Bringing Maddie Home. Janice Johnson Kay
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After a momentary silence, Duane said, “You have a hunch.”
Colin moved uncomfortably. “Why don’t I make a few calls? You have enough to do here, and you’re right. Chances are it’s a waste of time.” But he had to satisfy this uneasy feeling, and Duane, like any other cop, would understand.
After a moment, his lieutenant nodded and turned away. “All right,” he called. “Folks, let’s get pictures, and then we’ve got some work to do.”
Colin was reluctant to leave, but he was, essentially, an administrator now. He had to demonstrate trust in not only Duane, but also his detectives. Let them do their job. If he stayed, all he’d do was make them nervous.
He knew from experience, too, that more bones would be uncovered slowly. Officers and evidence techs wouldn’t be digging with shovels; they’d use trowels. From here on out, this would more nearly resemble an archaeological dig than a normal crime scene. It was going to take days, maybe weeks, given the scale of the damage wrought by the bulldozer.
But some answers should be forthcoming soon. With teeth, a femur—assuming that was one—and a pelvis, the medical examiner or a forensic pathologist ought to be able to nail down age and gender. A good guess at how long ago the victim had been buried would provide a starting point, too.
Walking away, he was surprised to feel a clutch of something like grief.
Don’t let it be Maddie.
Damn it, he thought, her parents would probably be relieved if these bones proved to be hers, if they knew at last, once and for all, what had become of their daughter. Who was he to want to prolong the agonizing, fading wisp of hope that she was only gone, not dead?
No one. He had no right to wish that kind of suffering for them. And, Jesus, he didn’t like to think about what Duane was feeling right now.
But it was his own memory, his own sense of failure, that caught at him now. Instead of going straight back to his SUV, he went to the trail and walked back into the park. Not far—just to the curve where he had found the bike that night. Voices and the sound of distant traffic were muffled here. He stopped, looking at the spot where her blood had soaked into the earth. He remembered the darkness, the thick silence. The crime scene tape that by morning had wrapped from tree to tree, the careful search for evidence never found. And the photos the newspaper had run, not only the one he had kept, but also candid shots of Maddie when she was younger.
Never smiling. Only in the school photo had her lips curved in an obligatory smile. Otherwise, her face was always solemn. Today, he felt the same unease he had then, the same sense that the common description of her as an introverted dreamer wasn’t quite right.
He stood for a moment, as if at a grave site, then finally, shaking his head, turned away. Some old wrongs could be righted. Some couldn’t.
* * *
COLIN SPOKE TO a Sergeant Fletcher in the Crook County sheriff’s department about the bones that had been found by a rock hound out past Prineville the previous year. “Nah, we never identified that kid,” Fletcher said. “Medical examiner’s best guess was that she was maybe fifteen, sixteen years old. She thought female, but you know that was a big maybe.”
Colin made a sound of agreement.
“Thing is, we never found the skull. Probably carried away by an animal. With no teeth to match to dental records, no fingerprints...” Probably he was shrugging. After a moment, he asked, “Have you thought about checking with other jurisdictions? I have this feeling Deschutes County had some bones, too.”
Goddamn. If I were a serial killer, Colin thought, I’d spread the bodies around, too. Good way to avoid anybody getting too interested, in case a few of those bodies were found eventually.
If these were related, the few that had been found almost had to be the tip of an iceberg. Think of how much empty country there was out here, with the high desert stretching to the east, the wooded, rugged mountains of the Cascade Range to the west. How many places to dump a body.
He didn’t like this line of thinking, but couldn’t avoid it. He thanked the sergeant and asked him to call if he thought of any more details or heard of anything relevant.
His gaze strayed to the bulletin board and Maddie Dubeau’s picture. Did this explain her disappearance? He didn’t want to think so.
Duane called a couple of hours later. “It can’t be Maddie,” he said baldly. “We’ll check dental records, too, but...Marge says this one is male.”
Relief was sharp, a jab to the chest rather than a gentler flood. Colin cleared his throat. “Age?”
“Can’t pin it down. Apparently some people get wisdom teeth real early, some not until their twenties, some never. Late teens, she thinks, but she wants more bones.”
Colin grunted. “I don’t have good news for you,” he said, starting with what the Crook County sergeant had told him. “Deschutes County had a kid, too, found four or five years ago, buried in the cinders on Lava Butte. Some teenagers were out there at night, drank a few six-packs—climbing up and sliding down, you know how it is—and they uncovered bones. A boy smashed the skull with his foot.”
“Bet that still gives him nightmares.”
“No shit,” Colin agreed. “That one was shot. There was an exit hole in the back of the head. Since, unlike Crook County, they had teeth, they were able to identify the victim. Another runaway, a girl from Vancouver last seen in Portland. Sixteen years old.”
“The one here in town was about the same age, too, wasn’t she?” Duane said thoughtfully.
“There are a hell of a lot of kids that age on the street.”
This wasn’t a problem they had much in Angel Butte. Winters were too cold in central Oregon for anyone to sleep in doorways or alleys year-round, and the town was too small for prostitution and panhandling to hide in shadows. But in larger cities, it was another matter.
“I called Bend, too,” Colin continued. “They didn’t have anything related. They think. A Detective—” he glanced at his notes “—Jacobs is going to do some research. He’s only been with the department for four years. Klamath County’s getting back to me.”
“If this one is a guy and those were girls, there’s likely no tie.” A serial killer was wired to choose victims to meet a certain need, usually at least part sexual, which almost always meant they were of one gender or the other.
“Probably not,” Colin agreed. Which didn’t mean these bones weren’t in some way connected to Maddie’s disappearance.
Duane gave an update on the search, which so far had turned up only a few additional small bones from a hand or foot.
The two men left it at that.
Colin rocked back in his chair. Well, the latest bones weren’t Maddie Dubeau’s. That was something.
She’d be twenty-seven years old now, if she were alive. Twenty-eight in a few weeks. He didn’t even have to think about it. His relationship with his sister wasn’t close, but he’d sent her a birthday card just last month. Like Cait, Maddie wouldn’t be a skinny kid anymore.
Some people didn’t change much from their early teen years, others so much so their own parents wouldn’t recognize them if they hadn’t been there every day while the transformation happened. The plain became pretty, the beautiful, ugly...or just ordinary.
Which way, he wondered, would Madeline Dubeau have gone?
He shook his head at his own foolishness. She was dead. She had to be. It was past time he quit clinging to the stubborn belief that she had somehow survived. How could she have? She had been a kid. A girl, small, fine-boned, physically immature for her age. Injured, snatched late at night and never seen again.
The very fact that she haunted him suggested that