“Maybe.” He scanned the rest of the page. “A few weeks later the police found his birth mother, a fifteen-year-old crack addict named Mattie, in Dunston. She was living in squalor in a condemned three-story apartment building on Fuller Street. Melissa got her into rehab, but when she turned eighteen she disappeared, having relinquished all parental rights for Justyn.” He scraped back his chair. “This is definitely worth looking into.” Closing the file, he stood. A small square photograph slipped out of the folder and fluttered to the floor.
We both bent to retrieve the photo, but I got to it first. I picked it up and found myself staring into the face of a young boy who looked to be about eight or nine. He had curly black hair and unsettling, piercing eyes. The child’s gaze seared into mine, and I was instantly transported to the moment at the festival when a much older Justyn had laid a black feather on my table. No, not Justyn. I knew the true identity of the man with the sinister gaze.
“Sean, this photo…” I handed it to him, dumbfounded by what it revealed. “Justyn is Kirk Mason!”
Chapter 13
SEAN EXAMINED THE PHOTOGRAPH OF THE BOY WITH the intense stare carefully, but I could tell he wasn’t convinced.
“I know you’re looking at a picture of a little kid,” I said. “And Kirk Mason may be in his late twenties, but those are his eyes. I’d know them anywhere.” I pointed at Justyn’s face for emphasis, and suddenly, my mind took me back to the book festival. There I was, standing in the shadowy corridor of the old town hall while the looming figure of the young man with the dark eyes crept toward me. Those eyes were hypnotizing. They were like twin black holes, swallowing all traces of light and hope.
I couldn’t climb out of the memory until I heard Sean say my name and felt his hand on mine. And when I fixed my gaze on Justyn’s photograph again, another realization struck me. “Oh, Lord. Is it possible?” I turned from Sean and sat down in front of the computer. “There’s something I need to see.” Typing “Tilly Smythe” into Google’s search box, I struck the return key and waited for the results. Within seconds, I’d enlarged the image used on her latest book jacket so that it filled the screen. “Look. Tilly has the same eyes. I knew there was something hauntingly familiar about them, but I couldn’t make the connection at the time.”
Stunned, Sean raised the photo of Justyn, held it alongside Tilly’s, and said, “He’s got her nose and mouth shape, too. The resemblance can’t be chalked up as mere coincidence.”
Sean pulled out his notebook and flipped to a page covered with writing. “There’s a gap in Tilly’s history. We can trace where she lived, worked, and traveled all the way back to her early twenties, but before that, she doesn’t seem to exist. Not on paper, anyway.”
Things began to click into place. I compared the two faces before me. “She’s the right age…”
“To be Justyn’s mother.” Sean completed my thought.
The possibility filled up the room, compelling us to fall silent.
Questions ricocheted like pinballs in my head, but I kept coming back to one truth: We needed evidence or none of our brilliant deductions would bring the murderer to justice.
“What happened during your interview with Tilly’s husband?” I asked Sean. “Couldn’t he tell you anything about her childhood?”
“Not really. Said she was an only child and her parents had passed away before he and Tilly met. She told him she’d grown up in a trailer park on the outskirts of Dunston and that her childhood wasn’t a pleasant one and she didn’t want to talk about it.” Sean shrugged. “So they didn’t. Tilly has a blog and I’ve read through a bunch of her posts. More than once she says that her life with her husband and kids has allowed her to erase bad memories from her past and given her leave to focus on being happy.”
A vision of Tilly waiting for her children’s school bus rose up before me, and I distinctly remembered the way her face glowed with joy when she saw her son and daughter racing toward her. “I believe she was happy. Until Mason began to stalk her, that is.”
Glancing at his watch, Sean gathered the files together and stuffed them back into the cardboard box. He tucked the box under his right arm and said, “I’m going to head over to the Department of Social Services. If any of our theories are going to be substantiated, it’ll take a caseworker with a long, accurate memory to provide us with the details we need. I’ll call you if there’s a break in the case.”
I shook my head. “No way. Like you said, these are our theories. I’m a part of this case, Sean, and unless it’s illegal, I think I’ve earned the right to come along with you on this interview.”
“What about your work?” he asked, and I knew he was grabbing at straws.