“Who was found? We saw them bringing a stretcher out,” Harriet asked again, leaning forward to get the microphone in his face.
Before he could say anything, one of the CSI techs yelled for him.
“Agent Merlo. There’s something you need to see.” Over the collar of the man’s white coveralls, his face was grim with concern.
“I’m not able to share any more information at this moment,” Javi said smoothly. “As soon as we have more, we’ll let you know. Thank you.”
He turned and walked away quickly, ignoring the questions tossed at his back. The CSI tech was already walking back toward the building as Javi approached.
“What is it?” Javi asked.
“Bad news,” the man said. “We pulled up the floor to get the body out. She wasn’t the only thing under there.”
The image of a dozen sad, curled-up brown corpses flashed into Javi’s head. He ground out a curse and stretched his legs. He ducked through the plastic sheet they’d tacked up over the door. The area was gridded off with yellow tags and cameras. There were no bodies. It would almost have been better if there were. At least it would have been a clear situation.
Five plastic bags had been unearthed from under the floor. Each was full of a set of neatly folded clothes, down to a pair of shoes neatly placed on top.
“Son of a bitch,” Javi said through stiff lips.
“Look at this,” the tech said as he stepped around Javi. He picked his way over the wooden framework on the ground, shuffling in his oversized boots, and crouched down to pick up one of the already tagged and photographed bags. He tilted it toward Javi. Even through the glaze of milky plastic, Javi could see the faded red fabric of the T-shirt and the Avengers’ logo screen printed on it.
Captain America was Drew’s favorite, Kay told them when she gave them the description, but he loved the Avengers too.
“Get them back to the lab, process them, and get me the report before the end of today,” he snapped. Habit made the tech start to hedge, but Javi cut him off impatiently. “This missing-child investigation is about to be reclassified to a serial offender. Get me that report.”
The tech pinched his mouth—either in resentment or understanding of how the case had escalated, Javi didn’t care—and nodded.
“Agent.”
Javi took one last look at the room, fixed it in his mind for later when he would need to make sense of it, and then headed back outside. It was time to tell Cloister his hunch had become a theory. It looked like Drew’s disappearance and Birdie Hartley’swereconnected. Javi thought about the other little bags of clothes they’d unearthed and tightened his mouth into a grim line. Atleastthose two cases.
WHEN BIRDIEwent missing, so did whatever held the Utkins’ marriage together. Heather Utkin divorced her husband within the year and moved out of the city. Out of state, in fact.
“She went back to Illinois,” Lew Utkin said. Shock had knocked the confidence out of his voice, leaving it vague and distracted. He was a big man, although he’d run to fat a bit across his stomach, and probably still handsome usually. Today his face looked like it was slipping a little on his bones, sagging as though grief had a weight. He sat on the cheap metal chair and fiddled with a plastic cup of water. “I don’t have her number, but, umm… I have her sister’s address. I can get in touch. Are yousureit’s Birdie?”
It was the fourth time he’d asked that question. Javi wasn’t sure what answer he was looking for.
“We’re waiting on getting the DNA tests back from the lab,” Javi said. “That’s one reason we asked you to come in, so we could get a sample from you for analysis.”
Lew nodded before Javi even finished speaking. “Of course,” he said. “I… anything I can do to help.”
“We also have some of her effects….”
“Can’t I just seeher? I’ll know if it’s my daughter. It’s been ten years, but I’d know my own daughter.”
Javi mentally overlaid the pretty, smiling girl in the photo over the dead girl’s half-mummified face, her eyelids sagging over empty sockets and lips peeled back from a yard of hard gum and broken teeth. He didn’t think there was anything there to recognize.
“It’s been ten years, Mr. Utkin,” he said. “Let the lab do their job first.”
Lew closed his eyes. “Did someone hurt her?” he asked.
“We don’t know anything yet. Would you feel comfortable looking at some of the items we found with her, to see if you can identify them?”
The nod took a bit longer that time. Lew finally nodded stiffly and clenched his jaw until Javi thought he could hear his teeth grind. He got up from the chair as though he were much older than his face indicated. “Let’s get it over with.”
Javi walked him down to the evidence room, where the tech swabbed his cheek. Then he brought out a clean metal tray, carefully laid with the items they thought belonged to Birdie. A yellow shirt and a grubby rag of a top that had probably been floaty, hippy muslin at some point, flip-flops with brittle plastic straps, and a pair of tarnished-to-dullness silver earrings. There was a thread of hair still caught in one—frizzy and crooked in the bright light. Finally a set of keys, all different acid-bright colors, with a tangle of age-yellowed Zac Efron pics attached as key rings.
“Take your time,” Javi said as he discreetly watched Lew’s face.
