Live to Tell - Lisa Gardner [158]
She found her pager on the bedside table—yep, call out from Boston operations—and began shucking her gray sweatpants.
“They’re out of the house. Trust me, even the bosses know better than to contaminate a homicide scene. But we didn’t know the girl was missing. The uniforms sealed off the house, but left the yard fair play. And now the grounds are trampled, and I can’t get vantage point. We need vantage point.”
D.D. had sweats off, and was working to shed Alex’s flannel shirt.
“Who’s dead?”
“Forty-two-year-old white male.”
“Who’s missing?”
“Six-year-old white female.”
“Got a suspect?”
Long, long pause now.
“Get here,” Bobby said curtly. “You and me, D.D. Our case. Our headache. We gotta work this one quick.”
He clicked off. D.D. scowled at the phone, then tossed it on the bed to finish pulling on her white dress shirt.
Okay. Homicide with a missing child. State police already on-site, but Boston jurisdiction. Why the hell would the state police—
Then, fine detective that she was, D.D. finally connected the dots.
“Ah shit!”
D.D. wasn’t nauseous anymore. She was pissed off.
She grabbed her pager, her creds, and her winter jacket. Then, Bobby’s instructions ringing in her head, she prepared to ambush her own crime scene.
2
Who do you love?
I met Brian at a Fourth of the July cookout. Shane’s house. The kind of social invite I generally refused, but lately had started to realize I needed to reconsider. If not for my own sake, then for Sophie’s.
The party wasn’t that large. Maybe thirty people or so, other state troopers and families from Shane’s neighborhood. The lieutenant colonel had made an appearance, a small coup for Shane. Mostly, however, the cookout attracted other uniformed officers. I saw four guys from the barracks standing by the grill, nursing beers and harassing Shane as he fussed over the latest batch of brats. In front of them were two picnic tables, already dominated by laughing wives who were mixing up batches of margaritas in between tending various children.
Other people lingered in the house, prepping pasta salads, catching the last few minutes of the game. Chitchatting away as they took a bite of this, a drink of that. People, doing what people do on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
I stood beneath the shade of an old oak tree. At Sophie’s request, I was wearing an orange-flowered sundress and my single dressy pair of gold sparkling flip-flips. I still stood with my feet slightly apart, elbows tight to my unarmed sides, back to the tree. You can take the girl out of the job, but not the job out of the girl.
I should mingle, but didn’t know where to start. Take a seat with the ladies, none of whom I knew, or head to where I would be more comfortable, hanging with the guys? I rarely fit in with the wives and couldn’t afford to look like I was having fun with the husbands—then the wives would stop laughing and shoot daggers at me.
So I stood apart, holding a beer I’d never drink as I waited for the event to wind down to a point where I could politely depart.
Mostly, I watched my daughter.
A hundred yards away, she giggled ecstatically as she rolled down a grassy knoll with half a dozen other kids. Her hot pink sundress was already lawn-stained and she had chocolate chip cookie smeared across her cheek. When she popped up at the bottom of the hill, she grabbed the hand of the little girl next to her and they chugged back up as fast as their three-year-old legs could carry them.
Sophie always made friends instantly. Physically, she looked like me. Personality-wise, she was completely her own child. Outgoing, bold, adventurous. If she had her way, Sophie would spend every waking moment surrounded by people. Maybe charm was a dominant gene, inherited from her father, because she certainly didn’t get it from me.
She and the other toddler arrived at the top of the hill. Sophie lay down first, her short dark hair contrasting deeply against a patch of yellow dandelions. Then, a flash of chubby arms and flailing legs as she started