“These are exceptional circumstances,” I pointed out. “Alma, you need to tell me.”
Her eyes darkened and clouded over, like the mountaintops when a storm blows in. “We went on a picnic, and Eliza didn’t want to come. We, she and I, had words. When we came back, the house was empty. Grace found a note, in Eliza’s hand.”
I stared at Grace. “Tell me what it said.”
The woman who earlier had chastised me and ordered me from her yard sighed hard and shrugged. “It was short, but it left no room for misunderstanding. It said, ‘I’ve gone to the city. I can’t live here anymore. Don’t try to find me.’ Eliza signed it.”
“And you believed it?” I asked.
Grace looked at the other two women, and I knew before they spoke that they’d feared something might be wrong, but they’d buried their suspicions.
“Well, we did think it was odd,” Grace admitted, glancing over at Alma.
“Odd how?” I asked.
“Eliza didn’t take her clothes. We couldn’t tell that she took anything.”
Moments passed. The women looked one at the other, and then their eyes closed and their heads bowed. I sensed that they each silently acknowledged the truth. Perhaps they’d always known but refused to accept it.
“Is there a way to tell if that’s Eliza’s body?” Savannah asked, her voice quiet with resignation.
“We’re doing DNA, but that will take time. We’ll need a sample from you, Alma, as Eliza’s mother,” I said. Alma nodded. Then I asked, “Is there anything in particular Doc can look for during the autopsy? Does Eliza have any identifying scars? Any old injuries, like broken bones?”
Alma opened her purse and pulled out the photo of Eliza we’d asked her to bring. In the image, a pretty young girl stared back at me, one with inquisitive green eyes and a self-confident smile. I hoped it wasn’t her we’d found in the field. “No broken bones. But she has a mole above her lip,” Alma said, pointing at the dark, round spot on the photo.
Alma had a twin blemish on the right side of her face, half an inch north of her upper lip.
“Just like yours?” I observed.
“Yes,” Alma agreed. “We… she inherited that from me.”
“Max, call the doc. Ask him to look for the mole,” I said, and Max left the room. “While Max does that, let me show you photos of the dress on the body. See if it looks familiar.”
I’d brought the file with me. I sifted through, not wanting them to see the gruesome photos of the mummified body of what had once been a vibrant young woman. I pulled out two that I wanted them to look at. One showed the collar on the dress, the other a close-up of the green fabric with the flowered stripes. They inspected them, one woman handing the photos to the other, and put their heads together and whispered.
“No,” Alma said. “We don’t think this is Eliza’s dress.”
Minutes later, Max returned. “Doc doesn’t see the mole, but the condition of the corpse, well, it’s bad. So he can’t be sure.”
“Can you tell us anything else about how Eliza disappeared?” I asked the women. “Anything at all?”
“No. There’s nothing else.” Alma frowned. “Clara, can’t you put our minds at ease? Can’t you give us hope that it isn’t our girl?”
I decided to speak in a language I knew they’d understand. “Lord willing, Eliza is healthy and well and you’ll see her again soon. But we need to look at all the possibilities, Alma. I need your help to figure this out.”
All the anger Alma had shown earlier in the day had washed away, leaving only sadness. “What can we do?”
“You can give Doc Wiley a sample of your DNA,” I explained. “Right now, that’s all you can do for your girl.”
Alma Heaton nodded as tears filled her eyes.
Max left to get a DNA collection kit, and I said my goodbyes and hurried to interview room one, where Genevieve Coombs and her sister-wife waited. Their attitudes had changed as well. The finding of the girl in the field had shaken all of them.
“Tell me what you can about Jayme leaving,” I asked once I sat down.
“We were worried at first, because Jayme just disappeared. She was outside, and then she was gone,” Genevieve said. “But she’d run away before, to the shelter, telling Hannah Jessop crazy stories about our family. So we thought she did that again. But Hannah came to see us the next day, and she said Jayme wasn’t at the shelter.”
I assumed the Heatons had left, as Max walked into the room holding another DNA kit in a clear plastic bag. He stood off a bit, near the door, observing.
I didn’t question Genevieve about the abuse Jayme claimed. This wasn’t the time to get to the bottom of that. I needed to zero in on the girl’s disappearance. “What did you do? Did you tell anyone?”
“We were worried something happened to Jayme. All her clothes were still at the house, not like she took anything. So the following day, we went to the police station,” Genevieve said. “We talked to Chief Barstow. He looked worried, too. He took a few notes, and then he left us and made a few phone calls. A little while later, he came back with a sheet of paper, the phone number of some crisis center in Salt Lake written on it. He said Jayme was there. Someone saw her there. He said that she wasn’t coming home.”
“You reported her missing to Chief Barstow?” I asked. I looked over at Max, and he shot back a questioning glance. This wasn’t what we expected to hear.
“Yes,” Genevieve said. “I took the phone number home, but it made no sense to call. Jayme was gone, like so many of the other kids in town. Ran out and left us.”
“We have some photos. Of the dead girl’s dress and hair. I’d like
