by Kendel Lynn
Ransom approached my side, leaned in close. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. For all the shouting and yelling to run ’round the other side, no one had actually moved. “Zanna, honey,” I said, leaving the protective line. “I promise I’ll tell you. I promise.” I eased my arm around her shoulder and gently turned her toward the cars. “Let me do this for you, okay? Just let me do this for you. You wait here. I’ll be right back.”
“Come on, now,” Millie Poppy said, touching Lulu’s arm. “You and Bob come on with us over here. It’ll be okay.”
“If she’s out there, she would not want you or any of these people to see her like this,” I said. “Let me go instead.”
While the crowd never retreated as far as the car line on the shoulder, Sheriff Hill did move them back a solid twenty feet. Exhaustion, fear, and panic colored their faces. Anguish mixed with desperation. They wanted to know, but didn’t want to know.
Parker, Ransom, and I walked to the clearing. Once inside the delicate circle encased in yellow tape, I carefully stepped forward another hundred feet. The squat cones marking evidence peppered the ground more freely.
A young woman lay in the center of a grouping of officers and techs. I approached and knelt near her waist.
Her matted brown hair held a streak of pink. Sticks and leaves tangled sideways in her cropped cut. The visible side of her face was bruised and beaten. Smeared blood had dried across her cheeks, neck, and earlobe. An earring of tiny turquoise and gold beads was discarded about a foot from her head. It made it sadder somehow. This girl making herself pretty for someone, for herself, matching her earrings to her outfit. The last one she’d ever wear.
Her t-shirt and flowy skirt were grimy. Filthy and torn. Stained. Several tattoos marked her left calf. An elegant woman holding a sword to her side, the word “Queen” scripted below. And just beneath that, the words “always play The Fool.”
This girl looked sturdier than Daphne, or perhaps I’d simply begun to think of Daphne as fragile.
“It’s not her,” I said and waved to Parker to help me stand.
Ransom rushed to my side. He held my hand, put his arm around my waist, and lifted me from crouched to standing.
“You sure?” Parker said. “Looks like she’s been through a lot, and we don’t know where Daphne’s been for the last few days. Maybe she got a haircut?”
“I hear you,” I said. “But it’s more than her hair. It’s her face, her build. And those tattoos. No one mentioned Daphne had tattoos. and those’re pretty prominent.”
Dr. Harry Fleet, a meld of Delroy Lindo and Quincy in both appearance and demeanor, lumbered into the clearing. As Summerton County Medical Examiner, he held jurisdiction regardless of the city.
Ransom and Parker waited with me while Harry performed a cursory inspection of the dead girl. He knelt as I had, but he did more than simply look. He and his team used various instruments to take her temperature and to inspect her clothes and body.
“She’s probably been her since early morning,” Harry finally said. “Fits your time frame, in that she died recently, not prior to last Sunday before Fischer was reported missing. This girl was somewhere else before today. She wasn’t killed here. No shoes. Cuts on her feet indicate she’d been running. Maybe a lot longer than since this morning. Possibly days. She’s in bad shape.”
“How can it not be our missing person?” I asked. “I know it’s not Daphne, but how can it not be Daphne?”
“Not terribly unusual to find a body when searching in the brush,” Ransom said.
“We’ll fingerprint her,” Harry said. “Someone might be missing her, too.”
Ransom squeezed my hand and I squeezed back.
“I’m not sure if this is good news or bad,” I said.
My feet dragged against the dry leaves and pine needles as I crossed the wide clearing, then again through the thicker scrub. I could’ve been gone a minute or an hour. The crowd of friends and family and locals hadn’t moved. I wasn’t sure they’d even said a single word in my absence.
“It’s not Daphne,” I said to Zanna.
“You can’t be sure,” Zanna said. “What you know about her is a yard wide and an inch deep. It should’ve been me to look. I should go. Let me go.”
“I’ll go,” Juliette said.
“Does Daphne have any tattoos?” I asked.
