Cut and Run

by Mary Burton

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Thursday, June 28, Noon

  “I’ve got more information on Josie Jones,” Kat proclaimed, suspending any salutation to Faith on the other end of the phone.

  It was lunchtime, and Faith had spent the morning conducting the autopsy of a seventy-year-old male who’d accidently been shot by his neighbor. The buckshot had severed the femoral artery, and the victim had bled to death before the neighbor could get him in from the country.

  Faith sat down behind her desk. “Kat, I thought you were in school.”

  “It’s lunchtime. We get twenty minutes on the prison yard to ourselves.”

  She rubbed her fingertips to her temple. “You’re back there because I sweet-talked the principal, and it’s not a prison yard.”

  “Broom-Hilda is in her office. She can’t see me. Do you want to know about Josie or not?”

  Faith pushed aside the temptation to reprimand Kat about sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. “Just spill it.”

  “I found Josie’s older sister’s address. Her new married name is Jones, and she lives right here in Austin.” Kat rattled off the address.

  The cops had given her the same name, but she’d not had the time or courage to follow up yet. “How did you find that?”

  “Faith, everything’s on the Internet if you know where to look.”

  “Apparently.”

  “So are you going to see her?” Kat asked excitedly.

  “And just show up out of the blue?”

  “Why not? Don’t you think she deserves closure, too?”

  “Sure she does. But I don’t have any solid evidence for her yet about Josie, who may or may not be related to me.”

  “Do you want me to text this tip to Hayden?”

  “No. I’ll handle this.” Faith typed in the address to the map app on her computer. The woman didn’t live too far from Faith’s office.

  “You don’t sound excited about the idea of seeing her.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “You’re worried she won’t want to see you.” Kat’s words echoed exactly what Faith was thinking.

  “You’re right, Kat.”

  “Don’t be worried. She’ll be glad to see you.”

  How could this child possibly know this? It had been over thirty years since anyone had seen Josie. Loved ones moved on and did the best they could to cope with the pain. A reminder about the past from her might not be welcome. “Maybe.”

  In the background a bell rang. “I’ve got to go. The prison matron is summoning us back.”

  Faith smiled. “Not that bad, kid. Graduate high school, go to college, and the world will be yours.”

  “School blows.” Her words didn’t have quite the anger and agitation they’d had before.

  “Chin up, Kat.”

  The girl moaned and hung up.

  Faith was familiar with the area Kat had mentioned. It would take her twenty minutes to get there.

  Faith might not get a chance to meet the woman, but she could drive out there and see her house. Maybe spot something that would make sense to her.

  Without overanalyzing, as she loved to do, she grabbed her purse, a couple of DNA test kits from supply, and made her way to the locker room to change. Ten minutes after Kat’s call, she was driving north.

  Maggie Stapleton’s home was located on a cul-de-sac in North Austin. The one-level rancher was nestled under a large southern live oak tree that shaded the entire yard. There was a blue minivan in the driveway and a rooster weather vane perched on a pole in the front yard.

  Drawing in a breath, she tightened her hands on the wheel, beginning to question herself. She had no way of knowing if Josie Jones was her birth mother or that the woman’s body had been found. She had nothing definitive yet. But the need to know was overwhelming.

  Before she lost her nerve, she shut off the car engine and crossed the aggregate driveway up to the front door. She rang the bell, almost hoping no one was home. She should have called first, but as soon as she heard the footsteps and saw the front doorknob twist, she had no choice but to stand her ground.

  The door opened to a woman in her mid- to late forties. Immediately, she saw similarities between the mug shot and this woman. The face, the eyes, the lips all matched.

  “Mrs. Stapleton?” Faith asked.

  “That’s right.”

  Faith dug out her medical examiner’s identification from her purse. “My name is Dr. Faith McIntyre. I’m with the medical examiner’s office, and I’m investigating a cold case. Was Josie Jones your sister?”

  Mrs. Stapleton studied Faith’s identification and then her face. Her head cocked slightly as if something she saw in Faith had registered, but she then brushed the thought aside as if it were too improbable. “Yes, Josie was my sister. Have you found her?”

  “I can’t say with any degree of certainty, but I was hoping to find out more about Josie.”

  Mrs. Stapleton’s brow knotted. She didn’t invite Faith inside, but she also didn’t slam the door in her face. “It’s been over thirty years. There are days when I have to look at pictures just to remember what she looked like.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “It was the fall of 1987. I was a sophomore in college and Josie was a senior in high school and working part-time. She was in foster care and I wanted to have her come live with me, but the judge said I was too young to take care of her.” She moistened her lips and cleared her throat. “Josie was a beautiful girl, and she knew it. But she was always so restless. She was bored so easily. Was always looking for a new thrill. The first time she got arrested was for stealing her foster mother’s watch. The second time, Josie was almost eighteen, and her foster mother felt like she needed a hard lesson. So she stepped back and let Josie face the police and courts. Tough love, she called it.”

  “From what I’ve learned so far, she was acquitted of the charges,” Faith said.

