“I think you would make a fine detective.”
Olivia looked at Jessie. “I told you.” And then she frowned and said, “So what’s going on with the Heartless Killer case? Bella’s mom wouldn’t leave our side at the mall. Not even for a minute. All she talked about were the twin girls that were found recently. She said the story was on the front page of today’s paper.”
Olivia saw the paper on the table. A picture of the girls on the front cover.
Jessie walked across the room and hovered over Olivia as she read the story about how the girls were taken as they walked to the bus stop.
“They look exactly alike,” Olivia said.
“Identical twins,” Jessie said. The thought of the girls being taken and then held captive by some maniac made her sick to her stomach.
“Blonde. Blue-eyed,” Olivia said as she examined the picture.
Jessie looked closer, too. Then she saw the necklace one of the twins was wearing, and she gasped.
“What is it?” Olivia asked.
“Remember what you said the other day,” Jessie reminded her, “about the attention always being in the details?”
Olivia nodded.
Colin walked over to take a look.
Jessie went to her room and returned with the picture Arlo had given her the same day she’d found the shoe box under Zee Gatley’s bed.
“One of the girls is wearing earrings,” Olivia said as she continued her examination. “The other is wearing a necklace. The picture looks as if it was taken outside.”
“Look at this.” Jessie placed the picture of Zee next to the picture of the little girl.
“Zee is wearing the exact same necklace!” Olivia said.
“Who’s Zee?” Colin asked.
“She’s been missing for more than a week now,” Jessie said. “Her father hired me to find her after the police showed little concern since she’d run away so many times before.”
“She has schizophrenia,” Olivia added.
Colin hovered closer, examining the necklaces.
A tiny gold swan dangled at the end of a gold chain. How in the world had Zee ended up with that necklace around her neck? Images of Arlo flashed through Jessie’s mind. Arlo acting so strange. Arlo telling her she couldn’t take a look around the house. Arlo with blood on his thumb.
Jessie looked at Colin.
“Tell me again how you ended up with this picture?” he asked.
“Arlo Gatley came to my office after his daughter went missing. When I went to his house in Woodland to take a look at her room, I asked him for a picture of his daughter, and this is what he gave me.” She inhaled. “It’s him—isn’t it? He could be the man you’ve been looking for.”
Colin pulled out his phone. “I need your client’s name and address.”
“Why?” Olivia asked.
“Because if the necklace Zee is wearing is the same one that’s on that little girl,” Jessie explained, “then Arlo could be in a lot of trouble.”
“Zee’s dad could be a killer?”
Jessie nodded.
“If he lives in Woodland,” Colin asked, “why did he hire you?”
“He said he saw me on the news after I was able to locate Tonya Grimm. Arlo Gatley said he trusted me to find his daughter, too.”
“I’m going to need to get a warrant to search his house. Do you have the file here, or is it at your office?” Colin asked.
“It’s in my room. I’ll get it for you.” She walked back to her bedroom to retrieve the file from her bedside table. She didn’t like the idea of handing over her client’s information, but everything pointed to him being a suspect. Arlo had acted so secretive and bizarre at times. She thought about everything he’d told her, including his wife dying of cancer, and found herself questioning whether any of it was true. As she returned to the living room and handed Colin the file, she wondered if mental illness ran in the family.
“Wow,” Olivia said. “What if you’ve been working side by side with the Heartless Killer all along?”
Jessie placed a hand on Olivia’s shoulder. “Let’s hope it’s not true.” She didn’t want to believe Arlo was a killer. Her heart had gone out to him when he’d talked about being bullied and called names. Innocent until proven guilty, she thought.
Colin walked away from the two of them as he talked on the phone. When he was finished, he planted a kiss on Jessie’s forehead and then took two stairs at a time toward the exit, telling them to lock the doors and stay inside.
“You look sad,” Olivia said. “You liked Arlo Gatley—didn’t you?”
“I did. I can’t say he wasn’t an odd man, but I never would have pegged him as a killer.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Zee felt dazed and out of sorts. Her stomach rumbled and growled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten in days. Her face and part of her neck was swollen from spider bites. It had taken hours to rid herself of them all. She’d begun to sweat and vomit. When it became hard to breathe, she’d thought she was dying. But Natalie had talked to her in a calming voice. The more upset Zee got, the calmer Natalie became.
Zee felt pain in her joints when she stood for too long. Worse than that was the hunger. She’d chewed on the dirty straw littering the ground, but it wasn’t helping. “Are we dying?” she asked Natalie.
Natalie was in her usual spot, facing Zee, her back against the cement wall. “I don’t know.”
“What if he starves us to death?”
“We’ll be okay. I read once that dying of starvation is a peaceful way to go.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Do you really want to know what happens?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Simply put,” Natalie told her, “once the organs fail to work, the body will slip into a coma and pass away quietly.”
“But I’m thirsty, and my stomach is cramping.”
“That’s a good sign.”
“What? Cramping?”
“No. That you’re still thirsty. If you were starving, you’d be too weak to sense thirst.”
She’s lying again. She’s a big liar.
“The voices in my head think you’re a liar.”
Natalie shrugged. “Tell them all to fuck off.”
That was one of the funniest things Zee had ever heard. “Do you hear that?” she said out loud. “Natalie says fuck off!” She laughed so hard she had to hold her sides.
Natalie laughed, too.
“What’s it like to be normal?” Zee asked.
“I don’t know if I believe there is a ‘normal.’ We’re all different. I have voices inside my head, too,” Natalie told her. “But I’ve never given them names. I always figured the voices had something to do with instincts and conscience and perhaps lessons I was taught at a young age.”
“What do you mean?”
“For instance, if I feel like having an extra piece of cake, I always hear my mother’s voice reminding me that the extra weight will go straight to my hips.”
Zee chuckled at that. “Every one of my voices would tell me to eat the whole damn thing.”
Natalie smiled.
“Are you hungry?” Zee asked.
“If you gave me a hot dog, I wouldn’t turn it down. And that’s saying a lot, since I don’t eat meat.”
“Do you think he killed your husband?”
“No,” Natalie said.
As soon as the question had come out of her mouth, Zee scolded herself for being so blunt. One more bad habit she couldn’t seem to stop. If she had a question, she asked it. Didn’t matter what it was about. Her father told her not to worry about things like that. He told her to be herself. And to always love herself. She missed him. More than she’d ever missed him before.
“My mom died when I was very young,” Zee confessed. “She had cancer.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I blame my dad.”
“Your dad? Why?”
Zee shrugged. “I’ve been blaming him for so long I don’t really remember why.”
“People often place blame on the ones they love most.”
“Why?”