“We’re pursuing all leads,” Genie said. “What did Jocelyn do for you?”
“She’s a social worker.” As if that explained everything.
“Can you be more specific?” Lucy asked. She held up the brochure she’d taken from the small lobby. “It says here that you also work with law enforcement to rehabilitate underaged prostitutes. Senator Paxton said that was Jocelyn’s specialty.”
“You spoke with Jonathon Paxton?”
“Chris used to work for him.”
“I know, but-why is that important?”
“We’re trying to retrace the Taylors’ steps,” Genie said. “How long has Jocelyn worked here?”
Cathy took a deep breath. “Fifteen years, started right out of college. Jocelyn had been raised in foster care, she knew how bad the system could be, and she also knew how good the system could be when it worked. She wanted to help teenage girls make better choices, and the only way they could make good choices was if they had options. So many of these girls feel hopeless. They think no one cares what happens to them.” She stared at a picture on her desk. From her angle, Lucy couldn’t see who was in the photograph.
Cathy shook her head, then continued. “Jocelyn worked mostly with teenage runaways and prostitutes. She cared.”
Unspoken was
“And recently? This past week?”
“Jocelyn hasn’t been in the office much this week, but that’s not unusual,” Cathy quickly added. It almost sounded as if she was protecting her, and while that wasn’t strange, here she sounded defensive.
Genie said, “So you don’t know what she was doing?”
“No, of course not, it’s just that-” She stopped. “You said there was a third victim?”
Genie said, “Unidentified. The photograph is disturbing, but it’s important we identify her.”
Hummel took a deep breath, braced herself, then nodded.
Genie had a Polaroid picture of the Jane Doe in the bathtub, face only, but there was no mistaking that she was dead.
Her face fell. “Maddie.”
“Maddie who?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. Just … Maddie. She, oh my God, excuse me.” She ran from the room, her hands to her mouth.
Lucy wanted to go after her, but Genie put a hand on her arm. “She’s okay. Just give her a minute.”
“She knows what Jocelyn was doing and she’s not sharing. It’s dangerous.”
“She will. It’s natural to want to protect those you care about, but Cathy will do what’s right. We crossed paths before, she’s a class act.”
Lucy hoped so. She had far too much experience with people who, thinking they were doing the right thing, ended up hurting far more people than they helped.
Cathy was extremely protective of Jocelyn-not just MARC, her organization, but
The day before Lucy was supposed to graduate from high school, she’d never thought much about privacy. She wanted to do something special with her life, have fun doing it, and share it with the world if she had the chance. She was friendly, talkative, almost carefree-at least as carefree as possible with her military and law enforcement family. She’d wanted to study languages, which came naturally to her, to swim competitively and maybe earn a place on the Olympic team. She wanted to someday raise a family and travel around the world. She thought the world was her oyster, the cliche so appropriate to growing up as the youngest in a large family of seven who doted on her.
She’d been sheltered and protected, knew it and didn’t care.
Then every dream she’d ever had was stolen from her the day she should have walked down the aisle in her gown and cap to accept her diploma.
She’d never go to the Olympics; though she swam in college, her heart wasn’t in it. Instead, she became certified in water search and rescue where her strength as a swimmer helped her find and retrieve people both dead and alive.
She’d never study language, because how could she help people and appease her need for justice if she was a diplomat or a translator? But her language skills helped her understand people from different backgrounds and lifestyles, both spoken and unspoken.
And she’d never have children of her own because she no longer had a womb to carry a baby.
Worse, her pain and suffering, all of the evil that had been done to her, was part of the public record. She had no privacy and never would. Though she’d accepted it, there were days she wanted to scream at the unfairness of life.
But she didn’t. She went on. Because there were no other options.
Her family protected her, and she loved them for it, but sometimes it was too much.
Her eye caught the simple silver picture frame on Cathy’s desk, the one Cathy had glanced at several times during their conversation. She leaned forward and tilted her head so she could see who was in the photo.
Cathy Hummel, much younger, with a man Lucy presumed was her husband, and Jocelyn.
Except Jocelyn was much younger as well. Eighteen? Nineteen? Long before she was working here.
Cathy Hummel stepped back into the room. Her eyes were rimmed red, but dry, and her hands grasped several pieces of crumbled tissues. “I’m so sorry,” she mumbled. She sat back down. “I don’t know what else I can do for you.”
“How long have you known Jocelyn?” Lucy asked.
“I told you, she came to work for me when she was twenty-four, out of college-”
“Did you know her before she worked for you?”
“Why?”
“I saw the picture on your desk.”
Cathy stared at the picture. “That was taken the day Jocelyn got her GED,” she said quietly. “She was nineteen, but she hadn’t been in school since she was sixteen.” She shook her head. “This is all sealed, and I’m not going to share it with you. I’m sorry.”
“It may have something to do with her death.”
“It doesn’t.” Cathy’s voice took on an edge of hostility.
Genie spoke up. “Was Jocelyn working with Maddie? Was Maddie in trouble?”
“I told you, Jocelyn wasn’t in the office this week.”
“But you would know why,” Genie said. She leaned forward. “I understand you want to protect Jocelyn. I’m not going to drag her reputation through the slime. I’ll do my best to keep anything not directly related to the case off the books.”
Genie continued. “We haven’t released this information to the press, but we believe that the Taylors and Maddie were killed by the same person or people who killed a known prostitute, Nicole Bellows. Do you know her?”
Cathy’s shocked expression revealed the truth.
“Nicole was the murdered prostitute I read about in the paper this morning?” she asked weakly.
“Yes.” Lucy watched the director closely. “Anything you know, anything that could send us in the right direction, we’d appreciate.”
Tears streamed down Cathy’s face. “I told Jocelyn not to get involved. Not with those girls.”
That surprised Lucy. An organization like MARC
Cathy continued. “Six months ago, we were hired by the mother of a fourteen-year-old girl who had run away with her boyfriend, a nineteen-year-old high school dropout. She filed a missing persons report and went through proper channels, but the police couldn’t find her.
“Jocelyn tracked down the boyfriend and he was more forthcoming, because she wasn’t a cop. He dumped Amy, left her in Baltimore, and didn’t think twice about her. She wouldn’t ‘pull her weight,’ he said.
“Jocelyn has cultivated a lot of contacts in the tristate area. She traced Amy from Baltimore to DC, and finally to this group of girls who lived in a house on Hawthorne.”
