“So. After Montreal, Pomerleau goes to ground for three years, then resurfaces and grabs a kid in Vermont.” From his tone, I knew Slidell was rolling the theory past his own ears.
“Last I checked, North Carolina’s a few miles from the tundra,” Tinker said. “How’d Pomerleau end up here?” When no one responded, he pressed on. “DNA links this Pomerleau to the Gower kid. But what links Gower to Nance? I said it before, and I’ll say it again. It’s sad, but kids are murdered every day. What makes you so sure we’re looking at one doer?”
The pressure in my sinuses suddenly felt explosive. Discreetly, I pressed a hand to one cheek. My skin was fiery hot. Was the virus upping the ante? Or was it the shock of what I was hearing?
As I reached for a tissue to blow my nose, Rodas ticked off points, beginning with his right thumb. “Both victims were female. Both were eleven to fourteen years of age. Both vanished during daylight from a public road—a highway, a city street. Both were left on the surface in an unprotected setting—a quarry, a field. Both bodies were lying faceup, with arms and legs straight, hair carefully arranged.”
“Posed,” Barrow said.
“Definitely.”
Rodas shifted to his left hand. “Both victims were clothed. Both had remnants of tissue on their fingers. Neither showed evidence of trauma. Neither showed evidence of sexual assault.” He withdrew a plastic sleeve from his carton and put it on the table. Inside was a white-bordered five-by-seven color print.
Barrow dug a similar print from the tub and placed it beside Rodas’s. As one, we leaned forward to view them.
The photos were undoubtedly school portraits. The kind we all sat for as kids. The kind kids still take home every year. The backgrounds differed. A tree trunk versus rippled red velvet. But each subject looked straight at the camera with the same awkward smile.
“I got to admit,” Tinker admitted, “they are of a type.”
“Of a type?” Slidell pooched air through his lips. “They look like friggin’ clones.”
“Both victims were roughly the same height and weight,” Rodas said. “No bangs. No glasses. No braces, which I’d guess are fairly common in that age group.”
It was true. Both girls had fair skin, fine features, and long dark hair center-parted and drawn back from the face. Gower had hers tucked behind her ears.
I looked at Lizzie Nance. At the face I’d studied a thousand times. Noted the dusting of caramel freckles. The red plastic bow at the end of each braid. The hint of mischief in the wide green eyes.
And felt the same sorrow. The same frustration. But new emotions were stirring the mix.
Unbidden, images genied up in my mind. An emaciated body curled fetal on a makeshift bench. Yellow-orange flames dancing on a wall. Blood-spattered crystal casting slow-turning shadows across a dimly lit parlor.
My gaze drifted past Slidell toward the back of the room.
Though I couldn’t see the view from where I was seated, I knew the window looked out over the parking lot. And the buildings of uptown. And the interstate snaking through the power grids of the Northeast. And the far distant Canadian border. And a dead-end street beside an abandoned railroad yard. Rue de Sébastopol.
The sound of silence brought me back to the present.
“You need a break?” Barrow was studying me with an odd expression. They all were.
I nodded, rose quickly, and left the room.
As I hurried up the hall, more images popped. A dog collar circling a willowy neck. Dark refugee eyes, round and terrified in a morgue-white face.
I locked the lavatory door, crossed to the sink, and held my hands under the faucet. Watched and didn’t watch as water ran over them. A full minute.
Then I cupped my fingers and drank.
Finally, I straightened and looked in the mirror. A woman looked back, knuckles white as the porcelain she was clutching.
I studied the face. Not young, not old. Hair ash blond but showing gray feelers. Eyes emerald green. Revealing what? Grief? Rage? Congestion and fever?