The Little Grave (Detective Amanda Steele)

“A day; two tops.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. Night.”

She ended the call, dropped her keys in the bowl, shucked off her shoes and jacket, and headed for the master. But she found herself stopping outside Lindsey’s room. She cracked the door and inhaled. She was hoping to smell something that would remind her of her daughter, but it was just stale air. It had been a long time since she’d stepped foot in there; it simply hurt too much.

She flicked on the light and took in the space. Lindsey didn’t have parents with a limitless budget, so it wasn’t as decked out as Phoebe’s had been, but it was apparent that Lindsey had been loved. Still was.

Her bed wasn’t a canopy, but it had a bookcase headboard, and, just like Phoebe, her sweet Lindsey had also liked being read to. She could never pick a favorite among the classics that Amanda and Kevin had from their childhoods, but she had a slight preference for Curious George.

The bed was still made as if it were waiting for its owner to return. Barbies were in the corner of the room, some of them sitting at a picnic table. They’d been having that picnic for the last five and a half years.

Amanda walked over to the window, where there was a small desk she and Kevin had picked up for Lindsey. On it were her crayons, some of them strewn across an open coloring book, her daughter’s last strokes staring up at her.

She wailed, so violently her body convulsed. She’d worked so hard to suppress her feelings, to will them away, and they had returned with a bitter vengeance. They say time heals all wounds, but she had yet to experience that for herself.

She sobbed and sniffled. There would be no holding the doll her daughter had valued above all her toys, no tactile experience that way to bring her closer. That doll had long ago been destroyed. It had been in the car that night and had likely been stained with her baby’s blood.

Another gut-curdling cry hurled from her and she doubled over. Sheer, raw pain, so intense—as if the loss had just happened—overcame her. Rage also pulsated through her and she just wanted to throw something, to hurt something, to feel better.

She dropped onto her daughter’s bed and burrowed onto her side, snuggling in and wishing that night had never happened. That if there was a God, she’d just awaken and it all would have been a bad dream. It was something that she had clung to in the first few months—and years—but at some point she’d realized there would be no waking up. This was her reality and her nightmare.

She just lay there crying, heaving for breath.

Forty-Three

Amanda woke up to sunlight coming in through the white daisy curtains. Her head pounded and there was a kink in her shoulders. She grumbled as she turned slowly to her back. Her hip was tender too. She must have slept on her side all night without moving.

“My sweet, sweet Lindsey,” she whispered to the walls.

There was an emotional ache in the middle of her chest that was far more painful than her physical discomforts. She forced herself from bed and realized that she was still wearing yesterday’s clothes. She’d slept from— She looked to the clock on Lindsey’s dresser, but it was blinking. She hadn’t reset it since the first power outage after their deaths. She didn’t want to think about how long the clock would have been winking at nothing, serving no purpose.

She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and squinted at the brightness of the screen. It was after eight in the morning.

She’d slept for the better part of eight hours, without a sleeping pill. That was the first night that had happened since she’d been released from the hospital.

She wandered down the hall and took care of business in the bathroom and got freshened up for work. Twenty minutes later she was out the door, and shortly after that pulling into the parking lot of Hannah’s Diner. A coffee and a muffin would hit the spot.

She went inside and May helped her out. She gave her an extra-large and only charged her for a medium.

Amanda said, “You don’t have to—”

May batted a hand. “Amanda, I know I don’t have to do anything, but I want to.”

Amanda gave her a large tip and grabbed her blueberry muffin. Its top was devoured well before she reached Central.

She passed Cud’s cubicle and was happy that he wasn’t in. She’d want to confront him and call him out in front of the department, but then she might never get to the bottom of what was really going on. The same went for reporting his threats to Malone. The question was, though, was Cud trying to protect himself, as she’d considered last night, or trying to protect someone else?

She sat at her desk, slurped back the rest of her coffee, then tossed the to-go cup in her garbage can. Her mind was juggling the unknown man in the photograph she’d collected from the Baldwins, and Cud. That’s if her trip to Williamsburg had sparked his visit. And if so, what was his connection to any of this?

She tapped her fingers on her desk and an idea came to her. There was one link between Cud and Ritter—the detective that Cud had worked the case with. But who was he again? Jonah… something.

She pulled up the file on the Ritter investigation and got the full name. Jonah Reid.

But now what? She had no way of accessing human resources records, but the internet had proved invaluable in her finding Casey-Anne Ritter’s true identity. She keyed in the name Jonah Reid and seconds later had several links to social-media profiles showing J

onah Reids of all ages and nationalities. She typed in Jonah Reid, Virginia.