Why was he so quiet as of late? Was he worried about his job? Had she said or done something to upset him? Sometimes she took over crime scenes, interactions, or interrogations, leaving her partners behind as she followed her own ideas, racing and forging ahead at the speed of her expertise as an FBI profiler. She was a loner, by all means, not much of a team player; she knew that. It was a turnoff to some people, especially young and ambitious detectives from Texas with seniority in the sheriff’s office.
As if responding to her thoughts, a chime from Elliot’s phone broke the silence.
“Huh,” Elliot said, reading the message. “I’m being put on a new case.” His voice was laced with undertones of surprise.
“What case?” she asked, processing the cues in Elliot’s voice and body language. The regret she’d noticed was an unexpected note she needed time to understand. Why was he regretting the reassignment?
“A missing girl from Lane County, Oregon.” His phone chimed again. “And Doc Whitmore released Rose Harrelson’s identity.” He scrolled through the message, before typing a reply. “Doc said the news crew was interviewing the sheriff next.”
She barely contained a smile. “Ooh, and the boss really hates those,” she commented, sarcasm heavy in her voice. “I’ll swing by the office, for your car.”
“Sure,” he replied, seemingly absentminded, withdrawn.
“Tell me about the new case. Any connection with our murder investigation?”
“Not even a gnat’s whisker.” He looked briefly at the phone’s screen, then slid it in his pocket. “It’s the niece of one of Lane County’s deputies, who ran away from home after some words with her stepdad. They found a witness who puts the girl on the highway getting into a truck with California tags.”
“Ah, okay,” she replied, before the gnawing thoughts about Rose Harrelson’s abduction took hold of her mind and she fell silent. After a short while, she figured she might as well pick Elliot’s brain, while she still had him handy. “How do you think she was taken?”
“Who? The girl from Lane County?”
For a moment, the question confused her. Wasn’t the girl from Lane County a runaway? She shrugged it off. “No, Rose. The window was open just an inch, Shelley said, and the screen was in place, intact. How do you think the unsub took her?” She still used the FBI terminology; she found it simpler, easier, a mere five letters to replace the lengthy definition of an unknown subject, the unidentified perpetrator of a crime.
“There were no fingerprints, right?”
“N—no,” she replied, hesitating a little as she wondered about the thoroughness of evidence collection. There was no report on file, just a note in the detective’s handwriting, stating all the fingerprints lifted at the scene were accounted for. “I wonder—” she started to say, then stopped in her tracks. “It’s been fourteen years, no way we could reopen the crime scene now. You’ve seen the state of the property.”
“It must’ve been someone close to the family, someone who knew their way around the house.” He checked the time on his phone, then frowned ever so slightly.
“What’s wrong?”
He looked away for a moment. “I can’t come to terms with the way the case was worked, that’s all.”
She chuckled. “No kidding.”
“We’ll have to go back and interview all those people Martha Duncan was telling us about. Elroy’s work friends, the nanny Martha said had died, let’s verify that.” His frown returned, more visible this time. “You’ll have to interview them, that is, while I chase down a fourteen-year-old runaway from Lane County, Oregon.”
“Yeah,” she replied, turning left and then pulling over in front of the sheriff’s office. “I’ll start over from square one, and I’ll reopen the crime scene after all. Who knows what we’ll find?”
He looked at her with an unspoken question in his glance.
“Something tells me you’ll track your runaway in no time. Until then, I’ll get started on the legwork. We have to figure out who took Rose Harrelson, and why. And where she was all this time.”
They climbed the concrete steps that led to the main entrance. Heading into the building, they were about to go their separate ways. Elliot was looking to check in with the sheriff about the new case, and Kay to run another search in the system for the people who were identified at the time as being close to the Harrelson family. More than anything, she wanted to get the home address for the detective who had conducted the original investigation; it was time to pay him a visit. She couldn’t wait to start pounding on him with questions, his appalling incompetence the reason why she’d been grinding her teeth all day. His inability to find Rose, and the mystery as to why he hadn’t asked for help from the feds were the reasons why an entire family had been destroyed. He could’ve just as well hung Elroy with his own hands, and put Shelley where she was.
But none of that happened as planned. Sheriff Logan rushed to meet them in the bullpen the moment he saw them coming in.
“The phone’s been ringing off the hook,” he said, without any introduction. His voice was tinged with frustration, and his hands were clenched tightly together, not a familiar posture for the bold sheriff.
Several deputies were tending the phones, and the moment one set the receiver down, another call would come through.
“What’s going on?” Kay asked.
“We got the girl’s ID wrong, that’s what’s going on,” he replied, huffing while running his hands through the gray hairs on his temples. “The moment we released the vic’s identity as Rose Harrelson, the media picked it up and published it with her photos, one from back when she was taken, and the more recent one the ME had provided. Then everyone started calling in to laugh in our face and say we got it all wrong. That the vic is Alyssa Caldwell, none other than Bill Caldwell’s daughter. With a profile like
