The Dollmake (The Forgotten Files 2)

“But it was in the trash.”

“It’s evidence. I need you to bring it to the station, or I can send a patrolman to your house for it.”

“I get off in a few hours. Send someone by the house.” Bauer rattled off his address. “Can I get it back?”

Sharp shook his head. “If it’s linked to a case as evidence, not until the case has been settled.”

“How long is that?”

“Years,” Vargas shot back.

“Why are you all so worried about a doll?” Ms. Heath asked.

“I can’t say,” Sharp said.

Bauer tossed a glance at Sharp, then headed back to his truck. “I’ll get you the doll.”

Sharp followed and handed him his card. “Thanks.”

As Bauer drove off and Ms. Heath locked the home, Sharp and Vargas moved several paces away before Sharp said, “Recent medication in the cabinet tells me she was being treated for anxiety within the last couple of months.”

“So what was stressing her out?”

“I don’t know if she was having other issues or perhaps figured out someone was watching her and sending her little keepsakes that made her uncomfortable.”

Vargas’s cell phone chimed with a text message. She checked and nodded. “Department of Motor Vehicles just sent over a picture of Diane Richardson without all the crap on her face. Despite it being a DMV photo, she really was a stunning woman. I’d have killed for those cheekbones.”

He accepted the phone and studied the black-and-white photo. Memories stirred in the shadows. “Diane E. Richardson.” He said the name hoping to jostle free a memory.

Vargas checked her notes. “Diane Emery Richardson. Richardson was her married name. She has been divorced four years.”

“Diane Emery?”

“You say her name like you know her.”

Where had he heard the name? And then it clicked. “My sister had a friend in high school and college by the name of Diane Emery.” There’d been four girls that first semester at college who’d all been friends in high school and then in college.

Kara, Diane, Elena, and Tessa.

“Your sister died, right?”

“She died of an overdose. Twelve years ago.” The back of his skull burned with a warning. He’d learned quickly never to ignore the feeling. He dialed Andrews’s number. He answered on the second ring.

“Loading your files into my computer.”

“Andrews, I just identified a murder victim we found in a local park. Her name was Diane Emery Richardson. She was a good friend of my sister, Kara, at the time of her death.”

“I came across her name in several of Knox’s files. He interviewed her twice.”

“Cause of death was a high amount of narcotics in her system via an IV. Her face was tattooed to look like a doll’s.”

Andrews didn’t speak, but Sharp knew he had his full attention.

“Kara had been missing for days before she was found. The crime scene photos I saw were either blurred or didn’t show her face. I’m hoping Knox had other pictures.”

“Witness statements report your sister had been to a Halloween party, and she and several of her friends went dressed as dolls, but your sister was wearing a red dress. One of those friends was Diane Emery.”

Sharp’s heart hammered in his chest. What were the chances Kara and a good friend of hers had died in the same manner? Drug overdoses weren’t unheard of, but his instincts, which had never failed him, said otherwise. And in both cases, there’d been a link to dolls.

“My sister hated dolls,” Sharp said. “Everyone knew she couldn’t stand them. That explains why she wasn’t dressed as one.”

“There was no evidence of tattooing on your sister’s face, nor was there any makeup from what I can see.”

Emotions Sharp had struggled to keep locked away for years clamored for freedom. He shoved them all back into their dark recess and forced his mind to focus. “The cases could be connected.”

After a pause, “Feed me what details you can on your active case. I’ll analyze both cases separately and see if evidence connects.”

“Understood.” The call disconnected. Sharp checked his watch and shoved his phone in his pocket.

“So what was that all about?” Vargas asked.

“I don’t know. I’m going to find Tessa. She knew my sister and Diane Emery.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Friday, October 7, 4:00 p.m.

Tessa was finishing the last of a stack of HR forms when she felt him. The familiar tightening in her gut told her Sharp was close. Setting her pen aside, she looked up. He was standing in her doorway, studying her.

Slowly she rose, sensing this was the moment he was going to insist she file the papers and be done with their marriage. “Is everything all right?”

He walked into her office, his tall frame dominating the space. Boxes filled with medical books and unhanged framed diplomas lined the wall behind her desk. His gaze settled on a picture resting on the top box. It was taken of her in the jungle six months ago.

He frowned. “What can you tell me about Diane Emery?”

What had prompted that question? “Diane was one of our friends from town. There were four of us from town who went to the college.”

“I remember Kara mentioning her, but not much else.” At her desk, he picked up a paperweight given to her when she’d made the honor society in medical school. Slowly he turned it over in his hand. “I remember you. But not Diane, or Elena.”

“We all knew each other in high school, but we didn’t get together much outside of school. We four roomed side by side on the same freshman hallway, but you were in Iraq then. I was Kara’s roommate, and Diane and Elena stayed in the room next to ours.”

“She never mentioned Diane to me.” How many times had he tried to recall their last conversations together, she wondered. “But then there were always other things to talk about. Mom. Roger. College applications. She did say she had friends from high school going to college with her.”

“Why the questions about Diane?”

He looked at her with no hints of emotion. “Diane Emery was the Jane Doe on your table yesterday.”

The familiar name of an old friend was the last she’d have expected to hear. Her memories of Diane dated back twelve years to college, when they’d been so excited about striking out on their own. A cold knot settled in her gut. “Diane Emery is our Jane Doe? That victim’s last name is Richardson.”

“Richardson was her married name.”

“God, I thought there was something familiar about her, but I didn’t make the

connection.” Sadness strangled her heart. “Are you sure? The Diane I knew just wouldn’t end up like this.”

“How long has it been since you’ve seen Diane?”

She was irritated and disappointed with herself for not knowing the woman on the table had been a friend.

“I haven’t seen her in twelve years.”

“What do you know about her?” He studied the paperweight.

“Clearly not much. I didn’t know she’d gotten married. We both went our separate ways after my accident. I had to take the rest of the semester off, and by spring I really started to focus on the sciences. I also moved back in with my aunt to save money because the accident ate into most of my savings for college. Diane stayed in the art department, and I think she spent her sophomore year in Paris.”

“She married a guy named Nathan Richardson five years ago and they divorced a year later. I’m tracking her ex-husband now, and I’ll be talking to him soon enough. I remember Kara ran with a few other girls that first few months in college. One was you. Was Diane one of the others?”

“Yes.”

“I want to know more about her relationship with Kara.” A razor-sharp edge had crept into his voice.

“Diane was from town, just like Kara and me. Kara and Diane were school friends. They were both on the cheer squad in high school. They had a lot in common, and I know even by mid-October they were already talking about being roommates during their sophomore year. Both of them were art majors. They went to the frat parties together. They even went out with the same guy.”

“What guy?”

“Stanford Madison.”

“Where can I find him?”

“I don’t know, but I have a phone number for him. You can try that.”

“You’ve kept in touch with him?”

“He came to visit me in the hospital after my accident. Helped me with my rehab. I haven’t seen him in a couple of years. I’m still digging out eight months’ worth of e-mails, but I did notice he e-mailed me about an upcoming art show here in Richmond. I think he’s also teaching at the university.”

“He’s in Richmond now?”

“Yeah.”

“Send me his number.”

“Sure.” She pulled her phone from her lab coat pocket and forwarded the contact.