A Merciful Secret (Mercy Kilpatrick #3)(78)

“I don’t want you missing anything.” Truman understood. Linkage blindness happened frequently. It was easy to steer all efforts toward one lead to the detriment of the other leads. The intense focus would make an investigator miss opportunities.

“I don’t want to either.” Bolton ended the call.

Why did he call me? He could have run his theory past Ava or Eddie.

Truman looked at the drawings again. Bolton’s connect-the-dots lines definitely looked like a weapon.

Why?

Boots sounded in his hallway, and David Aguirre stopped outside his door. “Got a minute?” The minister was covered from head to toe with a light dusting of snow. He pulled off his stocking cap, creating a minisnowstorm in the hall.

Truman stood and indicated a chair. “What’s up?”

David twisted his hat in his hands, a struggle on his face. “I don’t know if this is any of my business . . .”

“Why don’t you let me decide that?”

“When you were looking at those particular months in the church records the other day, you were looking for some sort of connection to Salome Sabin, right?”

“Honestly, David, I’m not sure. Since a woman looking like Salome had possibly broken into the church and we had another break-in at the library, I was trying to connect the two in some way. Whether or not Salome was involved remains to be seen.”

“Well, I assumed that’s what you were looking for. I knew she was a year behind me in high school, so I estimated her age and took another look at the records. I looked at later dates than you did.” He slid a ledger out of his jacket, flipped it open to a page, and handed it to Truman.

The book was warm from David’s body heat. Truman noted the dates on the page were nearly a year after the microfiche film months. The name jumped out at him immediately. Salome Beth Sabin. Age two weeks. Olivia was the sole parent listed.

“She was baptized in the church?” Truman wondered aloud. “That surprises me a bit.”

“You never know what faith means to people. Olivia and I had our differences, but we also had a lot of beliefs in common. I suspect the baptism was very symbolic to her in some way.”

Truman stared at the baptism date. He turned to his computer, quickly accessed a database, and verified he was correct. “According to the DMV, Salome was born six months before this baptism date.” He looked up at David. “I can’t imagine the minister would mistake a six-month-old baby for a two-week-old. The baptism record has to be the correct date.”

“How did you know this baptism date didn’t make sense with her birth date?” David scowled.

“When everyone was searching for her, I looked up her driver’s license. I’d noted the birth date to see if she was the age I thought she was.”

“What’s the big deal about a few months?”

“Her father, Antonio Ricci, was sitting in jail during the twelve months before this baptism date.”

David’s face cleared. “Oh.”

Truman nodded. Is it relevant?





THIRTY-ONE

Morrigan is restless.

It’s a struggle to keep her occupied. We’ve been living in the same small space for three days now, and she wants to know why. I can’t tell her someone wants to kill me. And her. Today we played in the snow again. I’ve built more snowmen and made more snow angels than I have in my entire life. We started to construct an igloo, using a rectangular bin to form bricks. It’s challenging and time consuming. Exactly what she needs.

My hands in the snow connect me with its energies. I close my eyes, inhale the crisp scent, and taste the clean air. I pick up a handful of the snow and study the minuscule structures that make up the whole.

“What are you doing?” Morrigan asks me.

I show her the snow on my glove. “What do you see? Look deep.”

My daughter pulls off a mitten and tentatively touches the white fluff. “They’re so tiny. Itty bitty crystals.” She looks at the start of our igloo. “But they can form something so big.” She gently takes my handful of snow and adds it to a brick of our structure. She steps back and looks up at the snow on the pines, an entranced look on her face. I’ve seen it before at our home. She is an outdoor girl and loves to lose herself in the nature around her.

I’m proud of her. Teaching her to love and respect the nature around her has been one of my goals since Morrigan became mine. A face flashes in my mind. Morrigan’s birth mother. I send out a request that she have peace. She will never know the wonderful gift she gave me.

I thank nature for its abundance. The beauty around me. The life it gives me. My child.

While hiding, I spend my time thinking. It is clear that we can never return to our home as long as my father still hunts us. I’ve agonized over telling the police what I know, but I doubt their ability to believe me. And can they protect me and Morrigan 24-7? Of course not. It’s best if we stay in the shadows, but we can’t do it forever. The fact that he found us in the woods tells me his resources are still vast.

I must kill him to remove the threat from our lives. From my daughter’s life.

I see no other option.

A sharp pain rips open my heart. How can a child kill a parent? Would Morrigan stab a knife in my chest if I posed a threat to her? What if there were a threat to her daughter? I shake my head. She needs to have her own child to understand how a mother would die to protect her children.