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“Later,” she breathed into his mouth as it captured hers.
It was dark by the time they took Hudson’s truck to the Laurelton police station where a tech swabbed both their cheeks, labeling each vial carefully. Becca couldn’t see how giving her DNA could help. There was no way there could be any trace of DNA from whoever had killed the girl, be it Jessie or someone else, after all these years, but hey, if that’s what McNally wanted, fine.
When Becca and Hudson stepped out of the room together, they encountered McNally himself standing by the station’s front doors and looking toward someone who was just heading out to the parking lot: Renee.
“Hey!” Hudson yelled, hurrying after his sister. Becca would have followed but McNally said softly, “Have you got a minute, Ms. Sutcliff?”
No, Becca thought, but she hesitated, watching Hudson approach his sister. Renee’s body language said she was in a hurry and didn’t want to wait. Reluctantly, Becca turned her attention back to the cop and followed him down to a cubicle in a large open room where other detectives were seated at desks, talking on phones, typing reports.
She sat carefully in the chair next to his cluttered desk and noted a picture of a blond boy of about six, his big smile showing a spot where he was missing a baby tooth-a school picture. So McNally had a kid. Somehow that surprised her.
The detective gazed at her for a long moment, enough to make Becca feel uncomfortable. She wondered if this was one of those police tactics meant to intimidate criminals into spilling all. She felt like blabbing her fool head off, and he hadn’t yet asked her a single question.
“Was Jessie pregnant when she disappeared?” he finally inquired.
“Pregnant?” Becca could feel her eyes widen in surprise, her lips part.
“The bones of a fetus were found with the dead girl’s remains.”
Becca felt blood rush to her head, roaring through her ears. Pregnant? Jessie? “I…don’t know,” she heard herself say. Was that what Jessie had been trying to tell her? Was that the secret she wasn’t supposed to speak of?
She felt faint and she gazed past him to Hudson who, as if called by her urgent need, had appeared in the door to the large room. He strode purposely in her direction, and she swallowed hard as she thought that the baby McNally had told her about was undoubtedly his.
What the hell was this? Hudson wondered, seeing Becca’s white face and the shoulder she’d turned toward the detective, as if she were trying to block him out.
“I’ll let you know when I’m coming back from the beach,” Renee had called after him.
Hudson had hesitated. He’d asked her to postpone her trip. With the strange nursery rhyme notes, Glenn’s sudden death, and her sense of persecution, Hudson wanted his sister to stay within reach. But she was on a mission of her own, apparently, and wasn’t listening either to him or the feeling that something was very, very wrong.
More people were leaving the station, a group of them, and Hudson had felt like he was swimming upstream as he pushed his way to reach Becca and McNally. But he found them, Becca seated at the cop’s desk in the Homicide Department.
“Can I help you?” A tall, African American cop with a name tag that read Detective Pelligree stepped in his way.
“Lookin’ for McNally. Found him.”
Pelligree watched as Hudson made his way to McNally’s desk where Becca sat, white as a sheet, her eyes wide. Oh, hell, was she about to have one of her spells again. “You okay?”
“No,” she was saying to the detective, shaking her head, and Hudson saw that her hands were curled into trembling fists.
“What’s going on?” He looked to Mac for an explanation.
“He asked if Jessie was pregnant,” Becca said. “There was a baby…The bones of an unborn child…were there, in the maze, too.”
Hudson stared at Mac. “You think Jessie was pregnant?”
“The girl in the maze was.”
“So that’s why you’re doing the DNA swabs,” he said slowly, thinking. “If I’m the baby’s father, then it’s a pretty sure bet the mother is Jessie.”
McNally nodded.
“Jesus H. Christ.” He couldn’t believe it. This had to be wrong. Had to be. “Then…then the remains aren’t Jessie’s.” But even as he said the words, he knew he could be mistaken.
“Was that the trouble she was talking about?” Becca asked softly.
“She would have told me.”
“Would she, Mr. Walker?” McNally asked and Hudson had no answer.
