So far, at this site, she’d found only the deceased male in the barn.
A few of the other scene investigators had quietly indicated they were ready to sign off. But Larco was confident that if more human remains were here, Sheba would locate them.
The dog was able to detect human scent at any stage of decomposition, even if the remains were buried several feet under the surface. The scent radiated and weather conditions, like wind, humidity and temperature affected it. Sheba was trained to alert Larco whenever she detected any type of human decomposition by sitting down at the site. She was also trained not to dig up a site, so as not to disturb the evidence.
But Larco knew how her eager-to-please personality got the best of her sometimes. He watched her in the distance, snout to the ground, poking and probing, tail wagging, getting herself all worked up.
She ended searching abruptly, immediately sat and barked.
Had she found something?
Larco didn’t think so for, at times, sitting also meant a false alert—Sheba’s way of saying she was frustrated.
Pissed off, might be the truth.
She barked again, insistent this time.
“All right, I’m coming, I’m coming.”
Larco was about twenty-five yards out when Sheba ceased waiting and began pawing at the earth under some bramble.
“Hey there!”
Larco chided her because she knew not to do that.
What’s got her so excited?
At first he thought she was pulling branches and sticks in order to get at whatever had her excited. Then she came at him, as if to prove that what was clamped in her jaws was not brush.
It was a leg bone with a decomposing human foot attached to it.
“Damn!”
Larco reached for his radio.
CHAPTER 21
Banff, Alberta
Driving west through Banff National Park amid the grandeur of the towering snow-crowned Rockies filled Kate with an overwhelming ache.
She missed her daughter.
She pulled over at a rest stop and called home.
Service in the mountains was spotty, but the line rang through to Nancy’s voice mail. Kate left a message for Grace, then sought consolation in her daughter’s picture on her screen.
Taking in the majestic landscape as she got back on the road, Kate realized that she’d been climbing mountains all her life in search of the truth. How fitting her search would lead her back to the same highway she’d traveled twenty years ago when everything changed, leaving her the lone survivor of her family, haunted by not knowing what had really happened to her sister.
The new information she’d unearthed these past few days was so startling she’d started doubting it herself. Yet a voice, an unyielding emotional force deep inside, impelled her to hold on to the faint hope that Vanessa had actually been alive all these years.
Don’t let go of it. You can’t let go.
She passed Lake Louise, then entered British Columbia. The thick sweeping forests and jade rivers pulled her back through her life and the memories rushed by her.
Kate’s mother was a supermarket cashier and Kate’s father worked in a factory that made military truck parts. She remembered how her mother smelled like roses, how she felt safe in her father’s big strong hands whenever he lifted her up and said, How’s my Katie? She remembered how Vanessa’s eyes twinkled when she laughed and how happy they were in their little house near Washington, DC.
Then came the night when Kate and Vanessa were home together with their babysitter, Mrs. Kawolski, and police came to the door. Kate’s parents had been at a wedding in Boston. Fear had clouded Mrs. Kawolski’s face as the officers filled the kitchen, their utility belts making leathery squeaks as they cleared their throats, the policewoman giving Kate and Vanessa little stuffed bears to hold. “There was a terrible fire at the hotel. I’m so very sorry, your mommy and daddy won’t be coming home. They’re with the angels now.”
Kate was seven and Vanessa was four.
In the month before her death, Kate’s mother had given her and Vanessa each a tiny guardian angel necklace with their names engraved. Vanessa wanted to trade them so she wore the one with her big sister’s name on it and Kate had the angel bearing Vanessa’s name.
They cherished those necklaces.
After their parents died, Kate and Vanessa pinballed through a succession of homes belonging to increasingly distant relatives. Ultimately, they lived with strangers. All Kate remembered from that time was how they were forever moving, city to city, state to state, but lucky to stay together. They were with new foster parents from Chicago when the crash happened.
Not many miles from here.
Kate glanced at her GPS, then at the map folded on the seat, and adjusted her grip on the wheel as the images loomed…the car sinking…everything moving in slow motion… They never found Vanessa’s body…
No.
She couldn’t think about it now.
After the accident, Kate lived in a never-ending chain of foster homes. Some were good, some weren’t. As soon as she was old enough, she ran away and survived on the streets. She panhandled, lied about her age and took any job she could, but she never stole, used drugs or got drunk. She never prostituted herself.
Somehow Kate managed to follow an internal moral compass, which she believed—no, knew—she’d inherited from her parents.
During that time, Kate couldn’t help dreaming that Vanessa might be alive somewhere. She kept reading news stories about people finding long-lost relatives after enduring years of pain. Those stories and the reporters who wrote them gave Kate hope, gave her direction.
She would become a journalist. She would search for the truth.
At age seventeen, Kate was living in a Chicago group home and taking night classes. She wrote an essay about her yearning to know what
