Blind Sight: A Novel (9 page)

None of them had seen Lydia. Then a woman put a mitten to her mouth. “You’re investigating that dead body in the woods. That girl is the dead body.”

A plump older lady in a peacoat—she was able to fasten only the top button—asked, “Do you have any suspects? Have you arrested anybody?”

That let loose a string of other questions from the circle:

“Why’d they do it?”

“Did they rape her, too?”

“What was her name?”

“She wasn’t from around here, was she?”

“Who’re her parents?”

“What happened to the baby?”

“Pipe down,” the peacoat said to her friends. Then to Bernadette: “Inquiring minds want to know what you were doing in Sonia’s studio. Don’t tell me you think she’s got something to do with—”

“We were shopping the photo around, going up and down the street,” Bernadette said quickly. While she had suspicions about Sonia Graham, she didn’t want to torpedo the woman’s business just yet. “Ms. Graham’s establishment happened to be one of the few still operating during the bad weather.”

“You do know that Sonia has a … history,” said the peacoat.

“Eleanor,” gasped a woman in a hunting jacket. “Don’t.”

“Why not?” the peacoat snapped.

“Ms. Graham told me she had complications during a home birth,” said Bernadette. “She said there was some bleeding but that the mother and child made it to the hospital and everything worked out.”

All the women nodded and the hunting jacket said, “That was my cousin’s dippy wife. Bad deal, but it wasn’t Sonia’s fault. The dip thought a home birth would get her out of another C-section.”

“See,” said a skinny woman in a down jacket. “Sonia told the FBI people everything. Sonia’s a good person.”

“What about her
other
activities?” asked the peacoat.

Silence from the gang of women.

Then one said, “I have to go.”

“Me, too,” said another, hiking her bag over her shoulder.

“Wait,” said Bernadette, holding up a hand to halt any exits. “This is a murder investigation.”

“She’s a lesbian,” the peacoat blurted.

“God, Eleanor,” said the hunting jacket. “You had to tear the top off that can of worms, didn’t you?”

“Things should be out in the open, that’s all,” said the peacoat, trying to pull the garment tighter around her body as a wind rolled down the street.

“She came out to a few of us,” said the peacoat. “Asked us to keep it quiet.”

“Good job with that, Eleanor,” sneered the down vest.

“But is she a Wiccan?” asked Bernadette.

Half of the women frowned with confusion.

“A
witch,” Bernadette said. “Is she a witch?”

“Oh, you mean like Jordan,” said one.

“Right,” said Bernadette. “Know of
any
witches around town, besides Jordan Ashe? Any Satanists?”

One shrugged. “Sonia can be a bitch, but I don’t think she’s a witch.”

The down vest laughed.

The peacoat: “How can Sonia be a witch? She plays Christmas music. She throws a Christmas party every year.”

“When does she throw it?”

“New Year’s Eve,” volunteered the hunting jacket.

“She was here all day New Year’s Eve?”

“I helped make the punch with her in the morning,” said the down vest.

“I was here in the afternoon and saw her,” said the hunting jacket.

“Me, too,” said another.

“Were any of you with her at the studio, and she disappeared for a while?” asked Bernadette.

The women looked at one another and shook their heads.

“What’s this about?” asked the peacoat.

Garcia came up to Bernadette and put his hand on her arm. “Let’s go.”

Bernadette slipped the photo back inside her jacket and took out a handful of business cards. Passed them out. “Call me if something else comes to mind. You suddenly remember seeing this young lady somewhere. Whatever.” Her eyes met the eyes of the peacoat lady. “Anything.”

“I showed them Lydia’s photo,” Bernadette said as she and Garcia got into the truck.

“No luck?”

“No luck.” Bernadette reached over and turned up the heat. She told Garcia that Graham was in the studio on New Year’s Eve, at least for the most part, and that none of her clients believed she was a witch. She also revealed that Graham was a lesbian.

“Knock me over with a feather on that one,” said Garcia. “Did you ask about the doc being a witch?”

“I didn’t want to throw her name out there. I think Graham made it up to make trouble.”

“Since this ain’t seventeenth-century Salem, we can’t lock up someone based on rumor and innuendo. That’s about all we have right now. As much as the bosses in D.C. want to impress the senator with a quick arrest…” His voice trailed off.

She eyed the dashboard clock. It was nearly suppertime. “Shouldn’t you and Dunton be getting together soon? Is that what that phone call was about?”

“Meeting switched to tomorrow. Said he’s too pooped to meet today. Took too much effort to haul up here.”

