Hold on, Schilling said. Im curious why you didnt obtain warrants sooner on Nelsons residence and job?
We needed to confirm the male victims identification.
Youre kidding. With all the circumstantial evidence-his truck, the note and ballistics confirm his gun used. Come on, Ed. With that much time lost, you allowed for the potential of people going in and out of Nelsons residence, possibly removing or destroying evidence.
We had a patrol sitting on the house, Vern.
Like you did at the scene? I heard about a woman walking all over it and taking pictures.
That was very brief. We addressed it and believe no harm was done to the scene.
Lets go back to Nelson. If hes a technician at MRKT DataFlow and had access to accounts, isnt it possible that he selected the victim through her account?
Thats possible, but she didnt have an account that they processed.
Well, on another angle, given his access, he could easily have stolen identities, right?
Thats under investigation.
And, with his expertise, theres a strong chance hed have the skill to destroy evidence remotely. Did you think of that?
Vern. Brennan inhaled, let out a long, slow breath and rubbed the back of his neck. We thought of that. But let me say with the greatest respect-no one knows better than you-that each case has challenges. Second-guessing doesnt help.
Whoa. Vern held up his palms. Im only offering my feedback, as requested.
Brennan caught his captains reaction as he subtly telegraphed to Brennan to let it go. He did.
Thank you, Vern.
At that moment, Beverly, the office manager for the investigative unit, knocked on the door as the meeting broke up.
Ed, I am so sorry to interrupt, but Mitch Komerick has been trying to reach you. Hes at the scene and says its important.
Thanks, Bev. Brennan took his phone from his pocket and saw several missed calls from Komerick. He called back without listening to the messages.
Mitch, this is Brennan. Sorry, Ive been in a meeting. Whats up?
Ed, weve found something, Komericks voice conveyed a sense of urgency. Youd better come out.
20
Rampart, New York
At the crime scene, New York State Police trooper Dan Larco watched his canine partner, Sheba, sniffing the ground far off in the distance.
During the time theyd been assigned to help find human remains in the ruins of the barn, Larco had been thorough.
After Sheba had probed the burned wreckage, Larco had her search the fields and brush of the surrounding area in a widening grid pattern. Theyd started north, moved west, then south, then east. Now, Sheba was in the northeast sector, some seventy to eighty yards away.
If theres anything out there, shell find it.
Sheba could smell a small tooth in a football stadium, which was pretty good for a dog that started life fated to be put down.
Shed been abandoned, found eating garbage in alleys in Queens, put in the pound, then rescued by an animal welfare charity and offered to the state police canine team to train at Cooperstown. Now, the three-year-old was one of the best cadaver detection dogs in the state. Shed also played a key role in finding people in several search-and-rescue operations.
So far, at this site, shed found only the deceased male in the barn.
A few of the other scene investigators had quietly indicated they were ready to sign off. But Larco was confident that if more human remains were here, Sheba would locate them.
The dog was able to detect human scent at any stage of decomposition, even if the remains were buried several feet under the surface. The scent radiated and weather conditions, like wind, humidity and temperature affected it. Sheba was trained to alert Larco whenever she detected any type of human decomposition by sitting down at the site. She was also trained not to dig up a site, so as not to disturb the evidence.
But Larco knew how her eager-to-please personality got the best of her sometimes. He watched her in the distance, snout to the ground, poking and probing, tail wagging, getting herself all worked up.
She ended searching abruptly, immediately sat and barked.
Had she found something?
Larco didnt think so for, at times, sitting also meant a false alert-Shebas way of saying she was frustrated.
Pissed off, might be the truth.
She barked again, insistent this time.
All right, Im coming, Im coming.
Larco was about twenty-five yards out when Sheba ceased waiting and began pawing at the earth under some bramble.
Hey there!
Larco chided her because she knew not to do that.
Whats got her so excited?
At first he thought she was pulling branches and sticks in order to get at whatever had her excited. Then she came at him, as if to prove that what was clamped in her jaws was not brush.
It was a leg bone with a decomposing human foot attached to it.
Damn!
Larco reached for his radio.
21
Banff, Alberta
Driving west through Banff National Park amid the grandeur of the towering snow-crowned Rockies filled Kate with an overwhelming ache.
She missed her daughter.
She pulled over at a rest stop and called home.
