“Any other family you know of? Aunts, uncles, cousins?”
“I don’t know of any other family, so I don’t know what would have become of photos or anything else. The last I knew, Lisa took off with the boy. He couldn’t have been but three or four, I guess. It’s been a long time. She was ten years older than me, Lieutenant Dallas, and if her name came up, a cloud fell over our house.”
Now she sighed. “I’m gonna confess. When my daddy got sick, and we knew he didn’t have long, Mama wanted to try to find her. She even talked about hiring a private eye and all that. I took Daddy’s side—or what I knew would be his side if he knew what she was thinking. I told her no, and I told her flat, and I said some hard things. And she let it go. Maybe I should be sorry for that, but I’m not.”
“I don’t think I would be, either. If you think of anything else, any detail at all, please contact me.”
“I surely will. Sorry I don’t know more. I hope you find him, Lisa’s boy, before he hurts anyone else.”
“Thank you.”
Eve wrote up the gist of the call.
Then looked up the data on the cast of characters Irene had given her.
Maternal great-grandfather—a drunk, a womanizer. Wife-beater, con, dies in prison—second stretch.
Maternal grandmother, slept around, liked to drink and use illegals—busts for destruction of property, underage drinking, possession, disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct. Dead at sixty-one, overdose of barbiturates mixed in vodka.
Mother, busted for solicitation as a juvenile, had a male child at the age of twenty—no father listed—possibly addicted to painkillers, uneven employment and place-of-residence history. No records after 2002.
Could’ve worked off the books, Eve thought. Worked the streets. Could’ve drifted from place to place.
Dumped the kid maybe. But not through channels, or there’d be a record. Sold him, dumped him, died on him.
But she hadn’t dumped him with the grandmother when she’d taken off, so why dump him later? Why not take him back?
She studied her notes again. Harsh DNA in there. Dark and harsh blood running through.
Violence and addiction and self-destruction.
But murder was a choice. It was always a choice.
And he’d chosen.
17
After she checked in with Jenkinson—no hits in the field—Eve started to call in Peabody to brief her. Then she heard the cowgirl boots on their way.
“I haven’t hit with the nail kit yet,” Peabody told her. “But I talked to Dawber at the lab. Short delay, comp glitch, but he’s back on it. He should have the sample analyzed and ID’d within thirty.”
“I’ve got Yancy working on the age projection sketches, and I spoke with McKinney’s half sister. There’s history on McKinney’s maternal side of alcohol and drug abuse, violence, and indications that could weigh in on Mira’s supposition re mental illness. I’m sending you and Mira a copy of my notes. But here’s the thing.”
Eve sat back, gestured to the AC so Peabody could get them both coffee.
“The half sister lives in Oregon, but my search shows she’s the only family member to relocate north of Tennessee. How and why did McKinney’s son end up in New York? Did she bring him—break that generational geographical habit?”
“Possible,” Peabody speculated. “She comes off as a drifter—no real employment skills or ambitions, no close family ties. Could be an: I’m done with this place. I need action, bright lights.”
“Possible,” Eve agreed. “But it takes guts to make that dramatic a change. Small to smallish southern towns to big-ass big city in the North. And funds. Costs more to live in New York, especially with a kid in tow. Even unhappy people cling to the familiar.”
Rising, Eve paced with her coffee. “There’s nothing to indicate she set her sights on New York, or the North. She took off, more than once as a teenager, but she didn’t get on a bus or stick out her thumb and head to a big city, or travel outside that—in general—familiar area. Every time she was picked up within a fifty-mile radius of home.”
“But he’s here.”
“Yeah, he is. She dumped him or died, that’s how it looks for me. Dumped him when she just couldn’t hack it anymore, or OD’d, met a bad end, or self-terminated.”
Eve paused by the board, looked into the young Lisa McKinney’s eyes. Pissed and defiant.
“She could’ve sold him—and that would suck for us, as we’d never find him in the system, and it’s already a crapshoot finding a John Doe minor, between age four and six—and we’d need to add a year on both sides to cover any discrepancies or miscalculations, in the Southeast.”