“Who?” Jo asked, then managed to grab hold of her before Nessa fell to her knees.
There were two more ghosts standing in the water. The waves crashed over and into them, but they stood unmoving, like pillars sunk deep into the sand. One girl was white and wore a black dress. The other girl, who appeared to have Asian ancestry, was clothed in a red hoodie. The only thing all three dead girls shared in common was their youth. None of them looked older than eighteen.
“Where are you?” Nessa called out to the girls. Their bodies had to be somewhere nearby. The girl standing closest had pale, freckled skin and long red hair. She pointed out across the ocean.
“How can I find you?”
To that, neither girl had an answer.
“Nessa? What do you see?” Harriett asked, but Nessa was too overwhelmed to answer.
They were dead, their bodies resting on the ocean floor. How could two young women have died without anyone knowing? Where were their mothers? Why had no one come looking?
“Nessa?” It was Jo. “Tell us.”
“Somebody’s been killing girls,” Nessa said, her knees giving out once again. This time, Jo couldn’t hold her, and Nessa collapsed onto the sand and cried.
“What were you ladies doing out here this morning, anyway?” the police officer demanded. He was new to the area, and Nessa didn’t care for his tone. She’d accomplished more than enough in life to deserve some respect.
“Enjoying the public land that our federal tax dollars maintain,” Harriett said.
“We were heading down to the beach,” Nessa added. “I needed to go to the bathroom, so I stepped off the trail. That’s when I found her.”
“Was the trash bag closed when you found it?” the officer asked.
“Yes,” Nessa confirmed.
“And you took it upon yourself to open it up?”
“I didn’t know what was inside of it.” Nessa’s hackles were up. “Someone could have cleaned out their freezer and tossed the bag into the thicket. I didn’t want to call 911 to have y’all clean up a bunch of rancid garbage.”
“You contaminated the crime scene.”
“No I did not!” Nessa shot back.
“If she says she didn’t, she didn’t,” said a voice from behind her. “Nessa James is a nurse practitioner with a Ph.D. Her husband was a detective for the NYPD. She knows what she’s talking about.”
Nessa spun around to see a fiftysomething man in a navy suit. He stood just under six feet, though his perfect posture made him appear much taller. He’d thickened a bit since she’d seen him last, but in a way that made him seem sturdy, and the gray in his close-cropped hair added to the gravitas he’d always possessed. He wore glasses now, but the dark eyes dancing behind them were the same.
“My apologies, ma’am,” Nessa heard the younger cop say. He did a poor impression of sorry, but at least the words had been said.
“You can go now,” the older man dismissed him.
“Hello, Franklin,” Nessa said as the other cop slunk away.
“Nessa.” He didn’t seem at all surprised to see her in such surroundings. “I was wondering if you were still here after all these years. I always figured we might meet again someday.”
She’d known it, too. “What are you doing all the way out on the island?”
“Moved here about six months ago. Couldn’t bear to stay in the city after Aiesha died.”
Nessa reached out and laid a hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry to hear that she’s gone.” Nessa had met his wife once, long ago, at her own husband’s funeral. Aiesha had kept Nessa’s girls entertained that day with stories about her childhood in Kenya. If Nessa had stayed in the city, they might have been friends.
“Death comes for all of us. Aiesha was sick for a year. She had time to get ready. The poor girl you found this morning—” He looked past Nessa to where Jo and Harriett were watching the crime scene team assemble by the side of the road. “Those the two ladies who were with you?”
“Jo! Harriett!” Nessa called out and waved them both over. “Franklin Rees, this is Jo Levison and Harriett Osborne.”
“Ms. Levison, Ms. Osborne,” he said, shaking their hands. “I’m a detective with the Mattauk PD. I used to work with Nessa’s husband back in the day. I’ll be covering this case going forward.”
Nessa noticed Harriett giving Franklin an appreciative once-over. Given the circumstances, it couldn’t have been less appropriate. But Nessa wasn’t blind, either. Franklin looked good.
“What can you tell us about the girl we found, Detective Rees?” Jo wasted no time.
“Not much at the moment,” Franklin said. “She appears to have been out here for quite a while.”
“Given the weather, I’d say no more than two weeks, give or take a day,” Harriett said.
“How did you reach that conclusion?” Franklin asked. There was no challenge in the question. He sounded genuinely curious.
“I noticed the blowfly larvae had stopped feeding and the houseflies had arrived.”
“Oh my God.” Jo looked queasy.
Franklin nodded respectfully. “Well, we’ll find out if your hypothesis is correct when we get the lab results back.”
“It’s correct,” Harriett assured him.
“Has anyone reported a girl missing in the past two weeks?” Jo asked.
“No one locally,” Franklin said. “But we’ll certainly check all the databases.”
“When you locate her family, I’d like to speak with her mother,” Nessa told him. On that night back in South Carolina, she’d waited in the hall of the dead girl’s house while her grandmother spoke with the family. When her grandmother emerged, she’d looked much older and frailer than she had going in. That was the part of the job that would kill her, she told Nessa. But it was also the most important.
“If we locate the mother, I’ll pass along your request.” Franklin was trying to let her down easy, as though she were innocent of the ways of this world. “But don’t get your hopes up. We find Jane Does like this from time to time. Most are sex workers with drug problems and many have fled abusive homes. Even when we manage to ID the victims, their families often don’t want to be involved.”
Nessa looked past Franklin. The girl had come to stand behind him. She was listening to everything he said. She wasn’t going to go away. Not this one.
“This girl was loved,” Nessa informed him. “And not that it makes a difference where these things are concerned, but she wasn’t an addict. When she died, she was strong and healthy.”
Franklin studied Nessa’s face. “What makes you so sure?” he asked quietly, as if he knew he was entering dangerous territory.
The night Jonathan died, Franklin was the officer who’d answered Nessa’s frantic phone call. Few other cops would have given a wife’s intuition a second thought. But Franklin had listened—and he’d taken her seriously enough to check on Jonathan. He’d been just a few minutes too late. When someone had to call Nessa back with the news, Franklin had stepped forward. The connection they’d forged during those calls would last the rest of their lives.
Later, at her husband’s funeral, Franklin had come to stand beside Nessa at the coffin.