“It’s a Hollywood thing, like a little plastic bladder filled with fake blood. They hide it under clothes or stick it on your back. The bad guy comes along and supposedly shoots you, or in this case machetes you, and then another guy off camera presses a button and the squib explodes and the blood pours out.” He traced his finger along a shadow at the woman’s side. “This dark line here is the wire that connects to the squib. They got remote-controlled ones now, so I guess this was low budget, but—”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s fake. Not even good fake.”
“But, the girl—”
“Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. She looks just like Anna Kilpatrick.”
Claire hadn’t been thinking that at all, but now that he’d said it, the resemblance was uncanny.
“Lookit,” Mayhew said, “I know about your past. Your sister.”
Claire felt a warm sensation rush through her body.
“If I had a sister who disappeared like that, I’d probably be quick to make these kinds of connections, too.”
“That’s not what I—” Claire stopped herself. She had to appear calm. “This has nothing to do with my sister.”
“You look at this girl in the movie, and you think, Brown hair, brown eyes, young, pretty. It’s Anna Kilpatrick.”
Claire’s eyes went to the frozen image on screen. How had she not noticed before? Every time he said the girl’s name, the resemblance became more obvious.
“Mrs. Scott, I’m gonna be honest because I feel for you.” He patted his hand on the desk. “I really feel for you.”
Claire nodded for him to continue.
“This has to stay between us, all right? You can’t tell nobody else.”
She nodded again.
“The Kilpatrick girl.” He slowly shook his head side to side. “They found blood in her car. A lot of blood. You know what I mean? The kind of blood that you need inside your body if you’re going to stay alive.”
“She’s dead?” Claire felt a weight crushing her chest. She realized that somewhere, somehow, she had been hoping the girl was alive.
“Mrs. Scott, I really am sorry about your loss. And I’m sorry that you had to see this side of your husband. Men are pigs, all right? Take it from a pig who knows.” He tried to smile. “Guys can look at some hard-core shit, excuse my language, but that doesn’t mean they’re into it or even want to do it. This kind of stuff is all over the Internet. And as long as it’s not kids, it’s legal. And it’s disgusting. But that’s kind of what the Internet is for, right?”
“But . . .” Claire grasped for words. The more she thought about it, the more the girl looked like Anna Kilpatrick. “Don’t you think it’s an odd coincidence?”
“No such thing,” Mayhew said. “There’s something called the Law of Truly Large Numbers. Get a big enough sample size, outrageous things are bound to happen.”
Claire felt her eyes widen, her lips part, in a textbook example of shock.
“Is something wrong?”
She worked to return her expression to some semblance of normal. He might as well be quoting Paul, which begged the question, had he ever met Paul?
“Mrs. Scott?”
“I’m sorry.” Claire forced some calm into her voice. “It’s just—the way you said it. I hadn’t thought about it that way, but now that I hear it, it makes sense.” She had to clear her throat before she could continue. “Where did you hear that phrase, the Law of Truly Large Numbers?”
He smiled again. “I dunno. Probably a fortune cookie.”
She tried to steady herself. Every ounce of her being was telling her something was wrong. Was Mayhew lying? Or was he trying to protect her from something more dangerous at play?
She asked, “Can you tell me why Agent Nolan was at my house yesterday?”
Mayhew huffed out some air. “Being honest with you again? I got no idea. Those FBI guys are like flies around our cases. The minute it looks like we’ve got something good, they snatch it away so they can get all the credit.”
“They can take a case away from you? They don’t have to be asked?”
“Nope. They just walk in and take over.” He unplugged the hard drive. “Thanks for bringing this in. Of course I’m gonna have my people look at it, but like I said, I’ve seen this kind of thing before.”
Claire realized he was dismissing her. She stood up. “Thank you.”
Mayhew stood up, too. “The best thing you can do for yourself is forget about this, all right? Your husband was a good guy. You had a solid marriage. Almost twenty years and you still loved each other. That’s something to hold on to.”
