Ashes, Ashes, They All Fall Dead (16 page)

She ran her hands up and down her arms. “You’re saying it was my drawing paper, that when I was a little girl, I used that paper to draw on.”

“I think that’s a very real possibility, yes.”

If he was right, their case was about to come to a quick end. She prayed he was wrong. “I’ve never heard of prints being found that long after someone left them.”

He didn’t look at all deterred by her argument. “Then that fancy Quantico education of yours is lacking. There have been documented cases of fingerprints lasting on paper as long as forty years. It’s absolutely feasible your prints were preserved for a paltry twenty-five.”

“We can’t assume it’s twenty-five years. That paper could have been bought before the company went under and used later. I think we can both agree the latent prints were too small to belong to a toddler, but since they were partials, it’s hard to judge the size of the fingers that left them.”

“Which only narrows the time frame from grade school to just before the letters started arriving. Do you mind me asking your age?”

“Yes, but I’ll tell you anyway. I’m thirty.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed a day over twenty-eight.”

“Aren’t you charming?”

He grinned. “We’re looking at a span of about eighteen or nineteen years, from when you were about eight to when the letters first started arriving, when you were twenty-seven. That’s a lot of ground to cover.”

Ground they’d already covered, right after they’d first found her print on the letter at his studio. She’d already discussed every friend and acquaintance she could remember during her teen and adult years.

Going back to when she was a child wasn’t an option.

She tried to refocus him in a new direction. “Then we’re back to building dossiers on the known victims to try to find a link between them.”

He leaned his forearms on the table. “No, you’re the one whose past we need to look into.”

She frowned and took another sip from her soda.

“You’re stalling,” he accused. “What aren’t you telling me?”

She set her drink down and let out an exasperated breath. “You’re right. I’m stalling.”

“Why? Are you uncomfortable with me questioning you again? I promise I’ll make it as painless as possible. We’ll start at, say, third grade and work our way forward. It sounds like a lot of work, but it will go faster than you think, especially since we already covered a lot of ground the other day.”

“It’s not that simple. I can’t just sit down with you and answer questions about my childhood.”

His brow furrowed. “Why not?”

She hated the need to tell him what she’d never told anyone else, aside from the FBI, when she’d submitted to their background check. But he obviously wasn’t going to let this go.

“I can’t answer your questions because I don’t
know
the answers. I was adopted at age thirteen, and I have almost no memories of my life before that. My childhood is one big, empty void.”

E
MMA AND
P
ETER
James lived in the heart of Savannah, just a few blocks off the historic district in an older, middle-class neighborhood where large mansions had been converted into multifamily townhouses

As Tessa led Matt up the brick steps to her parents’ porch, she gave him a questioning look. “Not what you expected?”

“I’m not sure what I expected. Seems like a nice place. Sophisticated, but down to earth.”

Like you.

She studied the front of the house as if she was seeing it in a new light. “I never thought of it that way, but I agree with you.”

“You grew up here?”

“Before I went away to college, this was the only home I’d ever known.”

“That you remember.”

Her smile dimmed. “That I remember.”

A man, perhaps in his mid-sixties, answered Tessa’s knock on the door. He was about Tessa’s height, quite a bit shorter than Matt, but his shoulders were straight and his red hair only bore a hint of gray. His slightly faded deep green eyes widened with pleasure as he wrapped her in a bear hug.

Matt waited off to the side while father and daughter spoke to each other in low tones. The father’s red hair and green eyes were a surprise. If Matt saw the two of them anywhere together, he’d assume they were blood related.

Their huddle broke apart and Tessa’s father offered his hand to Matt.

“You must be the PI my little girl mentioned on the phone, Mr. Buchanan.”

“Call me Matt, please.”

“Matt. You can call me Pete. Come in, come in.”

Tessa’s mother didn’t meet them in the entryway. Instead, she was waiting in the adjoining living room, demurely sitting on a white couch, dressed in a pair of dark blue slacks and a tucked-in white cotton blouse. She rose when they entered, her actions graceful and contained. But in spite of her decorum, her obvious joy at seeing her daughter shined in her eyes. When she hugged Tessa, Matt noted her gray hair was pulled back in a long braid down her back. Like mother, like daughter.

