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Amelia almost laughed. “You can’t be serious.”
“Are you accusing her of attacking this person?” Bishop asked.
“We’re not accusing her of anything,” Foster said. “We’re just having a conversation.”
Bishop started to get up. “Like hell you are. It’s a fishing expedition.”
“Not quite,” Li said. “Silva ID’d Ms. Davies as being the woman who attacked her.”
Bishop glared at them. “Physical evidence? Witnesses? No, or she’d be in cuffs already. Amelia, let’s go.”
Amelia cocked her head and studied Foster. She was the one Amelia was up against. Her father had always taught her that outthinking an adversary was only a victory if the adversary was a worthy opponent, that you could take no pride in besting an inferior. Foster had set a trap for her, and she’d taken the bait. Well played.
“Not yet.” Amelia smiled sweetly, as if butter wouldn’t melt. She wasn’t a fool. She hadn’t been raised by a fool either. Cue look of concern, soft eyes. Amelia remembered what was expected. “I saw it on the news this morning. I was so upset. Is she going to be okay?”
“Have you ever met Dr. Silva?” Foster asked.
Amelia ran through the choices in her head . . . no or yes, truth or lie. She went with the lie. “Early on in Bodie’s stay. She had questions about our family and our childhood she hoped I could answer.”
“And did you?” Li asked.
“Some. I gave her as much as I could. I wanted to help my brother.”
“Why was she shocked then to hear he had a twin? You?” Foster asked. “She ID’d your photo as the woman who attacked her but didn’t have your name.”
“I assume Silva is in critical condition,” Bishop said. “Heavily medicated after such a violent attack. She can’t possibly be in her right mind. She could be confused, disoriented. This is clearly an unreliable victim account.” He searched their faces. “But you know that already. A conversation, you say, but this is you trying to get us to do your work for you.” He smiled. “No dice. Amelia.” He gestured for Amelia to get up.
“But I want to help,” she said. “I was at my studio last night. I stayed pretty late. Unfortunately, I have no one to vouch for me. I was alone.”
Li laid a copy of the CPA ad on the table. “Let’s talk about your father, or, as you called him, Uncle Frank?”
Amelia’s heart began to race. She could feel the corners of her mind beginning to fray. She looked down at the ad but didn’t reach for it. “My father is dead. You’ve obviously talked to Joie. I don’t know who that man was. I only said he was my Uncle Frank so that she would calm down. She was practically hyperventilating.”
“What about your mother?” Foster asked.
Bishop scraped his chair back from the table. “Why is any of this important? What are you two up to?”
“While looking into your brother, we found a few inconsistencies we’d like to clear up,” Foster said. “We can’t find Tom Morgan anywhere prior to opening up his business in Naperville years ago, and there’s no death record for him now. Where did he die? And exactly when?” She waited for Amelia to answer, only she didn’t. “And your mother, Priscilla Morgan? Same situation. No death record. No history.”
“But we were looking under her real name,” Li said. “Priscilla Jensen. Her married name. Her maiden name is Walsh. Your father was Niles Jensen. Here’s your birth certificate.” Li slid it across the table, then laid another down next to it. “And here’s your brother’s.”
Amelia stared at the certificates, knowing everyone was watching her. She couldn’t think. Jensen. Walsh. Not Morgan? It was a lie. Cops lied. The words on the paper appeared to dance as she focused so hard on them. Niles Jensen. “Is this your idea of a joke?” she said.
“We think we might know what happened to your mother, but we’re still looking into it,” Li said.
“Meanwhile,” Foster said, “we stopped by your studio earlier today and had a chance to see your painting again.” She opened her folder and slid photos of the painting out, fanning them out on the table. She pointed to Silva’s face. “The paint was still wet on this one.” She pointed to the others. “A backpack. Phones. I don’t get the padlocks, but there are plenty of them. Can you tell me why your painting appears to corollate with the murders we’re working on?” She pointed to the unidentified faces. “And can you tell us who these two women are?”
“Whoa,” Bishop said. “Stop right there. Are you about to charge her with something?”