“That’s a good excuse,” said Bernadette.

“He apparently thought so.”

They drove past the tatt shop. It was closed for the night. “So much for that idea,” said Garcia. “Let’s regroup at the cabin.”

Bernadette opened the storage box between them and eyed the candy bars. The sight of them turned her stomach. “I need some real food,” she said, slamming it shut.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

G
arcia thawed some walleye fillets in the microwave, coated them with cracker crumbs, and started pan-frying them on the range. “Talk to me,” he said, his lids drooping. “I’m falling asleep at the wheel.”

Bernadette closed the fireplace doors, dusted off her hands, and launched into a to-do list. “Let’s get some of the Minneapolis guys to check around at the other clinics. Cahill needs to start those background checks we talked about. Oh, then tomorrow morning you and I can—”

“Not the case,” he said. “Anything but the case. Tell me about… tell me about your stint in New Orleans. What was that like?”

She dropped onto the couch and accommodated him, rambling on. “When I needed a quick lesson on anything weird—spells, rituals, chicken decapitations—all I had to do was walk up and down the streets of the French Quarter. Poke my head into a shop. They knew everything about voodoo dolls, potions, gris-gris bags.”

“Gris-gris bags?”

“Sacks filled with roots and herbs, for good mojo. Attract a mate, get rid of an enemy, have a safe trip.”

“I’ll stick with my Saint Christopher medal.” He adjusted the heat under the pan. “That’s where you became the big expert on witchcraft and all that.”

She put her feet up on the cushions. “I wouldn’t call myself an expert.”

“Tell me about this star stuff,” he said, flipping the fish. “I get the pentagram. Pointing down, it’s satanic. Pointing up …”

“Pointing up, it’s a symbol for witches representing Mother Earth plus the four basic elements of wind, water, earth, and fire. Add a point and you’ve got a hexagram. Represents the interaction of God with humanity. With seven points, well, there’re a ton of seven-based belief systems. The seven heads of the beast in the Book of Revelation. In Galician folklore, the seventh son born into a family will be a werewolf.”

“Stars can mean a lot of things,” he said, and popped a sampler into his mouth.

“Or nothing at all. Remember those two little girls supposedly kidnapped from their own beds? Letter found in the house said don’t try looking for them. At the bottom of the note was a pentagram.”

“That’s right. Girls turned up dead in a swamp. Mom and Dad did it. They were abusers. Used the satanic junk as a smokescreen.” He pointed the spatula at her. “You broke that case.”

“Did such a bang-up job, they gave me beach time.”

“Saw that suspension in your file. Something about backdating a memo to cover up the fact that you delayed starting the investigation. Didn’t sound like you. I usually have to hold you back.”

A small compliment from him. She hadn’t had many of those this assignment. “It was bullshit. As soon as I was assigned to the case, I dug in—and my sight led us straight to the parents. When people started asking questions about how I’d figured it out, my ASAC cooked up a misconduct story to get rid of me.” As she talked about it, she got mad all over again. “Even when I get the job done, I’m an embarrassment.”

“Didn’t mean to hit a nerve,” said Garcia, taking the pan off the stove.

She wondered if she was an embarrassment to
him
.

He started dishing out the fish. “Want to eat in front of the fire? We could open a bottle of wine.”

In light of their history, both of those options sounded too comfy. She got up and took a stool at the kitchen island. Had a sip of water. “This is good.”

He stood across from her and ate at the counter.

While they were cleaning up, his phone rang. He wiped his hands on the thighs of his jeans and picked up. “Yeah … Hey, Forbes … Get anything good?”

Forbes was one of the ERT guys.

“That’s what I figured,” said Garcia, pacing the kitchen floor as he talked. “What about the storage room/morgue?”

Garcia sounded like he was going to be on for a while. There was something she wanted to check before they called it a night. She dropped down on the couch, opened her laptop, and started pecking.

There’d been a handful of fetus thefts over the years, the babies stolen by acquaintances or family members who wanted to pass the children off as their own. The cases had been quickly solved—all but one.

She went to the Division of Criminal Investigation, part of the Wisconsin Department of Justice. Its Special Assignments Bureau had a cold-case unit assisting local law-enforcement agencies in resolving unsolved Wisconsin homicides. She clicked on the link for Unsolved Homicides around Wisconsin. Half a dozen cases were listed under the heading
UNSOLVED
…
SEEKING INFORMATION FROM THE PUBLIC
. She couldn’t find the case there, and then saw another link to Missing from Wisconsin.

