“What about her car?” Jeremy asked, and Joe slid the paper over to him.
Jeremy’s eyes skipped over the page while Joe stared at him. He found what he was looking for and turned back to Joe. “It was found abandoned off of I-95 north, just south of the Maine line. It was towed on November first, but the authorities don’t know how long it might have been there. It was reported the day before by a state highway patrolman who had seen it there at least two days before.”
“I think we may have something here,” Joe said. He pulled out his cell phone and put through a call. He gave Dinah Green’s name to one of the deputy sheriffs, and crisply informed him that he wanted any additional available information requested from Boston and any dental records patched through to Doc Harold immediately. He wanted current pictures, and he wanted his men canvassing the area bars and shops asking if anyone had seen her, and if so, when and with whom. Then he snapped his phone shut. “Anything else? Anyone else?” he asked Jeremy. “I have a feeling you’ve found our Jane Doe, but just in case she doesn’t pan out…”
They spent another twenty minutes flipping through the rest of the missing persons reports, and in the end, Jeremy pulled out three of them. “These fit the description but not much else. There’s a girl from Princeton who apparently had a huge fight with her boyfriend, but according to the police in New Jersey, she made a withdrawal in person from a branch of her bank in New Hampshire. And here’s a woman from New York City, but she took off with her boyfriend—the mother called it in. She told police she hates the boyfriend, he’s Italian and probably Mafia, and he kidnapped her daughter to an island in the Caribbean.”
“You’re kidding me. He’s Italian, so he has to be Mafia?” Joe said in disgust.
“The mother hates him. She has to find something,” he said calmly, then returned to the files. “Here’s one more that’s worth looking into—Charlene Nottaway, left New York City for a cabin in Maine, but she hasn’t shown up there yet. She left the city the last week of October and hasn’t used a credit card since.” He looked up at Joe. “She’s thirty-eight. A little older than the M.E. seems to think our cornfield corpse could be.”
“Yeah, well, I think your first girl is the one, but I’ll pull more information on this one, as well,” Joe told him grimly.
He frowned suddenly, staring at Jeremy suspiciously. “Where’s Rowenna?”
“She was going to do some research,” he said.
“In town?” Joe asked sharply.
“Yes.”
“She didn’t drive in alone, did she?” Joe demanded.
Jeremy shook his head. “No.” He hesitated for a moment. Rowenna wasn’t Joe Brentwood’s daughter. She was over twenty-one. Her life was her own. So why did he feel like a college kid who had kept a girl out too late? “She stayed with me here in town. I’m renting a house over on Essex Street.”
“I see.” Joe stared at him and let out a long sigh. “The thing is, I want her to have a life. I just didn’t want her having a life with a cop or another serviceman,” Joe said. “And I don’t imagine your profession’s a whole lot safer.”
Jeremy looked down at the remains of his hamburger. Well done. He usually liked his meat rare.
Not after an autopsy. He was a carnivore, and he had no interest in going vegetarian. But there was something about seeing the remains of a human being that just wasn’t conducive to enjoying rare meat.
He looked back up at Joe. “There are no guarantees in life,” he said.
“No. There are no guarantees. But there are statistics. And statistics aren’t good for servicemen, cops—anyone who messes with perps. Why don’t you just play your guitar?”
Jeremy laughed. “I’m not good enough to make the big bucks.”
“I hear otherwise.”
“That in the file you’re putting together on me?”
Joe just grinned.
“I like to play, don’t get me wrong. But I like investigating, working with my brothers, more. There’s a real satisfaction in it. It’s important to me. And, I might add, I don’t see you putting in for early retirement.”
Joe was quiet for a minute. “Well, I kind of feel like I’m on borrowed time anyway, if that makes any sense. Wife and son, both gone. I have friends. I’m not the suicidal type. But my work is my life now.”
“It’s not really a life if you don’t find some kind of meaning in it,” Jeremy pointed out.
Joe shook his head and changed the subject. “She worries me.”
He didn’t have to say who he was talking about. Jeremy knew he was referring to Rowenna.
“She worries you—but you go looking for her to help you out with potentially dangerous situations,” Jeremy reminded him.
“She’s going to get into things with or without me,” Joe said. “The thing is, I know I would take a bullet for her. The question is, would you?”