She surprised Matt by hugging him too. “Mr. Buchanan, please call me Emma. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. Tessa has told us a lot about you over the years.”

“She has?” He glanced at Tessa over the top of her mother’s head. “I’d love to hear what she had to say.”

Tessa cleared her throat. “I may have mentioned how annoying you were at Madison’s wedding.”

Her mother shot her an admonishing look. “I’m sure that wasn’t what you said at all. As a matter of fact, I remember you saying—”

“Mom,” Tessa interrupted. “We’re on a tight time frame. Do you have the photo albums I asked about over the phone?”

“Well of course, dear. They’re right over here.” Emma led Tessa to a rolltop desk beside a bookshelf.

Matt would have paid a small fortune to hear whatever Tessa’s mother had been about to say before Tessa cut her off. Instead, he followed her father to one of the two couches separated by a coffee table. Tessa and her mother placed four thick albums on the table in front of the men and sat on the other couch.

Tessa briefly, and vaguely, explained that she and Matt were working on a case, but she didn’t give her parents any significant details. She also neglected to mention that she’d been suspended.

“So, you see,” she concluded, after giving a sanitized version of the investigation, “we believe the man who wrote those letters could be someone I used to know when I was little. But since I don’t remember much of my past, we hoped you could fill in some gaps, or provide a starting point so we can go from there.”

Pete frowned. “Well, I guess that explains why you’re suddenly interested in these albums when you’ve never wanted to look at them before. But I reviewed the albums with the FBI when they did your background check years ago. Wouldn’t all that be in their files?”

“The FBI doesn’t let us look at our own background checks. That’s all confidential.”

Her father’s frown deepened. “But if the information might help with an investigation, wouldn’t they make an exception?”

Matt waited to see if she’d admit she’d been suspended.

“Um, yes, that’s true,” Tessa said. “But getting the personnel files on an old background check takes a long time. I was hoping we could save time.”

She fidgeted and wouldn’t look her father in the eye. She obviously wasn’t used to lying to her parents, because she was doing a lousy job.

“Honey, are you in some kind of trouble?” her father asked.

She cleared her throat. “Of course not. Why?”

His brow crinkled. “I get the feeling something is worrying you and you aren’t telling us everything.”

Tessa gave Matt an imploring help-me look.

He pulled the first album toward him and flipped it open. “Mr. James, would you mind walking me through these pictures? Can you tell me the names of all these people?”

“Of course, of course. But call me Pete.”

“Yes, sir. Pete.”

Pete’s brow smoothed out and soon he was animatedly describing every major event in his daughter’s life, with all the enthusiasm of a proud and loving father.

Tessa mouthed a silent
thank you
.

Matt gave her a quick nod and turned his attention to the albums. He couldn’t help noticing that Tessa completely ignored the albums and spoke quietly to her mother while her father spoke to Matt.

Had she really never looked at the albums? Was she afraid of what she might see?

When Pete finally paused long enough to give Matt an opening, Matt flipped to the first page again and pointed to the black-and-white photo. It showed a group of adolescent girls lined up in front of a white, two-story building. They were all wearing plain, identical dresses. And the name of the building was engraved in an archway above them:
JESSAMINE MANOR
.

“Tessa said she was adopted,” Matt said, “but she didn’t mention she was in a group home.”

Pete glanced at Tessa, who appeared to still be in deep conversation with her mom, not paying attention to the men. He leaned in close to Matt.

“She knows she was in a group home, but she remembers next to nothing about it. Talking about her past, before she came to live with Emma and me, has always been uncomfortable for her, so she avoids it.”

He pointed to the picture. “She’s the fifth young lady from the right,” he said, his voice raised again so Tessa and her mom could hear him if they were interested. “We knew as soon as we met her that she was going to be our daughter. All that red hair and those green eyes.” He pointed to his own red hair, as if to help Matt connect the dots. “It was a sign.”

