Yesterday's Gone (Two Daughters Book 1)

by Janice Kay Johnson

  Yesterday, people had been at work. He figured by the time he got there now, everyone would be reaching home. A kid might have said something to a parent about the guy she saw knocking on the Garcias’ door, then going around back. You never knew.

  With a last look at the bulletin board, he thought, Too much to do, not enough time to do it.

  And then, Damn, I’ve got to call Eve.

  * * *

  BAILEY SMITH PAUSED by one of her tables. “How’s your meal? Can I get you anything else?”

  The guy, hot in an I-know-I-am way, was so engrossed in something on his smartphone, he didn’t even look up. The girl did, even though her phone sat next to her plate, too.

  Canosa was a high-end Italian restaurant only a few blocks from the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. This couple’s dinner along with their drinks and the bottle of wine would run them a couple hundred dollars. What Bailey couldn’t figure out was why they hadn’t eaten at home or hit the drive-through at McDonald’s if they didn’t intend to so much as look at each other or have a conversation over the meal.

  But, hey. As long as they tipped generously, why should she care?

  “It was awesome,” the girl said in a bored tone. “Actually, we’re probably ready for our check.”

  Bailey smiled. “I’ll get it for you.”

  She paused at one other table, then went to the computer station tucked into an alcove by the kitchen and ran off the bill for table six. She glanced over it for accuracy, then smilingly placed it on the table midway between the two. The guy reached for it.

  The girl said, “You know, I keep thinking you look familiar.”

  “Well, if you’ve eaten here before...”

  “No, friends told us it was good. You don’t work at Warner Brothers, do you?”

  Um, no, she wanted to say. I work at Canosa. But really that wasn’t fair. Living expenses were high in Southern California. She knew people who worked a part-time job or even two on top of a full-time one just to pay the rent.

  “Afraid not,” she said cheerfully. If the girl had looked even faintly familiar to her, she might have mentioned being a student at the University of Southern California, but, honestly, she didn’t care if they might have crossed paths before.

  The guy handed her an American Express card. She took it with another smile.

  When she returned to the table, it was to find them both staring at her.

  “I figured it out,” said the girl, a stylish brunette whose handbag was either a genuine Fendi or an amazing knockoff. She sounded excited. “I saw your picture on, I don’t remember, Facebook or Tumblr or someplace like that.”

  “Couldn’t have been me,” Bailey assured her. “I’m not a celebrity in disguise here.”

  “No, it was amazing! Everybody has been passing it around. It was about this little girl who disappeared and an artist drew what she’d look like now. And...wow. I’d swear it’s you.”

  The darkness inside Bailey rose, dimming her vision for a minute. But she didn’t let her expression change. “Really? That’s weird. Pretty sure I’ve never disappeared.”

  “Yes, but you ought to look at it. It’s totally uncanny.”

  She managed a laugh. “Okay. What’s my name?”

  The young woman frowned. “Hope something.” And then her face brightened. “Lawson. Hope Lawson.”

  Oh God, oh God. Could any of this be true?

  “I’ll look,” Bailey promised. “Gotta see my doppelgänger.”

  They were still looking over their shoulders at her on their way out. She was so engaged in holding herself together, she didn’t even check to see what kind of tip they’d left. She had another hour before she could leave.

  Part of the act of maintaining was convincing herself she wasn’t going to bother to look at the totally uncanny picture that supposedly looked like her. It probably really didn’t. And if it did? Why would she care? Nothing would ever make her Hope Lawson, even if by some bizarre chance that had been her name. Hope. She almost snorted. How sweet.

  Long after she collected her tips for the shift, as well as her paycheck, and went out to her car, dying to take off her very high heels even if it mean driving home with bare feet, she stayed in the mode that could be summed up as No Way. There’d been a time she would have given anything to be found, to have it turn out she had a perfect family somewhere who would welcome her back with cries of joy and who’d kept her bedroom exactly the way it was when she disappeared. Then, she’d imagined it as very pink, with a canopy bed. Every so often, she made alterations in what that perfect little girl’s bedroom would look like, but the canopy bed always stayed.

  By the time she was thirteen or fourteen, though, she realized she didn’t belong in that bedroom, and the family wouldn’t want the girl she was now back anyway. Not long after that, she quit believing they even existed.

  Now—was she really supposed to open herself to the possibility they actually did? That they were still looking for her? The idea would be ludicrous, except she’d occasionally, just out of curiosity, scanned websites focused on missing persons and seen the kind of age-progressed pictures the girl tonight had talked about. She’d read a little about how it was done, combining knowledge of how a face normally changed with age—what thickened or sagged or whatever—along with details of how that child’s parents’ faces had changed as they grew up, to achieve an approximation that was sometimes astonishingly accurate.

  As she turned onto West Sunset Boulevard, she thought, it might be interesting to take a look. And then she could dismiss the whole silly idea, instead of leaving it to fester. Which it would. She knew herself that well.

  Besides, if anyone else mentioned it, she could say, Saw it—definitely not me.