  “That’s right. The day she turned eighteen, Josie came home like she could pick up where she left off. Her foster mother, who was having none of it, kicked her out. The woman told Josie to find her own place to live. Josie grabbed a few things and left. She said she had someone who said he’d give her a job and a place to live. I never saw my sister again.”

  “Do you know who that person was?”

  “The cops asked her foster mother that question dozens of times. But Josie never told her or me.” Mrs. Stapleton folded her arms over her chest. “Why, after all this time, are you here?”

  “We’ve found a set of remains in the Hill Country. I’m trying to identify them.”

  Mrs. Stapleton raised her fingers to her lips. “What makes you think it’s Josie?”

  “There are several factors that I can’t discuss right now.”

  Mrs. Stapleton’s eyes watered. “To think you might have found Josie after all this time. I prayed for years that she’d show up healthy and whole, but as time passed, I lost hope.”

  “Do you have anything that belonged to her?”

  “I have a few pictures.” Mrs. Stapleton reached for the door, glanced at Faith as if she were trying to process all the information and emotion flooding her brain. “Does the medical examiner always make personal calls like this?”

  “No. This is an unusual case.”

  Mrs. Stapleton stared at her and then pushed open the door and motioned Faith inside. The one-level house had a great room with a vaulted ceiling, bedrooms on one side, and the kitchen on the other. Bright light streamed into the room onto a large collection of houseplants. An artist’s easel was propped against the wall along with some paintings.

  “You’re an artist?” Faith asked.

  “I do portraits. Not getting rich, but it’s a good business.” She crossed to an intricately carved box on the coffee table and opened it. Inside was a stack of older photos that curled at the edges and were slightly yellow. “I wish I had more of Josie. Mom never took many, and neither did her foster mothe
r, who had five other kids to care for.”

  Mrs. Stapleton gently handed the stack of six photos to Faith. Nervous energy burned through her body as she glanced at the first picture of two young towheaded girls standing by a Ferris wheel. She flipped to the next picture and found the two girls a couple of years older. Josie in these pictures was a far cry from the somber girl in the mug shot. Each image featured the girls a little older, until she reached the last picture. It was just Mrs. Stapleton.

  “Can I snap pictures of these?” Faith asked. “We’ll need it for the files.”

  “Sure.”

  Faith carefully laid each one on the coffee table and took pictures with her phone. “Thank you, Mrs. Stapleton.” She handed back the photos, along with her business card. “I promise to keep in touch.”

  Mrs. Stapleton followed Faith to the door. “Josie did tell me the job she’d been hired for was a nanny position.”

  “Nanny?”

  “Yes. She said something that was odd then. She said the man who hired her liked her looks a lot.”

  “He hired Josie based on her looks.”

  “Yeah. That sounded off to me, but Josie told me I worried too much. When she went missing, I relayed that comment to the police, but they never found any evidence that she’d interviewed for a job like that. I’ve always wondered if I had said something more to her, would she have been more careful and would she be here now.”

  “Josie wouldn’t want you to believe that. No good will come of it.”

  “The guilt is all I have left of her, I guess.”

  “Did Josie say anything else about this guy?”

  “She said he was handsome. Classy.”

  “Did she say anything about the baby or the wife?”

  “No.”

  “Did she ever mention Russell McIntyre?”

  “McIntyre. That’s your name.”

  “He was my father. There is evidence that he might have represented your sister in court.”

  “Your father knew my sister?”

  “Her name appeared in his datebook multiple times,” Faith confessed.

  “I don’t recall the name.” Mrs. Stapleton slid her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “Was she hired to babysit you?”

  “She vanished a year before I was born.” Faith cleared her throat. “When was the last time you saw Josie?”

  “The day she was supposed to be meeting the child she’d be babysitting.”

  Anything could have happened to the girl that day, but she had one way of narrowing the search. “I brought a quick DNA test. Would you mind taking a cheek swab?”

  “Sure. I’ll take whatever test you have.”

  Faith removed the packaged test and latex gloves. Carefully, she slid on the gloves before breaking open the test. “Just open your mouth so I can take a quick swab.”

  Mrs. Stapleton opened her mouth and watched as Faith swabbed the inside of her cheek. When Faith was done, the woman ran her tongue over the area. “When will you know if the remains you found are linked to me?”

  “Very soon.” She replaced the swab in the glass vial and sealed it in a plastic bag. If she could prove that Mrs. Stapleton was her aunt, then she had proven her connection to Josie. But it would take a mitochondrial DNA test to prove the bones in the ground were Josie. “Thank you, Mrs. Stapleton.”

  “Call me Maggie.”

  “Maggie. I’m Faith.”

  Warm eyes studied her closely. “You look like Josie.”

  Faith stood perfectly still as her heart thumped in her chest. She wanted to explain everything, but she was in the middle of a police investigation and couldn’t. “Do I?”

  “The instant I saw you, I saw her.”

  She promised herself as soon as she could she would tell Maggie the entire story. “I guess I have that kind of face.”

  A half smile teased Maggie’s lips as she shook her head. “No, you don’t.”

  Faith felt an odd kinship with this woman. “One way or the other, you’ll see me again.”

