never get rid of that one,” observed the detective whose desk was right behind Seth’s.
He grunted. “Am I doing her any favors? Hell, face it. It’s an intellectual exercise for me. For her...”
“It’s a heartbreaker.”
He turned to scowl at Ben Kemper, near his age, light-haired to his dark, a man Seth suspected was on a mission of his own, although Seth had no idea what it was. “Thanks. Just what I needed to hear.”
Kemper grinned. “An intellectual exercise, huh? That’s all it was?”
“Damn it, no! But I don’t have the same stake that woman does, either.” He scrubbed a hand over his head. “Shit. My best hope was a match in NamUs.” The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System hadn’t existed when Hope Lawson disappeared. A body found in one jurisdiction had in the past rarely been matched to a listing for a missing person even a few counties away. Now medical examiners, cops, even families could input information. A body found in a shallow grave in Florida could be linked to a woman snatched in Montana. As time allowed, some medical examiners’ offices were inputting old information. Or the improvements in DNA technology meant they were taking another try at finding a name for a body long since buried but never identified.
“Nothing, huh?” Kemper leaned back in his chair, his expression sympathetic.
“No.” He didn’t kid himself that meant Hope Lawson had grown up and was living out there somewhere under another name.
Kemper was the one to grunt this time. “You get a call back from Cassie Sparks’s school counselor?”
He and Kemper, often paired on the job, were working the murder/suicide together. Along with her mother, eleven-year-old Cassie had been shot to death by her father, who had then swallowed the gun. The fact he’d killed a kid—his own kid—had made the scene a difficult one, even for seasoned cops.
“Hell. No.” Seth frowned. “I’ll finish going through these emails, then head out to the school. I should still be able to catch her before they let out.” They were trying to find out every detail of the lives of all three members of the Sparks family. Unfortunately, Cassie’s very basic Facebook page had been unrevealing. Friends were denying any knowledge of problems with her dad. “You talk to the father’s boss again?” he asked.
“Sure. Best employee ever. Great attitude. We have to be wrong. Dale would never do anything like this.”
They’d been getting a lot of that. Too much, in Seth’s no-doubt cynical viewpoint, one shared by his fellow detective. No one who’d known the Sparks family wanted to admit they’d seen any crack in the perfect facade. It sucked to face the reality that you might have knowingly blinded yourself. Or to realize you weren’t nearly as perceptive as you’d imagined yourself to be.
“I hear a few of his coworkers have a favorite bar,” Ben continued. “I figure I’ll stop by tonight, see what they have to say after a couple of beers.”
Seth nodded. “Good.” He turned back to his monitor and skimmed down to where he’d left off on that last email.
Except you’ve got her hair wrong in the picture, and her nose, too. And her chin is kind of square, not pointy like that.
Uh-huh, he thought. But she was totally positive they had a match.
Delete.
Twenty minutes later, he logged out and pushed his chair back. “I’m off.”
Ben had a phone tucked between his ear and shoulder as he tapped away on his keyboard. He glanced up. “You coming back?”
“Probably not. I need to knock on some more doors in the Garcias’ neighborhood.” Raul and Maria had come home after a hard day’s work to find their brand-new Sony fifty-five-inch LED HDTV missing, along with the Dell Inspiron laptop the grandparents had bought the granddaughter just last week to take with her to college. Seth had little doubt the thief knew one of the Garcias. He had to have heard about one or both of those very nice purchases—the TV had a two-thousand-dollar-plus price tag. Otherwise, why had their house been hit when none of the others in their modest neighborhood had been?
Yesterday, people had been at work. He figured by the time he got there now, everyone would be reaching home. A kid might have said something to a parent about the guy she saw knocking on the Garcias’ door, then going around back. You never knew.
With a last look at the bulletin board, he thought, Too much to do, not enough time to do it.
And then, Damn, I’ve got to call Eve.
* * *
BAILEY SMITH PAUSED by one of her tables. “How’s your meal? Can I get you anything else?”
The guy, hot in an I-know-I-am way, was so engrossed in something on his smartphone, he didn’t even look up. The girl did, even though her phone sat next to her plate, too.
Canosa was a high-end Italian restaurant only a few blocks from the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. This couple’s dinner along with their drinks and the bottle of wine would run them a couple hundred dollars. What Bailey couldn’t figure out was why they hadn’t eaten at home or hit the drive-through at McDonald’s if they didn’t intend to so much as look at each other or have a conversation over the meal.
But, hey. As long as they tipped generously, why should she care?
“It was awesome,” the girl said in a bored tone. “Actually, we’re probably ready for our check.”
Bailey smiled. “I’ll get it for you.”
She paused at one other table, then went to the computer station tucked into an alcove by the kitchen and ran off the bill for table six. She glanced over it for accuracy, then smilingly placed it on the table midway between the two. The guy reached for it.
The girl said, “You know, I keep thinking you look familiar.”
“Well, if you’ve eaten here before...”
“No, friends told us it was good. You don’t work at Warner Brothers, do you?”
Um, no, she wanted to say. I work at Canosa. But really that wasn’t fair. Living expenses were high in Southern California. She knew people who worked a part-time job or even two on top of a full-time one just to pay the rent.
“Afraid not,” she said cheerfully. If the girl had looked even faintly familiar to her, she might have mentioned being a student at the University of Southern California, but, honestly, she didn’t care if they might have crossed paths before.
The guy handed her an American Express card. She took it with another smile.
When she returned to the table, it was to find them both staring at her.
“I figured it out,” said the girl, a stylish brunette whose handbag was either a genuine Fendi or an amazing knockoff. She sounded excited. “I saw your picture on, I don’t remember, Facebook or Tumblr or someplace like that.”
“Couldn’t have been me,” Bailey assured her. “I’m not a celebrity in disguise here.”
“No, it was amazing! Everybody has been passing it around. It was about this little girl who disappeared and an artist drew what she’d look like now. And...wow. I’d swear it’s you.”
The darkness inside Bailey rose, dimming her vision for a minute. But she didn’t let her expression change. “Really? That’s weird. Pretty sure I’ve never disappeared.”
“Yes, but you ought to look at it. It’s totally uncanny.”
She managed a laugh. “Okay. What’s my name?”
The young woman frowned. “Hope something.” And then her face brightened. “Lawson. Hope Lawson.”
Oh God, oh God. Could any of this be true?
“I’ll