A Different Blue(105)

“Yeah. It does. August of '92 or '93. Hotel room. Missing child. T-shirt with a truckstop logo.

What else can you give me? Anything at all?”

“She was young . . . maybe younger than I am now.” The thought had struck me often in the last

few months. “She was Native American, like Jimmy. I think that might be one of the reasons she

left me with him.” Maybe I was kidding myself. But it was something to hold onto.

“I'm gonna make some calls. This case was obviously never solved because they never found you,

did they? Reno P.D. will have to hit the archives, do a little digging, might take a few days,

but we'll find out who your mother was, Blue.”

“And find out who I am.”

Detective Bowles stared at me and then slowly shook his head, as if the realization was

staggering. “Yeah. You poor girl. And we'll find out who you are, too.”





“I'm going to Reno.”

“Reno?”

“Reno, Nevada.” Wilson was British. Maybe he didn't know where Reno was. “It's in Nevada, but

it's way up North. It's about an eight hour drive. I could fly, but I'm too far along for that

to be safe. I don't even know it they'd let me on a plane.”

“Why Reno?”

“I went to the police department on Monday.”

Wilson's eyes widened and he was very still.

[page]“I told them everything I knew . . . about myself, about my mother . . . about Jimmy.” I

felt oddly like crying. I hadn't felt that way when I spoke with Detective Bowles on Monday. But

he had called me back this morning. And he had been excited. And I had a feeling that the life I

was trying to build for myself was going to unravel yet again.

“The Detective who I spoke with . . . he says there was a woman who was found dead in a hotel

room in Reno in 1993. This woman apparently had a child. The child was never found. The details

match up with what Cheryl told me. They want me to come to Reno, give a DNA sample, and see if

I'm the missing child.”

“They will be able to tell you that?” Wilson sounded as stunned as I felt.

“Not right away. Apparently, when they realized there was a child unaccounted for, they took a

DNA sample from the woman and it's in some national database.”

“How soon will they know?”

“Months. It isn't like TV, I guess. Detective Bowles said he's had to wait a year for DNA

results before, but he thinks this will be a priority, so it shouldn't be that long.”

Wilson huffed out. “Well, the sooner you get up there and give them a sample, the sooner you'll

know, yeah?”

“Yeah.” I felt queasy.

“I'll come with you.”

“You will?” I was surprised and oddly touched.

“You can't go alone. Not when you're this close.”

“I've got two weeks.”

Wilson waved that away and whipped his cell phone out, making arrangements for a substitute for

Thursday and Friday as well as reservations at a Reno hotel, all in a matter of minutes.

“Did you tell Tiffa?” He paused, phone in hand, glancing up at me. “She's going to want to

know.”

I called Tiffa, and, as it turned out, Tiffa didn't just want to know, she wanted to come. She