The room was quiet for a long second.
“What the hell?” asked Bruce. The young deputy crossed his arms and glowered. “It sounds like Rich Causey is still causing problems with women and their children.”
“What if the penciled message is old?” asked Tessa. “The newspaper is seven years old—we don’t know that the message is new.”
“Maybe it’s not,” said Cate. “But the FBI needs to know about this immediately.”
“I agree,” said Tessa. “I’ll see that my office provides whatever support they need.” She tilted her head as she studied Cate. “You okay?”
Cate met her gaze, and Henry saw the pain in her eyes. “This was a tough case for me. Kori and I connected on a personal level. I lived in her house for two weeks, never letting her out of my sight while a team worked the case. She treated me like a sister. Now I feel horrible that I haven’t been in touch with her in over two years. I used to call or email her every few months and let her know that we hadn’t forgotten her daughter and were still looking for new leads.” She grimaced. “I haven’t done it since . . .”
Since I was shot.
“I hope the case hasn’t been overlooked by the bureau since then,” Henry said.
“I assume someone else is handling it and keeping in touch with her. It will never close until her daughter turns up. She told me several times how thankful she was that we were trying to find her daughter. She knew we were investigating every single lead.”
“Cate, is there any chance that Kori was involved in her daughter’s disappearance?” Tessa asked slowly. “And her husband’s?”
Henry swallowed. The thought hadn’t even occurred to him.
“Of course there’s a chance,” Cate answered with a shrug. “The team discussed it several times, but other than Rich’s friends telling us that Kori and Rich argued a lot, we never found any evidence to support that.”
“My question is, Who wrote this?” said Henry, tapping a finger on the table next to the handwritten sentence on the newspaper. “And how current is it?” He’d felt disgust for Rich Causey while reading the article. The written plea for help had cemented it.
“The FBI will look into it,” said Cate. “But no trace of Rich has ever shown up since he disappeared seven years ago. He’ll be hard to find.” She reached for the newspaper but pulled her hand back at the last moment. “I wish I hadn’t handled the paper. Hopefully I didn’t ruin any evidence.”
Henry looked from the newspaper to the tiny bone on the box. “No one expects to be handed murder evidence on the street.”
“It’s not murder yet,” said Bruce. “Right now, it’s still a kidnapping.”
Henry exchanged a look with Cate.
She thinks it’s murder too.
2
Cate’s mind had been a whirlwind ever since she had seen the small mandible, details of the old case flooding her thoughts. She’d gone to work at the bakery, only to have her grandmother, Jane, kick her out after she messed up an order of brownies.
“Your mind is somewhere else. Shoo,” Jane had said, flicking her hands at Cate. “I don’t need you here making more work for me.”
Everyone did what Jane ordered.
Her grandmother had that way about her. A natural manager. She knew how to get shit done and make the workers happy while doing it. She’d been a force on the island for decades.
So Cate had retreated to the bookstore and unpacked new inventory, offering the boxes with crinkly packing paper to Ghost, the bookstore cat. The cat alternated between leaping into boxes and thrashing around as noisily as possible to abruptly going motionless under the brown paper, hiding and waiting for prey—which was Cate’s wiggling hand. She received a few scratches, but Ghost’s enjoyment and the sight of his huge hunter-mode pupils made them worth it.