“Where’s your father, Mr. Whittier?”

“At home watching television. It’s about all he ever does since you folks took away any hope he had of enjoying life.” Frank had been the only suspect in Claire’s disappearance. They’d hounded him until he’d left the state. And then the suspicion followed him from job interview to job interview.

“Are you sure he’s at home?”

“Yes. I just left him.”

“You visit him often?”

“Yes.” So many years of running—of hiding facts—came to the fore and Cal protected his father’s whereabouts without thought. He wasn’t about to tell Miller, or any detective, that his father lived with him.

They’d changed identities for a while. Until it made Cal’s education suffer. But they never registered a car, or an address other than a P.O. box. Until Cal came of age and registered in his own name.

His father had never been charged with a crime. But he’d been hounded until suicide had seemed the only alternative. For Cal’s sake, his father had run instead.

Cal owed him.

“Have you or your father been in Massachusetts anytime over the past three months?”

“No.” Nor for the past twenty-five years, either.

“To your knowledge have you or your father been in contact with anyone who has been in Massachusetts?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry to have to ask these questions, but it’s routine,” Ramsey said.

Cal didn’t think the guy sounded sorry at all, and he didn’t bother to reply.

“It’s my duty to inform you that a box containing some of your personal information is missing from the archives of the Comfort Cove Police Department, Mr. Whittier. Your fingerprints, as well as those of Emma Sanderson, were in that box. As was a shirt you were wearing on the morning of the abduction.”

“What about the tape containing my testimony?” It was that tape that he’d have stolen, if he could. Stolen and destroyed. Just as the things he’d put on that tape had destroyed his father.

“That, too.”

Shit.

“And you have no idea who took the evidence? Or why?”

Could the real perp be behind this?

Or someone who suspected that Claire was still alive?

“Not at this time, no.”

“Have you contacted Emma Sanderson?”

“We’re in the process of doing so.”

He wanted to ask more questions. To know where Emma was living.

Had she gone to college? Did she have a career? Kids of her own?

“Just out of curiosity,” he said instead, “how did you come to find the evidence missing?” Obviously someone was looking at the case, for some reason. Unless the Comfort Cove police had unlimited resources allowing them to randomly check evidence lists for every cold case on the docket.

“I was following a lead.”

“On Claire’s case?”

Tags: Tara Taylor Quinn Romance
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