She wished she could be more direct, but unless she wanted to see Harriett arrested, she couldn’t let on that Chertov was dead.
“Not to my knowledge,” Franklin said. “I was the lead detective on the case. If they brought Chertov in for questioning before Harding’s death, they must have hidden him pretty well, because I didn’t see him. Half of what the chief said on Newsnight was meant to cover up his incompetence. I just haven’t found a way to prove it.”
“He wasn’t covering up incompetence,” Nessa said. “He and Harding were working together. Harriett went out to the Pointe this morning and spoke to a woman who works there. The lady said Rocca was at Harding’s house before the helicopter took off that night.”
“Doing what?” Franklin asked, his curiosity clearly piqued.
Nessa shrugged and took a drink. “No idea. But it means the chief lied when he said Harding escaped after he was tipped off by the podcast. Rocca was at Harding’s house. He could have arrested Spencer at any point, but he didn’t. There should be security tapes that can prove it. We’re going to see if we can get our hands on them.”
“I’m impressed,” Franklin said. “You guys are turning out to be better detectives than I am.”
Nessa stared out at the water. “We’re still missing most of the story. I can feel it. The gift has limits, and this sure isn’t how my grandmother taught me to use it. I think you were right, Franklin—the two of us are meant to work as a team. I shouldn’t have pushed you aside like I did. We need your help. I need your help.”
“You really mean that?” Franklin asked.
Nessa nodded. “I do,” she said.
“Then come on,” he said, rising out of his chair.
“Really?” she asked. “Now?”
Franklin laughed. “Look who’s got a dirty mind.”
Nessa felt her cheeks burst into flame. “I’ve been spending too much time with Harriett.”
“Sounds to me like Ms. Osborne is an excellent influence,” Franklin said, holding out a hand to help Nessa up. “We’ll get to that later, after I cook you dinner. There’s something I want to show you first.”
He led her through the sliding doors and into a tasteful living room decorated in shades of blue. It opened onto an old-fashioned kitchen with white cabinets and appliances that had to be as old as the house. There wasn’t a crumb on the counters or a dish in the sink.
“You’re awfully tidy for a man,” Nessa said, though Jonathan had been tidy, too. “I drop by unannounced, and your house is spick-and-span.”
“That’s what ten years in the military will do to you. For your information, I’m a whiz with an iron, too.” He shot her a wink over his shoulder and Nessa clapped a hand to her heart as though ready to swoon.
Down a short hall from the living room were the cottage’s two bedrooms. The door to one was open, and Nessa could see a perfectly made bed with a nightstand beside it. Franklin opened the second door, and the smile slipped off Nessa’s face. The walls were plastered with pictures of girls. White girls and brown girls—they all looked like babies to Nessa. File boxes sat stacked against the walls, and three computer monitors cluttered an old desk.
“What is all of this?” Nessa asked.
“After your They Walk Among Us interview aired, I knew my days on the force were numbered. So I went straight to headquarters and started making copies of files I thought could prove useful,” he said.
“Who are these girls?”
“Missing persons cases going back a couple of decades,” Franklin said. “All were last seen on the island. Most lived here, but some were just visiting. All between the ages of thirteen and eighteen.”
“How many are there altogether?”
“I started with hundreds,” Franklin said. “I’ve managed to narrow it down to a couple dozen girls who might be connected. About two-thirds vanished in the last couple of years.”
Could they all be Spencer Harding’s victims? Nessa shuddered at the thought. “A woman came up to me in the store the other day. She said her daughter disappeared a year ago when she was visiting the island from Queens. Her name was Lena.” Nessa tapped her temple trying to dislodge the girl’s last name from her brain.
Franklin already had it. “You must mean Lena Collins.” He walked across the room to a picture pinned to the far wall. Nessa stepped forward and recognized the girl from the photo her mother had pulled from her wallet. “Seventeen years old. Captain of her school’s soccer team. Came out with a friend whose grandparents have a house not too far from here. It was two weeks before her high school graduation. File says she ran away, but there was nothing to suggest that this girl wasn’t happy at home.”
“And Harriett mentioned a girl who worked on Culling Pointe a couple of years ago. She disappeared after serving drinks at a party thrown by a man named Jackson Dunn.”
“Rosalia Cortez.” He took a few steps and tapped a picture of a stunning young woman with wild black hair and sweet eyes. “Also seventeen. She and her mother came here on H-2B visas to work on the Pointe. She was saving money to attend a nursing college in Guadalajara. Her school records were in the file. The girl was smart as hell—not the kind of person who’d be easily duped.”
“You know them all,” Nessa marveled.
“Of course,” Franklin said. “If you’re looking for someone, it helps to know who they are.”
“It sounds like no one really looked before.”
“No,” Franklin said. “Girls this age are often assumed to be runaways. But girls don’t run away if they’re saving for nursing school. And they don’t run away if they’re two weeks from their high school graduation.”
“And you think all these disappearances could all be connected to Spencer Harding?”
“Not all of them,” Franklin said. “But maybe a few. And if so, their families deserve to know.”
“Could any of them be the two girls we found who haven’t been identified yet?” Their ghosts may have moved on, but the girl in blue and the girl in the red hoodie hadn’t left Nessa’s memory. Their faces were on her mind every morning when she woke. They were with Nessa each night that guilt and frustration kept her awake.
Franklin shook his head. “That’s one of the strangest things about this whole case. I haven’t found a single clue when it comes to those girls. But don’t worry—I’m going to keep looking till I do.”
Nessa turned to him. “So this is what you’ve been doing since you lost your job?”
“All day, every day,” he said. “I figured when I had some conclusions, I’d come share them with you.”
“I can’t believe you did all of this,” Nessa said.