She couldn’t believe these assholes. When she’d first arrived in Tennessee, Chase thought that they were different than the Sheriff in Alaska, the detectives in Boston and Chicago. But they weren’t different, they were the same. All they wanted to do was protect their shitty little reputations, make sure that they got re-elected or appointed or whatever the fuck they did to keep their jobs.
But Chase didn’t give a shit about any of that. All she cared about was finding the damn missing girls.
Finding Georgina.
Jordan threw his hands in the air.
“See? She’s a fucking psycho. Missing children from 30 years ago? Terrence, come on. Stop pandering to them — we both know that has nothing to do with this case.”
“Nothing to do with this case? You just can’t—”
Stitts came between them then and for once Chase was grateful for his interference. Otherwise, she might not just be off the case, but she might be spending the night in jail for assaulting a TBI Agent.
“I hate to say it,” Terrence began. “But this is getting a little crazy. I’ve run a couple of these missing child cases in my time and I know that once emotions get involved, police work goes out the window. Every second that we spend fighting with each other is another second closer to finding these girls in a ditch somewhere.”
“You think they’re dead? You think they’re dead?”
Chase swatted Stitts’s hand away and stepped up to Terrence.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to come off as callous. But the fact is, Jordan’s right. This is too close for you and the conflict of interest is too great. I really—”
Chase was veritably fuming now. She meant what she’d said to Stitts. There was no way she was leaving this case, not unless Terrence pulled his gun and put a bullet in her head.
She was about to say as much when Stitts surprised her by stepping forward.
“Terrence, let me remind you that Chase isn’t the only one with a conflict of interest in this case.”
His eyes darted to Jordan as he spoke, and the man’s face immediately flushed.
“This fucking jackass doesn’t know what he’s talking about, I—”
Well, this was unexpected, Chase thought, raising an eyebrow.
“Rose Thompson,” was all her partner had to say.
Terrence and Stitts were locked in a stare-down, during which no one in the room spoke.
Eventually, Terrence was one to look away. But Stitts wasn’t done yet.
“Yeah, I figured you’d know about Rose Thompson. The optics… the optics aren’t good, Terrence. The mother of one of the missing girls having an affair with the second in command at the TBI? No, I don’t think that looks good at all.”
“Affair? Affair? Rose is—”
Terrence held up a hand, silencing Jordan.
“There is no need for threats. The truth is, we all have a lot invested in this.” The man rubbed his temples.
“If we keep it together, we can solve this thing,” Stitts said, trying to reconcile the group.
Terrence nodded, Jordan scowled, and Chase felt her brain clench.
If push came to shove, she’d find her sister on her own. That wasn’t to say that she didn’t want help, however.
“Alright, alright. We’ll give this another shot,” Terrence’s eyes leveled on Chase as he spoke, and now it was her face that blossomed with color.
I kissed him? I fucking kissed the Director of the TBI? What the fuck is wrong with you, Chase?
She shook her head.
“I promise I’ll behave, daddy. Now let’s go find this fucking sick bastard.”
Jordan grumbled something incomprehensible, but Chase let it slide. She wasn’t on thin ice, she was walking on water now.
It was only a matter of time before Chase bobbed below the surface, gasping for air.
They were about to exit the room when there was a knock on the glass door. Terrence turned. He obviously recognized the young kid with short blond hair and wispy goatee as he quickly gestured for him to enter.
“Sorry to interrupt, but I’ve got something I think you guys are going to want to see.”
Terrence raised an eyebrow.
“What is it?”
“It’s the videotape from the grocery store — the one with the little girl and the women with the white dresses.”
Chapter 34
“You see, that’s the girl — watch as she comes into the frame,” the tech instructed.
Stitts drew his eyes away from Chase and looked at the computer monitor. He was still thinking back to the moment before he’d intervened, the moment when he saw something flash over Terrence’s eyes as he looked at Chase.
He shook his head.
You’re paranoid, he thought. Just letting what Dr. Matteo said get to your head.
One thing was for certain; no matter how this panned out, he was going to uphold his promise to get Chase back to Dr. Matteo.
He’d seen it time and time again on both sides of the law: people who spent their whole lives desperately seeking something, be it salvation, revenge, the ultimate high, justice. When you devote so much time and effort to a singular cause, it becomes impossible to achieve; the goalposts just keep on shifting. You either convince yourself that you never attained your goal, or you simply extend it until it truly is unreachable.
