Desires of t he Dead (The Body Finder 2)

Violet stared at her. She wasn’t sure how to answer the question. It wasn’t clear; FBI Sara hadn’t given her enough details to be sure which body she meant.

Violet thought about the first body she’d found last year, discarded and bloated in the shallow waters of the lake. She closed her eyes, trying for the millionth time to purge the image from her mind’s eye. But it was too vivid, forever etched into her memory.

“I saw it,” she mumbled, hoping that that was the body the woman was talking about.

The woman shifted uncomfortably. “You saw him?” she asked, eyeing Violet suspiciously. “What do you mean, you saw him?”

And that was it. That one clarifying word, and Violet could no longer deny it to herself.

Him, she’d said him. Violet had been wrong. Precautions or not, she hadn’t been careful enough. All of the bodies Violet had found last year had been of missing girls.

They knew. The FBI knew. But how in the world was that possible?

She looked at the woman, trying to convey to her that this was all a mistake. It was her only chance. “I—I think you’re confused. Maybe you have the wrong person.”

“Violet Ambrose? That’s you. You placed an emergency call from a pay phone almost two weeks ago.” She watched Violet guardedly; her eyes narrowed just enough to look doubtful. “In it, you told the operator that you ‘heard something.’ You didn’t say anything about seeing the boy.”

It all came crashing down on Violet at once. Her head was spinning. She felt dizzy and sick in an instant.

She closed her eyes, trying to will her head to stop whirling so she could catch hold of her out-of-control thoughts.

She knew she shouldn’t have called 911. What had she been thinking?

But she’d used a pay phone. She shouldn’t be having this conversation.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she denied, but her voice sounded tinny and hollow, an obvious lie. She thought she was going to be sick. This was some sort of nightmare, almost as bad as her dream about the boy himself.

There was silence, and Violet struggled to keep it together. She needed to find a way out of this, out of her own car, if that’s what it took. And away from this woman who had managed to track her down.

“Look, Ms. Ambrose, there’s no point denying it. We traced you back using the shipyard’s security cameras. We had your license plate. That, coupled with the call you placed, made it easy for us to find you.” FBI Sara leaned forward, and Violet thought she might be trying to convey understanding, compassion. Instead she was intimidating.

“It wasn’t me,” Violet croaked.

“We both know that’s not true. I have the recording of that call, if you’d like to listen to it.” She pulled a small tape recorder from her jacket pocket.

Violet stared at it, unable to string together another denial.

“I didn’t think so.” She put the recorder back in her pocket. “We already know you had nothing to do with the boy’s disappearance. Or his death. Like I said, cameras. Besides, we have DNA evidence that rules you out.

“So here’s the deal. I want to make this easy for you. All I need to do is to ask you some questions. Not now, but soon. It will be quick and dirty, just the facts of how you came to”—her lips pursed again—“‘hear’ the boy. But for what it’s worth—and this is just a hunch on my part—I think there’s more to it. I think you didn’t hear him at all.”

Violet blinked once, trying to clear her thoughts as she apprehensively watched the woman in her car. She refused to give even the slightest hint of what was going on inside her head.

Sara continued without waiting for a response. She didn’t seem to want one. “In fact, I know you didn’t hear him, because you called on Sunday. The coroner says that the boy we found had been dead for at least two days before we recovered his body.”

Puking became a very real possibility at that point as Violet felt the acids from her stomach swelling dangerously high in the back of her throat. Sweat prickled like icy barbs across her forehead and along the nape of her neck.

Still, she refused to speak. Not so much refused, actually, since she felt like it would be physically impossible now.

Again, FBI Sara continued, undaunted. “And even though we believe you had nothing to do with the boy’s death, you were still there. You knew where to find him. So you’re going to have to answer some questions, whether you like it or not.”

Violet kept her lips tightly sealed.

Something about the look on Violet’s face must have clued her in, because FBI Sara finally stopped talking. She scrutinized the girl beside her. “Are you okay?” she asked. The question itself contained little genuine concern.

Violet nodded. “I’m fine—” she started to say, but cut herself off as she choked on her words. Suddenly Chelsea’s favorite expression, about throwing up in her own mouth, hit a little too close to home for Violet. She clamped her mouth shut again.

FBI Sara pulled a card from her pocket and handed it to Violet. “You’re going to have to talk to me sooner or later. Call the number on the card tomorrow to set up an appointment.”

She got out of the car then and walked purposefully toward the black SUV, the boy following right behind her.

Violet looked at the simple business card, absentmindedly running her thumb over the raised gold-foil seal.

She hated the feeling hanging over her, the looming apprehension that prophesized something terrible was about to happen. She hoped it was just worry over having been discovered and being forced to give a statement about something she should never have witnessed in the first place. Something that no normal person would ever have known.