“I’ve had two glasses of wine and I’m a little bit tipsy,” Nessa confessed. She wasn’t sure what was happening to her. First she’d taken up cursing, and now she’d started drinking alone. There was no telling what she’d end up doing next.
“I’ve found a few bodies in my day,” he responded. “Sometimes a drink or two is the only thing that helps.”
Nessa’s spine stiffened. She hadn’t meant to get personal. “What’s the latest on my girl?” she asked.
Franklin sighed. “Fentanyl overdose,” he said. “There were signs she’d had intercourse shortly before she died. Odds are, she was a sex worker who took one pill too many while she was out with a client. When she died, he didn’t know what to do, so he dumped her body on the side of the road. It happens around here—a lot more often than any of us like to think.”
“How often?” Nessa asked.
“A few times a year,” Franklin said.
“In Mattauk?”
“The general vicinity.”
The statistic was hard to swallow. “Then why haven’t I heard about it?” Nessa demanded.
“Because the deaths of drug-addicted sex workers rarely make the news,” Franklin said. “That’s not how I’d like it, but that’s how it is. You’re a nurse, Nessa. You know I’m right.”
She did. Nurses know better than anyone just how dark the world gets. “Okay, but that’s not what happened to my girl,” Nessa said. “She was clean.”
“The test showed high levels of fentanyl in her system.”
“Then someone drugged her,” Nessa shot back.
Franklin stayed quiet for a beat too long. “You want to tell me how you could know that, Nessa?”
She came right out with it. “I saw her.”
“You saw her?”
Nessa had planned to tell him everything, but at the last moment, she lost her nerve. She’d held on to her secrets for thirty-five years. She wasn’t ready to reveal them all at once. “I saw her in a dream,” Nessa lied. “That’s how I knew where to look for the body. She’s been calling to me. She’s been waiting for me to find her.”
This time, the pause that followed was so long, Nessa felt the need to fill in the silence.
“The girl I saw looked seventeen or eighteen but could have been younger. She died wearing a pale blue dress and black heels, and she had a little quilted black leather handbag. Her hair was in twists and it looked like it had just been done. She was dressed like she was on her way to a party.”
“There was a bag like the one you described underneath the body,” Franklin said. “It was empty but the label said ‘Ofelia.’ That mean anything to you?”
“Ofelia? Never heard of it.”
“Me neither. But according to Google, it’s a popular Caribbean retail chain. We’re checking the files for missing girls who might have family there. Right now, it’s our best lead, unless you can give me something else.”
She could. “The girl wasn’t alone in my dream. There was another young woman down there—a Mattauk girl who disappeared two years ago. Whoever killed her must have dumped her body in the ocean. She was my daughters’ age. They went to the same school. I believe her name was Mandy Welsh.”
“You’re telling me that in your dream, this girl Mandy Welsh was dead too? Are you sure, Nessa?”
“No, I’m not sure!” Nessa snipped. “I’m new to all of this. All I’m asking is that you go take a look. Will you do that or not?”