There wasn’t much new information from Fern, but hearing the woman’s story gave him more insight. Her life was pretty solitary. A thought circled in the back of his mind that he wanted to dismiss, but it was hard to. No one had filed amissing-person report for Fern until she had missed four days of work.
Fern didn’t have any close ties. She worked in a doctor’s office, with a few friends from work, but that was it. She lived alone. He knew she had been in the foster care system, as had Camille Lancaster from Wilson. Was that the connection? Maybe someplace in the foster care system where their paths had crossed?
He waited in the hall for Ava, who looked surprised to see him when she came out. She led the way down the hall, and he followed her. When they were at the elevator, she propped her shoulder against the wall.
“Get what you needed?”
“I think so. Thank you for arranging it,” he said.
It was really hard to stop thinking about that moment when he’d almost kissed her at her house, but his mind was distracted by the case. He said goodbye to her when they both got to the bottom floor, and he watched as she went to her office.
Chapter 5
Focusing just on young women from twenty-one to twenty-five who were missing was a lesson in heartache. There were too many of them, too many families who didn’t have answers. He couldn’t help remembering when his mom had left and all the sleepless nights he’d had wondering where she was and if she was ever coming back.
Wes, who had started two days after him, was at the desk next to his, filling in paperwork for a break-in the night before. There was almost always something happening around the reservation. This thing with kidnapping and keeping a woman near the edge of it—Chay didn’t like it.
Rubbing the back of his neck, he reached for his coffee cup, but the bit in the bottom had gone cold. He swallowed it anyway and then went to refill it before opting for water instead. He drank too much coffee. Walking around the almost empty office just to stretch and clear his head, he thought of Fern. She’d looked so small in the hospital bed when she’d been talking about being taken.
Starting with the missing-persons report that Annie Ross had filed on Camille Lancaster, he went over the details matching them to what Fern had revealed. But because Annie had only secondhand knowledge and the officer who’d taken the report hadn’t included much other information, Chay suspected that Annie’s drug offenses and the fact that her friend may have had the same influenced the slim report.
But Camille Lancaster…he ran a check on the woman and found out she’d been in the foster care system in Wilson. Nowhere near where Fern had been raised. Was there a connection there he was missing?
Cross-referencing the missing young women with the foster care system, he got several hits. Like sixty percent of the woman on the list had been in the foster care system. Of that number, many of them had been reported because they missed work. There were a handful that had been reported by a partner or a roommate.
Carefully, he started to compile a list. There was no obvious connection to these women other than they all seemed to have no one in their life. No close family or friends to miss them when they disappeared.
He sent the information he’d gathered to Jacob and then leaned back in his chair to stretch his back. Tomorrow he’d start following up with the local police departments and get the missing-persons reports together.
His phone rang, and he glanced down to see it was his grandmother. A quick glance at his watch confirmed he was late for dinner. Uh-oh. She wasn’t one who liked it when he missed their time together.
“Sorry. I’m leaving the office now,” he said as he answered her call. Getting to his feet, he grabbed his jacket and headed out of the office, waving goodbye to the night officer on duty at the front desk.
“I figured you would be. You’ve got fifteen minutes to stop and pick up some flowers for me,” she said wryly. He could picture her standing in her kitchen, talking to him from her landline because she refused to rely on her cell phone.
“I already have them,” he retorted. When he had turned sixteen, he had started bringing home flowers for her. It was a simple way of saying thank you when he’d been too confusedinside to express his emotions for her. She’d saved his life. He knew it. There was no way he’d have become the man he was today without her influence.
“See you soon.”
He hung up, unable to stop thinking about those missing women. The foster care system did the best it could, but when young people turned eighteen they were adults. There was no safe place for them to move to. There was some housing, but it was rough and in some places riddled with gangs, drugs and violence.
Fern had moved beyond that living situation and had had a good job and her own place. But being abandoned took a toll. Moving from place to place made it hard to form connections. All of those missing women were in the same boat.
Someone was taking advantage of that. Someone who had access to the foster care system and would know when a kid aged out?
He dialed Ava’s number to ask her.
“Hey, it’s Chay,” he said when she answered.
“Hey.”
“As a foster carer, what kind of information are you given?” he asked.
“About what? Gracie’s family? I have access to knowing who her parents were if they are known. I fostered two brothers in that situation but with Gracie I only know what you do. What is going on with the criminal investigation into how Annie died. Is that what you are asking?”
“Sort of. Would you be able to find out who is aging out of foster care?”
“I don’t know. I can ask around, but that doesn’t seem like information that would be shared,” Ava said.