Claire nodded. She was feeling sick again.
Mayhew placed his hand on the hard drive. “Looks like you took this right from his computer.”
“Sorry?”
“The drive. It was connected directly to his computer, right?”
Claire didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Good.” Mayhew put his hand to her back and led her out of the office. “We wouldn’t want any copies floating around. Like on a backup? Or another computer?”
“I checked. It was only on the hard drive.”
“What about his laptop? Didn’t Quinn say something about Paul’s laptop?”
“I already checked it.” She had no idea where the damn thing even was. “There’s nothing else.”
“All right.” His fingers curved around her waist as he steered her toward the last corridor. “You let me know if anything else comes up. Just give me a call and I’ll head right over and take it off your hands.”
Claire nodded. “Thank you for your help.”
“Any time.” He walked her across the small lobby and held open the glass door.
Claire held on to the railing as she navigated her way down the stairs. The overhead lights sent a glimmer through the rain as she crossed the parking lot. The entire time, she felt Mayhew’s eyes on her. She didn’t turn until she had reached the Tesla.
The doorway was empty. Mayhew was gone.
Was she being paranoid? Claire wasn’t sure about anything anymore. She opened the car door. She was about to get in when she saw the note on the windshield.
She recognized Adam Quinn’s handwriting.
I really need those files. Please don’t make me do this the hard way. AQ
CHAPTER 6
Lydia lay on the couch with her head on Rick’s lap. Two dogs were on the floor in front of her, a cat was curled into her side, and the hamster was either running a marathon on its wheel or the parakeet in Dee’s room was scraping its beak on the side of the cage. The fish in the fifty-gallon tank were blissfully quiet.
Rick absently ran his fingers through her hair. They were watching the ten o’clock news because they were both too pathetic to stay up until eleven. The police had released a composite drawing of a man seen in the vicinity of Anna Kilpatrick’s disabled car. The drawing was almost laughably vague. The guy was either tall or medium height. His eyes were blue or green. His hair was black or brown. There were no tattoos or identifying marks. His own mother probably wouldn’t recognize him.
The report cut to a taped interview with Congressman Johnny Jackson. The Kilpatrick family was from
his district, so by law, he had to milk their personal tragedy for every political ounce possible. He droned on about law and order for a few seconds, but when the reporter tried to pull Jackson into speculation about the girl’s well-being, the man fell uncharacteristically silent. Anyone who’d ever read an airport paperback knew that the chances of finding the missing girl alive dwindled with each passing hour.
Lydia closed her eyes so she wouldn’t see images of the Kilpatrick family. Their haggard expressions had become painfully familiar. She could tell they were slowly coming to accept that their little girl would not be coming home. Pretty soon, a year would pass, then another year, then the family would quietly mark the decade anniversary, then two decades, then more.
Children would be born. Grandchildren. Marriage vows would be made and broken. And behind every single event would lurk the shadow of this missing sixteen-year-old girl.
Every once in a while, a Google alert on Lydia’s computer found a story that mentioned Julia’s name. Usually it was because a body had been found in the Athens area and the reporter had reached into the archives to find past open cases that might be relevant. Of course, the body was never identified as Julia Carroll. Or Abigail Ellis. Or Samantha Findlay. Or any of the dozens of women who had gone missing since then. There was a depressingly large number of hits for “missing girl + University of Georgia.” Add in “rape” and the tally climbed into the millions.
Had Claire performed these same types of searches? Did she feel the same kind of nausea when an alert came up that a body had been found?
Lydia had never checked the Internet for information on her baby sister. If Claire had a Facebook page or Instagram account, she did not want to see it. Everything that had to do with Claire had to do with Paul. The association was too painful to invite onto her computer screen. And honestly, the anguish of losing Claire was almost more overwhelming than losing Julia. Whatever had happened to her older sister had been a tragedy. Her rift with Claire had been a choice.