“That’s not something for publication,” he said. “How did you find out about it?”
“I’d rather not say. And I couldn’t write about it, anyway. You know that.”
“You could talk to Mark.”
“This sounds like a roundabout way to try to get me to tell you who talked to me.”
He laughed. “The DNA in the cigarettes was tested. No hits in any of our databases.”
“Did you check it against the shoe DNA?”
“That hasn’t come back yet. We’re hoping they’ll finish it this afternoon.”
“How about comparing the cigarettes to Sheila’s DNA?”
There was a pause. “Now, what makes you ask something like that?”
“I can’t help but think that she had some reason to be at the scene out at the Sheffield Estate. Some reason other than searching with Altair. She wasn’t really trying to find anything, and if it was supposedly for attention, why did she arrive there before the press was on hand? She didn’t know I was going to be there-she damned near ran me off the road when I got there, and kept going, so if it was publicity she was after, what was up with that?”
“She made sure the Express was there that evening, for the show with the teeth.”
“Yes. A show.”
“If she knew something about the death of Gerald Serre, that little show probably got her killed by his murderer.”
“Hmm. Maybe.”
“What’s on your mind, Irene?”
“What if she knew something about his murder or burial because she was there when it happened? Or killed him herself?”
“Revisiting the site in full view of the newspaper and investigators?”
“Offering to be of help in the investigation. Don’t tell me she’d be the first killer to do that.”
“No, of course not.”
“Reed, what if she wanted the press to be able to say there was a reason for her DNA to be found there? That we had seen her smoking there, and so on?”
Another pause. “Ben documented every step of that recovery process.”
“Did she know that?”
He thought about this for a moment. “Maybe not. She got there after the coroner left. Anyway, we’ll be running her DNA as part of the investigation of her murder. I’ll ask the lab to do a comparison.”
I went back to listening to messages and making notes. About three messages after the one Caleb’s mom left, I heard another one that piqued my interest.
“This is Martha Hayes. I used to be Martha Faroe. Reggie Faroe was my son. I’m very sorry about that man’s little girl, but Reggie had nothing to do with her being taken, and I can prove that. Please call me.” She left a number, so I gave her a call.
She thanked me for returning her call, then said, “Reggie was no angel, and nobody knows that better’n me. His daddy was trouble, too-got killed in a bar fight. He passed his drinking along to Reggie, I guess. And his ability to charm the ladies. That boy was in trouble one way or another most of his life.”
“You speak of him using the past tense…”
“That’s exactly my point. Reggie was dead a week before that little girl went missing.”
“I’m sorry…”
“Absolutely no need to be. I loved him, I was his mama, and I wished he’d straightened out. But I would be a liar if I didn’t tell you that he made life miserable for me and Mr. Hayes and my children from my second marriage.”
“How did he die?”
“No certain answer to that. His body was found in Arizona.”
I was silent, thumbing through the photocopies I had from Blake Ives. When I found what I was looking for, I said, “Mr. Ives hired a private investigator, who was able to trace Reggie to a Nevada trailer park around the time Mr. Ives’s daughter disappeared. And your son and a female companion disappeared from the trailer park around that same time.”
“I know all about that PI-he come by here asking about Reggie, told me he thought Reggie and Bonnie had that little girl.” She laughed. “I told him that I could no more picture Reggie wantin’ to live with a little kid than I could picture him flyin’ to the moon, and that’s the truth.” She paused. “I even told him that Reggie and Bonnie wasn’t together, but I seen he didn’t believe me. I don’t know who that-what’d you call her?”
“The PI called her a ‘female companion.’”
“Yeah, well, I know some cops who’d like to know who she was. Anyway, back then I didn’t know Reggie was dead.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Reggie was left for dead out in the desert. He might have been murdered, but it wasn’t a sure thing-he was at the bottom of some cliff out there, and it was a question whether he fell or was pushed. Nobody saw him fall, or even ever saw him out there or knew why he was there. Didn’t have no wallet or anything on him to say who he was.”
“And you say he was found before Carla Ives went missing?”
“The date they give me for the body being brought in was a week before that little girl went missing, if she went missing when you said she did.”
“What’s your theory about what happened to him?”
“I tend to think he pissed somebody off and got himself killed, because he wasn’t exactly the type to go hikin’ in the desert. Anyway, I don’t think whoever it was left him there expected he’d ever be found, but as it happened, some rock hunter out looking for gems come across the body and called the sheriff. Well, they didn’t have nothin’ to go by, because Reggie wasn’t missed by no one.”
“There was no missing-persons report.”
“No. You see, Reggie disappearin’ for long periods of time wasn’t exactly anything new to me. And then I have this PI come along and tell me he’s run off with this Bonnie, that I know left him some time back, and her little girl. But back then I thought maybe they got back together. And when I didn’t hear nothin’ from Reggie, I just thought maybe he’d decided to become a family man, and well, leave it to him to do it such a lousy way.”
She paused, then said, “I did him wrong, thinking of him like that.”
“You say you were contacted by an Arizona medical examiner’s office?”
“Yes. Just about two years ago, I got a call from Arizona. Somebody down there was goin’ through cold cases, John Does in the morgue. A trainee or something, and they give him this job to do. Decided to run the fingerprints. That’s the one time I guess I was lucky Reggie had a prison record. He was in the FBI system, and so they matched him up that way. And my husband, Mr. Hayes, he paid so I could go down there and bring Reggie’s ashes home.”
By that time, she said, she had forgotten about the PI who had been asking about Reggie. My story had reminded her of him.
“I’m not mad at you or Mr. Ives for what’s in the story,” she assured me, “but I started to think about it and figured Reggie got blamed enough for things he did do, maybe I’d set the record straight for him. I mean, I know you don’t come out and say he took that girl, but people will suppose it, just like Mr. Ives does. And maybe if Mr. Ives stops looking in the wrong place, he’ll have an easier time finding her.”
She gave me the names of her contacts in Arizona. I thanked her, made some notes, and went back to retrieving messages.
I logged onto my computer and found my e-mail in-box nearly as overloaded as my voice mail, although a few of the subject lines told me I had the usual amount of deja poo in there, too-jokes and links that had been sent to me a dozen times before. Nothing dies on the Internet.
I was deleting spam while half-listening to messages, which is why I had to replay one of them-a young girl. I wondered why she had hung up before finishing her first message, and felt relief that she had left the second one.
A scared young girl, whispering two messages. Messages left before seven in the morning. Not the usual hour for crank calls by kids.
