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What connection?
The other Gavin was not her father; this entire situation was nothing but a weird coincidence. Starting to doubt her sanity, she typed the name into the search field for the CLETS database. The California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System gave her access to state databases, such as the DMV and CORI—Criminal Offender Record Information, and national databases maintained by the FBI, such as the NCIC—National Crime Information Center.
Her father featured prominently in there, with several misdemeanors and two drunk and disorderlies on his record, and an open warrant for the assault with a deadly weapon that had taken place eighteen years ago when he’d stabbed his wife. The statute of limitations had since run out; it was only three years.
Tears stung as Kay’s eyes stared at the screen. Such an unspeakable ordeal, and only three years? That wasn’t justice, but it stopped mattering eighteen years ago. Forcing some air into her lungs, she chased away the ghosts of her past and focused on the other Gavin Sharp, the suspect in Jenna Jerrell’s rape and murder.
There was also a criminal record for the Gavin Sharp of San Francisco. He’d served six months for assault and battery thirty-two years ago, and nothing else since. He’d been walking the straight and narrow on paper; in reality, he’d been preying on underage girls. Other than that, his DMV records showed a clean driver’s license and a registration for a blue Hyundai Santa Fe.
She stared at the man’s photo, her emotions a whirlwind she could barely contain. He was fifty-six years old, but didn’t look a day over forty-five. He seemed attractive in his DMV photo, which explained what Jenna had seen in him beyond a father figure. Shaving his head to hide his baldness and wearing a two-day stubble, the man was tall and slender, boasting a sensual smile. His alluring demeanor was calculated, carefully constructed.
He was charismatic in a weird, familiar way that stirred Kay up, making her feel uneasy, revolted. Frowning at the computer screen and drawing her chair closer to her desk, she put her father’s photo next to the suspect’s.
The resemblance was uncanny. Her father, about forty years old in the latest photo CLETS had, looked older than his age because of his drinking. The San Francisco Gavin Sharp looked younger than his real age. On the screen, with their images side by side, they could’ve been brothers. The same pattern in their baldness, only her father had never shaved his head. Same dimple in their chins. Dark hair. Brown eyes. Same build.
The only discrepancy she could find was the age. This man was fifty-six. Her father, had he lived, would’ve been sixty. Close.
Her FBI contact, an analyst on her former team, had sent her the suspect’s social media channels. Browsing his messages, she found his exchanges with Jenna, the dates he’d arranged to meet with her in Mount Chester. Strangely for a hunter like him, there were no other girls he was targeting at the same time, only Jenna.
The girl’s growing happiness with the relationship tugged at Kay’s heart; she’d been the perfect victim for a sexual predator like Sharp. Vulnerable and depressed, she believed the first person who told her what she needed so badly to hear. And now she was dead.
Coincidence or not, Kay owed it to Jenna to bring her killer to justice, consequences be damned.
Staring at the screen, fascinated and drawn to the edge of a bottomless abyss, Kay continued her research into the second Gavin Sharp’s background. Her throat parchment dry, and her heart thumping in her chest like a caged bird, she peeled the layers off the suspect’s past.
Unsettled by each discovery, she found even more commonalities between her father and that man. The facts went beyond what coincidence could explain. The two men were born in the same town. Had attended the same schools. Every new commonality she uncovered in their past painted a nightmarish picture with only one possible explanation: one of these men had stolen the other’s identity.
She looked at the two photos as if the truth was written on their faces somehow. One had led a life in the open, active on social media, not hiding as far as she could tell, since he’d been released from prison. The San Francisco Gavin Sharp had friends and a social life, went on vacations, posted photos of himself online. Even if he was a sexual predator, on paper and online nothing stood out; no red flags.
The other man, her father, had buried himself in a small town and never cared about interacting with anyone from his past. She couldn’t remember a time when his family or friends would’ve visited or called, before or after that fateful night eighteen years ago.
The conclusion was obvious. Her father had stolen this man’s identity, then had laid low, hiding from who knows whom and for what reasons.
“Always steal from criminals,” she muttered, quoting her father’s own words from many years ago, “because criminals won’t call the cops on you.” He’d said that one time, to Kay’s mother, after swiping a coworker’s toolbelt and bragging about it during one of his daily intoxicated rants.
It seemed her father had found the perfect criminal to steal an identity from. It made sense.
But if that was true, then, what had been her father’s real identity?
TWENTY-FOUR
KENDRA
The first thing that caught Elliot’s attention about the Flannagan place was the smell of wine. Not fresh wine, not spilled, but the kind of smell old casks get after storing wine for ages, a mix of fermented grape and oak. The kind that fills the nostrils the moment one enters a winery’s tasting room.
The Flannagans owned a small winery south of Mount Chester, only a few acres of hills covered in neatly aligned rows of vines. Although not much of a wine drinker, Elliot was familiar with their two most popular labels, both Cabernet Sauvignons. Blue Mountain was one, distributed mainly through local stores and a grocery chain or two. Elliot had seen it in a Safeway store in San Francisco a few years back, when he didn’t know the wine was made only ten miles from his new home. The second wine, Black Rose, was a boutique label, a small production reserved for local connoisseurs with deep pockets and a personal connection to the family.
The Flannagans were new to the wine business, first-generation winemakers, but passionate about it. Elliot had seen them in passing, at county events, wine tastings, and carnivals, but had never spoken with them. They belonged to different worlds.
He stood in the middle of the wine tasting room, waiting for the cellar tour guide to tell the Flannagans he was there. The winery was unexpectedly busy for eleven in the morning; it seemed wine tasting started early. A colorful tour bus had unloaded a flock of elderly tourists, their lively chatter filling the room with echoes of good cheer.
He was quickly shown into a hallway that led to the main residence, an older farmhouse, renovated and equipped with modern accoutrements, but still showing wide, smoke-stained darkened oak beams supporting the vaulted ceilings. It reminded him of an old, turn-of-the-century tavern. It smelled like one too, maybe without the cigar smoke and the scent of sweaty leather horse tack.
Mr. and Mrs. Flannagan met him at the door. The woman was about forty years old, dressed in black slacks and a black shirt. Her skin was pale, and her lips were quivering as she searched his eyes with a terrified yet hopeful gaze.
“Did you find my daughter?” Mr. Flannagan asked. He was older than his wife, maybe pushing fifty, also dressed in black clothes, jeans and a golf shirt. Judging by the slightly pitted, reddened skin on his cheeks and nose, he seemed to be the one most passionate about wine.
Shaking his head, he flashed his badge, but they didn’t break eye contact to look at it. “Detective Elliot Young, Franklin County Sheriff’s Office. I have a few questions, if you don’t mind.”
