The smile vanished. “Please hold.”
The screen went to blue and drippy holding music. But this time the doctor herself came on.
“What in the world is this about? I had to leave a vital meeting of—”
“I don’t care. I’m investigating two murders, three abductions.”
The woman who looked to be wearing a sharp red suit stared back at Eve with Lisa McKinney’s eyes. “You do realize I’m not in New York City?”
“Your half brother is, and he’s my prime suspect.”
Joella Fletcher brushed at her perfectly groomed auburn hair around a narrow face—like her mother’s—and cast her eyes skyward. “I don’t have a half brother. I have two brothers, and neither of them are in New York. Now, Lieutenant—”
“Your mother was Violet Fletcher?”
“Yes.”
“Before she became Violet Fletcher or Violet Blank, she was Lisa McKinney, born in Bigsby, Alabama, in 1978, and gave birth to a male child in 1998.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s fact.”
“Lieutenant, my mother, Violet Blank Fletcher, was born in Tennessee. Her parents were drifters who moved around, taking work in housekeeping, lawn maintenance. Handyman stuff. They were killed during Hurricane Opal.”
“Her parents were Buford and Tiffany McKinney. Violet Blank didn’t exist before 2004. What did she say her parents’ names were?”
Eve actually heard Joella’s nails drumming impatiently on her desk. “She didn’t, that I recall.”
“Where did she go to school?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if she went regularly because her parents moved around so much. She didn’t like to talk about it. She often said her life really began when she met my father.”
“I bet. And how did they meet?”
“He hired her to help with the house, the gardens. It’s an old family plantation house that came to him from his grandparents. They fell in love, married, raised a family there. A happy family that has nothing to do with murders in New York.”
“Your mother died last fall of an overdose.”
“Accidental,” Joella snapped. “She was grieving for her husband, my father. His death was so sudden, so hard. It’s still hard. She couldn’t sleep, and she became disoriented and took too many pills.”
“Doctor, I believe up to now you’ve told me the truth as you know it. It’s not the truth, but it’s what you were told, and why would you question it? But you just lied to me, and that tells me your mother took her own life.”
“I have nothing more to say to you.”
“I believe she contacted this individual, her first child, perhaps to try to make amends in some way. And that contact triggered a psychic break. I have the top profiler and psychiatrist in New York City, if not the damn East Coast, who will confirm this. He’s killed two women with strong resemblances to your mother at the same age.
“You’re a scientist. There were a lot of blanks in her past—before your father. Including the name she chose. Blank. You never questioned that?”
“She had an unhappy childhood, and wanted to put it behind her.”
“She did have an unhappy childhood, just not the one she created for you. And from what I’ve learned today, she created a new life, and a good one, was a good mother, a good wife. She loved you. She left a note for you before she took those pills.”
“It was an accident.”
“Dr. Fletcher, by trying to save your mother’s memory, to spare the shadow of suicide, you’re blocking any detail that might help me find and stop this man. Look at this.”
She turned to bring up Elder’s crime scene photo. “Her name was Lauren Elder. She had a man who loved her, a family who loved her. This is what he did to her because she bore a resemblance to your mother.”
“My—my mother never looked like that. She never.”
“She had a tattoo of a butterfly on her back, wings spread. Lower back.”
“She had it done when she was a teenager. I don’t see what—”
“Wait.” She shifted to the photo of Elder’s back. “This is the tattoo he put on Lauren Elder, and on Anna Hobe, his second victim. It’s the same, isn’t it?”
She watched some of the color drain out of Joella’s face. “A lot of women get butterfly tattoos.”
“It’s exactly the same, isn’t it?”