That brought up several thumbnail photos of missing adults and kids, and one black-and-white sketch—of an unidentified dead woman. Black-and-white police sketches could appear so generic, she could be looking at a drawing of her own face and not realize it. Bernadette put the cursor over the thumbnail and brought up a large poster.

UNIDENTIFIED
was the heading above the sketch. To the right of the drawing were the bare-bones details: Age. Sex. Race. Height. Weight. Location found. Date found.

Below that was a narrative:

A female estimated to be in her mid-twenties was found dead in Brule River State Forest in northwestern Wisconsin. A fetus had been cut from her womb. The infant’s body has not been found. The victim was nude. Her ears were pierced, but she was wearing no jewelry. No identification or other personal items were found near the body. Anyone with information is asked to call Lt. Jerry Dupray of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department.

Garcia was still in the kitchen, talking and pacing and sounding frustrated. She picked up her cell and called Douglas County to see if she could put her hands on the file. The deputy on the other end of the line asked her to call back on Monday, when the records folks were around. She made a stink and the deputy transferred her to a sergeant. The sergeant transferred her to Dupray’s desk, telling her to leave a message on the lieutenant’s voice mail.

Dupray was still there, working late on some paperwork, and picked up after two rings. He offered to buy her coffee on Saturday morning in Brule, a tiny town in the middle of Brule River State Forest. He lived around there and said he would be happy to bring the file home with him. The guy who’d originally worked the case had died and Dupray had inherited it.

Garcia closed his phone just as she was closing hers. “Nothing from the wedding tent. Too much from the storage room/morgue. Too many prints. Too much hair.”

She was back to reading. “No surprise.”

“Our Minneapolis crew is going to hit the other clinics around here, show the girl’s photo around. I told Forbes to tell B.K. to get going on some background checks. Ashe and Graham to start. The two out-of-towners.”

“Good, good,” she mumbled as she scrolled down her screen.

“What’re you looking up?”

“That thing in Wisconsin.”

He closed the dishwasher and started it. “We can take a steam later. They’ve got a steam room down in the basement.”

“I didn’t bring a swimsuit,” she said distractedly.

“Neither did I. We can figure something out.”

We
again. She couldn’t hold it in any longer; she had to ask about his cold shoulder at the bureau bash. “You get all cozy here, but you ignored me at the party. What’s the deal?”

“Don’t want to talk about that stupid party.”

“Why not?”

He leaned a hand against the counter. “You were loaded, that’s why. You were loaded and I’m your boss, and it wouldn’t have looked good if we’d been together or left together.”

“I drank too much because you were ignoring me.”

“Are we in junior high? Jesus!”

“On top of that, you’ve been an asshole to me when it comes to work.” She knew that was an exaggeration, but he’d gotten her wound up. “Questioning everything I come up with and—”

“What have you come up with, Cat? We’re looking for a guy with two hands. No. Wait. Could be a big chick with two hands. He or she is someplace where it’s snowing. Stop the fucking presses.”

“Go to hell!”

“Watch your mouth, Agent!”

“Oh, now you’re the big boss. You just invited me to get naked with you in the steam room!”

“I did not.” His phone rang again, and he ignored it.

“Why did you want me to crash here instead of at a hotel with the others?” Another, more disturbing question occurred to her. “Do they know we’re here together?”

“No,” he said quickly. “They don’t know. Everyone’s at different hotels. Nobody’s comparing notes.”

“You hope.” She took a calming breath. “Tony I think I should drive to Wisconsin tonight.”

“That other stolen-fetus case? It was years ago. No connection. A waste of time.”

There he was, dismissing her ideas again. She grit her teeth and continued. “There are some similarities. Found in a state forest, like our girl.”

He ran a hand through his hair. “If this is about—”

“It’s about work,” she said.

“All we’ve got is the truck.”

He was reaching for arguments to this plan, and she wasn’t going to let him stop her. She needed to get out of there. “I can handle the truck. Have one of the Minneapolis guys come by for you in the morning. Use his wheels.”

His cell rang again, and he picked it up. “Garcia … No, Senator. This is fine …”

While he talked, she started to gather her things together.

“No apology necessary, sir … No offense taken. I can’t begin to imagine what you and your wife are going through.”

Dunton was sorry for taking Garcia’s head off earlier. Good, she thought.

“As a matter of fact, I have an agent working on an angle right now. There’s a case similar to your daughter’s, and she’s heading on over there.” Garcia looked over at her and offered a weak smile. “Bernadette Saint Clare … Yes, sir. She’s the best.”

There was Garcia’s apology to her.