Bones Don't Lie (Morgan Dane Book 3)

by Melinda Leigh

  Exhausted from the morning, she nearly fell asleep on the drive home. Once the kids were settled in the kitchen with Mac, Morgan took a shower and dressed in a suit. She needed to visit the courthouse later. But not even a hot shower and fresh clothes could completely wipe away the skeevy feeling. She took her handgun from its safe and fastened it to her belt before heading toward the office in her grandfather’s Lincoln Town Car.

  What kind of person would pour animal blood in her van?

  She reminded herself that Tyler Green had beaten his wife, hidden from process servers, and tried to strangle Morgan. Filling her car seat with blood was hardly a stretch for him.

  A donut shop on Third Street caught her attention as she drove past. Thanks to her stalker, a simple visit to the cemetery had consumed her entire morning. It was almost lunchtime. Her crappy morning and a dull headache called for a sugar-and-caffeine fix. She went through the drive-through, then continued on to the office. Juggling her coffee, the bakery bag, and her tote, she unlocked the front door of Sharp Investigations. After the emotional storm of the morning, the quiet building was bliss. A general weariness nagged at her muscles.

  She went into her office, dropping off her briefcase and coat, before checking out the kitchen. Empty. She settled behind her desk with her coffee at her elbow and opened the bakery bag. The scent of warm glazed donuts wafted to her nose. She sighed and ate the first one in three bites, washing it down with coffee. Fortified, she checked her e-mail and took her time with her second donut.

  Footsteps in the hallway announced Sharp’s arrival. He appeared in her doorway. Taking one look at him, she couldn’t argue with the all-organic, mostly plant-based diet he attempted to foist on everyone around him. At fifty-three, the only signs of Sharp’s age were his short salt-and-pepper hair and the crow’s-feet gathered around his seen-it-all gray eyes. His lean runner’s body wore jeans and an oxford shirt better than most men half his age.

  He glanced at the white bag on her desk. “I’m not even going to ask what you ate today.”

  “That’s probably best.” Morgan licked the sugar from her fingertips.

  “You eat enough sugar to give an elephant diabetes.” His gaze lingered on her face, which was probably red and puffy. “Is everything all right?”

  Where to even start?

  “It’s John’s birthday.” She fought a tear as she told him about the morning. Now that the incident was over, and her girls were safe at home with Mac, her self-control felt shaky.

  Or perhaps Sharp was right, and she needed to cut back on the caffeine.

  She thought about the third donut but decided Sharp would probably have a stroke if she ate it in front of him. Also, he was probably right about the sugar making her feel worse. Her sugar high was fading, leaving her queasy. “Whoever decided to suspend a spare tire underneath a vehicle should be flogged, and someone is harassing me. All in all, it was not the best of mornings.”

  And she still wanted the donut.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You OK?”

  “Yes,” she said. “As frightening as the morning’s incidents were, now that I know there’s a threat, I can take steps to protect my family.”

  And the grief that had crushed her at the cemetery had ebbed. She would miss John forever, and she would always be sad that he’d been taken from her and the girls. At every milestone, those feelings would resurface. But they wouldn’t suck her under again. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—let them.

  “Do you want to go looking for Tyler Green?” Sharp asked, his gray eyes narrowing, suggesting he’d love nothing more.

  Morgan shook her head. “We have no evidence that it’s him, and he’s smart enough to file a harassment suit if we follow him around. The sheriff’s department will handle it, and either Mac or Stella will stay at the house when I’m not there, so the family is covered.”

  Sharp nodded. “And I want me or Lance with you at all times until this stalker is caught.”

  “All right.” Morgan was independent not stupid.

  “Have you heard from Lance?” Sharp asked.

  “I called him early this morning.” She updated Sharp on Jenny’s condition. “He intended to visit the ME first thing.”

  “I’d like to set aside a chunk of time to review Victor Kruger’s case with you. I’ve been chasing leads for more than two decades. I’d like some fresh eyes on it.”

