Bones Never Lie (Temperance Brennan, #17)(23)

“Three?” I asked.

“I’m putting it all in my journal. In case anything happens to me.” I could hear the gleam in her eye. “But I’ve sent you the names, dates, and locations. In separate emails, of course.”

“This isn’t necessary, Mama.”

“What about your young man?”

“Ryan has agreed to help.”

“I’m glad. If my brilliant baby likes him, this gentleman must be very clever.”

“I’ll visit as soon as I can.”

“You’ll do no such thing. You be dogged until you catch this horrible creature.”

I found Ryan in the kitchen discussing baseball with Birdie. Over coffee and quinoa-cranberry cookies, I gave him the basics.





CHAPTER 10


WHEN I WAS eight, following the loss of my father to an auto crash and my baby brother to leukemia, my grandmother relocated Mama, Harry, and me from Chicago to the Lee family home at Pawleys Island, South Carolina. Years later, after Harry and I had each married and moved on, Gran died at the overripe age of ninety-six.

A week after Gran’s funeral, Mama disappeared. Four years later, we learned she was living in Paris with a maid/nurse named Cécile Gosselin, whom she called Goose.

When I was thirty-five, Mama and Goose returned to the States. Since then they’d migrated between the Pawleys Island house and a sprawling condo on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

Throughout the years, if Mama felt the darkness closing in, or if Goose noted the telltale signs, they’d make their way to whatever facility had caught my mother’s attention most recently. While Daisy reassembled herself, Goose would return to France to revisit whatever life she’d lived pre–Katherine Daessee Lee Brennan.

It was midnight by the time I’d explained Mama to Ryan. Her beauty. Her charm. Her madness. Her cancer. By then we’d ingested sufficient caffeine to barefoot the entire Appalachian Trail.

“She’s smart as hell. And kick-ass on the Net. You want something, Mama will find it.” Perhaps needing to emphasize the positive. “She helped me find you.”

“Sounds like your mother should work for the NSA.”

“My mother should be shot straight back into treatment.”

We looked at each other, both knowing the time for therapy was past.

“Check her emails?” Ryan suggested.

“Sure.”

There were nine in all, sent to my Gmail, AOL, and university accounts. Coded, to indicate what linked to what.

“She is cautious,” Ryan said.

“She’s batty,” I said. Immediately regretted it.

We opened the lot, and I copied the information into a Word document.



Avery Koseluk, age thirteen, went missing in Kannapolis, North Carolina, on September 8, 2011. The child’s father, Al Menniti, vanished at the same time.



Tia Estrada, age fourteen, went missing in Salisbury, North Carolina, on December 2, 2012. Her body was found in a rural area of Anson County four days later.



Colleen Donovan, age sixteen, had been reported missing in Charlotte the previous February.





“I remember Donovan,” I said. “She was a high school dropout living on the streets. I think a prossie filed the missing persons report.”

“Cops probably wrote her off as a runaway. And she was older, so she didn’t fit Rodas’s profile,” Ryan said. “Koseluk would have been treated as a noncustodial parent abduction.”

“Estrada was Latina, so she wouldn’t have matched Rodas’s profile, either.” I’d just said that when my phone pinged three times, signaling incoming texts. Mama had sent photos of the girls, undoubtedly copied and pasted from the archived articles she’d found.

Ryan put his head close to mine as I tapped to enlarge each image. I had to work to keep breathing normally.

Each girl had fair skin and long center-parted brown hair. Each was at that child-woman phase typical of adolescence, limbs gangly, chests showing the first blush of breasts.

Donovan didn’t look sixteen. Estrada didn’t look Latina. It didn’t need stating.

“Slidell can contact Salisbury tomorrow,” Ryan said.

I nodded in his direction, not really seeing him. We knew what the police and autopsy reports would say. The article on Tia Estrada reported that she was found in the open, dressed and supine. Cause of death undetermined. No arrest made.

“Until then, we could both use some sleep.”

“Yeah.” I didn’t move.

“Tempe.”

I brought Ryan’s face back into focus. His eyes made me think of cool blue fire.

“You solid?”

“As a Russian tanker.”

“Would you prefer that I stay here tonight?”

Yes.

I shrugged.

“Go on up.” Ryan’s voice sounded strange. “I know where you keep the bedding.”

I awoke to the feeling that something was wrong.

Birdie was gone. Sunlight was knifing in through the shutters.

My eyes whipped to the clock: 8:10. I’d slept through my alarm. I never do that. Larabee may have already started the Leal autopsy.

I shot out of bed, threw on clothes, no shower. Pulled my hair into a pony and brushed my teeth. Thundered down the stairs.