The Truth Seeker

by Dee Henderson

  “One of the perks of going out with a guy who comes from very old, very deep money.”

  “True.”

  Lisa relaxed against the railing. She couldn’t feel sad that Kate and Dave were making that next step. She liked Dave. He was exactly what her sister needed, someone who would stick forever.

  But as happy as she was for them, she was sad too. The exclusive group of seven was going to become ten when Jennifer and Tom, Marcus and Shari, and Kate and Dave married. It was going to change, and while she knew there would always be a place for her, after they were married she knew she’d be thinking twice before she picked up the phone to call one of them in the middle of the night. It was those little changes she dreaded.

  “I’ve got a favor to ask,” Kate said.

  “Sure.”

  “Would you consider coming to church with us next week?”

  While she had known the subject would come up again, the question came out of the blue, and Lisa wasn’t ready with a graceful answer. She simply shook her head. “I’ll pass.”

  “I wish you’d come.”

  “Kate—” Causing friction in the family was the last thing she wanted to do, but Kate didn’t know what she was asking. And Lisa was tired, didn’t want to have to deal with this.

  “You’d be welcome. They’re a great bunch of people. And I’d like you to meet the rest of Dave’s family, his friends.”

  “Have a barbecue; I’ll come. Dave’s place has room for a small crowd.”

  “You can’t avoid the subject of church forever.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve never known you to form an opinion without having the facts.”

  “I know what I need to know.”

  “Scripture is true, Lisa, even though you find it hard to accept. Jesus is the Son of God, and He did rise from the dead. He is alive.”

  “Leave it alone. Please.”

  “I always thought you were open-minded enough to at least listen.”

  “Insults aren’t going to help.”

  Shock crossed Kate’s face, then pain. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “And I’m a little sensitive about the subject right now. You, Jennifer, and Marcus have been laying it on pretty thick in the last few weeks.”

  Kate absorbed that. “We didn’t mean to. I really am sorry, for all of us.”

  Now she’d made a mess of it. Lisa rubbed her face. “I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to bite, but I really would like you to just drop the subject. I’m tired. I’m not going to change my mind. And I’m really not interested.”

  It was so obvious Kate wanted to ask why, but she stopped the question and gave a reluctant nod. “All right, Lisa.” Kate’s pager went off. She glanced at the number, frustrated. “This job has lousy timing. I’ve got to take this one.” She reached into her pocket for her cellular phone and punched in the numbers with her thumb. “Yes, Jim?”

  Lisa saw the shift to an impassive expression, knew whatever was going on it was serious. “I’m on my way.” Kate closed her phone and sighed. “I’ve got to go.”

  Lisa reached out and hugged her, not wanting her to depart with tension between them. “Be safe, Kate.”

  “Always.” Kate kissed her cheek. “Get some sleep.”

  “Lisa, where do you find these records? That sax is wailing like somebody is in mourning,” Quinn asked, wondering if he could convince her to change it without admitting it was getting on his nerves. It was Friday evening, and he and Marcus were camped out at her place, going through what evidence they had been able to gather, trying to formulate their plan of attack for the next day. Lisa had insisted she wanted to help and Quinn had finally conceded the point.

  He was enjoying the chance to quietly invade her space. Her ferret was draped over his knee, half asleep. They had moved from the dining room to the living room after Lincoln got paged and had to leave. It was after 9 P.M., but Lisa showed no signs of wanting to call it a night.

  Sitting on the couch, using the coffee table as a work area, she didn’t bother to look up from the photographs she was sorting. “I like jazz.”

  “Your music taste is decades old.”

  “Really? I figured you would have heard it when it was new.” She glanced over at him and smiled as his partner chuckled. Quinn made a face back at her. The last three weeks had done some good; at least she’d started to relax with him.

  It was such slow progress.

  The more he knew about her, the more he wanted to know. The attraction went deeper than like, but not as strong as love; it hovered there in the middle like a balance waiting to settle. It was an incredibly dangerous edge, one he worried about privately when he prayed. He’d always been able to control his emotions and how close he got. This time events were overtaking him and he felt like he was picking his way through a minefield.

  The convergence of issues had created something he had never expected. Spending time with Lisa in the investigation had opened up a look at her professional life, just as helping her out as she got over the injury had opened a window into her private life.

  She was intelligent, fair, independent, kind, and above everything else, curious. But when it came to being willing to talk about things of faith, that curiosity change to indifference. He had watched Kate try, then Marcus. Lisa had rebuffed them both.

  Quinn frowned at that ugly reality, knowing something had turned off that curiosity, dreading both what it could be and how hard it was going to be to uncover. Lisa was formidable in keeping her secrets.

  Of the three problems he’d faced—she wouldn’t let him get close, she didn’t trust him, and she didn’t believe—he’d made progress on only one, and even that was fragile. She had let him closer than he expected, but she still wasn’t ready to trust him, and he had gotten nowhere with the question of faith. He had the feeling getting her to trust him was going to be key to figuring out why her hackles rose so fast when Jesus was mentioned.

  Lisa and her secrets—she wasn’t going to give them up easily.

