Stolen Daughters by Carolyn Arnold (top novels TXT) 📗

Her name was Ashley Lynch, out of Washington. She was groomed on social media by someone claiming to be a boy from her high school. Obviously it wasn’t. Ashley was spotted with another friend—who also ran away—talking with a woman.”

“I wish I could help.”

Amanda shifted straighter in her chair. “You might be able to, and I may be able to help you. I have a few names from the detective who investigated Ashley Lynch’s disappearance. He cleared these people, but I was hoping you could take a look and see if any of them mean something to you. Might even give you a lead to shut these monsters down. Or at least make their lives hell.” Amanda had amended her comment because Patty had told her before that it was near impossible to destroy these rings. They’d just reorganize and pick up business as usual.

“Sure, shoot the names over, and I’ll take a look.”

They wished each other a good night in spite of the darkness that had occupied their entire conversation.

Amanda’s phone rang immediately.

“Just wanted to let you know that the tip line will be functional and broadcast on the eleven o’clock news.” It was Malone, and he was to-the-point again.

“You got that set up fast.”

“How I work.”

She thought for a second he was going to hang up on her, but he said, “How are things going with the case?”

“Nothing more since we last spoke. Just about to dig back in now. I’ll probably start with reviewing the interviews conducted by canvassing officers from today and see if any leads pop up there.”

“Good. Keep me posted.”

“You’re sure everything’s okay?”

“Four dead bodies in four days. Not really.” He hung up.

Maybe he was just upset about the murders and his mood had nothing to do with her, after all.

“Heard you on the phone.”

She turned to see Trent going to his desk.

“Was it Malone?” he asked.

“Yep. The tip line will be in place for the eleven o’clock news.”

“That’s good. Right?”

“Sure.” She was for it when Malone had made the suggestion, had doubts about its effectiveness when talking to Justin Cooper, and now, with its inevitability, they had become stronger. Even if someone did decide to speak, would they come forward only to get themselves killed for doing so? She cleared her throat and told Trent about the memo she’d received on the yellow two-by-two square.

“I’ll get started on reading the interviews.” He no sooner finished speaking than he started clicking away on his keyboard.

“Ah, just a couple more things. I got an email from Mia, and she sent over some pictures of the crowd.”

He looked over the partition, and she passed him the colored printouts.

He glanced at the pictures, then at his monitor, back at the pictures. His brow furled up. “Huh.”

“What is it?”

“Well, it looks like…” His lips were moving, but no words were coming out.

“Trent,” she prompted.

“There’s a folder on the server labeled Crowd Interviews, but nothing from canvassing officers.”

“Okay, well, start with what we have.”

“No problem, but I just counted and there are fourteen interviews and, in this picture—” he held up one of the printout she’d given him “—there’s fifteen people.”

“You’re sure?”

“Let me count again…” His lips started moving like before, then he nodded.

“All right, well, we’ll just have to figure out who got missed.”

Forty-Three

“How do we figure out who wasn’t interviewed?” Trent left his desk and joined Amanda in her cubicle.

She could only think of one way. “We read through all the interviews—you do half, I’ll do the other half. We’ll pull background reports for everyone as we go and compare their DMV photos with the pictures of the crowd. It’s likely most of them have a driver’s license. We mark off every face as we go along. Make a copy of the picture and give one back to me.”

Trent left for the copy room to do as she’d asked and returned seconds later. “Here.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.” Next thing she saw was the top of Trent’s head from his cubicle as he looked down and pecked away on his keyboard.

She got to work on her half. She’d had to pull a lot more backgrounds at one time before. Seven were nothing. But still the hours passed. It was one fifteen in the morning when she had one more report to pull.

The interviewing officer recorded her name as Cindy Page.

Cindy… It wasn’t a common name, but one she’d heard recently.

She typed Cindy Page into the system and… nada. She brought up a map of Dumfries in her mind, and the address Cindy gave during the interview was only a block over from the first fire. Then it suddenly sank in why Cindy was familiar. She was the young woman Amanda had spoken to, the one who had brought her boyfriend a coffee. Why wasn’t she in the system, and what was she doing at the scene of the second fire?

“Trent, you finished over there? I need your photo to see who you marked off.”

“Ah, yeah.” Trent’s marker squeaked across the page as he inflicted his final X before handing it to her.

She scratched off the faces on his that she had on hers. They were left with two—a dark-haired man and a blonde with teal highlights standing several people apart. “Okay, quite sure this is Cindy Page. I spoke to her and her boyfriend at the scene of the first fire. But that man is a mystery.” She went digging through the image gallery on her phone, searching the photos of the gawkers from the first crime scene. She stared at one after the other, looking to see if she could find his face in the crowd there—and finally she found him.

“Look!” She pointed excitedly at his face on the screen and then to the one in the printed copy from the Clear Mountain Circle crime scene.

“He was at both fires.”

“And so was Cindy…” Did that mean anything? Was she grasping for a clue so badly she was making them up now? After all, Cindy and the mystery man weren’t