Josie shook her head. “No way.” She turned to Zach. “Let me come with you. Don’t make me sit here uselessly. Whatever comes up, I might be able to help. I might . . . recognize something you wouldn’t or . . .” She threw her hands up, frustrated, desperate. “I don’t know, but I can’t sit here. Please.”
Zach only paused for a moment. “All right, listen. We need to start calling all her friends, anyone she might have spoken to recently. We’ll get a list from her husband. Let’s go.”
**********
The station buzzed with activity. Josie sat at Zach’s desk waiting for him to return with the list Evan made of the names and numbers of people Reagan might have spoken to recently. She’d called Cooper’s phone, but it had gone straight to voicemail. It was the middle of the afternoon, though. He was probably at work.
She stared around the open room, watching the other detectives work at their desks, some on their phones, others talking among themselves. The noise around her faded out for a minute, the moment feeling surreal, as though she were in some strange dream. Is this how it looked, for a time, when they were looking for me? And yet, they’d never found her. She’d had to escape on her own. Please let them find Reagan.
Zach emerged from the office where he’d been talking to Jimmy and his boss and headed her way. “Did you get a hold of him?”
Josie shook her head. “He isn’t answering.”
“What’s the name of the firm where he works?”
Josie cast her mind back. “I don’t think he said. Just that it’s an architectural firm downtown.”
“All right. There can’t be too many of those. We can start calling in the car. In the meantime”—he held up a small piece of paper—“I got a call a few minutes ago from a woman who used to live next door to the Merricks. I met with her briefly last week.”
“What’d she say?”
“She just left a message for me to call her back. But I’d rather talk to her in person if you’re up for a car ride?”
Josie stood, already heading for the door, eager to follow any lead Zach had to find her friend.
Less than fifteen minutes later they were pulling into a beautiful neighborhood in Hyde Park. Zach pulled his car under the shade of a giant oak tree in front of a pretty, white brick home.
When they knocked on the turquoise door, a blonde woman in her fifties pulled it open, appearing expectant for a moment and then her face clearing with recognition as she looked at Zach. “Oh, goodness, Detective Copeland. I didn’t mean for you to drive over.”
“Mrs. Parsons.” He smiled. “It’s no trouble.”
She opened the door wider. “Please, call me Dawn and oh, I hope I’m not wasting your time.” They followed her inside to the living room at the front of the house, large bay windows making it bright and airy. Josie and Zach sat on the couch as Dawn took a seat on the chair across from them. Zach introduced Josie and simply said she was offering assistance to the CPD. Dawn gave her a distracted smile.
“I spoke with Alicia a few days ago. I’d called her after I heard the news about the missing students and that Vaughn was being questioned.” She shot a somewhat guilty glance at Zach as if she’d just admitted she’d been gossiping. “She finally called me back and we spoke briefly.” She dragged her teeth over her bottom lip. “I hadn’t realized Vaughn was a person of interest in the case until Alicia told me.”
“Yes, that’s true,” Zach answered. “Do you have information about Professor Merrick?”
She shook her head quickly. “No, it’s not related to him. Truthfully, I’m not sure it’s anything at all, Detective. But I’ve been stewing on it for the last few days, and I figured calling couldn’t hurt.”
“Of course. I appreciate it, whatever it is.”
She nodded, shooting him a relieved look. “Well, the other day there was a young man on the Merrick’s old porch. I saw him peering in the windows and then glancing back over his shoulder. Sort of suspicious. I figured he was looking for the Merricks, but he was acting odd, and so I watched him, and he went around the house and looked in a few side windows. I finally did go outside, and when I called out to him, he turned in the other direction and walked away. It was like he was purposely avoiding me.” She shrugged. “I didn’t call the police. He didn’t commit a crime, but it was just strange.”
“Can you describe this man?”
“Tall, dark hair, he kept his face turned from me mostly, but there was something familiar about him, I just couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe someone who had visited the Merricks before. I’m sure that was it, it’s just that he was acting cagey.”
Josie glanced around the pretty house as Zach asked a few more questions. She loved these older homes that had been updated, but still retained their vintage charm. She’d glanced at what she knew was the Merrick’s old family home as they’d approached Mrs. Parsons’s door and a small frisson of guilt had trembled in her stomach. That house was where Professor Merrick’s wife and daughters had sat eating dinner or watching TV as she’d had sex with their husband and father. Regret still shook her. But now she knew just how many women he’d slept with over the years. Had he once thought of his wife and girls as he’d recited Wordsworth to yet another gullible coed?
There was a photo gallery of the Parsons family hanging on the wall next to Josie and her eyes moved over it, taking in the happy smiles. Dawn Parsons and her husband had obviously adopted. They stood with two beautiful young black women in what looked like the most recent photo. There were other pictures of the family as a group and the two girls from babyhood to present. One photo in particular snagged her gaze and she frowned, standing so she could see it better. Josie tilted her head as she stared at the photo, her blood turning to ice in her veins. “Who is this?” she asked hoarsely.
Both Mrs. Parsons and Zach stopped speaking and walked to where she stood looking at a photo of five children sitting at a picnic table in a backyard, plates of food in front of them. Josie’s eyes moved slowly from Dawn’s two daughters, to the Merrick girls, and to the beautiful little boy—older than all four girls—sitting at the end, a large smile on his face, a slice of watermelon in his hands.
“Oh, that’s Charlie.”
“Charlie?” Josie asked. She felt slightly out of her body.
Dawn nodded, a frown appearing on her face. “Yes. Many years ago, Vaughn and Alicia fostered a little boy named Charlie.” She seemed lost in thought for a moment. “Sorry. I . . . have to admit, I pushed the idea. My husband and I had a wonderful experience with the foster to adopt program. Our girls completed our family. I sang its praises. They took in a boy, oh he was about ten or eleven at the time I suppose. Their . . . well, he wasn’t a great fit for their family, and they weren’t able to keep him.”