  She hated that her apartment house didn’t have gated parking, but that was one of those things you had to pay for. And she did, at least, have an assigned spot underneath the aging, three-story apartment house, so she didn’t have to hike a block or more when she got in late. Even so, she had to put her heels back on, because she knew all too well what she might step in—yuck. She took her usual careful look around when she got out and locked her car. Her handbag was heavy enough to qualify as a weapon, and she held it at the ready as she hustled for the door that let in to the shabby lobby and single, slow-moving elevator.

  Safely inside, she ignored the guy who was getting mail from his box. He had a key to it, so he must actually live here, too. He didn’t make any effort to get in the elevator with her, which she appreciated.

  There were only four apartments on each floor. She let herself into hers, turned both locks and put the chain on, then groaned and kicked off her shoes again. It sucked to have a job that required torturing herself like this, but sexy paid when it came to tips.

  Her laptop sat open on her desk where she’d left it. She didn’t let herself so much as glance at it, instead shedding clothes on her way to the bathroom, where she changed into the knit pj shorts and thin tank top she slept in at this time of year. Then she used cold cream to remove her makeup, brushed her teeth and stared at herself in the mirror. The light in here was merciless. She leaned in closer, the counter edge digging into her hip bones, and made a variety of faces at herself. It wasn’t as if she was so distinctive looking.

  But she knew that was a lie. She kind of was. Her cheekbones were prominent, almost like wings, her chin pointed, her forehead high enough she had her hair cut with feathered bangs to partly conceal it. Without makeup, her face was ridiculously colorless, given that her eyebrows weren’t much darker than her ash-blond hair, and her eyes were a sort of slate blue. She looked young like this, more like the girl she didn’t want to remember being. The one who had been invisible when she desperately wished someone would see her.

  “Fine,” she said aloud. “Just do it. Then you’ll know.”

  While her laptop booted, she turned on the air-conditioning unit even though she tried not to use it any more than she could, but today had been hot.
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  Then she perched on her cheap rolling desk chair, went online and, in the search field, typed Hope Lawson.

  * * *

  A MONTH LATER, Seth admitted, if only to himself, that he’d done everything he could think of to do to bring resolution to the Lawsons.

  He had interviewed witnesses afresh, at least those who could still be found. He’d talked to the first responding officer and the investigator who’d pursued the case thereafter. He had tracked down neighbors of the Lawsons’, even those who had since moved. Hope’s teacher that year. He’d studied investigations and arrests made anywhere around the time of Hope’s disappearance, looking for parallels no one else had noticed. He’d read every scrap of paper in the box he recovered from the storage room in the basement.

  Meantime, he’d made sure her DNA and a copy of her dental X-ray were entered in every available database, along with the two photos. He’d worked social media sites to the best of his ability.

  The result? Something like a thousand emails, not one of which pinged. His best guess was that Hope had been raped and killed within hours of her abduction, and her bones were buried somewhere in the wooded, mountainous area bordering Puget Sound in northwest Washington state. Maybe those bones would be found someday, but given the vast stretches of National Forest and National Park as well as floodplain that would never be farmed, it was entirely possible no one would ever stumble on them.

  Sitting at his desk, he grimaced. He owed the Lawsons a phone call. If he didn’t get on it, Karen Lawson would pop up, sure as hell, apologizing but still expecting an explanation of what he’d done this week to find her missing daughter.

  And, if he was honest, he’d have to say, Nothing. I’ve done everything I can. I’m sorry.

  If he was blunt, would she accept his failure and go away?

  “Nope,” Kemper said behind him. “Not happening.”

  “What?” He swiveled in his chair.

  “You were talking to yourself. You asked—I answered.”

  He swore. Good to know he’d taken to speaking his every thought aloud. Was he talking in his sleep, too? Wouldn’t be a surprise. He’d been having a lot of nightmares lately, too many populated by Hope. In the latest unnerving incarnation, she was a ghost. Sometimes a little girl, sometimes a woman, always translucent. Either way, he couldn’t touch her, couldn’t escape her no matter what he did.

  The idea had apparently sparked his unconscious imagination—hey, pun! and not in a good way—because Cassie Sparks’s ghost had joined Hope last night. She’d seemed kind of protective of little Hope.

  Hard to imagine, considering her dark path, which had turned out to be even uglier than they had known when they found her body along with her parents’. He and Ben had discovered what precipitated that hideous final scene, and part of him wished they hadn’t.

  Shifting his thoughts back to Mrs. Lawson, he said gloomily, “She brought me cookies last week.”

  Ben’s mouth quirked. “And they were good. Peanut butter cookies are my favorite.”

  “She brings pictures, too.” He yanked open his center desk drawer and brandished the small pile. The one on top, the most recent, was a baby picture. First smile, someone had written on the back.

  Radiant, open, delighted, it was unbearable to look at when he knew that baby’s fate. He’d shoved it into the drawer the minute Mrs. Lawson walked away. Angry at her unsubtle emotional manipulation, he wanted to throw them in the trash. Because he saw her pain, week in and week out, he didn’t.

  His phone rang and he turned back around, reaching for it.

  “Someone here to see you,” the desk sergeant said, his tone odd. “Her name is, uh, Bailey Smith.”

  “Never heard of her. She say what she want?”

