Daylight (Atlee Pine, #3)(120)

CHAPTER





76





THE COLDEST OF CASES.

Pine had the file on Joe Atkins’s murder and the disappearance of his wife spread out on the bed in her motel room. The unofficial conclusion by the local cops was that Desiree had killed her husband and fled. They had no idea that another person was living with them, so that person was never a suspect.

Not just a suspect. My sister.

She had seen Mercy on the video, she was sure of that. But she now had another piece of evidence leaving no doubt. DNA could live a long time on certain surfaces, and there were many things in that cave that Pine had never touched that had come back as confirmed to be consistent with her DNA.

Not mine, of course, but Mercy’s.

The file did not have much in it. The autopsy on Atkins showed that he had died from a knife wound that had severed his aorta. He had bled out. But he also had severe blunt force trauma to his head. The trauma had clearly been done before he died.

Beaten and then stabbed.

The chain in the cave broken. The door busted. Mercy escaped. Captured on that video for all time.

And . . . maybe during that escape she had exacted her revenge on her captors.

She knew where Joe Atkins was. Six feet under. But where was Desiree? Where had Leonard and Wanda Atkins gone? Were they still alive? Should she try to find them?

Deputy Sheriff Wilcox had listened patiently to Pine’s speculation and information. He had provided her copies of the case file. He had looked at the video. He had even gone out to the cave to see it for himself. He had been intrigued by the possibility of another person present at the scene. He had been surprised that that person was Pine’s twin. But he seemed to have no desire to pursue an investigation into the matter. And neither, he told Pine, did his boss, the sheriff.

Wilcox had said, “We’re really not equipped to handle cold cases. And from what you said, seems to me that this Joe Atkins fella got what was coming to him.”

Now she went outside, where it was starting to rain. She drove to the one restaurant in the area, went inside, and ordered a coffee.

The rain picked up and she gazed out the window as it poured down. She sipped her drink and saw in the rain nothing positive. Not one damn thing. On the one hand, she had made tremendous strides in tracking down what had happened to her sister. Mercy had been abducted by Ito Vincenzo and given to the Atkinses, and then Len Atkins had passed her off to Joe and Desiree Atkins. At some point—Pine didn’t know exactly when—Mercy had gone from the room in the house to a locked cave.

As Pine sat there, her mind wandered deeper and deeper into terrifying thoughts. Instead of finding her sister alive and well, or at least being able to locate and identify her remains, she now had to contemplate the possibility that her sister had killed one and maybe two people and was out there somewhere, doing God knew what. Pine knew that after her years of brutalization at the hands of the Atkinses, there was little possibility that she would even be able to recognize her sister, either physically or emotionally.

She closed her eyes, and the image of her sister in that video returned to haunt her.

Pine had had her sister with her every day of her life for six-plus years. And then for thirty years, nothing. Until now. And she could not reconcile the woman on that video with the little girly-girl who loved her tea parties and stood up for her little sister whenever Pine had gotten in trouble.

I just want to find her. I want to help her. I want her to . . . have the life she should have had.

Her ringing phone was a grateful distraction. She didn’t recognize the number, but she answered it anyway.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Agent Pine, this is Darren Castor from Trenton. You talked to me about when I worked for Ito Vincenzo.”

“Yes, Mr. Castor, what can I do for you?”

“Well, you said to call you back if I remembered anything. And I do. See, I got my dates wrong.”

Pine stiffened. “Excuse me? The dates wrong?”

“I told you that I started working for the auto body place in 2001.”

“Yes.”

“Well, I was wrong. I started working there in 2002, not 2001. It was during the first week of June. Should have known it wasn’t 2001. I mean, three months later 9/11 happened.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yep. I checked my pay stubs and some other records I’d kept around.”

“You said the summer. Do you have a specific date? That would be really helpful.”

“I do, as a matter of fact. The day he didn’t show up was June first. I remember that because my wife’s birthday is the second of June.”

Birthday?

“Well, hope that helps,” said Castor.

“What, oh yes, thank you very much, Mr. Castor. It was a big help.”

She clicked off and stared down at the phone. A terrible thought, a truly bizarre piece of speculation, was making the rounds in her head like a bullet caroming around.

She called Blum. “We need to go see Jack Lineberry. Right now.”





CHAPTER





77





PINE DROVE FAST AND MOSTLY IN SILENCE. She had not explained to Blum why they needed to see Lineberry. She could not bring herself to even say out loud what she was thinking. If it turned out to be true, it would be horrendous.