In the end, it left you unsatisfied and unsatiated. In the end, it left you lonely or dead.
And Stitts wasn’t about to let that happen to Chase.
“You can clearly see that she comes into the store with this lady here, the one with the black hair,” the tech continued, jogging the tape forward several seconds.
Stitts blinked twice and tried to regain his focus. On-screen, he saw a cute little girl who was probably five or six years old break away from her “mother”.
“Do you have a shot of her face?” Chase demanded. “Is it one of the missing girls? Is it Stacy, Becky, Tracy, or Stephanie?”
The tech looked at her with a sour expression. It was clear that he took his work seriously, and as a result, anyone who didn’t was a nuisance who needed to be taught a lesson.
“Hold your horses,” he said, turning back to the screen. “Now you can see that she runs over to Rita, Rita Arnold, and their interaction is pretty much the way she described it.”
Stitts nodded in agreement and he saw Terrence doing the same.
“Here’s where it gets a little funky,” the tech said. “Now I tried to interlace the images, piece together video from the other CCTV cameras in the store — it wasn’t easy, given the different resolutions of each, let alone the differing frame rates, but I managed to do it.”
The tech loaded another video, which lacked the quality of the first. It didn’t run as smoothly, either.
Still, it was clear enough for Stitts to get the gist of what was going on.
After breaking away from Rita, the little girl ran toward someone else who was mostly off screen. Only the woman’s lower half, covered in a long white dress as Rita had described, appeared in the shot. Then the girl hugged her leg, forcing her almost completely out of the frame. Stitts opened his mouth to say something, but the tech continued before he could speak.
“And now… here,” he said, pausing the image. The little girl turned back at the last second, giving the camera a clear view of her face.
“It’s not her,” Stitts heard Chase whisper. He cast a glance to the other people in the room, but they didn’t appear to have heard her.
“Anybody have the pictures of the missing girls?” Terrence asked.
“One step ahead of you,” the tech said, bringing up the most recent photos of each of the missing girls on the monitor next to the image from the CCTV camera.
Everyone in the room leaned in close, their eyes darting from image to image.
“It’s not her,” Chase said more loudly this time, pulling away.
Her voice had changed. When Chase had first uttered those words, it wa
s clear that she was thinking about her sister. Now, she was considering the four most recent missing girls.
“No, it’s definitely not any of them,” Jordan reiterated.
Terrence tapped the tech on the shoulder.
“Thanks, Danny,” he said, before turning to Stitts. “Is this a red herring, then? A coincidence? A little girl confused about having two moms?”
Still shrugged.
“I really don’t know,” he replied honestly.
“It’s not a coincidence,” Chase said with confidence. “When we spoke to Mr. Peterson, he told us that the woman who served them the snow cones— him and Stacy — was wearing a white dress that reached the floor.”
“So, what? It’s only a fucking dress. Every decent woman wears a white dress at least once in their lives,” Jordan interjected.
“And every good man knows when it’s best just to shut his fucking mouth,” Chase shot back.
Terrence stepped between them and focused on the monitor.
“Simmer down. I think we can all agree that this isn’t one of the missing girls. Danny, you think you can rewind the tape a little?”
“To where?”
“To when the little girl first comes into the grocery store.”
All eyes were on the screen again as the tech did as he was asked.
The little girl bounded into the store ahead of the woman in the white dress. But before she ran to Rita, the woman raised her head for a split second.
“There! Pause it,” Terrence instructed. “So, we can’t get a photo of the little girl’s mother, but we have one of this lady… the one who isn’t her mother.”
Silence fell over the stuffy tech room for a moment, only to be broken by Chase’s gasp.
“Oh my God,” she said in a nearly audible whisper. “I know who that is. I know who that is!”
Chapter 35
Chase raced to the back of the room where she scooped up several folders and hurried back.
“I’ve seen her before, I know I’ve seen you before,” she muttered as she searched through the images. Only the one that she was looking for wasn’t there.
Chase turned to Stitts.
“Where are the photos that I brought with me?”
Her partner shrugged.
“I thought you had them,” he replied. Chase scowled and turned back to the desk. They weren’t there.
“Hold on, hold on,” she said. “Don’t move — I’ll be right back.”
With that, Chase sprinted back to the conference room they’d been in moments before. She passed Detective Mayberry as she went, but while the man gave her a curious look, she paid him no heed.
Her mind was racing almost as fast as her limbs, trying to make sense of what she thought she saw on the screen.
