Cavanaugh Cold Case by Marie Ferrarella

sudden understanding washed over the lined, drawn face.
    â€œThis is about Abby, isn’t it?” Each word he uttered was more anxious-sounding than the last. “You’ve come about Abby.”
    â€œYes, sir, we did,” Malloy replied in as calm a voice as Kristin had ever heard him use. She glanced in his direction as he asked Abby’s father, “May we come in?”
    The older man all but stumbled as he backed up. Kristin couldn’t tell if it was because the professor was trying to give them some room to enter, or if he’d stumbled like that from the impact of the words he’d just heard.
    Belatedly, Sullivan answered, “Sure. Come in. Come in. I’m right, aren’t I?” he asked nervously, looking over his shoulder at the two people even as he led them to his living room.
    Every flat surface within the partially darkened room had a framed photograph of a bright-eyed, smiling young girl with long blond hair. It was a panorama that began with a photograph taken straight out of the hospital the day she was born and abruptly stopped with a photograph of her standing before a building that was clearly on a campus. Abby appeared to be about nineteen.
    â€œIt’s about Abby, isn’t it?” Sullivan asked again, his voice sounding raspy as the question clawed up his throat.
    â€œWe’re very sorry, sir,” Kristin said, taking the man’s hand between hers as she made eye contact with the professor.
    His eyes filled with tears—as did hers. “Then she is dead,” he said sadly, murmuring the words almost to himself. And then he looked at Malloy for his answers. “How did it happen? How did my little girl die?”
    â€œWe’re not sure yet, Mr. Sullivan,” Malloy told him. “Her body was found buried at the perimeter of a cacti and succulent nursery in Aurora. It was called Prickly Gardens. Would you have any idea why she might have been there? Did your daughter work there or know anyone who worked there?”
    â€œA cacti nursery?” Sullivan asked, clearly mystified. He shook his head. “She hated those things. What was she doing there?” he asked.
    â€œThat’s what we’re trying to find out,” Malloy told him gently, not bothering to point out that he had asked the man the same question. He tried something easier. “When was the last time you saw your daughter?” The man made no response. He clearly looked shell-shocked. “Mr. Sullivan?”
    Kristin took the man’s hand again, closing hers over it and doing her best to get him to come around. “Mr. Sullivan, this could be very important and help us get whoever did this to your daughter. Please think. When was the last time you saw her?”
    He didn’t have to pause to think. It was obviously a date that had been stamped on his heart. “August eighteenth of ’95. She was driving this old Corolla back to college.” He pressed his lips together to keep them from quivering. It took him a moment to pull himself together. “She was a headstrong girl, and we’d had an argument just before she left.” He let out a shaky breath. “Margaret thought she just ran off because I’d yelled at her.”
    â€œMargaret?” Kristin questioned as unobtrusively as possible.
    â€œMy wife,” he explained. “She blamed me when we didn’t hear from Abby.” For a second, he sounded like a man reliving his worst nightmare. “When she didn’t come home anymore,” he all but whispered. And then there was confusion mixed with high anxiety as he looked at them. “You said someone buried her? Do you know how long ago they did that?”
    â€œWe don’t have anything even close to exact yet,” Malloy told him, “but since you told me when you last saw her, going by what we do know, I’d say it was approximately shortly after she left home that August.”
    Sullivan