Stolen Daughters (Detective Amanda Steele)

“She was reported missing three years ago. I’ve got fresh cases on my desk that need attention.”

“Isn’t that a coincidence? We have a fresh homicide, and we believe the victim may have been Ashley Lynch.”

He stared at her but kept moving.

She couldn’t understand why he was being so difficult. They were there with potential news about a case of his. Then again, maybe that explained the attitude—he didn’t want to be shown up, and by a detective from another department no less. But shouldn’t justice trump ego? “You heard what I just said?”

He stopped outside a door marked Interview 2. “You go in there and get comfortable. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Ah, sure? Where are you—”

He was already down the hall. For a big man, he moved quickly and stealthily.

“Okay then,” she said to Trent. Either Robbins was too proud to accept help from a fellow detective and/or he was having a bad day before they’d shown up.

Amanda and Trent sat at a table that would normally be used for questioning perps. Chester really wanted to remind them they were on his turf. Personally, she didn’t have any interest in getting into a battle over jurisdiction. She just wanted a killer to go away.

A few minutes later, Chester returned with a laptop under his arm. He proceeded to put it on the table, then sat across from her and Trent. “Talk to me.”

“The body of a young woman was pulled from a house fire in Dumfries, but her cause of death was strangulation.”

“You’re sure it was Lynch?”

Amanda pulled the computer-rendered photo of Lynch up on her phone and showed it to Chester.

Chester didn’t give the screen much attention. “I don’t remember what she looked like.”

Amanda tucked her phone away and pointed to his laptop. “We’ll wait if you want to bring her picture up. Keep in mind that she would have been three years younger at the time she went missing.”

Chester seemed to debate whether he was going to do as Amanda suggested. He flipped the lid on the laptop open, clicked some keys, grunted. He was slower at typing than she was at texting—and that said a lot. “Could be her, I suppose.”

“Do you remember much about the case?”

“What would you like to know?” He crossed his arms on the table, his body language closed off and rigid—defensive.

Maybe it wasn’t so much that Chester didn’t want to be shown up, but rather that he was feeling guilty about possibly missing something that led to the girl’s death. “To start with, did a man by the name of Samuel Booth surface in your investigation?” He could have been the man to lure her away from home—and then been the one to take her out. She wasn’t dismissing an

y possibilities at this point, though she also wasn’t trying to convict him yet either—something she needed to keep reminding herself.

“Name doesn’t sound familiar.”

She pulled up a photo of Booth on her phone. “Look familiar?” She put her screen in front of him.

“Nope.”

She put her phone back in her pocket. “We read that Ashley may have been groomed through social media.”

“Is there a question in there?”

“Were there messages to support this?”

“Yes.”

“And…?” she prompted.

“Lynch was communicating with a male—or perceived male—online. More specifically through social media, in the month proceeding her running away.”

“A month?” That surprised her. Shouldn’t her parents have noticed? But maybe they were much like the Fosters and only orbiting in the same vicinity of their child, not really a part of her life. Then there was the breaks and fractures. “What were the Lynches like?”