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“The ex-husband’s?”
“Type A negative, a match for James Creighton. He claimed the blood was from a year before, when he’d cut himself while shaving.”
“Did he have any fresh injuries?”
“He had a healing cut on his finger, claimed it happened onhis sailboat. Therewasblood on the boat too, so that didn’t really help us. They held him for forty-eight hours while they searched his rental house and his crappy sailboat, looking for the kid. Her hair and fingerprints were all over the place, of course, but there was no Lily. Since the girl visited him regularly, all that trace evidence added up to nothing. They had to let him go, but he’s still my number one suspect.” Thibodeau looked straight at Jane. “Now explain to me what Creighton has to do withyourhomicide case.”
“We were hoping you could tell us,” said Jane.
Thibodeau shook his head. “I have no idea. I don’t even know where he is at the moment.”
“You weren’t keeping tabs on him?”
“It’s been nineteen years. Tremblay kept hoping that one day he’d be able to prove Creighton did it. Maybe a witness would start talking, or the man would confess. Or, god forbid, they’d find the little girl’s body. A few years ago, we thought wedidfind her when a skeleton turned up at the state park twenty miles away.”
“A kid’s?” asked Jane.
“Yeah. Based on their condition, the bones had been there for a while, maybe a decade or more, and they belonged to a little girl around three years old.”
“Just like Lily.”
“Right after they found those bones, I pulled James Creighton in for questioning. Ran him through the wringer. I wanted so badly to nail him for the kid’s murder, but then we got back the DNA on those bones, and they didn’t match either him or Eloise.”
“Then whose bones are they?”
“They’re still unidentified. She’s just Little Girl Doe, left out in the woods.” He shook his head. “I thought I fuckinghadhim.”
“What happened to Creighton?”
“The high school didn’t want him teaching music classes, so he lost that gig. From there he moved around, looking for other jobs. Worked at a Gas and Go in Augusta. A restaurant down in South Portland.”
That explained all the Maine phone numbers on Sofia Suarez’s cell phone records. She’d been trying to track down James Creighton, tracing his work history job by job. The gas station. The Buffalo Wings restaurant. Had she ever contacted him? Did the burner phone she called belong to Creighton?
“We want to show you a video,” said Frost, handing Thibodeau his cell phone. “It’s surveillance footage recorded at a cemetery in Boston. This isn’t the best way to view it, but I’ll send the file to you later, so you can watch it on your desktop.”
“What am I supposed to look for?”
“We’re hoping you recognize the man.”
Thibodeau studied the video once, then replayed it as the cappuccino machine once again hissed in the background.
“Is that man James Creighton?” Frost asked.
Thibodeau huffed out a sigh. “I don’t know.”
“Couldit be him?”
“I suppose. The height seems right, and the hair color. But if it is him, he’s changed a lot since I last saw him. He’s lost weight, a lot of weight. And some hair too.” Thibodeau handed Frost’s phone back. “I wish I could be more certain, but it’s not a very clear video.”
“Do you have any idea where he is now?” Jane asked.
“No. After I took on the cold case, he dropped out of sight. Probably because he knew I was watching him, waiting for any reason I could find to yank him behind bars. Okay, maybe Ididharass him a little, so he had a reason to avoid me. For all I know, he’s still up here in Maine. Or he could be anywhere in the country.”
“And killing again.”
“Maybe. But I’m not sure I see the connection between Eloise Creighton’s murder and your case down in Boston.”
“Sofia Suarezisthe connection.”