“No,” Juliette said, along with Tucker, Bob, and random voices in the crowd.
“The girl, the one they found, she has several large tattoos,” I said. “Visible and prominent.”
“Maybe she just got them,” Bob said. “She’d do something like that.”
“And didn’t tell anyone,” Juliette said.
“No, they’ve been there awhile,” I said. “Years, maybe. It’s not her. I promise, it’s not her.”
Zanna cried in relief, or maybe frustration. “We’re never going to find her. I can’t do this.”
Millie Poppy held her while Bob cursed and kicked the dirt. “This ain’t right,” he said.
The rest of the crowd looked just as frustrated, but also shocked and wounded. And lost. They’d faced the edge of finding Daphne dead. Discarded on the side of the road. It wasn’t her, but that didn’t make the situation any easier.
Ransom came up behind me. With a gentle hand on my arm, he pulled me aside. “I have to go,” he whispered. “It’s my case. It just got legs.”
“Oh?” I whispered back. “Alex? This girl?”
He kissed my forehead softly. “Call me if you need me.” He climbed into his sleek silver racer and sped away.
“We keep searching,” Parker said. Her voice projected well over the crowd. “I know this is hard, but Daphne is still out there. We keep going.”
As we returned to our respective cars, I asked Juliette to stick with Millie and Sam. “You shouldn’t be searching alone. No one should.”
“I’ll take Zanna, honey,” Millie Poppy said to Sam. “I don’t want her to be alone either. We’ll finish our zone. You take Juliette and finish hers.”
“You want to come with us?” Juliette asked me.
I spotted Harry Fleet in the brush and shook my head. “I’ve got other leads to follow. Keep me posted, okay? And keep drinking your water.”
THIRTEEN
(Day #7: Friday Late Afternoon)
Most of the civilian cars left the roadside, leaving me and my Mini squeezed between a police cruiser and the medical examiner’s van. I knew it might be awhile before anyone emerged from the brush with information, so I closed the convertible top for privacy, turned on the a/c, and settled into returning calls.
Tod, Carla, and Sid had all left various texts and voicemails.
I texted Sid: Not her, still looking.
Then called Tod at the Big House.
“It wasn’t Daphne,” I said when he answered. “I’m not sure who it is, but it’s not her.”
“A different girl?”
“I know. I’m hanging around to find out more. It’s too coincidental.”
“I’m calling Edward in a few minutes,” Tod said. “I’ll update him.”
“Good idea,” I said. “They’ve probably heard about the body by now.”
“They’ve probably heard it’s not Daphne by now.”
“True,” I said. “Let me know if something comes up at the Big House. I’ll be out most of the day.”
I scrolled through my recent call list and found the rental counter in Charlotte. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Daphne Fischer. I rented one of your cars a while ago. I can’t find my receipt and I need it for my taxes.”
I’d tried this on a case last year and broke it wide open.
“Yes, ma’am, I can help with that. My name is Yolanda, and this call may be recorded for quality assurance and training purposes.”
“No problem,” I said, an
d happy to talk to a different agent other than Micah. “I rented a car several weeks ago. I turned it in late at night. You were closed. It was after hours.”
“Of course,” she said, faint typing sounded as she hummed. “I don’t see a Daphne Fischer.”
“It’s spelled with a s-c-h, like F-i-s-c-h-e-r.”
“Yep, tried it every way possible. There’s no record of any rental, customer or driver, under that name. I’m sorry, I wish I could help. Is there anything else?”
“Not today, but thank you for trying.”
“Of course,” she said, and then there was a click and she lowered her voice. “I hope you all find her.”
“Excuse me?”
“We have Caller ID, Ms. Lisbon, and your name is on the flyer you left. Micah researched you after you left here yesterday. Sorry to hear about the missing girl. We all are.”
“You’ll keep the flyer displayed?” I asked. “Let me know if anyone recognizes her?”
