“No. Sergeant Detective—”
“But she did talk to you about Stacey Summers? Come on. Now is the time to be open and honest, Doctor. Because I have one dead body and I’m pretty sure there’s about to be more. Flora talks to you. Flora tells you things she doesn’t tell anyone else. Not even her mother. So what did she tell you about Stacey Summers?”
“Saturday morning’s phone call was the first contact I’d had with Flora in months. At least six months. We are not that close, Sergeant Detective. Not nearly as close as you think.”
“But she tells you things. Things she tells no one else. This morning, I spoke to the FBI agent who rescued Flora. According to her, she has lots of questions about what Flora did during her time with Jacob Ness. But Flora won’t answer those questions. She’ll only talk to you.”
“I provided a full report of Flora’s statement. Contrary to what you’re implying, everything I heard has been made available to investigators. That Flora didn’t want to share her experience again and again . . . that’s hardly unusual for someone who’s been through her level of trauma.”
“Did she do it? Help kidnap other victims?”
“Not that she ever revealed.”
“Is that what this is? All this vigilante business? Survivor’s guilt to cleanse her conscience of what she did during her captivity?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“No. Not true. One, you’re the expert. Two, she trusts you. And she keeps calling you. When she’s in trouble, when she needs help, your number is the one she dials. Five years later, Doc. How many families are still calling you five years later?”
Keynes didn’t say anything.
“Then there’s the mom,” D.D. continued, thinking out loud. “Rosa Dane. She seems pretty comfortable with you as well. Does she also keep you on speed dial, or do you call her? Because Flora doesn’t and you know that bothers her.”
Then, it came to D.D. The way Keynes had touched Rosa’s shoulder yesterday in her office. The way he’d stood so solidly beside her when, frankly, there was no reason for him to be there at all. But he’d come. At Rosa’s request. And he’d stayed. The good doctor and Rosa.
“Does Flora know?” D.D. blurted out. “About you and her mom. Have you ever told her?”
“Sergeant Detective, do you have any new leads on Flora’s disappearance?”
“Answer my question first.”
“I will not.”
“It’s relevant—”
“It is not. Now, do you have any new information—”
“Rosa’s standing there,” D.D. filled in abruptly. “She’s standing right beside you, and she’s asking about her daughter.”
Keynes didn’t answer, which D.D. took to be a yes.
“Rosa doesn’t know, does she?” D.D. said more softly. “Your feelings for her, you’ve never said.”
“I assure you—”
“I am mistaken. Got it. Your relationship with the family is purely professional. Proper feebie like you—”
“Sergeant Detective—”
“I have a body. One of the women we believe Devon Goulding abducted, we’ve found her remains based on evidence we recovered from his house.”
“You believe you’ve just discovered one of Goulding’s victims? In other words, Flora was right in her actions on Friday. If she hadn’t killed him, it might be her body you were discovering now.”
“Flora’s gone. And whatever happened to her has to have something to do with Devon Goulding, Stacey Summers, and at least two other missing women. It would be too coincidental for it to be otherwise. So I’m asking you one more time, did Flora ever mention the names Kristy Kilker or Natalie Draga?”
“And I’m telling you, I hadn’t spoken to Flora in months before Saturday morning.”
“Which only tells me when you spoke to her, but doesn’t answer the question of what she said. Come on, Keynes. I might not have the initials PhD after my name, but that doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”
“Do you have any new leads on Flora’s disappearance, Sergeant Detective?”
“No.”
“Please call me when you do.”
Keynes disconnected the call. D.D. stood there, gnashing her teeth for a while longer. Wondering once again at the relationship between the victim specialist and the Dane family. And why, once again, she had a feeling he wasn’t telling her everything.
*
D.D. CONVENED THE TASK FORCE meeting at one. Ordered in sandwiches and cookies because it was always good to keep the troops motivated. She also added salad, because most of them were at the stage in life where they had a deeper appreciation for dark leafy greens.
Alex walked in as they were just getting started. He was dressed in his official academy shirt and slacks. She remembered his offer to tour Flora’s apartment this morning and figured by the intent look on his face he’d made it there. She waved for him to take a seat, and he helped himself to a turkey sub.
“This is what we know,” D.D. stated, standing in front of the whiteboard at the head of the conference room. She liked running these meetings. Frankly, she needed an opportunity to organize her thoughts on this case.
Now she tapped a list of bullet points, sadly a much shorter list than the second column, which included all the questions they couldn’t answer.
“Flora Dane headed out Friday night, most likely in search of Stacey Summers’s kidnapper. In her own words, she’d targeted some loser at the bar when a second suspect, Devon Goulding, entered the picture. He punched out Flora’s original partner, then dragged her off. When she regained consciousness, she was tied up naked in his garage. When he reentered the space, presumably to rape her, she retaliated by setting him on fire using items she’d found in his garbage.
“Devon Goulding died on scene. Upon further investigation, we found the driver’s licenses for two other women, Natalie Draga and Kristy Kilker. As of Saturday morning, we began investigating the whereabouts of these two women. At the same time, Flora Dane returned to her apartment, where she spent some time with her mother. Shortly after one P.M. on Saturday, Rosa Dane departed her daughter’s space. And Flora has not been seen since.”
D.D. had added a timeline to the bottom of the whiteboard. She now tapped Saturday afternoon on the bar.
“We believed initially that Flora was abducted by a large man who’d posed as a building inspector days before in order to gain access to her apartment keys. However, we have tracked down the inspector, who it turns out is real enough and has no criminal record. He also has an alibi for the time in question. Which leaves us with . . .”
D.D. moved on to her second, longer column.
“Four missing persons cases: Stacey Summers, Natalie Draga, Kristy Kilker, and Flora Dane, all of which may or may not be related. One possible but now deceased perpetrator, Devon Goulding, who is connected to at least three out of the four missing women. And one body, discovered just this morning based on information from Goulding’s vehicle’s GPS. We do not have definitive ID, but believe the remains belong to Kristy Kilker. Meaning we may have found one of the women. But where are the others? And if Goulding is the one behind it all, how could Flora Dane disappear after his death?”
“Do we know she was kidnapped?” Phil spoke up, leaning back from the table with a chocolate chip cookie halfway to his mouth. “I mean, wasn’t half our suspicion based on this inspector the city housing department swore it never sent? Now that you’ve determined the visit was legit, what are we left with? Unlocked front door. Undisturbed apartment. What if Flora simply took off? Got a hot lead on Stacey Summers, freaked out we’d figure out what she was up to after she burned Goulding to death. So she disappeared on her own accord.”
D.D. shrugged—hard to argue with that line of reasoning. Still: “Call me sentimental, but if Flora planned to take off for a few days, I think she’d let her mother know, even if she simply made up some excuse. But she’d call her mom, tell her not to worry. Except, of course, she didn’t.”