I watched as my fingers reached out and opened the blue folder. This was my victim. The one found in my family plot. She stared up at me, artless and vibrant, a mischievous expression on her face.

  “—and so I’ll turn it over to Ashlee Davenport to tell us how she discovered the shoe and subsequently the body of the second vic.”

  Me? Jim wanted me to…? How nice of him to share that information with me ahead of time. I gave him a look that must have said exactly how I felt, because his eyes went wide and innocent. I was pretty sure the evil man was laughing at me. But I had taught third graders in Sunday school for several years. After that, a bunch of federal agents would be a piece of cake. I could feel my neck retaking its splotchy, rosy hue.

  “How many of you are native South Carolinians?” I asked. Only a few hands went up as I bent to see both directions down the table. From the front, Jim made a small “stand up” gesture. Reluctantly I stood, smoothing my jacket.

  “Often people from the North say the South has a small-town feel, even in the bigger cities. What they’re sensing is a perception of rural roots, a slower pace that comes from the land. The Carolinas were predominantly agricultural states until long after the Civil War, a widespread smattering of small cotton or tobacco industrial towns or educational centers surrounded by cultivated land.” I watched the cops’ eyes glaze over as I spoke, but I needed them to understand why I had reacted as I had, even if my reasons had been subconscious.

  “Farmers know their fields, what kind of soil is where, what the drainage problems are, how surface water moves across the property. We know where certain types of trees are likely to grow and where large copses of trees of a particular variety are.” I opened my notes, transcribed from the tape I had made when I’d first found the shoe.

  “My dogs brought me the shoe at approximately 07:52,” I said, giving the time in military numerals. “I had worked all night and was standing at my vehicle holding my forensic nursing supplies, which includes equipment for evidence gathering and preservation. The shoe smelled…” I paused, remembering the fetid stink. I started over. “I knew from the smell something was wrong. However, my initial thought was that the dogs had been to the illegal dump northeast of the farm and brought back a shoe that had been buried with food or some other decayed matter.

  “Just to be on the safe side, I took the shoe and began treating it as evidence I might gather in the emergency room. Most of the soil on Chadwick Farms and the surrounding property is red dirt with a smattering of yellow-tallow or black-jack, which are both types of poorly draining clay. The shoe had not been in contact with either.” Several cops looked up at that. They were beginning to understand.

  “There was a sycamore leaf crushed into the laces. Sycamores grow only in a few places on the farm, and only in red clay, except for one area of the farm where an ancient, dry riverbed runs through. The riverbed soil is white or yellow sand. There was sandy grit in the tongue of the shoe.”

  Emma leaned forward in her chair. “You’re telling us you knew where the body was the moment you saw the shoe.” Her tone was faintly disbelieving, which made my face blossom even redder.

  I straightened my shoulders and lifted my head. A short woman’s trick for looking taller. “I didn’t know there was a body when I first saw the shoe.” I smiled pleasantly at Emma and let the sweetness flow through me like honey. “When I examined its exterior, I assumed it hadn’t been taken from the illegal dump, which is located northeast from the farmhouse on red clay, and I assumed that because the shoe had no red clay stains. Sounds simple once you think about it, doesn’t it?”

  I looked around the table and made eye contact with the cops as I spoke. They were listening now, which could be a good thing or could mean more interest in Chadwick land and Chadwick family members. But I did owe law enforcement an explanation of my decision-making processes the day before.

  “When I opened the tongue and saw the toe, I assumed, mostly subconsciously, the general direction it had come from, which is near the stand of sycamores, which are near an old creek bed, due west. I assumed it was from a little girl, because the toenail was painted blue and most little boys don’t paint their toenails.” I looked at Emma. “And I assumed she was dead by the smell.”

  Steven started coughing. I resisted the urge to pound him on the back—a mother’s urge, not a nursing one, as that never helped unless food was trapped, and he had finished the doughnut long ago—and leaned in toward Emma.