His wife took Tessa’s hand in hers, and Matt realized from the way Tessa glanced at him that she hadn’t been tuning out his conversation with her father nearly as much as she’d pretended.

“It wasn’t just her resemblance to my husband that made us want her,” Tessa’s mom said. “It was the look in her sad eyes that just about broke our hearts. We’d planned on adopting a younger child, but there was something about her that spoke to us. We filed for adoption that same day, took her home a few weeks later.”

Matt took out his computer tablet and tapped a few quick notes, including the date in the far-right corner of the picture and the name of the girls’ home.

“Is the group home here in Georgia?”

“No, it was near Greenville, in South Carolina.”

South Carolina. Where the two most recent victims had been murdered. That thought sent a chill of dread through Matt. Was the killer sending a signal with those two kills? Was he letting Tessa know he was coming for her next? The killer had no way of knowing Tessa didn’t remember her past, that she didn’t know the significance of anything in the letters. What if the killer assumed all along that she remembered him? Was the name on each successive letter supposed to mean something to her?

“Tessa, what do you remember about Jessamine Manor?” Matt asked.

She shook her head. “Not much. Just impressions. A white house, dormitory-style rooms. White uniforms. Everything was so . . . bland.” She twisted her hands together.

“How did you end up there?”

“I don’t . . . I don’t remember. Daddy knows more about it than I do.” She stood, rubbing her arms as if she were chilled. “Mom, do you have anything to drink around here?”

“Of course, dear.” Her mother rose and patted Tessa on the shoulder. “Where are my manners? I should have offered refreshments as soon as you two arrived. Let’s make everyone some sweet tea.”

Pete shook his head and opened the second album. “I told you Tessa doesn’t like to talk about her past. She never has. I think she remembers more than she wants to admit, and whatever she does remember is too . . . disturbing . . . to talk about. We took her to a therapist when we first adopted her, but it seemed to cause more harm than good, so we stopped.”

“More harm than good?”

“The more she went, the more agitated she became. It was the therapist who recommended we stop the sessions. Turns out that was good advice. Leaving her past in the past was the best thing we could have done. She was a much happier child after that. Did Tessa tell you she didn’t speak for a whole year after she was transferred to that group home?”

“No, sir. She didn’t. Where was she transferred from?”

“Another group home, can’t say I remember the name. She was about seven years old. No one knows what happened to her biological parents. We don’t even know her original last name.”

“How is that possible?”

“The home’s administrator said Tessa’s records, and those of some of the other children, were lost during the transition from the previous home to the new one.”

Matt couldn’t imagine something like that happening. There had to be more to that story.

Tessa and her mother came back into the room, each of them carrying two glasses of iced tea. Matt murmured his thanks and took a glass from Tessa.

Pete narrated the rest of the albums while Matt made notes. Unfortunately, he didn’t think anything he’d learned was going to be particularly useful, other than the name of the home where Tessa had been. Tessa, it seemed, had never made many friends, so the people she’d known comprised a short list.

Half an hour later, Pete closed the last album. “If you want to take these with you, you’re welcome to them.”

“As long as you bring them back,” Emma added.

“Of course, ma’am. And yes, I’d like to take these and look through them again.”

Tessa set her glass down. Matt took that as his cue. He stood and shook Pete’s hand.

“Thank you for your help. Both of you. It was nice meeting you.”

“I’ll get some bags to carry the albums.” Emma hurried into the kitchen while Pete led Matt into the entryway.

Pete leaned in close again. “Be honest with me, young man.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “Is my little girl in danger?”

“I’m perfectly safe.”

They both turned to see Tessa standing in the doorway between the family room and the entryway. Apparently she’d been paying more attention than either of them had realized.

Her mother hurried into the entryway and Matt took the bags of albums from her.

Tessa proceeded to give both of her parents the standard FBI party line about investigations covering every possible angle. She told them any link to her past was only theoretical and highly unlikely to pan out into anything useful for their case. She insisted she wasn’t in any danger.