WHEN ELLIE AND PEANUT ARRIVED AT THE POLICE STATION, THE BUILDING was quiet. Cal was at his desk, headphones on his head, drawing a picture of some winged creature. At their entrance, he turned the paper facedown.
As if Ellie cared to see his bizarre sketches. He’d been doing them since sixth grade. The only difference between him and every other guy she’d ever known was that Cal had never outgrown it. There were always doodles on her pink While You Were Out messages.
“Earl signed out,” Cal said, pushing a lock of hair out of his eyes. “Mel is going to make one more pass out toward the lake to check on the teens, and then he’s off, too.”
In other words, life in Rain Valley was back to normal. The phones weren’t ringing and her two patrol officers were off unless someone called in.
“And the DNA results are back. I put them on your desk.”
Ellie stopped. They all looked at one another. After a long moment she went to her desk and sat down. The chair squeaked in protest.
She picked up the official-looking envelope and opened it. The pages inside had a lot of mumbo-jumbo/scientist speak, but none of it mattered. At the midsection was the sentence: No match found.
The second page was a lab report on the dress fibers. As expected, it revealed only that the dress was made of inexpensive white cotton that could have come from any of a dozen textile mills. There were no blood or semen traces in the fabric, no DNA present.
The final paragraph of the report outlined the procedure to be followed in the event that the DNA collected from Alice was to be tested against a found sample.
Ellie felt a wave of defeat. What now? She’d done everything she knew; hell, she’d thrown her sister to the wolves, and for what? They were no closer to an ID now than they’d been three weeks ago, and the people at DSHS were breathing down her neck.
Cal and Peanut pulled chairs across the room and sat in front of the desk.
“No ID?” Peanut asked.
Ellie shook her head, unable to say it out loud.
“You did the best you could,” Cal said gently.
“No one coulda done any better,” Peanut agreed.
After that, no one spoke. A real rarity here.
Finally, Ellie pushed the papers across her desk. “Send these results out to the people who are waiting. How many requests have we gotten?”
“Thirty-three. Maybe one of them is the match,” Peanut said hopefully.
Ellie opened her desk drawer and pulled out the stack of papers she’d gotten from the National Center for Missing Children. She’d read it at least one hundred times, using it as the only guidance she could find. The final paragraph had been burned into her brain. She didn’t need to read it again to know what it said. If none of this produces a positive identification of the child, then social services should be called in. The child will most likely be placed in a permanent foster home or a residential treatment facility, or adopted out.
“What do we do next?” Peanut asked.
Ellie sighed. “We pray this DNA produces a match.”
They all knew how unlikely that was. None of the thirty-three requests had seemed particularly promising. Most of them had been made by people—parents and lawyers and cops from other jurisdictions—who believed the child being sought was dead. None of them had described Alice’s birthmark.
Ellie rubbed her eyes. “Let’s pack it in for the night. You can send out the DNA reports tomorrow, Pea. I have another phone conference with the lady from DSHS. That should be fun.”
Peanut stood up. “I’m meeting Benji at the Big Bowl. Anyone want to join me?”
“There’s nothing I like better than hanging around with fat men in matching polyester shirts,” said Cal. “I’m in.”
Peanut glared at him. “You want me to tell Benji you called him fat?”
Cal laughed. “It’ll come as no surprise to him, Pea.”
“Don’t get started, you two,” Ellie said tiredly. The last thing she wanted to listen to was a he said/she said fight over nothing. “I’m going home. You should, too, Cal. It’s Friday night. The girls will miss you.”
“The girls and Lisa went to Aberdeen to see her folks. I’m a bachelor this weekend. So, it’s the Big Bowl for me.” He looked at her. “You used to love bowling.”
Ellie found herself remembering the summer she and Cal had worked at the Big Bowl’s lunch counter. It had been that last magical year of childhood, before all the sharp edges of adolescence poked through. They’d been outcasts together that summer, best friends in the way that only two social rejects can be. The next summer she’d been too cool for the Big Bowl.