  “At that point, everything was an assumption except that there was a body nearby, likely within two square miles because that’s the range my dogs have been known to wander. Frankly, I was hoping I wouldn’t find it. But I did. And you have an entire report in the blue folder. You might want to read it,” I said pointedly. I sat down.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Davenport,” Jim said. His lips had a natural tendency to curl up, but he seemed to be having more trouble than usual keeping them straight. “You stated for the record, when you gave your report to the officers at the scene and afterward to the agent during your interview, that you do not actually work the land on Chadwick Farm.”

  My eyes met his. “Chadwick Farms. Plural, not singular. No, I don’t work the land. My maternal grandmother is the farmer. She makes the decisions, hires the help, works the soil, handles the harvesting and the sale of all the crops. Occasionally, I will oversee a specific job, especially during haying, though I no longer work the land myself. But I was raised helping Nana and have lived on the farm for most of my life. We Chadwicks know our land.”

  Jim nodded and turned to the side. “Let’s take a look at the physical evidence and the items recovered with victim number two, Lorianne Porter. If you’ll turn your attention to the wall at the head of the room, we have 35mm slides just back from the lab and they are much better quality than the digital photos in the blue folder.

  “Let’s rearrange the chairs up here.” He pointed to the head of the table. “Schwartz, would you get the lights?”

  Julie stood and dimmed the lights as Jim and the others seated at the head of the table moved to the sides with a scraping of chair legs and huff and puff of breath. A photo was projected on the wall against which they had sat. It was an in-situ close-up shot of the skeletal remains of a child’s hands. I blinked once to settle myself in reaction. The hands were bound at the wrists in a grief knot. A ballerina doll was under the left wrist. A pointed stick seemed to be clasped in the skeletal right fingers. A black wooden tray was under the right hand, liberally coated with wax that had softened and run across it at some point. There was no wick.

  “The lab has determined that this doll, like the doll found with Jillian LaRue, is the same brand ballerina doll, but the ballet clothing has been replaced by two men’s white handkerchiefs, tied in artistic knots,” a female voice said from the back of the room. “Silk embroidery thread holds them together at the doll’s waist like a makeshift ball gown. I’ll have to compare, but I believe that the thread is tied in a grief knot, too.

  “Notice the jewelry,” she continued. A silver ring engraved with intricate knots was on a left finger and a silver bracelet gleamed in the photograph on the same wrist. The PowerPoint presentation switched to a second slide showing side-by-side photos of her ears, where silver pierced earrings hung. Silver knots on dangly chains pressed into the desiccated flesh. Possibly Celtic knots, though I looked away before I could be sure.

  “Lorianne Porter’s family says she didn’t own jewelry of this type and her ears were not pierced. She had wanted to have her ears pierced for over a year and the piercing had been planned for her next birthday. As you recall from the red folder, similar, though not identical, jewelry was found on Jillian LaRue.”

  I swallowed down a second reaction that brought tears. I closed my eyes a moment in the darkness and breathed deeply to calm myself. It wasn’t working. Tears still gathered. The PowerPoint blinked again.

  The third shot was of a filthy and partially decomposed pink cloth backpack on a table, with what must have been its contents placed neatly around. Water-damaged schoolbooks, pencils, spiral notebooks and several three-ring binders with lined paper inside. One binder was open, showing words arranged in verse like a song or poem. I hadn’t seen them removed from the grave. I squeezed the bridge of my nose to stop my tears, knowing I would be the only person in the room showing such a reaction. The cops would simply be analytical, cold or angry.

  “We aren’t certain what this next item is,” the woman’s voice said. “The quarter is there solely to show dimension. The coin was not on the child’s body.”

  A new visual was on the wall, showing a shiny quarter and beside it a deep-brown rock. It, too, was shiny on all but one side; the top was rough as if it had been broken off.

  “We think it’s composed of pottery or dark ceramic clay with a brown glaze, but the lab hasn’t had time to analyze it. It was in the girl’s jeans, the tiny short pocket that is part of the usual larger right pocket in the Levi’s she was wearing. Nothing similar was in the other vic’s possession. It may be something, or it may be nothing.”

