Dorie left the photo stream and went to the computer’s main files. “If she’s hooked up her phone to the computer, it may have automatically downloaded other pictures. Ones she didn’t choose to show off.”
Martin entered the room. “Stephen said you needed me?”
Teresa hugged herself. “Our daughter is missing, Martin. Of course I need you.”
“Wow, okay. Looks like we’ll be here awhile.” Dorie located the images folder, which contained more than four thousand items. Ellery held back a groan as Dorie began the painstaking process of clicking through each one. Many more shots of Snuffles, sometimes dressed in diva clothing. Bad selfies that came out wrong. McKenna doing handstands in what must be someone’s backyard. Pool shots. A vacation to the beach somewhere.
“Are you looking for something in particular?” Martin asked.
“Well,” Dorie said. “How about him? Who is this guy?”
They all looked at the photo she’d stopped on, which depicted Chloe and an older boy, their arms around each other, tongues out as they mugged for the camera. The wind blew his large Afro into her hair. She made a peace sign, while he chose the old “hang ten” gesture. There was ink across his knuckles—a tattoo, maybe?—and it spelled out D-E-A-T-H.”
“I—I’ve never seen that boy.” Teresa looked at Martin, a question in her eyes.
“I don’t know him, either.”
“He’s in a couple of other shots,” Dorie said. “This one shows part of a mural in the background. See that orange sun?”
“I don’t recognize that, either.” Fear crept into Teresa’s voice. “Maybe Margery knows?”
“We’ll ask her,” Ellery replied.
Teresa’s phone dinged, signaling the arrival of a text. Eagerly, she pulled it out from her pants, only to drop it with a soft cry when she saw the screen.
“What is it?” Ellery asked as she moved to pick up the phone. Her stomach flipped as she read the text:
U WANT 2 SEE CHLOE AGAIN?
GO ON TV & TELL THE WORLD WUT A SHITTY MOM U ARE.
DO IT 2DAY OR U WON’T BE A MOM ANYMORE.
7
To understand a perpetrator in the present, Reed always had to look to the past. He had to interview relatives and talk to the guy’s third-grade teacher. He had to visit his previous homes and learn his habits, his hobbies, his obsessions, and his hatred. All of this took time, time the victims didn’t have, but there was no shortcut. So, absent any current suspects to investigate, Reed turned to Chloe Lockhart’s ugly family history, specifically her murdered brother, Trevor. He kept one eye on his daughter as she performed acrobatics on the playground and the other eye looking about the Boston Common for the stranger he’d arranged to meet. His research had revealed that Lisa Frick, the grown daughter of murdered housekeeper Carol Frick, was in graduate school at Northeastern University, so he’d phoned her and asked her to speak with him. Lisa had been about Tula’s age when her mother was killed inside the Stones’ home. She had a younger brother, Bobby, and an older sister, Elizabeth, who had died in a car accident about a month before their mother’s murder. Reed had hesitated to ring Lisa and invite the tragedy back into her life, but he suspected it had never left her. A loved one’s unsolved murder, he knew from experience, was a wound that never healed.
He clapped loudly as Tula nailed the dismount. His phone rang, and he checked the ID, half-expecting Lisa to be canceling on him. She was already fifteen minutes late. Instead, he saw Ellery’s name on the screen. She’d slipped out early that morning without a word, her pillow cold by the time he awoke, and he had no idea how long she’d been gone. In the gray silence of her bedroom, he’d lain awake and wondered if this was how Sarit had felt when he disappeared into a case.
Still scanning the horizon for Lisa Frick, he answered Ellery’s call. She didn’t give him a chance to say more than, “Hi.”
“I need your help. Someone sent a threatening text to Teresa Lockhart saying she has to go on television and say she’s a terrible mother or she’ll never see Chloe again.”
“What?” He leaped to his feet from the shock. “No ransom request?”
“No, just this weird demand for a ‘bad mom’ confession. I’ll send you the screenshot.” She paused to do just that. “We need some insight here, Reed. Who the hell would do this? Should Teresa go on TV to say what they’re asking? We’ve traced the number and it’s a prepaid phone. We’re trying to get the provider to pinpoint its physical location now.”
Reed turned in a circle, one hand to his head as he tried to think. He’d been with the FBI for twenty years, but he’d never encountered anything like this. “You need to establish proof of life if at all possible. The person texting Teresa may have Chloe or they may be a crank responding to the media reports on Chloe’s disappearance and Trevor’s murder.”
“I thought about that. But I’m wondering how a crank could have gotten Teresa’s private cell phone number.”
“Good point. Okay, assuming for a moment this person does have Chloe, it’s clearly personal. This is someone known to the family, not a stranger.”
“That’s good, right? They’re less likely to hurt her.”
He had a flash of Teresa’s son dead on the floor with a plastic bag over his head. Someone close to the family got that kid, too. “Possibly, but there are no guarantees. We had one case where the kidnapper repeatedly engaged the family with notes and phone calls, always promising that he would return the missing girl when she was free of sin. We eventually apprehended him and discovered that she’d been dead the whole time. He had a recording of her voice from the initial hours that he played to string the family along.” Reed kept churning through old cases in his mind, looking for any similarities that might give a direction on how to proceed.
“So, do we do this TV thing or not? Conroy wanted me to get your opinion. People here are divided.”
Reed looked down at the message again and considered the abbreviated text-speak language. “We know Chloe left the park on her own. We know she’s got a second phone. What if she’s the one who sent this message to Teresa?”
Ellery made a humming noise, pondering. “Yeah, maybe. I mean, who’s more likely to think you’re a shitty mom than your own teenage daughter? But that doesn’t help us with the immediate question: Does she go on TV and do the mea culpa?”
Ticktock, no pressure. Guess wrong and a little girl could die. The closest approximation to this situation that he could come up with was hostage negotiation, which centered on a give-something, get-something exchange. Make the hostage taker feel heard without giving in to every demand. “She should do the television appearance,” Reed said at length. “She should talk about Chloe and how much she loves and misses her, how much she wants her to come home. I recommend she admit generally to making some mistakes, like all parents do and kids included. Make sure to use conciliatory language but stop short of using the exact phraseology of the text. If Chloe’s behind this stunt, she’s probably looking for a safe way to come home. Teresa should signal that she won’t be punished, that all everyone wants is for Chloe to be safe at home again. Meanwhile, she should answer the text and ask for assurances that Chloe is okay.”