Service in the mountains was spotty, but the line rang through to Nancys voice mail. Kate left a message for Grace, then sought consolation in her daughters picture on her screen.
Taking in the majestic landscape as she got back on the road, Kate realized that shed been climbing mountains all her life in search of the truth. How fitting her search would lead her back to the same highway shed traveled twenty years ago when everything changed, leaving her the lone survivor of her family, haunted by not knowing what had really happened to her sister.
The new information shed unearthed these past few days was so startling shed started doubting it herself. Yet a voice, an unyielding emotional force deep inside, impelled her to hold on to the faint hope that Vanessa had actually been alive all these years.
Dont let go of it. You cant let go.
She passed Lake Louise, then entered British Columbia. The thick sweeping forests and jade rivers pulled her back through her life and the memories rushed by her.
Kates mother was a supermarket cashier and Kates father worked in a factory that made military truck parts. She remembered how her mother smelled like roses, how she felt safe in her fathers big strong hands whenever he lifted her up and said, Hows my Katie? She remembered how Vanessas eyes twinkled when she laughed and how happy they were in their little house near Washington, DC.
Then came the night when Kate and Vanessa were home together with their babysitter, Mrs. Kawolski, and police came to the door. Kates parents had been at a wedding in Boston. Fear had clouded Mrs. Kawolskis face as the officers filled the kitchen, their utility belts making leathery squeaks as they cleared their throats, the policewoman giving Kate and Vanessa little stuffed bears to hold. There was a terrible fire at the hotel. Im so very sorry, your mommy and daddy wont be coming home. Theyre with the angels now.
Kate was seven and Vanessa was four.
In the month before her death, Kates mother had given her and Vanessa each a tiny guardian angel necklace with their names engraved. Vanessa wanted to trade them so she wore the one with her big sisters name on it and Kate had the angel bearing Vanessas name.
They cherished those necklaces.
After their parents died, Kate and Vanessa pinballed through a succession of homes belonging to increasingly distant relatives. Ultimately, they lived with strangers. All Kate remembered from that time was how they were forever moving, city to city, state to state, but lucky to stay together. They were with new foster parents from Chicago when the crash happened.
Not many miles from here.
Kate glanced at her GPS, then at the map folded on the seat, and adjusted her grip on the wheel as the images loomedthe car sinkingeverything moving in slow motion They never found Vanessas body
No.
She couldnt think about it now.
After the accident, Kate lived in a never-ending chain of foster homes. Some were good, some werent. As soon as she was old enough, she ran away and survived on the streets. She panhandled, lied about her age and took any job she could, but she never stole, used drugs or got drunk. She never prostituted herself.
Somehow Kate managed to follow an internal moral compass, which she believed-no, knew-shed inherited from her parents.
During that time, Kate couldnt help dreaming that Vanessa might be alive somewhere. She kept reading news stories about people finding long-lost relatives after enduring years of pain. Those stories and the reporters who wrote them gave Kate hope, gave her direction.
She would become a journalist. She would search for the truth.
At age seventeen, Kate was living in a Chicago group home and taking night classes. She wrote an essay about her yearning to know what really happened, to be forgiven for, the night Vanessas little hand slipped from hers. Her teacher showed it to an editor friend at the Chicago Tribune. Impressed, the editor gave her a part-time news job. From there, Kate went to community college, then on to reporter jobs across the country.
All the while she was quietly searching for Vanessa. Shed sent age-progressed photos to missing persons groups and chased down Jane Doe cases, always in vain.
She was working at the San Francisco Star when she fell in love with a cop. After she got pregnant she learned that hed been lying about his divorce and was married and had two sons. She left California for a job with the Repository in Canton, Ohio, where she had Grace at age twenty-three.
Kate thrived at the paper where, through relentless digging, shed tracked down a fugitive killer. While her work was shut out for a Pulitzer, she won a state award for excellence. But after several years shed fallen victim to downsizing and was laid off. Things got dire. Kate was juggling bills when she landed a spot on a short but paid job competition at the Dallas bureau of Newslead, the worldwide wire service. Shed helped cover a devastating tornado and broke a national story about a missing baby boy. The competition had been ferocious but it led Chuck Laneer, a senior editor, to hire her last year as a national reporter at Newsleads world headquarters in Manhattan. Since then, shed often led on coverage of major crimes and disasters across the country or around the world.