“Kurt?”
“Kurt Shepherd, my new partner. I was trying to have a bit of my own happiness. I thought Gracie was on track, old enough to be left alone more ...” Her voice cracked. She blew her nose again, her Kleenex turning ragged.
“Which church did Gracie attend on Sundays, Mrs.Drummond?” Pallorino said from the other side of the room. She’d moved back to the desk and was closely examining the gold pendant and chain.
“The Catholic cathedral downtown, same place she sings. Our family was fairly religious when Gracie was little, but we let things lapse after her father left, the divorce and all.” She inhaled shakily. “Gracie got back into the faith in a serious way after she started singing at the church. The choir is not faith-based itself, but it put her back into that environment, and she liked it.”
“Her joining that choir, her going back into the religious fold—did this perhaps coincide with her more upbeat change of mood that you noticed?” Pallorino said.
Drummond pushed a tangle of hair back from her brow. “Possibly. She joined the choir last June, the summer before she entered her final year of high school.”
Pallorino held up the little medallion that had been lying on the desk. The chain was broken. “It’s a Saint Christopher,” she said. “The patron saint of travelers, often worn on a chain or a bracelet, or carried in a pocket, or placed in a vehicle to keep the owner safe on journeys.”
“She wore that regularly. I guess she didn’t have it on Saturday night because the chain is broken.”
“It’s engraved on the back,” Pallorino said, turning over the medallion. “It says,For Gracie, with love, J.R.” She looked up. “Who is J.R.?”
“I ... I didn’t know that. I can’t think of anyone with the initials J.R.”
“How long has she been wearing this?”
“A while.”
“You don’t know exactly?”
She shook her head. “Last several months. At least.”
“And this wall calendar here—there’s a circle around last Tuesday. It says,Lara P., Amanda R., B.C. @ eight. She go out last Tuesday?”
“Yes. She went to Lara’s place. She said they were going to cook dinner, catch a chick-flick—sleepover.”
“Who’s Amanda R.?”
“I don’t know.”
“And B.C.?”
She shook her head.
“I see there’s another Lara-Amanda-B.C. date marked the week before, also on Tuesday. She do that fairly often, sleep over at Lara’s?”
“Regularly. Like I said, they go back, have been friends forever.”
“If you recall anything about those other initials, Amanda R., B.C., or J.R., will you give us a call, Mrs.Drummond? Anything at all, okay?” Pallorino handed the mother her card, then said, “Lara got a last name, address, phone number?”
“Pennington. She stays in an apartment right near campus.” Gracie’s mother scribbled down the address and number, handed it to Pallorino.
“And Rick Butler?”
“He graduated from Duneagle in June. He lives with his parents a block down from the school.” She wrote down the address.
“Can you provide us with contact details for Kurt Shepherd as well?”
“Why? You really don’t think—”
“Just to cover all bases, rule out as many people as possible.”
Lorna Drummond wrote her boyfriend’s details down, her mounting frustration evident in the sharp strokes of her pen. “I was with him,” she said, her voice becoming clipped as she handed Pallorino Shepherd’s address. “I was with my boyfriend when my daughter was raped, sodomized, and mutilated. Brutalized. He had nothing to do with it. I’m the one at fault. I should have been home.”
