The Little Grave (Detective Amanda Steele)

“Yes, there are. Again, call if you need anything. You have my number from the other day still?”

“I do.”

With that, Amanda ended the call and set her phone on her desk. She hadn’t laid out her entire plan to Patty, but she was going to look at the photos and files and cross-reference what she found with local news. She’d also try Missing Persons and see if she had more luck than the detective in Georgia had with his search. But he said he’d limited his search to Atlanta.

She took a few deep breaths and accessed the mainframe. There were three files right where Jacob had told her they’d be, and she clicked on the first one. It opened a spreadsheet listing contacts in one column, with their preferences and bids in columns to the right. As Patty had noted, the contacts were codenames, and to Amanda appeared to reference characters in literature and movies. It churned her stomach to see the list contained two hundred perverts, all with a lust for young women, a few with a desire for six-year-olds.

She opened the next file, which was pages long of scanned bank transfers.

The third file was a database—or catalogue—of girls. The girls were assigned nicknames too, and their profiles included age, ethnicity, hair, eye color, with photos attached.

She clicked on the picture attached to the first girl, and when it popped up, she shut the window down as fast as she could. The profile noted she was only ten years old and the photo depicted her— Bile rose in her throat. No wonder people transferred out of Sex Crimes. Once you saw an image like that, there was no going back, and the one Amanda had just seen would be burned on her brain for life.

Thirty-Nine

Amanda would let Patty Glover scour the files and do her thing, while Amanda would do all she could to work around the disgusting files. She brought up the missing persons database for Prince William County and searched for girls aged between six and nineteen but didn’t set any limitations as to when the reports were filed. She added cherry birthmark under identifying markers. Sadly, there were far more than Amanda would have imagined or than she had time to investigate.

Maybe she was going at this from the wrong angle. If Casey-Anne Ritter had gone missing as a young girl, it would have been big news. If she had been taken within Prince William County, she would have likely heard buzz about it firsthand through her father and the community, even if Amanda had been a young woman herself. But she didn’t remember any of that happening. So it might be prudent that she extend the search geographically. And maybe instead of looking in a missing persons database, she’d consult the worldwide web.

She keyed in missing girl state of Virginia age six to nineteen and watched as the screen filled with news articles.

She started the search and sat back, sipping on another cup of coffee—she’d lost track of the number now. She’d been at this for hours and a glance at the clock told her it was now after three in the afternoon. Her ass was numb, and her head throbbed from staring at the screen so hard, wishing for it to provide answers.

Trent entered her cubicle with a grease-stained paper bag. “I’d put it on your desk, but…”

“What is— Oh, you didn’t need to—”

“I know I didn’t.” He looked at her desk and seemed to be trying to figure where he could set the bag down.

“Here.” She took it from him with a smile. The smell of bacon, cheese, and onion wafted up and had her stomach rumbling. After seeing the picture she had, and contemplating the horrible evils in the world, she was surprised she had an appetite.

“You are a prince.”

She opened the bag and dug out the bacon cheeseburger, then cleared a spot on her desk and set it down. Grease marks—who cared. She unwrapped it and took a bite. A glorious, heavenly, devilish bite.

“Oh… my… God,” she said between chomping. Grease dripped from the corners of her mouth, and she snatched a tissue from the box on her desk and dabbed it away. “Thank you so much.”

“You’re very welcome. I figured if I’ve gotten to know you at all in the last couple of days, you’d probably be slaving away with no regard to your body’s needs.”

“How did you know you’d find me at my desk though?”

“I didn’t. Figured if you weren’t here, I’d just have it later. Hence the onions. Hopefully, you like—”

“Love.” She tore off another chunk of cow and gluten.

“Good.” Trent chuckled and sat at his desk.

She desperately wanted to press him for updates, but with all the ears around and Malone down the hall, she thought better of it. She held her burger in her left hand, scrolled down the headlines with her right. On page three, an article from fifteen and a half years ago caught her eye.

Had her gamble actually paid off?

She swallowed the last bit of food in her mouth, set down the burger, and clicked on the article. It told the story of eight-year-old Phoebe Baldwin from Williamsburg, Virginia, who’d gone missing. There was something vaguely familiar about the name, but Amanda paused to do the quick math. Phoebe, if she was Casey-Anne, would have been eighteen—the age Detective Banks said she looked to be when she was murdered.

She returned to the article and gleaned takeaways. Phoebe’s parents were Wes and Tanya Baldwin, married at the time of the report, and wealthy as God. Wes was a thoracic surgeon and his wife was an aristocrat and hailed from old money. Phoebe had gone missing from a playground in the city while under a babysitter’s care. The babysitter was noted as a Rhonda Osborne, age twenty-five. That would presently put her around forty.

Amanda opened the missing persons database again and keyed in Phoebe’s name. The report quickly filled her screen. There were pictures. She hovered the mouse over the photos attached to the file. The first picture showed a bright-eyed young girl sitting on a concrete step in overalls and a T-shirt, a doll on her lap and an ice cream cone melting in her hand.

But it was the doll that tore Amanda’s heart and had tears pooling in her eyes. Lindsey used to have a doll just like that one. Maybe there were worse fates than death. But no matter how quickly and briefly that thought had passed through her mind, she felt a jab of remorse so deep, it