The Vanishing Season (The Collector #4)(47)

Our oldest potential case so far.

Gala’s fingers fly over the keys.

“Who else?” I ask.

“Lydia Green, from Houston; Tiffany King, Seattle; and Melissa Jones, Sacramento.”

“Tiffany!” Gala squeaks, her hands clapping over her mouth.

“We put Tiffany down as a possibility just a bit ago,” I explain.

“Before the car accident, his father had just started looking into Miranda Norvell of Las Vegas, and he printed off a mess of articles about the search for Kendall Braun, Madison, Wisconsin.”

Kendall was on my lists. “She was just last year.” So how does Brooklyn fit into what seems like a clear pattern?

“Miranda and Kendall both had FBI involvement. They’ve got files you can access, and Lurch is bringing you his dad’s stuff.”

“Thanks, Sachin. We’ll keep in touch.”

“Please do.”

“I’ve got another name to consider,” Yvonne says as Bran hangs up. “Riley Young, from St. Paul, Minnesota. Five years ago.”

“Add her to the list.”

I track down the files for Miranda and Kendall on the Bureau intranet. Miranda went missing thirteen years ago. Her file shows much the same as what we’ve been digging through. She vanished while walking home from the corner store where the neighborhood kids liked to buy treats with their allowances. I open Kendall’s. Something about Kendall feels familiar, like maybe I caught one of the press conferences back when she was first missing, but I can’t . . .

A heavy knock hits the conference room door. “Yoooouuu raaaang?” says a slow, artificially deep voice.

Bran rolls his eyes. “Come on in, Lurch.”

“For heaven’s sake.” Yvonne sighs and shakes her head. “Why on earth would you call someone Lurch?”

The door opens, and the man behind it actually has to bend over to fit into the room. He must be over seven and a half feet tall in his stocking feet. Question answered. He carefully sets a plain cardboard file box on a clear spot on the table. Or an almost clear spot, which is as close as it gets.

Bran introduces everyone perfunctorily, eyeing the box.

“I flipped through the rest of Daddy’s paperwork just in case,” Agent Addams says in a distinct Charleston accent, “but these were the only ones that seemed pertinent. I sorely hope they can help.” After the fake Lurch voice, his actual light tenor is almost a shock.

“I’m sure they will,” I tell him. “Thank you for taking time out of work to get them.”

“If there’s anything else I can do, please let me know. And don’t fret; Sachin told me about the gag order. I won’t say anything. I’d appreciate it, though, if you could see your way to filling me in after. Awful nice if it turns out Daddy’s work helped find them after all this time.”

Ian stands to shake his hand. “I’ll update you myself, Agent Addams. Thank you.”

He doesn’t linger, and we all dive back into the files. Bran goes into each of the new computer files and sends the headshots to his email, then disappears to the bullpen. A few minutes later, he comes back with printed pictures for the whiteboard.

Frowning down at a handwritten page of notes, Ian sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Eyes bothering you?”

“Can’t tell if it’s my eyes or this writing.”

I hold out a hand, and he gives me the sheet. “Maybe both.”

“He mentions someone before Diana. That’s the part that’s impossible to read.”

Ian’s probably never had to try to decipher the notes Eddison takes while holding his Moleskine and walking. I still have to squint a bit where the late Detective Addams accidentally overwrote a few lines. “Karen Coburn, Kansas City, Missouri,” I say eventually. “She went missing two years before Diana, back in ’87.”

Gala promptly does a search. No FBI involvement, so we don’t have her file, but there’s a memorial website that her family created with pictures of her and links to resources for families of kidnapping victims. She spins the monitor, and we all look back and forth between Karen’s and Diana’s pictures a few times.

“They look more alike than any of the rest,” Yvonne says. “Good Lord, they could be twins.”

They really could. They even have the same scrunchie-wrapped high-side ponytail that was so popular in the late eighties and early nineties.

“Her parents spent about a decade traveling and speaking to law enforcement and victim advocacy groups,” Gala reports, eyes flicking back and forth across the screen. “They spoke in Charleston six months before Diana went missing.”

“Explains why the detective would make the connection. Wonder why he didn’t put a file together?”

“Why did he sit on them, like I did?” Ian asks ruefully. “If he had the Coburns on his mind going into the Shaughnessy investigation, he might have dismissed it as bias.”

“Fair point.” I stare down at Kendall’s picture. “Gala, with the exception of Brooklyn, is there anyone who fits all of our factors who disappeared in an even-numbered year?”

“Not yet.”

Bran stops pacing back and forth across the far end of the room. “What are you thinking?”

“Gala was right, they’re every other year, from Karen thirty-one years ago straight through to Kendall a year ago.”