Crash & Burn (Tessa Leoni, #3)(94)

That moment, right before . . .

Smoke. Heat. My house burning down in New Hampshire. Why did Thomas torch it? His workshop maybe, but our entire house? Why the need to burn it to the ground?

How did Thomas become so good with fire?

Vero, laughing in the back of my mind. “Is it your past you’re trying to escape, or the man you married?”

I rein it all in. Force my eyes to focus on the here and now. The darkened hotel room. The empty bed beside me. I don’t want to feel so helpless anymore. Or lost or confused or overwhelmed.

This is it. The moment of truth.

I can spend the rest of my life being a dead woman’s roommate or a missing man’s wife.

Then, in the next heartbeat.

No. I’m more than either of those two things. I’m the one who wanted to move to New Hampshire, even when Thomas tried to convince me otherwise. I’m the one who hired a private investigator, even though Thomas tried to tell me to let it be.

I’m a woman twice returned from the dead.

And I’m not finished yet.





Chapter 32




WHILE WYATT WORKED with Kevin on the fingerprint riddle, Tessa got on the phone with D. D. Warren.

The Boston detective was her usual charming self. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

“My watch says midnight.”

“I haven’t even agreed to work for your high-and-mighty investigative firm yet—”

“But you did agree to a freelance assignment.”

“I already achieved the high score on Angry Birds.”

“You, an angry bird? Who would’ve thought?”

“Shut up,” D.D. said.

Which made Tessa smile. Because as interactions with the temperamental detective went, this was par for the course, and so far, the most normal conversation Tessa had had all night.

“I’m sorry to call so late,” Tessa acknowledged. “But if memory holds, you’re one of those round-the-clock workers. As in you’ll sleep when you retire. Or the day you drop dead.”

“Same diff,” D.D. replied.

“Perfect, because this case feels like it’s spiraling out of control and we definitely could use some answers sooner versus later.”

Wyatt had wrapped up his call. Tessa waved him over to join, putting her phone on speaker. Wyatt and D.D. had worked together on the Denbe case, so no introductions were required.

“How’s your arm?” Wyatt asked.

“Getting there.”

“Got a date for the fitness-for-duty test?” he asked.

“Getting there,” D.D. said, and this time her voice indicated end of discussion. “So the Veronica Sellers case. According to the always-in-the-know-and-never-wrong nightly news, you found the missing girl. Albeit thirty years late.”

“Um . . . we’re not so sure about that,” Tessa said.

A moment of silence. Then: “Well, I’ll be damned. Guess I’m happy I took your call after all.”

Wyatt explained about the fingerprint confusion, filling in now: “Kevin just examined the latex gloves using a magnifying glass, and sure enough, there appear to be ridge patterns at the end of each finger. As in, Thomas Frank somehow fashioned a pair of fingerprint gloves, designed to leave Veronica Sellers’s prints all over his wife’s car.”

“He wanted his wife identified as a missing girl from a thirty-year-old cold case?” D.D. asked in confusion. “But why?”

“That’s the million-dollar question. Got any ideas?”

“I’ve been reviewing the whole sorry case file,” D.D. said. “Can I just say, when you asked me to look into all the missing-kid and runaway-youth cases from thirty years ago in New England . . . What a shit assignment.”

“It’s a major investigation,” Tessa informed her. “Is there any other kind of assignment?”

“Touché. Look, I gave it my best go, but you have two fundamental issues when trying to track down a major sex-slave ring from that far back.”

“Okay,” Wyatt prompted.

“One, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children was still in its infancy. So we don’t have one central database. I mean, kind of. Major departments, such as Boston, took the time to send in their documents. But if you consider all the small-town offices, remote sheriff’s departments, out there who were already way understaffed, the information collection in the beginning was hit or miss, particularly for the years you’re looking at.”

“Then you go department by department,” Tessa stated, which was definitely a shit assignment, and yet, as all three of them knew, how things got done.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which brings us to problem number two. Garbage in. Garbage out.”

Tessa was still contemplating that one when Wyatt got it.

“You mean were the missing kids ever categorized as missing?”

“Ding-ding-ding, give the man a prize. Ask any cop who works vice. Most of the underaged working girls are runaways. Some might have been declared missing, but the vast majority—”

“Aren’t even in the system,” Tessa finished for her.

“Exactly. So yeah, I can kill the next week begging and pleading for every backwoods law enforcement agency to search their archives for missing persons cases going back at least thirty years, or I can actually do something productive with my time.”