“You bet,” she said. “You have a nice day.”
She disconnected and I knew I had to up my game. The usual tricks weren’t working. Or maybe it was because I’d been using all the old resources.
I started the car, and with a three-point turn, I was back on Piedmont, then Glen Falls, and finally Cabana Boulevard. I didn’t need to wait to talk to Harry at the crime scene. As soon as he finished, he’d return to his office at Island Memorial Hospital. Which happened to be mere blocks from the airport.
I parked in short-term in a spot I was beginning to consider my own. Ten seconds later, I entered the airport through the automatic sliding doors. Only a handful of people, all airline and security personnel, roamed the bright room. Sunlight shone through the glass onto the row of empty Adirondack rockers and nearby potted palms. Another flight probably wasn’t due for hours.
Jeanine Gurly, airline employee and Milo confidante, stood at the ticket counter behind her terminal. She used a pen to mark pages from a stack of paperwork.
“Jeanine,” I said. “You have a minute?”
“Hey, Elliott,” she said. “I heard they found a girl out near Loggerhead Bluff.”
When midwestern nosy Nellies spoke in watercooler clichés of news traveling fast, our island citizens showed them how it’s done.
“Yes, but unfortunately, I don’t know much more than that. Other than it was not Daphne Fischer.”
“It’s a different girl?” she said. “What’s this world coming to? I’m joining the search today after my shift. Most of us are. Seems like the best way to help bring her home.”
“Actually, helping me will help, too. I think Daphne bought two sets of tickets each time she flew—”
She flipped a switch on the monitor and her fingers drummed a staccato beat against her keyboard. “Only see one set of reservations.”
“I think she bought the second set of tickets under a different name.”
She raised a single brow, and her hands hovered above the keys.
“Hear me out. Daphne wouldn’t need any type of identification once she’s inside the terminal, right? She only needs to show security when she first arrives at the airport.”
“Mmmm, maybe.”
“Here’s how I think it could work. I show my ID here at Sea Pine. The security agent checks it. It’s me, all good, and I’m waved on to the conveyor belt and body scanner. Once through this security checkpoint, all I need is my boarding pass. It’s scanned prior to boarding, and I fly to Atlanta. Now I’m in Atlanta, and I’m already inside the airport. Inside the secure zone, right?”
“Right, right, right,” she said. “I follow. You don’t need your ID to board the next flight. You only need a valid boarding pass.”
“Exactly. Which I could print at home and take with me. I don’t need to get it from any airport personnel. I think that’s what Daphne did. She didn’t want her name to show up on the manifest, probably so it wouldn’t show up on her airline account. No boarding pass or record of the flights in her name.”
“Meaning she booked the second flight under a different name. Very easy to do online. Can use prepaid credit card or gift card or someone else’s credit card.”
“Exactly. At first, I thought she bought a credit card at the grocery, but now I’m thinking she used someone else’s card. Because once in Charlotte, she needed to rent a car.”
“And for that, you definitely need ID.”
“I know she didn’t rent one under her own name. Well, I mostly know that.” I’d need to call every rental car agency in Charlotte to confirm, but it seemed more likely she’d use a different name with the rental car as well. She didn’t want her name to show up anywhere in Charlotte.
“Okay, let’s see,” Jeanine said. “I’ll look up her last three flights to get the dates.”
I quickly pulled out the list of her flights Jeanine had given me the last time I asked and showed them to her. “We have those dates. Now we need to check the passenger manifests for the flights from Atlanta to Charlotte on those specific days.”
Jeanine tapped with purpose, clickety-clacketing, periodically taking notes. She scribbled names, crossed off two. Tapped again.
“Anything?”
“I think so. Let me check one more flight.” She scratched off another name. “Does the name Tess Martin mean anything?”
“It does indeed,” I said. “Thank you so much for your help. And look, I don’t know if Daphne did anything illegal—”
Jeanine pressed a key and turned her screen. She handed me the scrap of paper with Tess’s name on it. “You have a nice day now.”