  Neither was this case. Quinn forced himself to turn his attention from Lisa back to the work at hand. It was so frustrating. The search for information had bogged down. Grant was being uncooperative to the extreme, would answer nothing about Rita and when he had met her or if he had known Amy Ireland. It made Quinn more determined than ever to crack open what he was hiding.

  Lincoln was trying to prove the man innocent; they were trying to prove him guilty of a second murder. Grant Danford was in a box squeezing so tight that it was going to eventually have to pop one way or the other. And it was actually easier to make progress on the case with all of them working together, looking at all the information gathered with different objectives.

  From Amy’s mother had come shoe boxes of photographs and slides Amy had taken during the two-week art camp. From Valerie Beck—told only of the search to locate Amy—had come old letters Rita had kept from friends, Rita’s diaries—kept daily during her teens with sporadic entries into her twenties—and access to Rita’s photographs. Rita had been intending to make photojournalism a full-time career and her film negatives were extensive going back to when she was fifteen. Lisa was trying to get them into some sort of chronological order.

  Quinn watched Lisa work for a few minutes longer, then turned his attention back to Rita’s diary. “What were you doing when you were sixteen?” he asked casually, curious if she’d answer.

  She looked up. “What?”

  “What were you doing when you were sixteen? Rita was boy and horse crazy by the sound of her diary.”

  “Lisa was into running track and pretending she didn’t like Larry Rich,” Marcus answered absently on her behalf. He was sitting on the floor using the couch as a backrest, leafing through old newspaper clippings from the initial missing person’s investigation of Rita Beck.

  “I was not,” Lisa protested.

  “Sure you were. I chaperoned that year’s prom, remember?”

  “I di
dn’t go.”

  “You half did; you slipped out to meet Larry over at the high school gym so you could borrow his brother’s motorcycle. You ended up going bowling if I remember correctly.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Larry. He was wise enough to ask permission before the two of you disappeared.”

  Quinn turned a chuckle into a cough as Lisa shoved Marcus’s shoulder with her socked foot.

  “Forget it, Sherlock; I’m still going to start vetting the guys in your life again.”

  “Kevin was a mistake, okay? I learned my lesson.”

  Marcus reached back and tweaked her foot. “Stephen stood there and watched Kevin’s nose bleed after Jack slugged him. I was so proud of him. He asked about Jack’s hand before he dealt with Kevin’s broken nose.”

  “You should have read them both the riot act.”

  Marcus smiled. “I love you too. Where’s that stack of letters Amy’s mom sent out?”

  Lisa shuffled through the box of material they had brought over to the house, found them, and handed the packet to him.

  Quinn was grateful for their help, even if he did feel guilty that Marcus had chosen to stick around for the last days of his vacation to help out. It was clear just watching Marcus and Lisa together that his partner had decided to do some low-key meddling in her life.

  He was relieved to see that the pain she’d been doing her best to hide appeared to be fading. She was not pausing to think before she moved as she had been; he’d only seen her reach to shield her ribs twice tonight. And that brace on her broken finger was going to be gone in another couple days if she kept fiddling with it. He wanted to reach over and still her hands as she worked at the tape holding it in place. Doctors had to be some of the worst patients there were.

  Her parrot stalked along the back of the couch and stepped down onto her shoulder. Lisa absently stroked her feathers. “What’s the matter, Iris? Peanuts gone?”

  The parrot whistled. Lisa pulled another one from her pocket, still in its shell, and offered it. “Take it back to your perch.”

  Iris grasped it and flew with a rush of feathers to the perch by the patio door.

  The ferret looked up, and then rolled over in Quinn’s lap onto his back. Quinn obliged the silent invitation and rubbed Sidney’s stomach. After a week of dropping into Lisa’s home, it was obvious she’d be lost without the pets. They were part of her life. He’d remember that when her birthday rolled around.

  “Who’s this?” Lisa asked. “Amy took a lot of pictures of him.”

  Quinn accepted the photo she handed him. The teenage boy was throwing a bale of hay from the bed of a pickup truck to waiting cattle. “Amy’s boyfriend at the time she disappeared. Fred Wilson. They had been going together for about two years.”

  “Nice-looking guy.”

  “Pretty devastated at her disappearance from what I remember.”

  “He was ruled out as a suspect?” Marcus asked, looking at the photo.

  “He was rebuilding a fence with his dad the day Amy disappeared. No one was ever totally ruled out, but he’s low on the list.”

  Marcus nodded and handed it back to Lisa.

  “Did Amy have her camera with her when she disappeared?” Lisa asked.

  “Good question. Yes, one of her Nikons was missing.”

  “Never found?”

  “No.”

  “I wish we could find some kind of proof that she came to Chicago.” She stretched carefully, taking the strain out of her back.

  “If it exists, we’ll find it,” Quinn replied, certain of that.

  The room became quiet as they worked.

  “So what were you doing when you were sixteen?” Lisa casually tossed the question back at him. It caught him off guard; it was the first probe she’d made into his past. There was a wonderful irony to the fact she was asking while her brother was in the room.