  She left, crossing quickly to her car and sliding behind the wheel. She was rattled, unsure, and nervous. But she was also exhilarated. She looked at the DNA test kit and then glanced up to find Maggie still staring. She waved and drove off. At her first stoplight, she called Hayden.

  He answered on the first ring. “Faith, are you all right?”

  “I’ve just visited Josie Jones’s sister.”

  If he heard the tremor in her voice, he ignored it. “Does Nancy Drew ever go to school?”

  A nervous smile tugged at her lips. “When it suits. Where are you?”

  “At the forensic lab,” he said. “I also have a DNA sample that needs testing.”

  “Who does it belong to?”

  “PJ Slater.”

  “PJ? Did he give you a sample?”

  “He left a cup behind,” Hayden said.

  “That’s not going to be admissible in court.”

  “I’m looking for confirmation that he’s the product of one of those girls, not court evidence.”

  “Why PJ?”

  “He’s the right age, has your coloring, and his father was at the epicenter of all this.”

  “But he wasn’t adopted.”

  “So I’ve been told. Would you give me a DNA sample?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good. Then we’ll know soon enough, won’t we?”

  “Why would Margaret and Peter lie about their son not being adopted?”

  “I don’t know,” Hayden said.

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes,” she said.

  Faith drove straight to the state forensic lab, and before she went into the building, she pulled a second test from her purse and swabbed her own cheek. Inside, she turned in Maggie Stapleton’s DNA sample, as well as her own. She gave orders for her sample to be compared to Stapleton’s and any one that Captain Hayden had dropped off today.

  Rounding the corner, she saw Hayden standing at the end of the hallway. He was leaning against the wall, hat in hand, his right boot resting on the wall as his head tipped forward, cell phone to his ear.

  She didn’t know what exactly she had with him or even where it would go. But she was so glad to see him.

  Straightening her shoulders, she moved toward him, and as her heels clicked on the tiled floor, he looked up, pushed away from the wall, and ended his call. He looked tired, but a small grin appeared as she approached.

  “Everything turned in to the lab?” Hayden asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Great. We could use some good news.” He nodded toward the evidence-testing lab down the hallway. “The forensic tech has examined the two magazines,” he said. “She said she’d like to go over some of the results. Thought you would like to hear.”

  “Thanks. I would.”

  “What did Mrs. Stapleton say about her sister?”

  “She said Josie had a line on a nanny job and she was set to interview with both parents the day she vanished.”

  “When was that?”

  “September of 1987. Nine months before I was born.”

  She felt his hand on the small of her back as they walked toward the lab room. They crossed the large room filled with workstations to a tech with salt-and-pepper hair wearing thick dark-rimmed glasses. His name was Doug Turner, and they’d met before. Turner looked up from his microscope. “Dr. McIntyre, I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “I wanted to hear what you had to say,” she said.

  “Sure.” He rose and crossed the room to a large computer screen. He pressed a couple of buttons, and the title page of one of the magazines appeared. “To save possible evidence and the integrity of the pages, I have photographed the magazine, and it’s now in storage.” He selected another file on his computer, and the next page in the magazine appeared, along with a fingerprint highlighted by black powder. “I pulled several prints from the magazine’s cover as well as the interior. The large thumbprint you see on the right came from the magazine’s cover.�
�

  “It’s too big to be a young girl’s,” Faith said.

  “Correct,” the technician said. “I’ve already run the fingerprints against the AFIS database, and it’s a match for Danny Garnet.”

  Hayden shook his head. “I’ve been on the phone the last half hour trying to light a fire under the judge. His clerk promises I’ll have a warrant for Second Chances in the hour.”

  “This fingerprint should seal the deal,” Turner said.

  “Brogan and I were at Second Chances earlier, and from what we could determine from the outside, there was no one at the bar.”

  “I was also there last night,” Faith said. And when she looked up at his hardening features, she said, “I can make all your logical arguments, Captain Hayden, so save the lectures. I wanted to see the place for myself. Unlike you, I went during business hours and got in.”

  “And?”

  “The bar was packed, and Garnet was working hard to fill drink orders.”

  “When did you see him?” Hayden asked.

  “About seven thirty last night.”

  A muscle pulsed in Hayden’s jaw. “That was an unnecessary risk.”

  “Maybe.” She deflected his ire back to the technician. “Garnet was taken aback when he saw me. I think he thought I was Macy at first. What else did you find, Mr. Turner?”

  “I found more fingerprints on the inside of the magazines. Since all the missing girls had arrest records, I was able to match prints to Josie Jones, Olivia Martin, and Kathy Saunders. They were all there, and it appears each wrote notes in the magazine.”

  Faith watched as the technician slowly clicked through the photos of the different pages of the magazines. What I like. What I hate. Josie had started the trend, and each girl had followed suit.

  She read through the notes, her throat tightening. The sets of bones all had faces and identities now. They all had stories.

  “We also found several hair strands on various pages. I’ve bagged them and will run DNA against them.” Easy to assume the hair found would just belong to the girls or Garnet, but there was no telling if evidence of another suspect was involved.