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The two of them parted as they entered, and she found Derrick hovering over his laptop at the table in the corner of her office. She dropped the food and coffee on the table.
“I talked to Laney on the way over,” Ellie said. “No ID yet, but the remains in the car are male and injuries are consistent with foul play.”
Derrick looked up, eyes widening in surprise. “Interesting. The car was registered to a female, not a male.” He opened the wrapper on his sandwich and thanked her.
“What do you know about her?” Ellie asked as she bit into her own breakfast.
“Name’s Amy Dean,” Derrick said. “Twenty-two years old when she disappeared. Light-brown hair, hazel eyes, attended Widow Peak College. Last seen ten years ago.”
“Ten years,” Ellie murmured.
“Yeah. She was reported missing. Police investigated but never found her.” He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “No information on her since. But I’ll dig deeper in case there’s a paper trail I haven’t found.”
An image of the empty car seat flashed behind Ellie’s eyes. “Did she have a child?”
Derrick looked back at his computer. “A two-year-old little girl named Paisley.”
Ellie’s breath stalled. “Where’s the little girl now?”
“No information on her.” He paused, jaw tightening. “And Amy Dean was never found.”
Ellie rocked back in her chair. “So whether the dead man in the car is related to Amy and the child, we don’t know. But it’s possible Amy and her daughter disappeared the same night he died.” That gave her a general time frame to begin with. “If she ran with the child, she might have been afraid of something and gone into hiding.”
“Or she had something to do with the accident,” Derrick said.
Ellie wadded up her sandwich wrapper. “I say we go to Widow Lake and talk to the officer who investigated her disappearance.”
First, she sent Cord a text:
Owner of the car in the lake was a woman named Amy Dean. She and her two-year-old little girl disappeared ten years ago.
Have search teams look for their bodies or a grave near the bridge where the car was found.
TWENTY-NINE
WIDOW LAKE
A feeling of trepidation plagued Cord, just as it had when he was a kid and knew bad things were about to happen. And now Ellie’s text.
What if a childhadbeen in the car before the crash? What if the child was taken… or worse? Murdered and thrown into the lake. Or buried somewhere on the trail.
He hated that his mind jumped to the worst, but it was a product of his past. Ellie must be thinking along similar lines or she wouldn’t have requested he look for graves.
He texted his coworker Milo and explained their task. Milo agreed to meet him so Cord got on the road. A few minutes later, he met Milo and another SAR team member and they fanned out in different directions.
Heat blazed down, parching the weeds and leaves and turning the once-green grass into a dull brown that crackled as he plowed through the trees and bushes. He kept an eye out for snakes and spiders, remembering all the times he’d slept on the ground when he was a teen and had encountered the deadly creatures.
He searched the wooded area near the cabins, then veered toward the shed where Betsy had been found. The dilapidated building was rotting, covered in moss and lichen, and had been abandoned for years. Normally, water would probably reach just below the rotting wooden dock but now it was so low you could practically see the muddy ground beneath.
Brush had been pushed aside and smashed. Footprints marred the soil near the opening of the shed. Footprints that would have been too large for the twelve-year-old girl who’d found Betsy.
Footprints that looked as if they were made by a man’s boot.
Possibly from the search teams who’d been hunting for Betsy. Or maybe the crime team looking for forensics after they’d found the car in the lake.
He scratched his head. Although, his grid hadn’t included the shed specifically so they might not have searched it, especially after Betsy was rescued.
Curious, he inched closer, shining his flashlight into the dark interior. The small structure smelled of rot, dampness and a fishy odor. Wet prints, recent ones, smeared the floor, indicating someone had been inside.