  “At sixteen I was doing my best to survive the rodeo circuit and seriously pursuing Ashley Blake, the soon-to-be-crowned Miss Montana.”

  “You didn’t catch her.”

  “On the contrary. She made me the envy of every guy in the state for the next two years running. Then she married my best friend.”

  Lisa laughed. It was a good sound, with no hesitation part of it. “Why do I have a feeling you were part of that?”

  “Jed’s a quiet kind of guy. Ashley just needed an excuse to hang out with him.”

  “And it gave you cover from all the girls chasing you.”

  Quinn winked at her, then glanced at Marcus. “She’s smart.”

  “No argument here.”

  Lisa didn’t follow up on it, to his disappointment.

  She looked back at her notepad and running list of issues. “How much money did Amy have access to when she disappeared?”

  “Not much. Maybe thirty dollars according her mom.”

  “Unless she had been hoarding money for a while in preparation of leaving.”

  “Which is why we might be having such a hard time finding a record of her travel. If it wasn’t a spur of the moment runaway, then she either got transportation arranged early or Rita made the reservations for her.”

  “Do we have access to Rita’s accounts when she was sixteen?”

  “Her mom sent over what she had, but there’s not much there. No way to trace all the cash from her summer jobs. What she wasn’t spending on film, she was spending on camera equipment. There’s just too much money unaccounted for to tell.”

  Quinn turned the page in the diary. Rita’s handwriting at age sixteen had been enthusiastic, the letters sweeping and the words expansive, the number of exclamation points and underlined words and sad or smiling faces making it very easy to formulate a good idea of who she was.

  A happy kid.

  Fights and secrets with friends, crushes, occasional comments about family, a lot of plans and dreams for her future.

  She hadn’t dated many of the entries and often had several that appeared to be written during the course of one day. He was in the section of the diary for the right year the girls had met. She’d spent five pages on her birthday party describing who had come and what they had said and what gifts she had received from whom, but he’d found no reference yet to the art camp or to Amy.

  He turned the page and stopped at the first part of a new entry.

  Horses!! Sam took me to the forest preserve over by his house to ride bikes and one of the trails goes by a big estate with its own stables. It was so cool! There were like six horses and a foal out in the pasture. Mr. Danford told me I could come back and visit if I wanted, bring my camera to take pictures of the horses. He was riding a big sorrel that was just magnificent!

  “Gotcha,” Quinn said quietly.

  “What?”

  He held out the diary to her. “Top of the left page.”

  She read the passage, then looked over at him. She didn’t say anything for a long moment, and he understood that expression. There was sadness there. “He knew Rita when she was sixteen.”

  “We’ll prove he knew Amy too.” Quinn was convinced of it now.

  Eleven

  Lisa twirled the plastic stem of a rubber-tipped dart between her thumb and first finger and considered the now slightly smudged, red twenty-six circled on the whiteboard. She sidearmed the dart toward the board and it stuck with a squishing sound just below the six. She scowled at the miss. Her eyes were blurry from the long days spent reading and the hours at the microscope. She ignored the darts on the floor that had not stuck and scored the four inside the circle. Four out of five was an improvement.

  Two weeks working in the archive files and she had zilch.

  She got up from the table, glanced one last time at the case she had spread out, and paced toward the far counter and the coffeepot. It was after eight on a Wednesday night, she was getting nowhere, and if she were smart she’d call it a night and go home. In the quiet night, the empty building, it wasn’t just her imagination that had the victims
haunting this room, that sat at the tables before their spread-out files, looking at her and silently shaming her for not seeing the truth.

  She had to stop reading Stephen King before she went to sleep. The silence was accusing.

  She dumped sugar into the coffee to help kill the headache and looked around the room at all the tables. There were seventeen cases presently set out, all ones that had shown promise. When one stopped yielding ideas, she had moved on to the next. And while results were still outstanding on most of the ballistic, fingerprint, and DNA tests she had requested, the first round had come back. She had added new evidence to several cases, but overall she had moved not a single case significantly forward.

  There was a knifing death, a strangled assault case, two gunshot victims, a burned Jane Doe, three victims from an armed robbery gone bad. . . . The tables were weighed down under tragedies.

  She had to find justice for somebody.

  She’d even concede, cutting that goal of twenty-six successes to two if she could just get movement somewhere.

  She could open another box and start a new case, but if she couldn’t solve any from the first set she had already examined, it left little hope for the others she would open.

  There had to be a better way to work this problem.

  “What are the odds a murderer kills only once?” The question Quinn had asked lingered like an intriguing thread. In the unlikely event that Lincoln was right and Grant Danford was innocent, then there was a killer still out there. Or if Quinn was right and Grant had killed twice, what were the odds of a third time?

  Two hundred and sixty cases—two hundred and sixty different killers?

  No way.

  Somewhere in this room there were cases that were similar. Find the common MO and she’d find cases she could link and leverage together.

  It was a good enough idea to have her setting aside the coffee and reaching into the small refrigerator for a soda instead, knowing it would keep her awake unlike the coffee, a psychological difference if not a caffeine- and sugar-driven one.

  Where did she start?

  Group by age of the crime? type of crime? type of victim?