“Any idea on how long this has been here?” Kendra asked.
“I’d say a couple decades at least,” Omari said.
An older trooper joined them. He might be older, but Kendra could see that the younger Lieutenant Omari outranked Sergeant Newkirk.
“Yeah, this is an ‘80s baby, for sure,” Newkirk remarked.
Kendra winced at the description.
“That’s going way back to your era,” Omari said, and it felt like a little insult to Newkirk. A little ribbing to put him in place.
Newkirk hooked his thumbs around his belt as the three of them continued to try to categorize what they were looking at.
“What’s around her neck?" Omari asked, and Kendra followed his gaze.
Pink fabric circled the neck of the corpse.
Kendra looked closer and realized what it was.
“Those are her tights. Her tights are wrapped around her neck.”
“Well, I’ll be. Looks like another one. Humph. It’s been a while.”
Kendra and Omari both looked at Newkirk. He paused a beat, knowing he had their full attention.
“Probably a hooker or runaway. Rash of them back in the ‘80s. Nobody Girls,” Newkirk said.
“What?”
“The Nobody Girls—no one gives a damn where they came from, and nobody notices when they are missing.” Newkirk scratched his ear.
Omari made an exasperated sound, the kind you make when the older generation says something inappropriate at the family holiday dinner, then said, “I’m going to check on BCI, get an ETA.”
They both left Kendra alone. She kneeled down to get a closer look.
The Nobody Girls, that was what he’d said. Had no one in her life cared? Was she a runaway? Or did a boyfriend lash out?
“Who are you?” Kendra said quietly.
She didn’t know the answer. But she would.
Even if no one cared before, when this woman was alive, Kendra gave a damn now.
She wasn’t nobody.
The phrase rang in her ears.
The Nobody Girls.
Chapter 4
Kendra sat in her office at WPLE, Port Lawrence Public Radio and Television. Her scalp was burned, no question. She rubbed it.
It was late. She’d stayed at the scene most of the afternoon. And as suspected, the local media had soon shown up.
There were live reports and breathless breaking news cut-ins. They’d have to report, explain, and then quickly move on. Kendra knew what it was like, always on to the next story. It was what had frustrated her about her days in television news. She knew she tended to get obsessive and wanted to know everything she could about a subject that grabbed her. This wasn’t great when you were doing three different stories a day, but her propensity to go down rabbit holes perfectly matched this job as a cold case podcaster.
Kendra didn’t have to move on from the body she’d seen. This was good since she couldn’t. The idea that no one cared about this woman in life had taken hold of Kendra.
Kendra was lucky. She’d been a victim of trauma, of violence. But she was lucky people had cared. They cared too much sometimes. Her disappearance as a child and subsequent escape was big news. And it stayed news, thanks to the privilege she’d been born into. Her dad was the influential union boss in Port Lawrence, her mom, a popular politician. There wasn’t a person in town who didn’t know what had happened to Kendra Dillon when she was a little girl walking home from school.
And she was a happy ending in their minds, a positive outcome they could feel relieved about. They could decide that things weren’t all bad because look what happened to Kendra Dillon? She’s alive!
But that wasn’t the case for the woman they’d found today. Kendra didn’t have a date or a name. Who was she? Were people looking for her? Were there flyers and pleas to the local news when she didn’t come home? Where was her home?
Kendra had a million questions and no answers.
Only that phrase, nobody girls.
“Hey, looks like you stumbled into the news today.”
Kendra jumped. Art Cabrera, station manager of WPLE and her boss, had startled her out of her deep thoughts. Art looked ready to leave for the night. He had his briefcase in one hand and car key fob in the other.
“I did, yeah, all the stations were there,” Kendra replied.
“Thanks for calling it in for Judith. She was happy as hell to get the scoop,” Art said. Judith French ran WPLE’s daily news radio department. While Kendra spent weeks chasing cold cases for The Cold Trail podcast, Judith and a team of interns churned and burned the daily news for WPLE.
“Of course, I’d hear about it for the rest of my life if I didn’t.”
Anytime Kendra’s cold case travels crossed the path of breaking news, she always clued Judith in. Kendra had been in the daily news grind; she knew what it took. She respected the heck out what Judith did on a shoestring budget with a loose collection of college kids. She’d called Judith from the High Timbers construction site, now a crime scene, and given her the report.
“You still working on that find?” Art asked.
“Yeah, I guess. It is sticking with me.”
“Do we think it’s the next season?”
“We don’t know yet, too early to tell.”
“I have every confidence you’ll figure it out. But you’ll let me know ASAP, since—”
“I know, I know, underwriting, promotion, and all that.”
Art didn’t let up. It was his job to keep the lights on. Which was no small task in commercial broadcasting, much less in public broadcasting.
“You know, you’re looking tired. Why don’t you get out of here, take the day off? Shoop has the right idea,” Art said.
“You just said ASAP.”
“I’m going to tell you a little secret. Thanks to your blockbuster podcast, we’re doing just fine.