Amelia couldn’t take her eyes off the names—Priscilla and Niles— and she felt herself fracture as the floor seemed to drop from beneath her feet.
Niles. Not Tom.
“Amelia? Amelia.”
She realized it was Foster talking. “Your painting. Can you explain it to us?”
Their eyes locked. “No, I don’t care to.”
Bishop stood. “That’s it. We’re gone.” He opened the door, beckoned for his client to leave with him. “Not a shred of evidence. Silva met her before. The wonky ID was certainly fueled by pain meds. Then birth certificates and her own painting.” He shook his head. “You’ll have to try harder than that.” He wiggled his fingers for her to come, but Amelia couldn’t get her legs to move. She couldn’t move, couldn’t force herself to leave. The detectives were staring at her. Could they see?
“Your father died in a car accident two years after you and your brother were born,” Foster said, as though sensing what Amelia so desperately wanted.
Li slid the accident report toward her, along with a copy of Niles Jensen’s driver’s license photo. “Quite a resemblance between you and him. Same eyes.”
To Amelia it sounded like their voices were coming from far away. She couldn’t take her eyes off the photograph. It was true. She could clearly see her eyes, Bodie’s, staring back at her. She hadn’t seen any of their features in the man who’d raised them, the man who’d groomed her to kill, but it hadn’t mattered until now.
Foster leaned forward. “Priscilla Jensen went missing with her babies in 1990. She went out shopping and never came back home. Her twins—Anika and Boden Jensen—were never found. Your father searched for you. Filed a missing person report. I think the loss ruined him. The report on his accident says his blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit. He barreled into a tree.”
“Your mother’s disappearance is still open,” Li said. “You and your brother, however, are a different story. We could confirm with DNA, but I think we know what we’re looking at. Now, we’re wondering who Tom Morgan is and why he chose to raise you as his own.”
Amelia could feel herself floating further and further away from the person she’d thought she was just a few moments ago. Li placed a missing person flyer down next to the other things. MISSING stenciled across the top got her attention, but not as much as the photographs beneath it, one of a young red-haired woman and the other of two infants lying on a baby blanket.
Amelia drank in her mother’s face—every line, every curve—seeing it for the first time that she could remember. Beautiful. Young. Happy. Big blue eyes. She reached down and ran her fingers across her mother’s cheek as she felt herself disappear. The truth. Finally. It was in her mother’s crooked smile, in the shape of her nose, the rise of her forehead.
Everything he’d ever told her was a lie.
She wanted to scream and weep and kill, but she couldn’t. Everyone would see. Everyone would know.
“Tom Morgan isn’t your father,” Foster said. “We think he may be your kidnapper. And most likely your mother’s killer.” Foster gave it a moment. “You see it, don’t you?”
Amelia did. She saw it clearly.
“We’re done,” Bishop said, pulling Amelia gently up by the arm. “We’re not saying another word. Come at us again, and you’d better have something better than this little slideshow.”
Amelia smiled. It was meant to show that they hadn’t wrecked her, though they had. Following Bishop out, she was leaving behind the person she’d been. She thought about the beautiful woman with the blue eyes who once had babies she loved. She’d gone shopping a long time ago and never came home. And a dead man had Amelia’s eyes. Dr. Mariana Silva was no longer important to her. Only one thing was.
CHAPTER 72
Foster hovered over the phone on speaker as Bigelow reported back every few minutes with updated details on Davies’s movements. He and Lonergan were tailing Amelia at a normal pace in an unmarked car and were now headed north on Lake Shore Drive. Everyone hoped she was on her way to confront Tom Morgan. They didn’t have enough to arrest her. Silva’s ID wouldn’t have been enough to build a case on or sway the state’s attorney. They needed more.
“Well, she’s not making a run for it, that’s for sure,” Li said. “She would have to go a lot faster than that. We stunned her, though. I almost felt sorry for her. Finding out your whole life’s a lie?” Li looked up from her computer, where she’d been digging into the Morgans’ time in Naperville. “I know we’re hoping she’s running to Daddy, but what if she never wants to see him again and she’s running to tell Bodie the news?”