I know I’ve seen her before… I’m sure of it.
Inside the conference room, she found her folders where she’d left them. Without stopping, she grabbed them all and ran back to the tech room, once again blowing by Detective Mayberry who waddled like a drunken penguin.
All eyes were on Chase again and it was clear by their expression that they had been talking about her when she was gone, but she didn’t give a shit.
All she gave a shit about was finding her sister, and she was convinced the image on screen had brought her just a little bit closer to that reality.
Without saying a word, Chase placed the new folders over the old ones and tore through them. When she found the specific photo, a small smile crept onto her face — the first smile she’d had in days.
“Can you blow up the image of the woman?” she asked. The tech nodded and obliged.
Chase took the small photograph and held it up to the screen.
“That is Kim Bernard,” she said as her eyes flicked between photos. “Went missing in 1985 when she was five years old.”
Chase expected a gasp, a sigh, anything. To her dismay, nobody seemed to have much of a reaction at all.
“How can you be sure?” Terrence asked, leaning in close.
“What? How can I be sure? It’s her. There’s no question about it.”
Jordan gently nudged Terrence out of the way and looked for himself.
“How the fuck can you tell? In one she’s five, the other she’s 35. I mean, there are similarities, I’ll give you that much, but as for being certain? I don’t buy it.”
Once again Chase felt her anger rising. She stared at the images then, looking at the spacing between the eyes, the distance between the tip of the nose and the heart-shaped mouth.
It was the same woman. It was the same woman.
“No, it’s her.”
Chase looked to Stitts for support but was disappointed by the conflict on his handsome face.
It was clear that he wanted to support her, but he wasn’t fully on board.
Not quite.
“I’m—I’m not sure,” he said at last.
Chase grabbed his arm and guided him closer to the screen.
“Look closely. Look at the eyes, the nose, the lips. It’s for sure her.”
Stitts did as he was instructed, but when he pulled away there was still no lightbulb flashing over his head.
“Chase, it’s really hard to tell. I mean, it’s not not her.”
Chase backed away from the computer.
“You planned this, didn’t you? When I was gone — in those thirty seconds you fucking planned a coup to get me off the case.”
“Chase, come on,” Stitts said.
She hated the patronizing look in his eyes, the yes ma’am, I’ll look after you, bullshit shit.
“No, fuck you, Stitts.” She nearly rammed her finger through the computer monitor she was pointing so aggressively. “It’s the same person, why can’t you see that?”
“Sometimes people see what they want to see,” Jordan offered.
Chase almost blew her lid.
“Are you serious? Are you fucking—”
“Chase, think about it,” Stitts interjected. “Does this make any sense to you? This woman, this Kimberly Bernard, goes missing 30 years ago, only to reappear with some girl who just happens to share your missing sister’s name?”
Chase’s eyes narrowed.
“You said it, not me. But now that you have, what do you think? You really think that this is all just a coincidence? Stacy Peterson goes missing less than a week after visiting the very same fair that I was at when Georgina was taken? That’s a coincidence? Really?”
Stitts appeared anxious as he looked around.
“You heard what Terrence said; there are dozens of these fairs. The fact is that with so many young people running around… sometimes shit just happens. It’s horrible, sure, but—”
That was it; Chase lost it.
“Shit just happens? Listen to what you’re saying, Stitts. You’re saying that my sister went missing because ‘shit happens’. Well, fuck you,” Chase said as she backed toward the door. She hadn’t wanted to go on her own, but it appeared as if that was the only way to get things done. “Whoever took those girls was at those fairs, back then and now. It’s the same guy and if you can’t see that, then I’m better off on my own.”
With that, she spun around and started to the door.
Only she didn’t get very far. Something hard struck her in the side of the head, and she collapsed to the ground in a heap.
Chapter 36
The girl’s hands were raw and blistered, her fingernails so caked with dirt that they were pushed painfully back from her skin. And yet she worked furiously, dragging the silver plate through the ground, expanding the small hole beneath the bars a fraction of an inch at a time. It had seemed impossible at first, but as she worked feverishly, the space grew from several inches to nearly a foot and a half.
But that’s when she heard it: a man’s voice, the same man who had told her to get inside the van, the same one who’d said that he had air conditioning and that is was hot outside.
Soooo hot outside.
The
man was talking to someone, another girl, she thought, and this spurred her onward.
There was no way of knowing how long she’d been digging. An hour. Two. Three.
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