She started to sit, to take two minutes to clear her head, when Peabody signaled from the bullpen.
“The Cabots are here, Lieutenant.”
“Take them to the conference room. I’ll be right there.”
5
The Cabots sat at the conference table with their son between them. A unit, Eve thought when she walked in, bound together by grief. Each carried the pallor of the exhausted, and the stricken eyes of the shattered.
She saw Oliver Cabot reach for his wife’s hand when Eve approached the table.
“Dr. and Ms. Cabot, Ethan, I’m Lieutenant Dallas. Again, I’m very sorry for your loss, and appreciate you coming in to speak with us.”
Eve took a seat next to Peabody. Instinct had her speaking to the mother first. “This is hard, and the questions we’ll ask may make it even harder. I promise you, they’re necessary for us to find who hurt Mina.”
“Nothing you can say or do could make this harder than it is.” Rae Cabot, her bright hair drawn severely back in a tail, held Eve’s gaze with her devastated eyes. “All these months we believed—had to believe—we’d find her and bring her home. Now that’s gone, and Mina’s gone. Nothing can make it harder.”
“Do you know if Mina had any contacts or connections in New York, or any reason to come here?”
“She was taken from us. She was brought here. If you think she ran away—”
“I don’t.” The simple response tempered some of the fire that leapt into Rae’s eyes. “I’ve read Detective Driver’s reports and agree with her conclusions. But it’s a question I have to ask.”
“She didn’t know anyone here.” Oliver spoke now. “We brought the kids to New York a couple of times a year, to see a show, to visit museums.”
“She always wants to go shopping.” Head down, Ethan mumbled it, then knuckled his eyes.
“She does.” With a ghost of a smile on her face, Rae stroked his thatch of red hair. “And you always want the pizza. We’d come in as a family,” Rae continued. “Sometime during the holidays to see all the decorations and a Christmas show, and early summer, after school let out. She’s smart, and could have figured out how to get from home to New York on her own. But she didn’t.”
“We know, from Detective Driver’s files, the police conducted a thorough search on all of Mina’s devices and found no questionable correspondence or activities. But there are other ways for someone to connect with a young girl.”
“The investigators looked at that, and they—and we—talked to all Mina’s friends, her classmates, her soccer team, teachers, coaches, neighbors.”
“And she would tell us.” Rae interrupted her husband. “I’m not saying Mina didn’t have some secrets, some things she didn’t tell us. But she wasn’t sneaky.”
“It could have been very innocent on her part,” Peabody put in. “Something she didn’t mention because it didn’t seem important or unusual. Someone she passed on the walk home from school.”
“She’d never have gone with someone willingly, or gotten into a stranger’s car. Never. The short distance she walked is in a neighborhood,” Rae insisted. “It’s residential and quiet. It’s safe. It’s always been safe.”
As silent tears slid down Rae’s cheeks, Eve laid the printout of Dorian Gregg’s ID photo on the table. “Do you recognize this girl? Any of you?”
“I don’t. Oliver?”
“No, she doesn’t look familiar.”
“Mina has lots of girlfriends, but not this one,” Ethan said.
“Who is she?” Rae demanded. “Does she have something to do with Mina?”
“We have reason to believe this girl was abducted also. Evidence indicates she was with Mina last night.”
“What does that mean?” Oliver demanded. “Do you think—is this girl a suspect?”
“At this point we consider her a witness.”
“Do you think Mina knew her? There haven’t been any other child abductions from our area,” Rae added. “We’d have heard. She looks about the same age as Mina. If they went to school together…”
“She wasn’t from your area.”
Rae’s eyes narrowed. “Where?”
“New Jersey.”
“Oliver, why don’t you and Ethan go grab a snack?”
“You don’t want me to hear, but I’m not going. I’m not.” Ethan’s face reddened with temper under a scatter of freckles. “She’s my sister. And I was mean to her that morning. That morning before school I said how Nick was gonna try to touch her boobies.”