Foster looked over. “I don’t think she’s thinking about her brother right now.”
Li smacked her monitor. “Squeaky clean in Naperville. Paid his bills. No complaints on record for his business. Coached Little League and everything. I ran a name check for the community paper and found a photo of him with the team.” She slid the photo over to Foster. “Same guy as in the ad. Same guy Lenk ID’d as Davies’s creepy whistling uncle.” She leaned back. “So he’s at least a dirty babynapper who passed the kids off as his own, but I think we’re both thinking he killed Priscilla Jensen first. And if he killed her and he’s here now, I think he might have had something to do with Birch and the others. And if Silva’s right and Davies tried killing her, he’s got help. Which means . . .”
“We’ve got a family of killers,” Foster said, completing Li’s sentence. “All for one, one for all.”
They sat patiently waiting for Bigelow to report in again through the open line.
“Damn it,” he said. “Hold on.” They heard a car horn blare and could hear the engine rev. “We lost her on Sheridan, right after the turn off the Drive. Don’t see her anywhere. That’s that.”
Foster ended the call and sat for a time thinking. Li swiveled back to her computer. “Lonergan’s driving.”
Foster pulled out her desk drawer, searching for a pen that worked, but found a thumbtack lying amid the detritus and slipped it into her pocket. “Yes.”
There was a moment’s silence. “Could happen to anyone,” Li said. “Happened to me once. Not a suspected homicidal maniac, though.”
“I don’t have anything against Lonergan,” Foster said, hoping to cut off the discussion.
“Yeah, you do.”
Foster shot up from her chair. “I don’t.” She stormed off toward the restroom.
Li called after her. “Yeah, you do.”
When Lonergan and Bigelow made it back, they eased into the office quietly. The activity in the room didn’t stop, and no one made a big production out of the tail that had gone wrong, but everybody knew about it, knew how important finding Tom Morgan was. Foster could feel Lonergan watching her from the other side of the room, but she avoided eye contact. Did he expect her to rub his nose in it? Gloat? Did he really think she was that petty?
After more than an hour, Foster sat back in her chair, running her hands over her face, tired, hungry. They’d all been sleeping too little, eating too sporadically, afraid to relax for fear of another body dump. And Foster couldn’t forget the added worry, for herself, for Li. One of the Morgans, or maybe all of them, knew where they lived. They’d been to their homes, stood in their yards. In Li’s case, they had gotten dangerously close to her family. Foster was tired of not knowing.
“We’ve been tracking similar homicides,” Foster said. Li looked a question. “Bodies dumped. Young women of a type. Priscilla Jensen’s officially missing. Her body hasn’t been found. So . . .”
Li perked up. “We stop looking for bodies and look at missing person cases instead, especially those around Naperville and the University of Michigan campus.” She was already tapping. Foster scooted closer to her computer and did the same. They needed a lucky break, or else no break at all would be of any use. It took hours before they figured out the pattern, and then they called the team together.
Foster tacked the photos on the board. “Six women missing from the time the Morgans moved into their house in Naperville till the time Tom sold it and the kids went off to college. Notice anything?” She turned back to the team, at the cops seated or leaning on desks, weary eyes on the crowded board.
“Just the obvious,” Lonergan said. “They all look kinda like Birch.”
“Uh-oh.” It was Kelley right before he reached for a bottle of antacids on his desk. “I’m not going to like this.”
Foster pointed to the last photo up. “The last one we could find was fourteen years ago. Susan Rafferty. Twenty-two. Went missing from the Sloppy Cup Café in Naperville on a Sunday afternoon.”
“And you can connect Tom Morgan to her?” Symansky asked.
“Not yet,” Li said.
Bigelow raised his hand. “If it’s Tom, what’s he been doing since he ran out of Naperville?”
“Better question is, Where’s he been doing it?” Foster said. “We’ve got pings out all over the surrounding states. Killers don’t stop killing. We know that, so chances are good we’re going to come up with more photos to put on that board.”