  Again I borrowed Steven’s pen and quickly sketched the rock-like thing in the margin of his page. He nodded in approval though I couldn’t draw worth a toot. When he took the pen back, he redrew over my image, adding shadows, roundness. The woman kept talking as I watched him work, and the shape resolved into something common. I knew what the object was. Maybe.

  Pulling the pen from Steven’s hand, I wrote beneath his sketch Hoof?

  He nodded slightly. Looking at the picture, he redrew it from another angle. It could be a horse’s hoof, with the leg broken off. The woman had said it was pottery or ceramic. Her voice was droning on, but I had ceased to listen, ceased to watch the photos being zapped on the wall. It was a hoof. I was almost sure.

  Into a momentary silence, Steven asked, “The broken piece of pottery from the girl’s pocket, was there a flat side that was glazed? Opposite the broken side?”

  From the dim room, the woman said, “Yes. We have a photo right here.” She flashed a group of photographs onto the wall, perhaps thirty of them at once, searching.

  “Why do you ask?” Emma said from across the table.

  “Did it look like this?” Steven pushed his legal pad to her.

  “Yes. It does,” she said flatly, raising her eyes from the pad. “From another angle which we haven’t shown. Rachael, do not put that up on the wall. Blank the screen. Lights,” she demanded. The screen on the wall flickered into white as bright overhead lights came on and we all blinked in the glare. All of us except Emma, the supervisor with the silly little bow under her chin. She was staring at me, though she seemed to be addressing Steven when she asked, “Why?”

  I answered her. “I think it’s a horse’s hoof. A broken-off horse’s hoof, like maybe from a ceramic or pottery statue.”

  She smiled and it wasn’t a pretty smile. “And you have one of these in your home.”

  Though shocked, I smiled back, and I was very sure that my smile was everything Emma’s wasn’t, gentle and kind, in contrast to my words, which sounded both too soft and too hard for the room. “What an interesting, if erroneous, conclusion to jump to. If I did own such a statue, and if I were the killer, or a member of my family were the killer and I an accessory, I wouldn’t have been so stupid as to bring attention to myself by telling you it was a hoof.” I gave Emma my best Princess Di smile, all sweetness, no teeth.

  Someone up the table started to speak but I kept going, raising my voice a notch to override him. “However, if you feel the need to satisfy your mental calisthenics, you are welcome to send someone to my home to look. My nana will happily let you in so you don’t have to break down the door.” I narrowed my eyes slightly. “Just don’t frighten my daughter or I’ll bring you up on whatever excuses my very expensive lawyer can find.”

  “We have your permission to search your house.” The words were flat and clipped, neither statement nor question.

  I shrugged by lifting a hand and turning it palm up, just the way my mother had taught me a lady always did, especially when in the presence of one who had no concept of the niceties. “The cleaning crew hasn’t been in two weeks. It’s dusty. But you have my permission to look for a broken horse statue,” I said, as sugary as corn syrup. I could feel the heat on my skin, this time because I was angry and not bothering to hide it. “Anything else you wish to search for, of course, will require a warrant,” I said.

  “Mrs. Davenport doesn’t have a horse statue, broken or otherwise,” Jim said.

  Emma’s eyes slashed to him. “Oh?” The word was loaded with insinuation and some threat I couldn’t identify.

  “I’ve been there a number of times,” Jim said easily. I could hear the smile in his voice and knew he was about to give away our secret to the world, trying to protect me from the bow-tied barracuda across the table. “As you know from discussion yesterday, we’re dating.”

  Emma’s eyes rested on me with crushing weight, as if she had planted her feet on my chest. When she spoke, her soft tone was corrosive. “Of course, since you’re dating her, the entire Chadwick family must be innocent.”

