coming home from Daisy’s. Maybe she fell, twisted her ankle. Believe me, we’ll find her. It’s where I’m headed right now.” The sheriff refrained from mentioning Methuselah, Clyde Harmstead’s bloodhound, whom they’d use if Julie didn’t surface by the next morning.
“Karen’s given a good description to Mary.” McFaron stopped short of assuring Bob that he’d bring her home alive. “I won’t rest till she comes home or we find her. You know I won’t.”
“I want to join the search party.”
The sheriff gently rested his hand on the father’s broad shoulder. “As hard as it is, Bob, I’m asking you to stay home and take care of Karen and Maddy. They need you here with them.”
Heath shook his head; his lower lip pushed out. McFaron was thankful for having to deal only with Bob. Facing down Karen would have been harder with the blood evidence looming.
“I need to be going now. I’m on it full time, Bob. I’ll call as soon as I hear anything.”
McFaron got in his truck, waiting for Heath to go inside. Standing by a window next to the front door was the Heaths’ younger daughter, Maddy. Her face was plastered against the glass, staring at the sheriff. It was easy to see she’d been crying.
McFaron backed out of the drive. A mile farther down the road he veered onto the state highway, taking it north to Monroeville to the regional crime lab. He called his office on his cell. Mary was still there. McFaron told her he was headed straight for the lab, and then the briefing, and wouldn’t get to the Templetons’ till morning with the truck identification book. Mary said she’d notify Mr. Templeton and that she’d stay as late as he needed her to. Tonight he didn’t discourage her from the overtime.
The STATE POLICE POST sign appeared a quarter mile before the exit. McFaron took the turn and parked near the crime lab annex, which was a one-story gray building attached to the police barracks. The lab was well equipped for blood-typing, fingerprinting, and preparing samples to be sent to the main lab in Indianapolis for DNA testing, and McFaron had been there plenty of times before. Always with fingerprints though. Never with blood.
Missy Hooper, the girl who’d gone missing from Paragon Amusement Park, flashed through McFaron’s mind. Her decomposing body had just been found less than forty-five miles from here. It felt like a bad sign—and the blood sample riding on the seat beside him didn’t seem to promise anything good, either.
CHAPTER TEN
The ceiling lights in the narrow fuselage flickered as the Saab 340 turboprop commuter plane banked aloft, leaving behind the small Indiana airfield but not Prusik’s unsettled nerves. She checked her digital watch—7:30 p.m.—and adjusted the collar of the navy-blue polyester suit she preferred to wear to crime scenes and postmortems. She had spent a long day leaning over a decomposed body in a stuffy back room of a Blackie, Indiana, general medical practitioner’s office, blowflies constantly strafing her face mask in the makeshift morgue. Zippered in with the body as maggots, the pesky flies had emerged undaunted by an overnight stay in the cooler. The decaying flesh couldn’t disguise the ruthlessness of the young girl’s end.
Afterglow from the sunset came flooding through the porthole windows, coloring the cabin orange pink. In an hour a driver would pick her up at Chicago O’Hare and deliver her downtown to headquarters to face a barrage of questions from Brian Eisen and the rest of her team. Roger Thorne was impatient to see progress. Already stacked up on her new wireless PDA were three incoming messages from him since noon, wanting an update. Although she knew keeping him informed was part of her job heading up an investigation on a high-profile case, she was in no mood to talk to Thorne about Washington’s expectations. She needed clear air to think.
The fiery sky faded into a hazy charcoal gloom. The dead girl had a name:
“Karen’s given a good description to Mary.” McFaron stopped short of assuring Bob that he’d bring her home alive. “I won’t rest till she comes home or we find her. You know I won’t.”
“I want to join the search party.”
The sheriff gently rested his hand on the father’s broad shoulder. “As hard as it is, Bob, I’m asking you to stay home and take care of Karen and Maddy. They need you here with them.”
Heath shook his head; his lower lip pushed out. McFaron was thankful for having to deal only with Bob. Facing down Karen would have been harder with the blood evidence looming.
“I need to be going now. I’m on it full time, Bob. I’ll call as soon as I hear anything.”
McFaron got in his truck, waiting for Heath to go inside. Standing by a window next to the front door was the Heaths’ younger daughter, Maddy. Her face was plastered against the glass, staring at the sheriff. It was easy to see she’d been crying.
McFaron backed out of the drive. A mile farther down the road he veered onto the state highway, taking it north to Monroeville to the regional crime lab. He called his office on his cell. Mary was still there. McFaron told her he was headed straight for the lab, and then the briefing, and wouldn’t get to the Templetons’ till morning with the truck identification book. Mary said she’d notify Mr. Templeton and that she’d stay as late as he needed her to. Tonight he didn’t discourage her from the overtime.
The STATE POLICE POST sign appeared a quarter mile before the exit. McFaron took the turn and parked near the crime lab annex, which was a one-story gray building attached to the police barracks. The lab was well equipped for blood-typing, fingerprinting, and preparing samples to be sent to the main lab in Indianapolis for DNA testing, and McFaron had been there plenty of times before. Always with fingerprints though. Never with blood.
Missy Hooper, the girl who’d gone missing from Paragon Amusement Park, flashed through McFaron’s mind. Her decomposing body had just been found less than forty-five miles from here. It felt like a bad sign—and the blood sample riding on the seat beside him didn’t seem to promise anything good, either.
CHAPTER TEN
The ceiling lights in the narrow fuselage flickered as the Saab 340 turboprop commuter plane banked aloft, leaving behind the small Indiana airfield but not Prusik’s unsettled nerves. She checked her digital watch—7:30 p.m.—and adjusted the collar of the navy-blue polyester suit she preferred to wear to crime scenes and postmortems. She had spent a long day leaning over a decomposed body in a stuffy back room of a Blackie, Indiana, general medical practitioner’s office, blowflies constantly strafing her face mask in the makeshift morgue. Zippered in with the body as maggots, the pesky flies had emerged undaunted by an overnight stay in the cooler. The decaying flesh couldn’t disguise the ruthlessness of the young girl’s end.
Afterglow from the sunset came flooding through the porthole windows, coloring the cabin orange pink. In an hour a driver would pick her up at Chicago O’Hare and deliver her downtown to headquarters to face a barrage of questions from Brian Eisen and the rest of her team. Roger Thorne was impatient to see progress. Already stacked up on her new wireless PDA were three incoming messages from him since noon, wanting an update. Although she knew keeping him informed was part of her job heading up an investigation on a high-profile case, she was in no mood to talk to Thorne about Washington’s expectations. She needed clear air to think.
The fiery sky faded into a hazy charcoal gloom. The dead girl had a name:
Similar Books
