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“IDs verified on the older two girls,” Delacroix explained, flipping open her iPad cover and checking her notes. “Holly, the oldest, was twelve at the time and the middle sister, Poppy, was ten.”
He said, “But there were three.”
“Yes, Rose, the youngest.” She glanced up at him. “Still missing.”
He felt the muscles of his back tense. “How old was she?”
“Almost five.” Again she looked at her screen.
“So we can assume the youngest was supposed to go in that last spot, the empty grave. That had been the killer’s plan.”
Her lips tightened. “Possibly.”
Of course there were other options, but that seemed the most likely. “Do we have cause of death for the two?”
“Not completely confirmed, but the guess is strangulation.” Her jaw grew hard. “Fractured hyoid bones in both bodies.”
“So they were dead when they were placed in the tomb.”
“And staged,” she said, reminding him of the victims’ interlocking fingers.
“Right.” He rubbed the back of his suddenly tense neck. He’d dealt with his share of sickos. It came with the territory, but the crimes against children really got to him. “Has anyone notified next of kin?” The worst part of the job.
“Happening now,” she said. “The mother still lives in the area. Her name is . . .” Again she referred to the screen.
“Margaret,” he remembered.
“Yeah.” Nodding, she kept her eyes on her device. “Margaret, but no longer Duval. She’s remarried. Her name is . . . Where is it? . . . Oh, here we go: Margaret Le Roy. Her husband is Ezra. He’s a minister at the Second United Christian Church. It’s off of Derenne, not far from the hospital and medical center.”
“I know it.” Reed pictured the building with its prominent white spire and tracery windows cut into sand-colored bricks. “What about the father of the girls?”
“Harvey Duval,” she said. “He moved. Out of state. Now in . . . let me see.” Deftly Delacroix moved her cursor and said, “Okay. He’s in California.”
“Who isn’t?” he asked.
“Right.” She smiled, some of the tension breaking. Leaning a hip against Morrisette’s desk, she said, “Harvey landed in Fremont, which is a big tech center, I think. Southeast from San Francisco, closer to San Jose. Anyway, Harvey was in insurance. For a time after the girls disappeared, he and Margaret hung together and lived here in Savannah. But then the marriage fell apart and they split.” She was reading her notes, skimming details. “So the talk was that he wanted to get over the disappearances and try to move on. She, Margaret, couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. She became obsessed.” Delacroix looked over the tops of her glasses, pinning Reed in her gaze. “I can’t say that I blame her. Anyway, the upshot is that they divorced and she lost her job as an RN at Oswald General Hospital, because finding her daughters was all she could think about. She was coming in late and having trouble concentrating and, well, that’s not hard to imagine given what she was going through.” She scanned the notes. “Anyway, the upshot is that he moved away, to the West Coast, and she stayed. She began working as a private nurse and part time at a clinic here in town.”
“And all the while kept hounding the department,” he said.
“Yep, never stopped reminding us that the case hadn’t been solved, didn’t want it to go cold, which, of course, it did.”
That was right. He’d heard some of the staff in the Missing Persons department complain. Also, every year on the anniversary of her daughters’ disappearance Margaret had taken out a full-page ad in the Sentinel in an effort to renew interest in the case and keep the public informed, all in the hopes that someone—anyone—would have some information leading her to her children.
Reed got it. The woman had lost her three daughters in one fell swoop. But there was more to the story. Something about a brother, he thought. Something that was suspicious.
“Who was the lead?”
“Detective in charge of the investigation?” she said, then answered before he could confirm. “Charles Easterling, retired the next year, after the Duval girls went missing, and died three years ago at eighty-three. Congenital heart disease.”
“Who was assigned?”
“Someone named Woodrow Stevens, who moved to Chicago last year.”
“Woody,” Reed said.
“And now, it looks like you’re up.”
Waving Delacroix into the visitor’s seat, he leaned back in his chair and tented his fingers. “So give me the rundown. Fill me in on what actually happened the day the girls were last seen.” He hadn’t been a police officer yet when the girls had been abducted twenty years earlier, but he’d heard bits and pieces over the years. The case had never been kicked to Homicide because no bodies had ever been located and the mother had stalwartly insisted the girls were alive. That they?
