Detective Muhtar organizes a discreet breakout room for them. It isn’t exactly orthodox to have Julia and Leo assist him in this way and he explains he’s not keen to draw attention to that fact. Julia’s just grateful he’s letting them help at all.
The plan is to work systematically through everything in chronological order, writing down any possible further leads on Post-it Notes and sticking them to the whiteboard as they go. From there they’ll prioritize which areas to pursue first.
The entirety of the investigation is contained in two files and six clear tamper-proof evidence bags. They’re a pitiful reminder of what Toni’s life has been reduced to. A few boxes and plastic bags. It doesn’t seem much to Julia. Not for all that has gone on.
She glances at the largest evidence bag containing Toni’s backpack, the childish crocheted doll key ring squashed up hard against the clear plastic, and feels ill. She had only ever seen the photograph of it washed up on the rocks near the sea wall. That was bad enough, but seeing it now, a three-dimensional object right in front of her, is jarring, especially given she now knows it was Daniel who tossed it in the water after he took Toni from the hotel.
Leo glances at her. “You up for this?”
“I’m fine.”
Leo slides the laptop across the table. “Why don’t you take the social media accounts and I’ll take the physical items.”
“Thanks, Leo, that’s thoughtful, but I’ll be okay. Let’s just get this over with.”
Julia opens the plastic bag containing the backpack and is met with the salt-laden odor of the Bosporus. She bites back sadness at having to handle what is, for all intents and purposes, the total sum of Toni’s worldly goods. The canvas feels brittle and stiff to the touch, the sea having done its best to claim it. She checks the bag thoroughly, probing pockets and compartments, prying open zips and snaps now beginning to show signs of rust. Nothing but grit and the dregs of what is probably seaweed.
She scribbles on a Post-it Note: What happened to the pack’s other items? Clothes, toiletries, etc.? She sticks the note on the whiteboard then turns her attention to Toni’s passport, flipping through the water-damaged pages, the immigration stamps now little more than inky streaks, the tiny passport two-by-two-inch photo of Toni faded and unsmiling. Toni’s hair is much shorter and not pink. Exactly like the last time Julia saw her in the flesh on the day Toni confessed to sleeping with Leo. A few weeks after that Toni left the US for good and Julia never saw her again. She writes another note: How can they exit country without passports? Bribes at the border?
Next, Julia turns her attention to the wallet and examines the contents. Two expired credit cards. Forty US dollars in two twenties. Toni’s US driver’s license. A printed receipt in Chinese for one item that cost $40RMB. Three used bus tickets. One for a journey from Athens International Airport. The other two for one-way trips in China and Thailand.
Julia thinks that’s all there is when she notices something wedged in the tight space behind the vertical credit card pockets. Pinching the corner, she wriggles out a photograph folded into quarters. She opens it and gasps.
Toni, Julia, and their mom, happy and young. Toni about three, Julia around seven. Toni is perched on their mom’s hip, her tiny hand clasping some impossibly pink cotton candy. Julia stands on the other side, her mother’s arm protectively around her shoulder, holding her close. Looming in the background is a giant Ferris wheel and rickety-looking roller coaster. This was not the fractured miserable family unit that Julia remembered. This was a loving family unit out for a fun day at the State Fair. But what’s more remarkable is Julia’s mother, with waves of black, glossy hair cascading over her sun-kissed shoulders, eyes as bright and blue as the sky above her head. Julia has never seen her look so healthy. She tries to remember the day the photo was taken but draws a complete blank. It might as well be another family entirely.
“What is it?” says Leo.
Julia shows him. He smiles.
“Wow. You guys look happy.”
“Yeah. We do,” she says, eyes watering. “Toni kept it all this time.”
Leo hands back the photograph. “It’s really special, Julia.”
Julia folds up the image and returns it to Toni’s wallet. “I miss her, Leo.”
He gives her a sympathetic smile. “Me, too.”
Julia returns to the job at hand, picking up the final item. The penny necklace. The most troubling piece of evidence of all and a major loose end. How did it get from Toni’s neck to Asen Civik? A simple coincidence? Had the necklace come loose when Daniel kidnapped Toni from the hotel and Civik found it? It’s impossible to know because Civik is still refusing to talk. Julia writes a note: Re-question Civik? Examine CCTV footage for Civik in Toni’s hotel area?
She places the penny necklace on the table next to the other items and stands back to look at everything in its entirety. She tries to clear her head of misconceptions and approach things with a dispassionate, clinical eye. It’s like a puzzle. Much like when Julia was studying for her medical degree, when she had to make sense of the disparate parts of a human body and how they all fit together. The bones (two hundred and seventy at birth decreasing to two hundred and six at death), the organs (approximately seventy-nine, five of which are vital), blood vessels (made up of arteries, veins, and capillaries), and tissue (the core types being epithelial, connective, muscular, and nervous). Everything is relevant and connected. Everything is interdependent and necessary. Together everything makes up an entire whole that is a single human body.
But here? Well, here nothing fits. There’s no cohesion. No interdependence. No single story to tell.
She puts down her pen and glances up at her notes. Five
