Shoulder shrug. You know.
I did. Though it wasn’t a frequent part of my job, I’d participated in the notification of next of kin. In that moment when lives changed forever. I’d seen people faint, lash out, cry, go catatonic. I’d heard them berate, accuse, beg for retraction, for reassurance that it was all a mistake. No matter how often I partook, the task was always heartbreaking.
“Mother wondered about a ring the kid always wore. Silver, shaped like a seashell. You got something like that?” Slidell asked.
“I didn’t see any jewelry in the autopsy room, but I’ll check,” I said. “Maybe Larabee bagged it before I arrived.” And separated it from the clothing? I doubted he’d do that. Didn’t say so.
“We did some poking into your other vics. Koseluk and Donovan are still missing. Both files are inactive, since no one’s been pressing.”
Ryan excused himself. I stood and watched him walk to the door. Knew he was going outside to smoke.
As I sat back down, Slidell freed a toothpick from its cellophane and began mining a molar. The action didn’t stop the flow of his narrative. “Lead on the Koseluk girl is a guy named Spero. Kannapolis PD. He’s okay. Worked with him once. Gangbanger got capped—”
“What’s his take?”
“He’s still liking the ex.”
“Al Menniti?”
Slidell nodded.
“Has he surfaced?”
“No.” Slidell withdrew the toothpick and inspected something on the tip. “Talked to the mother. She says the dumb fuck couldn’t hide his own ass, much less a kid. Says he didn’t give two shits about fatherhood. Her words.”
“Lyrical. What about Colleen Donovan?”
“Parents both dead, lived with an aunt, Laura Lonergan, who spends her time frying her brains on meth. And there ain’t much to fry. That conversation was a treat.”
I gestured for Slidell to skip the character analysis. “Does Colleen have a jacket?”
Slidell nodded. “Juvie, so we’ll need a warrant to unseal it.” I raised my brows in question.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m writing something up.” Slidell paused, as though debating whether to make the next comment.
“What?” I urged.
“One weird thing. According to the file, Donovan was entered into a national database for missing kids.”
“By whom?”
“MP investigator name of Pat Tasat.”
“What’s weird about that?”
“I checked for the hell of it. Six months out, the kid was removed from the system.”
“Did Tasat say why?”
“No. And he won’t.” Tight. “Poor schmuck drowned in Lake Norman last Labor Day weekend.”
“I’m sorry. Did you know him?”
Slidell nodded. “Jimmy B and Jet Skis don’t mix.”
I thought a moment. “Isn’t it standard to enter a reason when removing a name from the database?”
“Yeah. That’s what’s weird. No reason was given.”
“Who removed her?”
“That wasn’t there, either.”
I gnawed on that, wondering what it could mean. If anything. “And Estrada?” I asked.
“Kid vanished in Salisbury—that’s Rowan County—turned up in Anson, so they caught the file. The investigation went nowhere, eventually landed with a ballbuster at the sheriff’s department name of Henrietta Hull. That’s who I talked to. Goes by Cock. You believe that?”
Hen. Cock. I was sure fellow cops had crafted the nickname. Doubted she went by it. “Was the problem lack of interjurisdictional sharing?” I asked.
“Partly that. Partly the Anson County Sheriff’s Office was busy mucking out its own barn.”
“Meaning?”
“Couple of their superstars got nailed for taking bribes.”
I remembered now. Both deputies had gone to jail.
“Partly it was timing. The initial lead retired some months into it. That’s when the case bounced to Hull. Mostly it was the fact that no one found dick. No physical evidence, no eyewitnesses, no cause of death.”
“Who did the post?”