  “Yes. Of course,” Morgan said.

  “I’ll make you a shake. It’s lunchtime. You need some protein to balance out your stress—and whatever crap you just put in your body.” Sharp left her office, still muttering as he walked down the hall. “I have no doubt you haven’t eaten anything even remotely nutritious today.”

  “Thanks.” Morgan didn’t bother to argue. He’d just blend her a shake anyway. She needed real food in her body, but she ate the third donut while he was out of the room.

  She drank more coffee and called out, “Where is the file?”

  “Lance’s desk,” Sharp answered from the kitchen.

  A blender whirred as she went into Lance’s office. His desk was the only piece of furniture in the room. The file was in the bottom drawer. Dust floated to her nose as she pulled it out. She carried it back to her office and set it on her desk.

  A few minutes later, Sharp set a gross-looking concoction by her elbow.

  She sipped. Pineapple and blueberry. “Considering the color and what you put in them, I’m always surprised that these don’t taste horrible.”

  “You can’t even taste the leafy greens.” Sharp’s current obsession was organic sweet potato greens. He eased into the chair opposite her. “This is going to be hard on Jenny—and Lance, no matter what he says.”

  “I know.” She studied the man across from her. He rarely talked about his past, other than his police career. “Were you ever married, Sharp?”

  “I was,” he said.

  Why did that surprise her?

  His gaze drifted to the window, his eyes pensive. “The marriage was a disaster from the beginning. I wanted kids. She didn’t. She didn’t like being married to a cop. I didn’t want to be anything else. We got a divorce. I haven’t talked to her since I signed the papers. The last I heard, she’d remarried and moved to Boston.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “It was a long time ago. I was a young man.” Sharp shook it off, but sadness clouded his eyes, as if he had deeper feelings about the breakup of his marriage than he was willing to admit.

  “When did you split up?”

  “February of ’94,” Sharp said.

  Three months before Vic Kruger had gone missing. Sharp must have been lonely. Morgan pictured him throwing himself into the investigation, taking an equally lonely child under his wing. Maybe his relationship with Lance hadn’t been as one-sided as Morgan had thought.

  “Anyway, I never came close to marrying again.” Sharp patted the desk. “Enough about me. You can grill me about the rest of my life some other time.”

  Morgan stared at the file, thick and heavy with implications.

  Before they could begin, the front door opened and closed. Lance appeared in the doorway. He took one look at Morgan’s face and asked, “What’s wrong? Where’s your van?”

  She told him about her morning.

  Anger flared in his eyes. “I’d like to go after Tyler myself.”

  “The sheriff will handle him,” she said. “Sheriff King is a pain, but this kind of situation is what he lives for.”

  “True. We can count on King to hassle Tyler.” Lance rounded her desk, leaned over, and hugged her. “I’m sorry you had such a horrible morning. I wish I’d been with you.”

  If he’d been with her, she doubted her stalker would have been so brazen. But a mother focused on her three small children was an easy target.

  “You had enough to deal with this morning,” Morgan said.

  Lance released her and straightened.

  “Did you see the ME?” Sharp
asked.

  “I did.” Lance’s jaw sawed back and forth. “I just came from his office. You’re not going to believe this, but the remains aren’t my father.”

  “What?” Sharp snapped upright.

  “The skeleton is female.” Lance’s eyebrows lowered.

  Silence floated in the air like dust motes.

  Female?

  Was Lance glad the body wasn’t his father? Or upset about the questions the news raised?

  “Frank doesn’t know who she is yet?” Sharp asked.

  “No.” Lance lifted troubled eyes. “I haven’t told my mother. She took the idea of my father’s remains being found better than I expected. But I don’t know how she’ll react when she finds out he’s still missing. Plus, there’s the obvious implication that Dad might have had some sort of relationship with this young woman.” Lance went to the second chair that faced Morgan’s desk, dropped into it, and recapped his visit with his mother.

  It was typical of Lance to be more concerned about his mother when the news would affect him just as deeply.

