Computers didn’t catch everything.
“How about this woman?” Jeremy asked, reading from the sheet in front of him. “Dinah Green, from Boston. She fits the physical description, and she didn’t show up for work on October twenty-seventh. She’d been on vacation and had told co-workers that she was going to drive up the coast, but when she still didn’t show up the following day and didn’t answer her phone, her boss reported her missing. She lived alone, but her apartment was empty and didn’t look disturbed when the local police went to check. They questioned her friends and neighbors, and she had told the woman next door, a Clare Faith, that she would be back for a Halloween party she was throwing. She didn’t make it, and apparently Clare also called the police and reported her missing. Dinah still hasn’t shown up, and she didn’t pay her rent for November or any of her bills. No one has heard from her, and her cell phone hasn’t been used since October nineteenth.”
Joe took the data sheet from Jeremy, frowning as he studied it.
“There’s not much more here,” he muttered. “Where’s this girl’s family? She kind of went off the radar, and it looks like no one was out there hounding the police.”
“Claire Faith seems to be worried. And her co-workers.”
Joe shook his head. “There ought to be a parent out there somewhere. Hell, I don’t get it. I mean, kids have to grow up, but you invest a lifetime in them—don’t people keep up with their kids, at least? Then again, maybe she just left home and forgot about them, so they tried to forget about her. If you distance yourself, I guess you don’t hurt as much when something does go wrong.”
Jeremy held awkwardly silent for a moment, then said, “I’m sorry about your son, Joe.”
Joe nodded and looked away for a long moment. “Hell, I’m sorry for your folks. Three boys—all in law enforcement, one way or another. They must worry.”
“My folks are dead.” Apparently Joe had only checked out his current circumstances. “Maybe Dinah Green’s are, too.”
For a minute, Joe stared back at him. Then a rueful smile curved his lips. “Well, I’m sorry for you boys, then.”
“We managed. They were great when we had them. We have the memories.”
“Memories. Yeah, my memories are all good,” Joe said, smiling in reminiscence. Then he frowned suddenly. “Why the hell did you up and resign the way that you did? According to my sources—and yes, even we local-yokel types have them—you found guys who had decayed in a six-seater Cessna, a woman dropped into a canal chained to a block of cement and a couple who crashed and died twenty feet down in a souped-up dragster. You even saved some lives, so what made you throw in the towel?”
“The kids,” Jeremy said.
“The kids?” Joe echoed.
“A van full of foster kids.”
“Because they were dead?”
“Because one of them wasn’t. And because I was about two minutes too late to save him,” Jeremy said flatly.
Because he’s alive in my dreams.
Not that he was about to admit that.
But Joe was still looking at him curiously, studying him. Jeremy wasn’t sure why he wanted the man to think well of him; he didn’t have to prove himself to anyone.
But Joe’s good opinion mattered to him.
Because Joe mattered to Rowenna?
He didn’t want to think about that.
“You learn in this business that you can’t save everyone—and you can’t blame yourself for that,” Joe said at last.
“I don’t blame myself. I put the blame where it belongs, on the idiot foster father who went drinking, then drove into that canal, but it doesn’t help. I didn’t blame myself. I was just ready to leave. Anyway, I like what I’m doing now. Working with my brothers…We make a good team. And I like the flexibility. Brad needs me, and I can be here. It all works.”
Joe nodded slowly, still staring at him. Jeremy had no idea what he was seeing, but the older man’s gaze was too penetrating for comfort.
Besides, they were getting off subject, and he was certain that Joe Brentwood was as eager to solve what was going on as he was, so he tapped the paper Joe was holding and asked, “What does the credit card trail show?”
Joe looked down and skimmed quickly. “She checked into a hotel in Saugus, just down the road, on October eighteenth. Checked out Halloween morning…No, wait. She was due to leave on the thirty-first, so the charge just went through as an express checkout. Nothing left in the room, so no reason for the hotel staff to suspect a problem. She made a withdrawal at an ATM there for a few hundred on October twentieth. That looks like the last credit or debit card usage.”