Alan considered. “Depends on what Richmond sends me. And the rest of the files from the Baltimore detective-Faulkner. Unless there’s something there we all missed, I’m probably going to have to wait for the DNA.”
Tupman nodded. “We’ll take it a day at a time. Somebody’ll be on him as long as needs to be.”
“Thanks,” Alan said, then added, knowing he probably didn’t need to, “Unmarked cars-don’t want to spook him.”
Tupman glared at him and punched a button. “Got it,” he said dryly.
Lindsey closed her mother’s front door quietly behind her. Across the tiny apartment she could see her mother on the patio, snipping off spent blossoms from pots of chrysanthemums. It was a chilly, breezy day, and Lindsey was pleased to see she’d remembered to put on a sweater.
“Mom,” she called, “it’s me-Lindsey.”
Susan looked up, and to Lindsey’s relief, her expression changed from alarm and suspicion to a smile of recognition. “Oh-my goodness. Lindsey-how nice!” She waved her snippers at the array of pots on various tables and stands around the patio. “I was just cleaning up these mums-they’re about done for the season, I think. I’m going to plant pansies next. Did you bring me some pansies?”
“I brought you pansies last week, Mom,” Lindsey said, and hastened to add, as a look of uncertainty crossed her mother’s face, “but I’ll bring some more next time I come.”
“Yellow ones,” Susan said emphatically. “I like the yellow ones best. They brighten up the place. Well-” she pushed back her hair with the back of her hand, then pulled off her gloves and laid them and the snippers on the wrought-iron table “-shall we have something cold to drink? See what there is in the fridge. I think there might be some iced tea…”
Lindsey said, “Sounds good, Mom,” and laid the manila envelope she’d brought with her on the table beside the gloves and snippers. “What’s this?”
Already on her way to the kitchen, Lindsey glanced back and said, “Just some pictures I brought to show you.” She felt quivery inside, now that the moment was almost upon her. “Wait a minute, let me get us some tea first, okay?”
She opened the refrigerator, removed a flat of wilted pansies from the bottom shelf and put it on the counter next to the sink, then got two bottles of sweetened lemon-flavored tea and shut the door. She returned to the patio to find her mother staring blankly down at the sheet of paper in her hand. The manila envelope had fallen unnoticed to the floor.
“Mom?”
Susan put out a groping hand, and Lindsey lunged, reaching her in time to guide her into a chair. She pulled out a chair for herself and sat in it, facing her mother. The piece of paper, upon which was printed the copy of the wedding photograph of James and Karen McKinney, now rested on Susan’s knees. Almost fearfully, Susan touched first one face, then the other.
“Do you recognize them?” Lindsey asked. Her throat hurt so intensely she could barely speak.
Susan’s shaking fingertips caressed the groom’s smooth cheek, almost as if it was warm flesh she felt instead of cold paper. She nodded, and a tear fell onto the image, making a small wrinkled circle. “James,” she whispered. “Oh, James…” She looked up at Lindsey and her face was bathed in tears. “He’s dead. That man killed him-the one who says he’s my husband. He shot him. I asked him why, but he wouldn’t answer me. Why? Why would anybody want to kill James? He was such a good, sweet, gentle man…”
Lindsey slid from her chair and, kneeling, gathered her mother into her arms. She held her mother while she cried and cried. And all the time, Susan just kept asking,
On Monday afternoon, a packet of files arrived from the Richmond, Virginia, PD. Included in the file were several clear photos of the woman rescued from the Chesapeake Bay, the one that came to be called Chesapeake Jane Doe. Carl, being a bit more adept with computer stuff than Alan, scanned them into a facial recognition program along with the high school graduation portrait of Karen McKinney and a recent photo of Susan Merrill. Shortly thereafter the computer came up with a positive match: Jane Doe and Karen McKinney and Susan Merrill were one and the same.
“What do you think?” Carl asked as they stood together staring at the monitor screen. “Is this enough to pull him in?”
Alan nodded grimly. He had his cell phone in his hand and was punching in numbers. “Calling Lindsey?”
Alan glanced at him as he listened to the rings. “I’d feel better knowing where she is and what she’s doing before we do this. Don’t want to take any chances on her getting into the middle of a situation.” Carl nodded.
After a moment, Alan put the phone back in his pocket and plucked his jacket off the back of his chair. “She’s not answering. She might be out jogging-she leaves her phone home when she runs. I’m going to drive out there… see if I can locate her. We’ve got Merrill boxed in. Let’s hold off on bringing him in until we’ve got his daughter under wraps.”
Lindsey left her car parked at the curb and walked up the driveway on legs that felt as if they might give way at any moment. The garage door was open, and so was the door to the backyard patio. She went on through, calling, “Dad?”
“Lindsey? I’m out here, honey-come on back.”
He was cleaning the pool. How many times had she watched him do that? He was wearing a windbreaker with his Bermuda shorts and tennis sneakers with no socks-a typical San Diegan’s concession to winter-standing with his legs a little apart to brace himself against the pull of the strainer, methodically moving it back and forth, back and forth… He could have installed an automatic cleaning system, like most of their friends had, especially now that they were all getting older, but he always insisted he liked the exercise.
“This is a nice surprise,” he said, and as always his face had lit up at the sight of her. The smile almost instantly turned to a frown of concern as he got a better look at her face. “Honey? What’s wrong? Has something happened?” As he spoke he was drawing the long-handled skimmer out of the water, laying it on the pool deck. He came toward her, drying his hands on his shorts, reaching for her. She backed away before he could touch her. His gaze dropped to the manila envelope in her hand, then rose again to her face. “Lindsey? What have you got there?”
She turned away from him and put the envelope on the patio table. She opened it and pulled out the wedding photo of Karen and James McKinney…slid it across the glass toward her father. When she looked up at him, she found that he was staring down at the photo, not looking at her.
“Where did you get this?” His voice sounded stifled.
“Do you recognize them, Dad?” She was amazed at how controlled her voice seemed.
He didn’t reply. His face, his whole body seemed to have frozen.
Almost gently, she said, “You do, don’t you?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, it’s your mother, obviously, but I don’t-did Alan give you this? Of course he did.” He paused, and his smile was sad. “Is he even your boyfriend, Lindsey?”
She shook her head as if to clear away fog. “Maybe-I don’t know-does it matter?” Her voice hardened. “You know him, don’t you? Of course you do. How could you forget the face of the man you
He jerked as if she’d slapped him. “Lindsey? What are you talking about? Where did you get such an idea? I don’t know what you-or Alan, the police, whoever-think I’ve done.”
“No-don’t lie to me.” She was crying, suddenly. “The fact that I have that photo should tell you I know pretty much everything. The police do, too. The only thing they can’t figure out-the thing I can’t understand, no matter how hard I try, is
There was a long silence. He drew a shaking hand over his face, which seemed to have aged a decade in a matter of minutes. “I have always known this day would come.” His voice sounded oddly stilted, as if he were reading from something he’d written. He paused, then turned and started toward the house in a vague, lost sort of way. “I have something I must give you. Something I’ve been saving for you…”
“No!” Lindsey shouted at him, “Don’t walk away. I want you to tell me why. Forty years of lies, pretending to
