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“Think of Rose,” her husband said softly.
“Of . . . of course.” She stared at the floor for a second, then added, “Owen’s not in Jacksonville any longer. He moved back here about two”—she glanced at her husband as she thought—“no, almost three months ago. He rents a place in Bloomingdale, well, just outside of it. Give me a sec.” She stood and headed toward the back of the house.
When she was out of earshot her husband said, “You have to understand, Detective Reed, that this is hard on her. Very hard.” His brow furrowed. “I worry about her. She’s a strong woman, but there’s only so much a mother can take. Do you have any children?”
Reed hesitated, felt a pang of regret, then shook his head.
“Well, this is tough. Let me tell you. I don’t have any of my own, but I’ve seen what it’s done to Margaret and then, of course, I deal with all kinds of family crises with my congregation—”
Footsteps heralded his wife’s return and she handed Reed a sheet of paper, lined and frayed from where it had been torn from a spiral tablet. Owen Duval’s name, address, e-mail and phone number were written in a smooth, flowing hand. “He’s innocent,” she said.
Reed knew she’d given as much as she would. He handed her his card. “If you think of anything else that might help us, please call.”
She bit her lip and crushed his card in the fist that still clutched a similar card from the newswoman. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be mean, to be rude. It’s just that after all the years I tried to give the police the information I’d gathered and then was treated like I was a nutcase, you know, like there was something wrong with me for trying to find out what happened to my daughters, it’s a little unsettling that now . . . now you want my help.”
Reed stood. “Yes, yes, I do. Thanks. I can’t change what happened in the past, but I’m sure the department has always sought to find your daughters. Now we want to locate whoever did this and bring him to justice, as well as find Rose.”
“You think the kidnapper, the murderer is a man?”
“Don’t know,” Reed said, tucking the note with information on Owen Duval into his pocket, “but we will find out.”
“Just find my daughter.” Again Margaret’s eyes shone with unshed tears. “And please, oh, God, please, when you do locate her, bring her back to me alive.”
* * *
I wondered when they would be discovered, when the bodies would show themselves. I’ve waited. And I’ve worried. And I’ve anticipated. Expecting this day. Finally, now, the truth will be exposed, and I will have to be oh, so careful. Too easily I could give myself away, too easily I could be found out. And I just can’t let that happen.
CHAPTER 12
Reed will kill you! You’d better think twice about this, Nicole . . .
Nikki’s conscience harangued her as she parked at the park two blocks away from the house where once the Duval family had lived. As far as she could tell, she was alone. No other reporters staking out a home that had been bought and sold three times in the twenty years since the girls had gone missing.
Well, he won’t really kill you, of course, but he could divorce you. Is that what you want?
“Of course not,” she argued with herself as she locked the car and felt her shoulder begin to ache. Too bad. It had been four days since she’d been released from the hospital and she was feeling better. She’d always healed quickly, and this time proved no different. Her shoulder gave her just a twinge of pain now and again, and the other . . . well, she was healing inside as well. Even emotionally, she decided.
Besides, she’d been through worse, she thought, as she walked along the sidewalk that rimmed the park, and now she had the list of names, numbers and addresses Millie had e-mailed her. Yeah, she had to get some things straight with her husband, but come on, he’d proposed and married her knowing full well she would never let a story go, especially a mystery that had swirled around Savannah as the Duval girls’ story had, especially one involving people she’d known, girls she should have grown up with.
A thicket of trees had been uprooted by the hurricane, the sidewalk buckled and cordoned off with neon cones and yellow tape for several yards, so she jaywalked across the street and eyed the small home where the family had resided. The stucco exterior was painted a soft gray with white paned windows with black shutters and flower boxes filled with trailing petunias in pink and white. The yard was tended, any debris from the storm already raked away. The house appeared to be one story, but the pitch of the roof and windows cut into the eaves on either end suggested a bedroom or two upstairs.
This was where the girls had lived.
Where Harvey and Margaret had raised their family.
Where Owen Duval, too, had made his home. She’d tried to contact him already, using the phone number that Millie had found, but he hadn’t picked up and she’d left her name and number asking him to call. So far, he hadn’t.
As she stared at the house, she tried to remember Owen, to conjure up something she’d known about him when they were in school, but couldn’t recall ever speaking with him. Even though he’d lived in the area, she’d never run into the boy who had lost his sisters that fateful day.
She’d looked up pictures of him, from the high school yearbook and from any photos she’d located on the Internet. But she’d found no recent shots of Duval, so she was stuck with the image of a dark-haired sullen youth with a perpetual frown and thick black eyebrows.
She wondered where he’d slept in this house. The people who owned the place now were an elderly couple with the neat front yard, tidy detached single garage and a lush, if hurricane-ravaged vegetable garden of squash, pumpkins, pole beans and rows of corn visible through the opening between garage and house.
Nikki had come here on a whim, thinking that seeing the home where the Duval family had once resided might give her some insight, a different slant on the story, but the house was like so many others on this street.
Had pure evil resided here?
Hidden by the charming facade?
