I nodded and peered down at the papers in the folder that I kept for this old case. “You know my near perfect clearance rate with the rangers?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s the one that I couldn’t solve.”
“This is one of your old cases.”
“Yeah. The only one I’ve carried around with me in the years since I left the DPS.” I took the picture from Jodi’s hand and stared at the smiling girl. “This was her senior photo, taken the summer before she was supposed to graduate.” In the picture, Karyn was smiling in the mock cap and gown. Her blonde hair bright and visible outlined her light blue eyes. There was hope of a bright future in those eyes.
“This isn’t the face of hers that haunts me at night,” I said out loud. “She wasn’t wearing a smile when her naked body was found in the woods about an hour from Harlington. Two hunters came across her early one morning. She’d been missing for months.”
Gasping, Jodi placed her hand on my shoulder. “That’s horrible.”
“It gets worse.”
“What could be worse than that?”
“After we got to the scene and did all the forensics and took pictures of everything, the ME flipped her body over. We found her lower abdomen sliced open, enough to remove an infant.”
“What?”
“She’d been pregnant. Whoever killed her had cut the baby out of her stomach. The baby is still missing. I don’t even know if it lived or not.”
“Oh my God,” Jodi murmured, shaking her head. “There weren’t any suspects in the case?”
“One in particular. The boyfriend she’d been seeing off and on for three years. They had a rocky relationship, and everyone, including her parents, pointed fingers at him. But it didn’t add up.”
“Why not?”
“She was missing for months before her body turned up in those woods. If she was pregnant before her disappearance, she wasn’t showing yet. Many suspected that her boyfriend found out she was pregnant and killed her so he wouldn’t have to take care of the baby.”
“But then why would he cut it out of her?”
“Exactly. The ME concluded that she’d likely been close to full term by the time of her death. What eighteen-year-old boy is going to keep his pregnant girlfriend locked up somewhere and then wait until the baby is almost due to kill her and it? It didn’t make sense. But everyone in their town believed it was him. Even after DNA came back as not matching his. There were a few cells from the placenta that we were able to test.”
“The baby wasn’t his?”
I shook my head. “Nope.” Sighing, I ran my hand through my hair.
“Are you thinking this case is connected to Amy’s and my grandfather’s?”
“It’s odd. There don’t appear to be any similarities on the surface, but something keeps bringing me back to this file. Amy and Karyn were only one town away from another, and they lived less than an hour from Harlington. Two teenage girls go missing in relatively the same vicinity. The only difference is that Amy’s body hasn’t been found.”
“So you do think we’re looking for a body? Not Amy.”
I frowned as I locked gazes with Jodi. “I do. I know the stats too well to be hopeful. If she’ been gone this long, chances are it’s because she can’t come back.”
Before Jodi could respond, a hard knock sounded on the door. Jodi jumped. “Were you expecting someone?” she questioned with wrinkled brows.
“Sort of,” I answered, stepping back, and heading to the door. Through the peephole, I spotted a tall figure as he stepped back from the door. I nodded my head and reached for the doorknob, opening it.
“Figured you show up,” I said.
Chael gave me a pensive look as he stood back, staring, letting his eyes roll over me, assessing from head to toe. Same thing he always did when we encountered one another.
“Bright Sun, you’re looking good,” he finally said in that deep, authoritative voice, as he folded his arms across his broad chest.
“Whoa.”
