He made a few more turns and they made the rest of the trip with no one talking.
Corrow pulled into the mall where the movie theater was, a Regal, with a grand entrance that looked like something out of Las Vegas. Even midday in the middle of a work week, there were plenty of cars. The parking spot Corrow wanted to show them was occupied by a minivan.
“This was the space, right here, this was where her car was. We let it sit here a week; Regal finally threw a fit at us, and we impounded it. Nothing in the car but her registration, a few candy wrappers, a couple pens; that was it. You want to go look at the car, too?”
Mike opened his mouth but Overton beat him to the punch. “No thank you, Detective. I think we’ve seen enough – can you just send us the info on that sex offender you said?”
“Uh-huh, sure,” Corrow said and nailed the gas, Mike feeling the Gs.
* * *
With Corrow off chewing gum somewhere on his own, maybe grooming his sideburns, the investigators had left Watertown with a copy of the file on Lavoie, a hard summer rain drumming the car’s roof. They were cruising along, Overton driving, Mike reading when Mike said, “Pull over.”
She shot him a look then brought the car to a stop in front of a restaurant. Before she could ask a question, he handed her the open file, poking the top page with his finger. “Read that.”
Overton held his gaze a moment then turned her attention to the file, started reading. “Okay… Lavoie was fifty-five when she disappeared… born in Watertown… went to school at SUNY Buffalo, was a social worker in Buffalo for almost ten years before she moved to Lake Haven to—”
She stopped reading to look at him again. “She worked in Lake Haven?”
“Yeah. And during the time she was a caseworker at Lake Haven, Harriet Fogarty was there, too.”
“Holy shit. How did we miss that?”
“Missing Persons didn’t have her work history. And what Corrow originally sent us only covered the Watertown stuff.”
“He didn’t think it was relevant – we have a murdered caseworker in Lake Haven, and his missing person used to work there?”
Mike didn’t have an answer. Sometimes cops missed things. Corrow was as busy as any other investigator, juggling multiple cases, being a chauvinist.
Overton continued examining the file. “Well, I think he’s just got his mind made up, and that’s the reason. If this is foul play, and someone abducted her, there’s no sign of it. Her car was fine, no scratches, no forced entry, no marks. So I can see why Corrow thought this was a boyfriend or something.” She looked out into the rain.
“Or it just means it was someone she knew,” Mike said. “Maybe the same as Harriet.”
Overton kept scanning, flipping pages. “Not a trace of Steven Pritchard in here,” she said. “Or Jameson Rentz, or the Fullers, nothing. Looks like Corrow worked it for about a month before considering it cold.”
Mike was quiet a moment, letting her read. Then, “Maybe this thing has to do with something further upstream.”
“Like a case they shared back – what? Ten, fifteen years ago?”
“Just a thought.”
“Okay but what about the MO? Like Cheever said, Lavoie is abducted, missing. Harriet is not.”
“That we know of. Lavoie is gone, yeah. Dragged off, hidden, murdered, who knows?” Mike thought of his talk with Crispin about a killer breaking pattern, escalating things, seeking a new high. Maybe hiding a body wasn’t satisfying enough the second time, and no one could see the handiwork when you hid your victims.
Mike’s eyes drifted to the rubbery shapes just visible through the thick rain. A neon sign in the restaurant window glowed red in the dark downpour. They’d stopped in Black River, just outside Watertown, still hours from home. “Again, maybe she knew him,” Mike said. “Maybe Corrow’s got that part right. He met her in the theater, convinced her to go somewhere with him, she never came back.”
“Still a different MO – no sign he was in the car with Lavoie. With Harriet, he obviously had a way in.”
“Right. Maybe he does it one way with Lavoie – uses the fact that she knows him to lure him to his car or something. But maybe that’s too much hassle, almost doesn’t work; I don’t know. Or his relationship to each of them is different, requiring an altered method. But think about it – in twenty years, how many CPS caseworkers have been murdered or vanished into thin air?”
“I’m going to guess two.”
Mike said, “Right now, we’re looking at present, open, child protection cases. Corrow said he looked at ten.”
“Yeah, Corrow…” she said skeptically.
“I think he brushed off the sex offender because of Lavoie’s age.”
“Or maybe her race. I don’t know if Corrow struck me as socially liberal.”
“Me neither. But what I’m saying is…” He took the file back, thumbed through a couple of pages, pulled one out and handed it to her. “Lavoie transferred to Watertown in 2008. Like her sister said, she moved in to be a support. We need to see all her case files.”
Overton clucked her tongue. “That’s gonna be tough – she’s considered a missing person, not a homicide. Her confidentiality is protected. It’ll be hard to get Cheever to sign off on a warrant opening Lavoie’s stuff when the connection is this tenuous.”
“There’s got to be a way around it. I think we can get Cheever on board.”
The rain made shifting shadows over her face as Overton thought it through. She said, “Well, this could be good news for Bobbi Noelle.”
“I think she’d be relieved, yeah.”
“I mean we can’t say anything, obviously… I wish we could. She seems pretty freaked out.”
Mike had felt the same, even if she showed an aptitude for self-defense.
“You know what strikes me about Noelle?” Overton asked.
“How much she looks like she could be Harriet’s daughter?”
“Not that. But that Noelle comes from a well-to-do family – her father worked for Xerox in Rochester for years, and when they shut down he went into business for himself and did very well. What’s she doing up here in the sticks?”
“You’re a classist?”
She hit him on the shoulder. “Stop it. You know what I mean. Stock County is the second most dependent county in the state. Know what the first one is?”
“Point taken.”
“More people in Pierce County on disability, Medicaid, than anywhere else. People are leaving – not coming in. Plenty of jobs and higher pay in Rochester.”
He shrugged. “There’s a need, I guess. And just because she comes from money doesn’t mean she doesn’t have… Maybe it’s one of those things where a kid takes off in a completely different direction from her parents.”
Overton got a half-smile on her face and leaned back in the seat a little, looking toward the restaurant. “Well, my son, Eric, says he wants to be a cop, so, there goes your theory.”
He waved a hand. “Bah, anecdotal.”
“Hardly. You want statistics? I bet we can find them. I bet more kids get up to similar careers than different from their parents. Eldest children, most definitely. What did your father do?”
“Cop.”
Overton threw her head back and laughed. “See? You jerk. Where was he a cop? Around here?”
“Dad worked the Seven-Seven in Brooklyn.”
Her jaw dropped. “East New York?” Sections of Brooklyn in the late 1970s had hotbeds of organized crime and law enforcement corruption; most cops had heard a story or two.
“East New York was the Seven-Five district,” Mike said. “He was right next door.”
She faced him. “You lived down there or what?”
“I grew up there for the first few years, then my parents divorced, I moved up here with my mother but went back to Brooklyn in the summers for a while. How old is Eric now?”
“Uhm, he’s… Eric is sixteen.”
Mike whistled.
“What?” Her eyes accused him though she smiled.
“That’s just got to be something. You’ve got two teenaged boys under your roof. Got to be a handful. And, so, what does…?”
“Avery.”