  Sharp got up and went into the kitchen. A minute later, the blender whirred, and he returned with another shake. He handed it to Lance.

  Lance took it with a sigh. “I’m not really hungry.”

  “You have a headache, and you probably didn’t sleep well,” Sharp said. “The protein will help.”

  “You know he’s always right about these things.” Morgan studied Lance’s exhausted face. How did he feel about his father still being missing?

  Sharp nodded. “I am.”

  Lance drank. Lowering the glass, he swallowed and seemed to brace himself. “Let’s get started. I want to get more information before I tell my mother. I don’t want to keep throwing conflicting reports at her. The ME isn’t in a rush to release any information to the press. He wants to identify the remains and notify the family first. His assistant was pulling missing person reports when I left.”

  Sharp bowed his head and wrapped a hand around the back of his neck. “Now what?”

  There was only one thing that would help Lance: an answer. Morgan opened the file on her desk. “Now we start at the beginning.”

  Chapter Ten

  Lance turned to the whiteboard mounted on the wall. The board was empty, but what would they find when they dug in to the case?

  Whatever it was, it was high time he faced the truth.

  Morgan offered Sharp the file, but he clearly didn’t need it. He leaned back in his chair and started talking. “We know that Vic left his house at approximately nine p.m. to go to the grocery store. When he hadn’t returned at eleven o’clock, your mother called his closest friends, Stan Adams and Brian Leed, hoping one of them would help. Neither was at home. So she drove the route between the store and house in case Vic’s car had broken down. When she didn’t find him, she drove to PJ’s Sports Bar, where he sometimes hung out with Brian and Stan. She didn’t see Brian or Stan there. No one had seen Vic.”

  Restless, Sharp got up and paced in front of the whiteboard. “Jenny called the police a little before midnight. A uniform drove out to the house and took the initial report. Victor had no concerning health conditions or mental limitations. There was no evidence that he was especially at risk, though staying out this late was out of character. The uniform filled out a missing person report and issued a BOLO alert for Victor Kruger and his 1984 Buick Century.”

  Sharp stopped pacing and faced the board. Picking up a marker, he began a timeline. “The patrol officer had hoped, reasonably, that Victor had simply stopped somewhere or taken a different route. Maybe his car had broken down. Those were the days before everyone had a cell phone attached to his or her body. People still used cash for transactions. There was no E-ZPass. It wasn’t so unusual for someone to slip off the radar for an evening.”

  Sharp used magnets to affix an old photo of Victor Kruger and two other men onto the whiteboard. The three men stood in front of a baseball field. They wore amateur baseball uniforms, with the logo for a local appliance store on their chests. Lance’s heart squeezed as he stared at the wide grin on his father’s face.

  “That picture must have been taken at a game.” Lance remembered sitting in the stands watching games. Memories of his dad teaching him to play flickered through his mind like a slideshow. “My dad loved baseball.”

  “Who are the other men?” Morgan asked.

  Lance pointed to the men in turn. “Brian Leed and Stan Adams, my dad’s best friends.”

  After a short pause, Sharp continued. “I took over the case in the morning. The first thing I did was go to the grocery store and view the surveillance tapes. Vic never entered the store that night. His car never pulled into the lot. I made the rounds of gas stations and convenience stores, flashed a picture of Vic around, and checked security videos where available. No sign of him.”

  “Normally, an unexplained adult missing person case doesn’t get a ton of manpower. But Mrs. Kruger was highly agitated. My caseload was relatively light, and I thought the disappearance warranted an investigation. Over the next few days, I visited locations Vic frequented. I called hospitals, morgues, police and sheriff stations, checked bus and train stations, the airport. I interviewed his boss, coworkers, and close friends. All the notes are in the file, but everyone agreed that Vic would never have just left his family. The more people I talked to, the more I became convinced that Vic Kruger hadn’t left town on his own. I searched the house and his office. It didn’t appear that he had taken anything with him except his wallet and car keys. I’d investigated people who walked, ran—and were taken—from their families, but in all my twenty-five years on the force, Victor was the only person to actually vanish without a trace. This isn’t the city. People usually return from a trip to the grocery store.”

