Heather(15)

“Because she was a slut,” McIntyre says. “Odds were pretty good someone knocked her up and she didn’t know who the dad was.” The word slut hits Callie like a slap. He looks at her as he says it, a satisfied gleam to his eye that tells her he relishes the chance to aim this word her way.

“She went AWOL right after the baby was found. She had dropped out of school before so it was hard to tell when she went missing, but no one ever saw her around here again. Innocent people—they don’t run.”

Something about that timing doesn’t sit right with Callie. A teenager, vulnerable, had just given birth, somehow finds the resources and the wherewithal to start a new life somewhere else? But she humors Mac. “I’ll look into that.”

“Look into it? You actually trying to solve the case?” McIntyre shakes his head, fixes her with a pitying look.

“Asking questions. Sometimes with cold cases time shakes things loose a little bit.” She bites her tongue about the bracelet, about the sense she has that there’s a bigger story here.

“Sometimes some high-horse detectives think they can show some Pineys a thing or two about good old-fashioned police work. Like one of those HBO shows. Keegan, you going to the Tavern?”

“I was going to have one, yeah.”

Keegan gives her a look—sheepish—but his loyalties are his loyalties. The guys all drink together in the one-room bar up the road. She sees their cars parked in the sandy lot every time she leaves a shift. Frank used to go—he’s told her as much—but no one has ever asked her along.



* * *



Back in her office Callie searches Susannah Riley in the system. No records. Nothing online, no social media—or rather, too many Susannah Rileys that social media is of no immediate use. Girls twisting their torsos to pout at a camera. A Susannah Riley in England who posts pictures of her garden. Gnarled wisteria vines heavy with flowers. Tulips so purple they are nearly black.

Fuck it, she thinks. She’ll use the bathroom, then get out of here. Her limbs are suddenly heavy with exhaustion.

In the stall she lets her head drop to her hands, lets her body go limp. She texts Jane, asks her how her day has been.

Jane sends her a link to a TikTok video. I’ve been going down such a rabbit hole with this one. Oh, and Opes made you a necklace. It’s hideous and she’s so excited to give it to you.

I’ll wear it with pride.

Maybe wait till you see it first.

Callie clicks on the link and watches the first few seconds of the video. A lipsticked young woman with glossy hair explains that a woman was found dead in a field in 1979 in Western Pennsylvania, the cops looked at all the wrong people, but she’s got a lead that is about to blow this thing wide open …

Callie closes the video. She can’t deal with these internet detectives, their affected righteousness and thirst for gore. She texts Jane: Wanna know about the real life of a cop? I just spent my afternoon springing twenty-five muskrats from traps.

She puts her phone away, washes her hands, and when she turns to the door she finds a blue Post-it note on the back, eye level.

Sabrina Riley, it says, in Della’s looping script.



* * *



Sabrina Riley she finds in the system. An arrest at seventeen for disorderly conduct in front of a bait shop where she was employed at the time. Time of arrest, 7:00 P.M. No mention of drugs or intoxication. A broken window. An altercation with a one William—Billy—Fauver.

“No shit,” Callie says, lets out a little whistle.

Billy Fauver is in the system, too. His record is lengthier: one arrest for marijuana possession a decade ago, for which he did community service; poaching; a handful of traffic violations; arrested again, five years ago, in relation to a domestic dispute, battery; charges dropped by his ex-wife, a woman named Angela Harris.

Good guy, she mutters. Violent toward women. Nineteen years old to Sabrina’s seventeen, not much of a difference but old enough that he would have the upper hand. Or want to have the upper hand. Wouldn’t want to give her time, money, sacrifice his independence, his will to do what he wants when he wants.

What was it that Kirby had said? Don’t piss that guy off.

In his mug shot Fauver looks offended. Chin thrust forward, mouth drawn in a tight line. Handsome, in a sneering way. Maybe Sabrina Riley would have found him magnetic, before she understood that he was really just mean. Maybe Fauver was a boyfriend, maybe a one-time hookup. Maybe she felt like she couldn’t raise the baby on her own. The fight with Fauver might have been about paying for childcare. About getting him to help out. It would have been three months before the baby was found. The clock ticking. Riley getting increasingly desperate.

She cross-checks Sabrina Riley’s address in the system with the location where Baby Doe was discovered, on Jenna’s old street, three-quarters of a mile away from Sabrina Riley’s house. Not inconceivable, if the girl had gone into the woods for privacy. Maybe she carried the child to the road, left it somewhere she hoped it would be seen before it was too late. A Safe Haven law wasn’t passed in New Jersey until 2000, which made it legal to surrender an infant at a police station or fire department. She probably thought she would get in trouble for asking for help, or for leaving the child where the authorities could find it. And she was probably right.



* * *