  “Simmons—”

  “Stop,” she said. Her cheeks were blazing with an anger all out of proportion to the situation. The air in the task-force conference room was brittle. No one said a word. The boss was pissed and looking for a boxing bag to bash. If that person happened to be an agent she could bully, so much the better. Steven started to speak, but I silenced him with a touch on his elbow, my hand below the table. Emma noted the movement.

  “Who did the preliminary interview of this woman?” Emma asked, her eyes still on me.

  “This woman has a name,” I said distinctly, the sweetness dissolved. “It’s Ashlee Davenport, and Special Agent Julie Schwartz had that honor.”

  Without taking her eyes from me, Emma said, “Agent Schwartz, please escort Mrs. Davenport to an observation room.”

  “And see that my lawyer is notified immediately,” I added. “Macon Chadwick, of Chadwick, Gaston and Chadwick, Attorneys at Law. I will not be speaking to any of you until he is present. I’d like water and a trip to the ladies’ room.” I dropped my wallet in front of Steven without looking at him. “Please make sure my car isn’t towed while I’m being observed, Steven.”

  “Why do you need a lawyer, Mrs. Davenport?” Emma asked. The woman had a smile like the barracuda she had become, all teeth and intent to do damage.

  And I’d had enough. “Because you are an ass, Ms. Simmons.”

  Beside me, Steven choked. I smiled sweetly again. And was escorted from the room.

  9

  M acon Chadwick was from both Aunt Mosetta’s side and Nana’s side of my family. He was half brother to my first cousin, Wallace Chadwick, which made him a…half cousin? All this convoluted genealogy gave Macon astonishingly beautiful skin tone—chocolate and milk, heavy on the chocolate—hair in soft locks, lashes long and curling over very dark green eyes. A one-hundred-percent gorgeous man.

  Wearing a hand-tailored black suit, Macon pushed in the door of observation room 27. “They treating you all right, cousin?” he asked, his dark eyes seeming a deeper green in the light of the barred window. I nodded as he set a sweating Diet Coke beside me and opened his briefcase on the table. “You need anything?” I popped the top on the can and swallowed deeply. The fizz roared against my tissues on the way down, just the way a good cold Coke is supposed to.

  “Not anymore. Thank you for coming.”

  “Sorry you had to wait. I was in court,” he said, his deep voice bouncing off the walls of the narrow room. Macon could captivate a jury by the power of his voice alone, the tone so rich it reminded me of a big brass bell, sonorous and powerful. He propped a hip on the table. “What’s this about you giving the feds permission to tear apart your house? Nana is pissed. Her words, not mine.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I gave them permission to search for a broken ceramic or pottery horse, the hoof of which was found in the grave of a little girl. I did so in front of more than twenty witnesses, all of them cops. If they are tearing apart my house, they better be prepared to deal with the consequences.”

  “Figure of Nana’s speech. I don’t really know what they’re doing from personal observation.” He sat and pulled out a pen and pad. “Why did you give them permission?”

  Briefly I told him why the FBI considered me a murder suspect or a material witness or a conspirator or an accessory after the fact. Sitting across from me, Macon took copious notes, his pen flying across the page.

  When I finished an hour later, he tapped his expensive pen on the page with little bouncing motions like a snare drummer and said, “They’re fishing. They need to do two things. One is to look busy for the press, which has been informed about the task force, the kidnapped girls and the hunt for the kidnapper. They’re gathering out front in a rabid clump. The other thing the feebs have to do is to eliminate the obvious.”

  “The third thing they have to do is get me back for calling Supervisory Special Agent in Charge Emma Simmons an ass. In front of the same witnesses.”

  Macon’s eyes glowed happily. “You didn’t.”

  “She was and I did. Don’t ask me to be sorry for it. I’m not,” I said, feeling guilty but unrepentant. I sat straight in my chair.

  “For a such a sweet-looking little thing, you got a lot of Nana in you. There’s no law against calling an ass an ass. At least not yet, anyway. But you could be considered as obstructing justice.”

  “I am not a sweet-looking little thing.” I glared at him. “And I gave them permission to search my house without a warrant. How can that be obstructing justice?”