrase. “No, that’s not what she said.”
Daniel sat beside her, looking her square in the eye. “What did she say, Alex?”
“When Mama came back from identifying Alicia, Craig gave her a sedative, then went to work. I put her to bed. She was crying so hard, and so was I… so I climbed in bed with her and just held on.” Alex pictured her mother lying in bed, a steady stream of tears running down her face. “She kept saying, ‘A sheep and a ring.’ That’s all she had to identify Alicia because her face was so destroyed. ‘Just a sheep and a ring.’ ”
Daniel’s eyes narrowed, and she saw the flash of triumph. “All right then.”
Alex looked down at her hands. “Alicia had a ring. So did I. Our birthstones. Mama gave them to us for our birthday.” Her mouth curved bitterly. “Sweet sixteen we were.”
“Where is your ring, Alex?” he asked softly, and her stomach turned over.
“I don’t know. I don’t remember.” Her heart was suddenly racing. “I must have lost it.” She looked up, studied his eyes, and knew. “You know where it is.”
“Yes. It was in your old room. On the floor, under your window.”
A sense of dread stole inside her, darkening everything. Inside her mind, thunder rolled and a single voice screamed. Be quiet. Close the door. “That’s it, isn’t it? What I don’t want to remember.”
His arm tightened around her. “We’ll find out,” he promised. “Don’t worry.”
But she did.
Atlanta, Thursday, February 1, 10:55 a.m.
Daniel stopped by the team room, where Luke pored over a stack of spreadsheets.
“A sheep and a ring,” Daniel said with a nod.
Luke looked up, his eyes narrowed. “That sounds nasty, Daniel.”
“But it’s not.” He sat down at the table and pushed a stack of yearbooks out of the way. “Alex’s mother said it the day Alicia died. She meant because Alicia’s face was smashed, she could only identify her by her sheep tattoo and the ring on her finger. And she saw Alicia before the cops got there.”
Luke frowned. “Alicia had a sheep tattoo?”
“On her ankle. They all did-Bailey, Alicia, and Alex.”
“And a ring on her finger. So now you have independent corroboration that Fulmore was telling the truth,” Luke said. “And that the Dutton sheriff’s office wasn’t.”
Daniel nodded grimly. “Looks like. So what have you found?”
Luke pushed a sheet of paper across the table. “I’ve compiled the names of every male to graduate the same year as Simon, a year ahead and a year behind, from the public and the private schools.”
Daniel scanned the list. “How many?”
“After we cut minorities and dead people?” Luke asked. “Roughly two hundred.”
Daniel blinked. “Shit. Do all two hundred still live in Dutton?”
“No. Culling out everyone that’s moved away leaves only about fifty.”
“Better,” Daniel said. “But still too many to show to Hope.”
“Why would you show them to Hope?”
“Because she saw the man who abducted her mother. I have to assume whoever took Bailey did so because of the letter she got from her brother, Wade, or else Beardsley wouldn’t be missing now.”
“That makes sense. But then what? I hate to be a broken record, but we’re trying to solve the murders of four women left in ditches. How are you going to connect whoever took Bailey to whoever’s killing the women?”
“You assume it’s not the same person.”
Luke blinked. “I guess I did.”
“And you’re probably right. Whoever took Bailey doesn’t want anyone to know about the rapes and the pictures. Whoever’s killing the women wants us to focus on Alicia Tremaine. I don’t know how I’ll connect them. All I know is that this SOB doesn’t leave anything behind on the body or at the scene that can identify him. If I can find out who took Bailey, something else might shake out.”
“Fair enough,” Luke said. “So you want me to get these fifty photos down to five or six so we can show them to Hope. You’re going to have her talk to an artist, right? If she can give the artist some basic description, we can cherry-pick from the fifty.”
Daniel stood up. “I’ll tell Mary to get you whatever they come up with. I’ve got to get down to Dutton to talk to Rob Davis and Garth. But first I have to call the SA. Fulmore was telling the truth about the ring and he didn’t hit Alicia while she was alive, so the man is not guilty of murder. Abuse of a corpse, but not murder.”
“Chloe’s gonna love you,” Luke said, shaking his head. “Not.”
“As long as-” Daniel stopped himself short. As long as Alex does, he’d been about to say. But that was premature. Maybe. But he was still warm from the… rightness of holding her in one arm and a little girl in the other. It was certainly more than he’d ever had before. It could end up being nothing more than good sex.
Really, really, really good sex.
But he didn’t think so, and Daniel was a man to trust his instincts.
“As long as what?” Luke asked, one side of his mouth quirking up.
“As long as Chloe does the right thing by Fulmore,” Daniel said quietly. “But that’s not the biggest thing. If Fulmore is telling the truth about that ring, then the Dutton police planted evidence.”
“Chase already gave Chloe the heads-up on Frank Loomis,” Luke said.
“I know. They’re going to open a formal investigation.”
“Are you okay with that? I mean, the guy was your friend.”
“No, I’m not okay with that,” Daniel snapped, “but if he planted evidence, he sent an innocent man to prison for thirteen years and let a killer walk free, and I’m even less okay with that.”
Luke held up his hands. “Sorry.”
Daniel realized he was grinding his teeth and forced himself to relax. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t bark at you. Thanks for all of this. I gotta go.”
“Wait.” Luke pushed two yearbooks across the table, one stacked on the other, opened to the senior graduation pictures. “Yours and your sister’s. I thought you might like to have them.”