  “To talk about Hope Lawson.”

  Seth sighed. She looks EXACTLY like this girl I know, except...well, for her nose, chin, cheeks and eyes.

  “Conference room empty?” he asked.

  “Yes, Detective.”

  “I’ll be right down.”

  Ben had gone back to whatever he was doing, and no one else paid any attention as Seth walked out and took the stairs.

  He emerged through the heavy, bulletproof door that led to the desk sergeant’s domain behind the counter, beyond which was the waiting room. As usual, half a dozen people slumped in seats, some sullen, some anxious. One woman stood, her back to him—and a very nice back it was. Interested, he enjoyed taking a good look. She was midheight, slender, with a tight, perfect ass and fine legs. Chinos cut off just below her knees bared smooth calves. One foot tapped, either from nerves or impatience. Nice foot, too, he thought idly; since she wore rubber flip-flops, he could see toenails painted grass green with some tiny decoration he couldn’t make out centered on each nail.

  He lifted his gaze to her hair, bundled up and clipped on the back of her head. It was so pale a blond, at first sight he thought dyed, except it had some natural-looking striations of color in it.

  Something inside him went still.

  “Detective,” the desk sergeant said in an urgent undertone.

  As if hearing his low voice, the woman turned to face the two men, pointed chin held defiantly.

  Stunned, Seth couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.

  Couldn’t breathe.

  She was alive. And...damn. How could the artist possibly have got it so right?

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE MAN STARING at her in open shock was not quite what Bailey had expected, although she didn’t know why that was. She’d looked him up online and even found a newspaper photo of him taken as he left the scene of a recent, really horrible crime.

  The coloring was the same—dark hair, worn a little longer than she thought cops usually did. Brown eyes. Broad-shouldered, solid build. She had been reassured by a hint of bleakness the photographer had captured on that hard face. He must be human, she had thought, although, really, she knew it wasn’t as if he mattered at all. If it turned out she really was this Hope person, he’d introduce her to her supposed parents, hold a press conference and bask in his victory as he sailed off to meet new challenges, while she was left to grapple with what, if anything, this meant.

  Now, seeing the expression on his face, she felt like a fish in a very small glass bowl. She suddenly, desperately wanted not to be here. It was too much. He cared too much, she thought in panic. Why?

  She slid one foot back, then the other. The door wasn’t that far. If she took off, what were they going to do? Arrest her?

  Seemingly galvanized into motion, he pushed through the waist-high, swinging door. “Ms. Lars— Smith,” he corrected himself. “Please. You’ve come this far. I’d really like to talk to you.”

  Only a few feet away from her now, he was even more intimidating. Something in him seemed to reach out and grab her. Her feet refused to keep edging backward. It was as if they were stuck in some gluey substance.

  “I shouldn’t have come,” she blurted.

  He shook his head. “You need answers, don’t you?” he told her more than asked, in a deep, soothing voice.

  Maybe. Yes. She did want answers, just not the complications that would come with them. She didn’t relate well to people on any but a superficial level. Whatever it was she saw boiling inside him scared her.

  She did some deep breathing, not taking her gaze from him, feeling him as a threat on some level she didn’t understand. Stupid.

  “Yes. All right. I’ll talk to you. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Good.” He produced a smile gentler than she would have imagined him capable of. “There’s a small conference room back here. We can talk there.” He stepped back and gestured toward the swinging door that led behind the long counter.

  She studied it warily, then the police officer behind the counter who had also been watching her. Finally she pretended a confidence she didn’t feel and walked forward.

  Although Detective Chandler followed, he kept a certain distance between them she appreciated
. She was afraid she’d given away her irrational panic, and that scared her. If she had one skill in life, it was an ability to hide all the craziness she carried inside.

  She hesitated until he waved her toward a hallway, and then she stepped back while he opened the first door, glass-paned to allow passersby to look in.

  “Please, have a seat,” he said.

  She took the first chair, the closest to the door. It also offered the advantage that nobody going by could see her face.

  He circled the table and sat across from her, then did nothing but look at her for long enough to have her fidgeting. Finally, he gave his head a faint, incredulous shake.

  “I assume you’re here because you saw the picture,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Just out of curiosity, where did you come across it? Were you searching for information about your background?”

  “No,” Bailey said flatly. “A total stranger thought she knew me, then remembered a story she’d seen online about this little girl who was abducted. She said someone had come up with a picture of what that little girl would look like now, and I was right on.”

  He winced.

  She raised her eyebrows. “What?”

  “You have no idea how many times I’ve read or heard that these past several months. Except usually they say we got the nose or the chin or the eyes wrong.” The shock in his eyes was back. “We didn’t.”

  Much as she’d like to, she couldn’t deny that.

  “So, you went online to see if this total stranger was right,” he prompted.

  “I did.”

  “And made the decision to come to Stimson.”

  “Actually,” she said coolly, “that was a month ago. In fact, I made the decision to pretend I’d never seen it. It’s been a very long time since I’ve had any interest in finding out where I came from.”

  Instead of appearing shocked or disapproving, he studied her with interest. “You didn’t believe anyone out there cared.”