Hide (Detective Harriet Foster #1)(96)

“I’m sorry. I’ve let you down.”

She had, but maybe he could retrain and redeem her. “You haven’t, kiddo.” He moved around the room, checking Amelia, not seeing the promise he once had, letting the lie comfort her. The loving smile he had perfected, the one that worked so well with babies and children, brightened his face. “Every problem has a solution. Now this is what we’re going to do.”





CHAPTER 70


“Okay, this is what we’re going to do,” Foster said, with Li and the others huddled up in the office. “We still have Morgan here. Amelia’s going to want to help him. That’s what Silva was about, I think. Another attack while we still had eyes on him was supposed to make us believe we had the wrong guy.”

“But she messed that up big time,” Kelley said.

“Now she’s got her own problems,” Lonergan groused. “We got every cop in the city lookin’ for her with that ID from the doc. We got her so far for attempted murder, and if Silva dies, the full ride. She’s not gonna be hangin’ around here.”

“And we swept Morgan’s place,” Symansky said. “No reflective paint. The only thing’s got us looking his way is Silva fingering him and the fact that he’s the oddest damn duck I’ve ever encountered.”

“I’m still looking for Priscilla,” Li said. “And Tom.”

Foster tacked photos of Amelia’s canvas up on the board. “Meanwhile, this is the painting she’s been working on. Li and I photographed the entire thing. It’s huge.”

“Good God, she’s all over the place with that,” Kelley said from his perch on Symansky’s desk. “Where’s the cohesiveness? The through line?”

“We’re not critiquing the quality of her work,” Lonergan bit back. “Head in the game, will ya?”

Kelley mouthed a rude comeback, then took a sip of coffee, glowering at Lonergan.

Foster pointed out the finer points. “A pink backpack. Silva’s face, the paint still fresh. Spikes, which punctured her tire. And here, here, and here, doors and padlocks. And over here a house.” Her finger bounced along the photo. “The house repeats several times. It has to be important. Look also at the little dots, some of them almost too light to pick up. Spots in red. Like blood.”

“There’s also a face there we haven’t seen before,” Li said. “Which means there’s somebody we haven’t found yet. Maybe the blood on Ainsley’s jacket belongs to her?”

“Here,” Foster said, pointing to a faint sketch of a face that hadn’t yet been painted in. “No idea who this might be. It looks like she started but didn’t finish. There’s no telling how long she’s been at this.”

“There are no prints or DNA on the victims,” Bigelow said. “So nothing connects her to anybody, even to Silva, as quiet as it’s kept. And if Silva dies, we don’t even have her shaky ID going for us. Davies could argue, and her lawyers will, that Silva was mistaken, hopped up on pain meds and out of her head wrong.”

Lonergan readjusted in his squeaky chair. “And this painting looks like what a kid would do with movie posters. Maybe she’s just one of those twisted people who’re news junkies and lose their minds over high-profile cases. Instead of tackin’ up newspaper clippings, she paints the details.”

“I’d believe that,” Li said. “Maybe, if it weren’t for the spikes. Those never made the news reports, or if they did, I didn’t see it. Davies wouldn’t know about the spikes unless she put them there . . . or someone who was with her.” She stepped up to the photo again, pointed at an image in the far corner. “A cell phone. We never found Birch’s.” She found another spot on the canvas. “And another. We never found Rea’s either.”

Lonergan frowned. “Wait. Back up. Someone like who?”

Foster faced him. “Tom Morgan.”

Lonergan stood, the clearing of his throat loaded with pomposity and scorn. “You’re takin’ a wrong turn. A woman’ll poison you, shoot you, but I don’t see one guttin’ you from stem to stern, then draggin’ you under a bridge. That’s a guy. That’s a guy with issues.”

“I can name at least five women right off the top of my head,” Foster said, challenging him. “Including Davies. We have Silva’s ID.”

“Maybe,” Bigelow said, “but I think Lonergan’s kinda right. These women were hacked up. Women don’t tend to do that.”

“And maybe we’re trying to shoehorn Silva’s attack into the others,” Symansky said. “They could be unrelated. Her ID could be wrong. The painting, not coincidence but Davies pinging off the same thing that’s got the whole city wound up, with some weird additions.”

Kelley nodded. “Right. I know we all want to wrap all this up and find the guy, but we can’t make the mistake of making stuff into what it isn’t. We’ve got a few threads here. We need to make sure we’re not jumbling them up.”

As much as Foster hated to admit it, she knew they were right. “First move then, find Davies. Second move?”

“The family,” Li said. “Priscilla.” She studied the photographs of Amelia’s painting, pointed to it. “That house.”