“But now he’s back here. Why?” Lonergan took off his blazer and rolled his sleeves up.
“I think he came back for Amelia,” Foster said. Her statement quieted the room. “I think Tom Morgan’s a killer and he raised her to be one too. Look at her painting, her attack on Silva. Nobody in the press knew about those lipstick rings. I didn’t see any of them report on a pink backpack. I think Tom killed Wicks for the reason we thought. She took a photo of something she wasn’t supposed to. Him. I believe that’s true because I don’t see any cameras painted up there, and Amelia didn’t paint Wicks’s face.”
“A family of killers,” Symansky groaned. “Damn it all to hell and back.”
“We suspect we have at least two more victims because of the faces we can’t put names to,” Foster said. “That first spot of blood found on Ainsley has to belong to one of them. Either we find Tom Morgan and Amelia and they tell us where these women are, or we have to hope we find them ourselves or someone stumbles on another tarp.” She scanned the team, each face. “We stop them.”
CHAPTER 73
Bodie walked out of his building and turned sharply toward the lake. He needed to walk. He needed the quiet. He craved the darkness. He knew there were cops in a car watching from across the street. They’d been there off and on for days. Surveillance. Like he was too stupid to know. He’d heard about Silva, but he hadn’t been able to work up a lot of sympathy. He knew it was his father’s doing. And where was Am? He’d been calling her since the police had let him go, but she hadn’t answered his calls or called him back. Was she with him? Had she always been?
Why couldn’t he turn his father in? What prevented him from simply walking into the police station and telling Foster and Li and the others that his father killed women? He didn’t know. That wasn’t quite right. He did know. He had been taught to lie and cover, to repress and ignore, to normalize that which was abnormal.
He liked the sound of his footsteps on the path and also knowing that his were the only footfalls he could expect, but this night, when he turned toward the sound of lapping waves and walked a block, there was the sound of footsteps behind him. Am. He reeled, but it wasn’t her; it was Detective Foster.
“What do you want?” It was harassment. The cops had no right to hound him this way.
Foster stood there, six feet away at best. “I’m looking for your sister. I thought maybe you’d know where she is.”
That threw him. He thought it was him they were trying to break down; otherwise, what was the surveillance for? He scanned the park, looking for the other one, Li, but Foster appeared to be alone. “My sister? Why?”
Foster glanced around. “You always walk this late at night? Not the safest thing to do.”
“I’ve got half the police department watching me,” Bodie said. “Answer the question.”
Foster let the distance between them stand. “Dr. Silva ID’d your sister as her attacker. And when she’s strong enough to add more, if she ever is, we’ll arrest Amelia. And also, because we think she can lead us to Tom Morgan.”
Bodie pedaled back, just a couple of steps, just enough to put more air between them. The mention of his father’s name elevated his unease. The police knew he was alive and back in the city. They knew that Amelia and Bodie were connected to him. Did they also know the worst of it? He opened his mouth to deny everything, but Foster stopped him with a warning look.
She slipped a hand into her pocket and pulled out an envelope and handed it to him. “We spoke to her earlier today. She came in with a lawyer to get you out, but you’d already gone. You haven’t spoken to her since then, I take it?”
Bodie shook his head, still startled by the intrusion, not sure what to make of it. He stared down at the envelope in his hand. “What’s this?”
Foster backed up. “Read it. Amelia likely ran to him, to confront him about everything. She seemed pretty upset. What’s in there isn’t anything you couldn’t have found on your own, if you’d known to look for it, and it answers a few questions you might have had. We gave your sister the same information. My card’s in there, too, in case you decide to get in touch.”
Foster turned and walked away, and Bodie stood there clutching the envelope, then fast-walked down the path toward the lake. He wanted far away from Foster. He wanted to find a quiet place, someplace with no one around. He raced into the park, found a bench under a tree near a light. A woman passed him, a scraggly terrier trotting beside her. He needed them to pass before he opened the envelope.