  Lance studied the board, trying to remain objective. So far, none of the case details were shocking. Sharp’s initial investigation had been by the book. But still . . . when the missing person was your dad, seeing his case laid out should have disturbed him.

  But Lance felt as distant as he had been in 1994. It hadn’t felt real then either. But then, his mother had used up all the emotions. Mentally, she’d crumbled quickly, leaving Lance to pick up the pieces. His life had felt like reassembling a shattered vase when you didn’t have all the shards. No amount of glue could ever make it whole again. What else could he have done except bury his own reactions?

  “So where do we start?” Morgan asked.

  Sharp shrugged. “I updated the file and missing person database over the years, but not since I retired. Unfortunately, we don’t have access to the NCIC, but I’ll have to assume that the sheriff will utilize that system to look for like crimes.”

  The National Crime Information Center was an FBI database, only available to law enforcement agencies, not private investigators.

  “It seems to me that you covered Vic’s disappearance, Sharp.” Morgan scanned the board. “So we should focus on the new piece of information.”

  “The dead woman.” Lance got up and went into his office. He returned a minute later with his laptop. “We can start with NamUs. If she was a local and a missing person report was filed, her information should have been entered into the system.”

  The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System was a Department of Justice database accessible to law enforcement and the general public. It cross-referenced unidentified remains and outstanding missing persons across the country.

  Lance tried not to think about the odds of actually finding his father. More than forty thousand sets of remains were unidentified in the United States, scattered in a patchwork of over two thousand coroner’s and medical examiner’s offices across the country. Even with his father’s DNA on file, it was possible his body had been found years ago. NamUs didn’t exist until 2009. Vic Kruger’s remains could be sitting in a vault anywhere in the country, or they could have been buried or cremated long ago without being identified.

  Focus on the
task.

  Lance typed. “In NamUs, there are 236 females missing in the state of New York.”

  Sharp leaned on the board and crossed his arms. “They’ll be listed in order of date last seen. Start with July through September 1994. Then we’ll whittle the list down by region.”

  “Four women were reported missing at that time.” Lance scrolled. “Two were local girls. Laura Dennis, from Albany, was twenty-two years old when she disappeared. She was last seen August 1, 1994. Mary Fox went missing from Grey’s Hollow. Her description says she was sixty-four inches tall and weighed one hundred fifteen pounds.”

  “Local girl, close enough in height to Frank’s estimate for the skeleton,” Sharp said.

  Lance continued. “She was reported missing August 25, but the file notes say she was last seen a week or two before. Though she lived with her mother and stepfather, her mother wasn’t sure of the exact date she’d left. They’d had an argument, and it wasn’t unusual for Mary to stay with a friend for a few days.”

  “No one reported her missing for two weeks.” Morgan made notes on her legal pad. “That’s horrible.”

  “Who’s listed as the investigating agency?” Sharp asked.

  “Randolph County Sheriff’s Department,” Lance said.

  “King wasn’t the sheriff in 1994.” Morgan’s chair squeaked as she shifted back and crossed her legs.

  “No.” Sharp shook his head. “Bob O’Reilly was the sheriff back then. He dropped dead of a massive heart attack on the job in 2001. King was the chief deputy. He ran for office, won, and has been sheriff ever since.”

  “Let me pull up the case report,” Lance said. “I’ll print Mary’s photo.”

  The printer hummed and spit out a sheet of paper. Sharp retrieved it and fastened it to the board. Mary had brown eyes and shoulder-length brown hair.

  Sharp pointed to the picture. “Does she look familiar, Lance?”

  Lance shook his head. “No.”

  Sharp wrote Mary’s name above the picture. “Lance, why don’t you call Frank? If finding her was this easy for us, then he probably already has her name.”