Reckoning for the Dead

she’d get a lead on the woman who might be her mother.

The way she figured it, she had a fifty-fifty chance of discovering that her mother had been involved with Danny Ray Millstone and given her up or had loved her the way a mother should and hadn’t been given the choice to keep her child.

But to get a look at the cold-case file—or gain the trust of the man behind the desk—would require her to do the one thing that didn’t come naturally. She had to open up to a stranger, or her business in La Pointe would be done—over, out, finito.

“All that took place after your murder, Chief, but I don’t know how your case would be connected to what happened to me.”

“To find that out, you may have to talk about things you don’t care to. You okay with that?” He furrowed his brow.

When the chief leaned forward in his chair, she knew she had his attention, making what she was about to ask him more difficult.

“Since you did DNA tests, was the woman who was killed . . . was she related to me?” Jessie cleared her throat, unable to look him in the eye. “Was she . . . my mother?”

“You don’t remember anything about your mother?” His voice softened.

“Bottom line is that I don’t know how my blood got here in La Pointe because I’ve blocked out a big chunk of my past. Either I was too young to remember stuff, or I didn’t want to know what had happened. I don’t know which, but I came here to see what you had, hoping I might learn something about my family . . . my mother, actually. That’s why I want to see what you’ve got on this case. Do you think you can help me, Chief?”

At first, the man stared at her as if she had two heads. Like the boy who cried wolf, she was about to find out if the guy believed her when she finally told him the truth. When his expression softened, he leaned back in his chair and heaved a sigh. He kept up his silent stare as if the truth would appear on her forehead.

Eventually, he broke the stalemate. “You have time to take a ride with me?”

The Perez Compound

Outside Guadalajara, Mexico

Ramon and his men had left them alone, for hours now. Estella Calderone listened to every sound coming from the corridor outside, waiting for the footsteps that would signal that her nightmare wasn’t over.

And in the stillness of the cell, she also heard the labored breathing of the man next to her. They’d given him loose-fitting clothes to wear, pants that tied at his waist and a shirt that had not been buttoned. Since they’d taken his shoes, his feet were bare. Suspended by chains, he looked more like a ghost in the darkness of their cell. That was why Estella was shocked to hear the American speak to her for the first time.

“I’m s-sorry.”

His voice had been so soft, she almost missed what he said.

“For what, senor?” Estella found it hard to breathe. Hanging by ropes made it hard for her to fill her lungs. And when she tried to relieve the pain by moving, her body ached with every exertion.

“What they’ve done to you, it wasn’t s-supposed to go d-down like this.”

Estella didn’t know what he was talking about, but she heard the sincerity in his words. The man looked at her with his face half-swollen and saw the knife wounds Ramon had cut into her arms. The sight looked as if it truly pained him.

His reaction made her more aware of what Ramon had done to her. She would never be pretty to another man. Ramon had ruined her in more ways than one.

The smell of her own blood filled her nostrils in the small cell. And whenever she moved, she opened the wounds and more warm blood oozed down her skin. Estella felt the sting of new tears and fought them off by talking to the man she shared the cell with.

“I was born under an eclipsed moon. No good can come from that, my mother used to say.” If her hands hadn’t been tied, she would have made the sign of the cross. “Besides, Ramon owns me. He can do whatever he wants. My mother sold me to him.”

It had embarrassed her to admit what she was to this stranger, but since they were both about to die, she did not see the point in hiding the truth.

“That bastard might’ve given m-money to your mother,” he mumbled, trying hard to catch his breath. “ . . . but he can’t own you.”

The American was weak. She strained to listen to him, barely hearing his words when the sound of his voice echoed off the stone walls.

“He’s got n-no right to do w-what he did to you.” He grimaced with the pain of speaking. “What’s your name?”

“Estella Calderone. And you are Garrett Wheeler, is that right?” She’d heard his name when he was being tortured, before Guerrero had come looking for her.

The American barely nodded.

“If we are to die today, then it is good we know who we are.” She felt a single tear roll down her cheek. “But in God’s eyes, no names are necessary.”

He knew the girl was scared even though she was trying to sound brave. It was one thing for him to withstand torture, but seeing what they had done to Estella had ripped him up. Any plans he had for revenge had been challenged the minute Ramon Guerrero touched that girl with his knife. It left him with a burning question that he had not yet found an answer for.

How badly did he want to kill the man who had taken everything from him?

La Pointe, Wisconsin

“So this is where it happened?”

Sitting outside in the passenger seat of Chief Cook’s patrol car, Jessie stared through the windshield at a dilapidated old clapboard house that was set back into the woods, off an unpaved road. The yard was overgrown, with vines and weeds making an effort to reclaim the property.

Massive old trees dwarfed the abandoned house, casting the place in shadows. And old crime-scene tape fluttered in the wind, a sad reminder of what had happened. A strong feeling of deja vu hit Jessie, even though a day ago, she would’ve sworn she’d never been to La Pointe.

“Yeah,” the chief said. “It’s been on the market a few times, but they haven’t had much luck in selling it. In a small town, rumors get more exaggerated as time passes. And it’s damned hard to whitewash a murder.”

“Well, that’s true enough.” Jessie got out of the squad car, keeping her eyes on the old house. “What was her name? The woman who was murdered here.”

“Angela DeSalvo. She was twenty-eight years old.” When the chief got out of his car, he had a file with him. After Jessie got caught staring at the manila folder he had under his arm, Chief Cook added, “I was a rookie at the time. Didn’t know her, but she was a pretty little thing by all accounts.”

After an awkward silence, he said, “Let’s go inside, and I’ll show you where it happened. And you can ask your questions.”

She nodded and walked in silence to the front steps. When she got closer, she stared up at the second-floor windows. One in particular caught her eye. Something about it was familiar, but it also stirred a tight knot in her belly.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” the chief said. “You okay?”

Without taking her eyes off the window, she replied, “Yeah, guess so.”

When they got inside, the chief didn’t say a word at first. He let her walk through the musty old rooms by herself, with her boots echoing in the emptiness. And every time a flash of memory hit her, she shut her eyes and clung to it as if she’d lose it forever if she let go.

Too much was familiar. As she walked through the rooms, too many recollections bombarded her for the unsettling feeling to be purely coincidental.

“I think I’ve been here . . . before,” she whispered, hardly realizing that she had spoken at all. “Where did it happen?”

“Up here,” the chief called to her from another room. When she joined him, he pointed up a set of stairs.