“You think we’ll find anything?” I said.
“I’d be surprised, since Mr. Proctor’s dogs didn’t appear interested in any of the other areas,” he said.
“I agree. Who’s overseeing the crime scene?”
“The CSI unit’s lieutenant. He’ll call if anything turns up. That way, I can work with you.”
“Okay.”
“Where do you want to start?” Max asked. “Since you have concerns about the Heaton and Coombs girls, we can head back out to their houses, question the families.”
I’d thought about that and nixed it. “We need the upper hand. I want them on our turf. They need to understand that I’m not some renegade cop from Dallas trespassing on their property. We’ve got a dead body. They need to take this seriously.”
“I’ll round them up and bring them here then.”
“Great. While they’re here, we’ll get DNA from Eliza’s and Jayme’s mothers, so Doc can compare it to the body, see if either girl is a match.”
“What about your family? Should we bring your mothers in?”
“Not yet. That wasn’t Delilah buried out there. My sister hasn’t been missing long enough for her to be in that condition, not even if she was killed the night she was taken.” I felt sick to my stomach thinking about the dead woman we’d found in the field, wondering about Delilah. “For now, let’s concentrate on the other girls. That body could be one of theirs.”
“Okay,” he said. “You’re still thinking we have a series here?”
“Yes, I am. It would be an unlikely coincidence that in a small town like this we have three missing girls and the dead one who turns up is unrelated. I’m betting that if we figure out who killed that girl, we’ll find all of the missing girls, including Delilah.”
“Okay. I’ll get the Heaton and Coombs women and bring them here,” Max said.
“Make sure both families bring photos of the girls. That could help Doc. And if we get confirmation they’re missing, we can get them on NCIC and send out a media alert.”
“What about Delilah? I gather we still can’t do that with her?”
“Not yet. We have the same problem we’ve had all along – my family,” I said. “You were right about the Amber Alert. We can’t do anything official until they file a missing person complaint.”
“What are you going to do while I’m out corralling the families?” Max asked.
“Research,” I said. “I have a hunch I want to explore.”
“That sounds promising. On who?”
I hesitated. I trusted Max, but I worried about how invested he was in the case. He’d brought me here and he was paying attention now, but when he allowed Gerard Barstow to sway his judgment, we wasted precious time. “We’ll talk about it later.”
Max turned around toward the door, but then swiveled back. “Clara,” he said. I’d grabbed a chair and had my head in my computer. When I looked up at him, he seemed troubled. “It wasn’t that I didn’t agree with you about Delilah, that I wasn’t worried about her.”
“You told me to go home, Max,” I said, not trying to hide my irritation. “If you had any concerns that Delilah could be in trouble, why would you do that?”
“There are things you don’t know, about my situation.” Max took a deep breath. “I’m not free to think of just myself. Sometimes, well, the position I’m in…”
He stopped talking and an awkward silence filled the room. When he began again, he looked at me as if confiding. “Clara, I haven’t told you about Brooke, my daughter. She’s…”
“What, Max?”
He seemed almost unable to form the words. “Things are complicated at home, my daughter…”
Max stopped and looked at me, unable to go on.
Weary, I rubbed my forehead. I felt overwhelmed, and it was too much at that moment to take on Max’s problems. “I appreciate your explanation,” I said, mustering as much sympathy as I could manage with my sister on my mind. “But we’re going to have to talk about this later, because right now, every minute we stand talking, Delilah and maybe the other girls are in danger.”
Max’s eyes clouded with disappointment, and I immediately regretted not handling it better. Still, I needed him to get to work. “Right now, let’s concentrate on figuring out who that girl in the field is and what she can tell us that will help us find the others.”
“Of course, you’re right,” he said. As he walked out the door, I heard him whisper, “Later.”
As soon as Max left, I found the storeroom and rooted around. I grabbed three sheets of poster board. Back at the conference table, I taped them together and drew a horizontal line side to side. A third of the way from the left, I made a vertical mark and noted that Eliza Heaton disappeared in late March. Six inches away, I wrote: Jayme Coombs, May tenth. Then I wrote down the date the note said Delilah disappeared, August thirteenth, three months after Jayme’s disappearance, the previous Thursday evening. The final mark had the current date and BODY FOUND. I purposely left room in anticipation of more victims at both ends of the timeline, hoping I wouldn’t have to use it.
I hung the timeline on the wall.
That done, I logged on to NCIC. Earlier I’d used the site to look into Evan Barstow. I still thought he was a possibility, but this time I had someone else on my mind—Jim Daniels. Ten minutes and I had a hit, not in Utah but in Iowa.
My brother-in-law was a convicted sex offender.
Daniels had been arrested at the age of nineteen for the statutory rape of a sixteen-year-old. The girl’s name was Rebecca Sanders.
Nothing further came up on Jim Daniels on NCIC, so I accessed the Dallas PD database I’d used that morning to track down Evan Barstow’s address. A few minutes scouting around, and I had a handful of speeding citations and an address outside Alber.
On the way out