It felt good to connect that particular dot about Daphne using Tess’s identification. Either Tess lent it to her or Daphne lifted it. They resembled each other. Sort of. Not twins or even sisters. Cousins maybe. Not enough for her to risk showing Tess’s ID to a federal TSA agent, but enough to fool a disinterested car rental agent who might glance two seconds at an ID. Micah hadn’t even really looked at mine. Just tapped in the numbers and handed it back. I made a mental note to talk to Tess and see if she was missing her driver’s license and a credit card.
But first I drove the short distance from the airport to the hospital, parking in a quiet lot on the south side which faced away from the main entrance. This section of the complex looked more like a restored colonial home than a medical center. The building was white with shutters and bunches of geraniums bloomed in the beds. The interior door I wanted was unmarked and unmanned. I rang the bell and waited for an orderly to grant me access.
The security door opened with a buzz, and the emerging doctor in scrubs recognized me. She held the door and let me find my own way to Harry’s office.
Dr. Harry Fleet, terse, cranky, and the best in the business, popped a mint from a slim blue bottle. “Nicotine lozenge” was written on the side. “Nerve pills,” he said in greeting. “I just got here, Lisbon. Going to be a long while yet. Give it a day. Or better yet, three.”
“Is there anything you can tell me now? Anything at all? I said this earlier, but how can this poor girl not be Daphne Fischer? How do you find a girl in the woods while you’re looking for a girl in the woods, and it’s not the right girl?”
“We have close to two hundred missing persons cases in South Carolina. That’s only the ones who been reported. Doesn’t include all the homeless and runaways who don’t have a soul to file a report. And of the fifty thousand annual deaths in the state, sixteen hundred happen in my county. Put it together and you find a girl while looking for a different girl.”
The same doctor in scrubs who met me at the entrance stuck her head in the door. “About to start. Did the prelim. You joining us, Elli?”
I felt my face blanch at the thought of attending the autopsy, and I waited for Harry to kick me out.
He hesitated, likely enjoying my discomfort, then let me off the hook. “She was just
leaving.”
“Before I go, can I hear the prelim?” I asked.
Harry sighed and waved his hand at the doctor.
“Looks like strangulation,” she said. “Best guess is about twelve to eighteen hours ago. We sent her fingerprints to the lab. Ran a missing persons search, but no names popped. Might be too soon.”
“So no idea who she is?”
“Hispanic descent likely. Mid-to-late twenties, early thirties at most. Two tattoos. What we think is maybe from Game of Thrones—”
“I think it’s a tarot queen,” I said. “The Queen of Swords, especially with The Fool reference.”
Harry put on his white lab coat, held the door open. “You coming?”
I thanked them both and turned right in the hall while they turned left.
It may seem normal to everyone else to find one girl when looking for another, but to me, it was too coincidental to ignore. I thought it was time to talk to the Sheriff.
Sid phoned as I crossed the lot. I’d forgotten she had board meetings at the hospital all day, so I changed my path, heading away from the palm trees in the lot to the palm trees at the entrance.
“You up for a late lunch?” I asked. “I’m in the parking lot. I’ve got lots of updates to share.”
“It’s good you’re here,” Sid said. “They just brought Juliette to emergency by ambulance.”
FOURTEEN
(Day #7: Friday Late Afternoon)
My sneakers squeaked on the linoleum as I hurried through emergency. Harsh disinfectant with a pungent lemony overtone made the glare of bright industrial overhead lighting more intense. I slowed only to check the posted white board where names of patients and doctors and bay numbers were written in black marker.
“Elliott,” Tucker called. He waved from a curtained cubicle across from the nurses’ station.
I jogged over, sliding my phone into my pocket with my keys.
Juliette rested in a standard adjustable hospital bed, its top inclined forty-five degrees. Loose bandages were wrapped across her forehead, blood spots stained her pink tee.
“What happened?” I asked.
