“Maybe. Good-bye, Nalchek. I’ll get back to you.” She hung up.
She doubted if Nalchek would get anyone to push forward on a cold case when they didn’t have proof of identity. It had been her experience that any excuse was good enough for manpower-strapped law-enforcement departments to file away the records in a bottom drawer and look the other way. But they’d had a chance with that reconstruction, dammit. She defied anyone to look at that face and turn away.
I won’t let it matter, Jenny. I won’t let what he did make a difference.
Somehow, I’ll make it work.
*
“You’re very quiet,” Joe said as he pulled her closer in bed that night. “Depressed?”
“Yes.” She stared into the darkness. “And angry. I can’t let him get away with it, Joe.”
“I knew that was coming.” He paused. “We have a chance. I found tracks of a vehicle near the road and sent the imprints to the lab. That may help, but what else are we going to do about it?”
“We? It’s my job.”
“Not with a killer out there.”
She would feel the same way about him. “And I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. I’m trying to put something together. I feel as if the rug’s been jerked from beneath me.” She was silent. “I was so sure that I was doing the right thing sending the reconstruction back to Nalchek. I wanted desperately for Jenny to find her family. She seemed so … lost.”
“Lost?”
“When Bonnie first came back to me, she wasn’t like Jenny. She was just the way she was when she was alive. Oh, she had things she didn’t know, like about where she was, and a few lapses of memory about how she died. But she knew me, she knew what we were together.”
“And Jenny isn’t like that?”
She shook her head. “She doesn’t remember her parents. She doesn’t remember anything about who killed her. She has only fleeting memories about anything connected to her life. As for her afterlife, that’s terribly vague. She only knows she’s been waiting.”
“Waiting to know who killed her?”
“I don’t know, Joe. Maybe waiting for her parents to bring her home? Though I think that things were starting to come back to her.” She paused. “That last day I actually saw her.”
“What?”
“I saw her. I’d said something about how happy I was that I knew what she looked like after I finished the reconstruction. And later I saw Jenny in her white dress and black, patent-leather shoes. She wanted to please me. She was so sad when I told her I was sending her away.”
“You actually saw her? The way you see Bonnie?”
She nodded. “I was surprised, too. She said that she’d thought she might be able to do it, so she tried. I think that she was exploring, stretching…”
“Since she was no longer lying in that grave, waiting,” he said bitterly.
“I don’t believe that’s what she meant.”
“You’ll have to forgive me. Your Jenny is a little out of my experience.”
“And mine.” She closed her eyes. “Hold me tighter, Joe.”
His arms closed around her. “There has to be some kind of cosmic justice for kids like Jenny. I don’t believe God would saddle you with that responsibility. She’s kind of out of our jurisdiction.”
“How do you know? Jenny was sent to me. Maybe that’s a sign that I’m the one who should help her. Oh, I know I did my best with that reconstruction. But it wasn’t enough, was it? She’s back with that monster who killed her.” She shuddered at the thought. “And that’s not justice, cosmic or otherwise. That’s a horror story.” She opened her eyes as a thought occurred to her. “Or maybe it’s payback time. I had a miracle come into my life, and her name was Bonnie. Even when she was taken from me in the cruelest way possible, she was allowed to come back and visit me. That was a miracle, too. Perhaps I’m being tapped to return the favor.”