Fear Collector

CHAPTER 4

One of the highlights of the lobby of the Tacoma Police Department was without question the Mug Shot Cafe. Forget the historic placards and the tributes to the fallen officers that filled part of a wall. The espresso shop served up decent lattes and cappuccinos to the men and women of the department that perpetually seemed understaffed-it was appreciated and needed, especially after late-night investigations that turned into early-morning case reviews. The officer who greeted visitors from behind a bulletproof glass enclosure had summoned Grace to come downstairs.

“Your mother’s here,” he said.

“Why does this feel like I’m in school again?” she said, trying to make light of it. Her mother had been a frequent visitor to the department. So frequent, in fact, that it had almost cost Grace the job when the department reviewed her application. Her mother wasn’t “crazy,” but she was a little on the annoying side. At least that’s what they said to each other. Inwardly, each of them felt a little different. Grace’s mother was a persistent advocate for her daughter.

The one who had gone missing before Grace was born.

“You said you’d call me,” said Sissy O’Hare, a woman who never waited longer than a blink to get to the heart of any matter. She was referring to the bones.

“Mom, there wasn’t any more to say.” She looked over at a pair of black leather chairs in front of a turn-of-the-century paddy wagon that was part of the department’s mini museum of Tacoma’s law enforcement history. “Let’s sit.”

“You didn’t tell me that the bones were a woman’s or a girl’s.”

“I didn’t know what they were. I told you that.”

“The news says female.”

“They’ve made a calculated guess. We don’t know what the gender is,” Grace said.

Sissy pressed her daughter. “Look, you’re here. You know what’s going on. The very least you could do is keep me informed.”

Grace looked around. She didn’t like the sentence that her mother had just uttered. Her job was to solve crimes, not be a tipster whose purpose was to slake her mother’s insatiable need to know every detail of every case that could possibly help solve the mystery of what had happened to Tricia.

“Mom, the evidence collected at the beach is in the hands of a very capable lab unit in Olympia. They will let us know what, and if possible, who, those remains belong to. Besides, getting any DNA from those bones will be difficult.”

Sissy put her hand on her daughter’s knee. “Then you have to find the rest of her. Was-was there a skull?”

Grace shook her head. “No. Not that we could find. We’re not sure how the bones got there, Mom. We don’t know for sure if there was a grave above, up on the cliff. We’re still looking.”

“She had a retainer when she went missing,” Sissy said. “You remember that I told you that.”

“I remember everything, Mom. And yes, while the retainer could be a helpful clue, the confirmation would come from teeth. The blood and tissue inside the tooth is often well-preserved.”

The conversation was both strange and strained. The two women in front of the vintage paddy wagon were talking about a daughter Sissy hadn’t seen for decades, and the sister Grace had never known. They were detached from the idea that they needed a dead person’s teeth. It was a conversation they’d had before.

Later, when they would separate and go about the rest of their day, they’d think about what had driven them to the point of obsession.

Back in her end cubicle on the second floor, Grace flipped through the stack of reports that had somehow managed to appear in the twenty minutes she’d been downstairs talking to her mother.

“You doing all right?” Paul Bateman said, setting down a morbidly stained white coffee mug-one that needed a trip home to someone’s dishwasher. Anyone’s.

She took it anyway. She needed more caffeine. “Yeah. I don’t know what’s worse, my mother or our caseload.”

“Speaking of caseload-we’re following up on the Lancaster case today.”

“Of course we are,” Grace said, already scanning the report.

When Lisa had gone missing just after Samantha Maxwell’s body was found, one of the local radio stations had tried to make something of the coincidence. The on-air hosts ignored the department’s public information officer when he reported that Samantha’s drowning was nothing but a tragic accident and had nothing whatsoever to do with the Lancaster girl.

“Short-staffed,” Grace said, getting her coat. “Remind me to remind our wonderful sergeant that we can’t do it all. No one could.”

Across town, a man wallowed in the same beleaguered state. So much to do. So, so little time.

That afternoon Catherine Lancaster’s haunted brown eyes stared at the lens of a Seattle TV news camera. A pediatric nurse at Tacoma General, Catherine was a tall, lanky woman with angular features and a wide, almost slotted mouth. With dark eyes and light brown bob, she had never been a beauty queen, but those who knew Catherine would only describe her with one word: beautiful. She’d devoted her life to serving others and the irony of what had happened to her wasn’t lost on anyone. Among her friends, Catherine was the first to offer help-and the last to leave when someone needed her. There was no time of day too late to call. No question that could not be asked.

She was a woman who didn’t deserve the lens of the camera on her. Not then. Not ever.

“Please,” she said somewhat stiffly, her voice surprisingly strong given her obviously fragile state. Her thin lips trembled as she strung together the words that no mother would ever want to utter: “Help me find my daughter.”

Catherine was on the news that evening doing what she’d been doing from the first moment Lisa vanished from a parking lot at the Pacific Lutheran University campus. A single mother, she had only one purpose in life at that moment. She wanted to find Lisa. No one but another mother could understand the true torment that comes when a child is missing. That was not to say that fathers didn’t feel true anguish. But while in the world of political correctness no one dared to say so, it was true: It was a million times harder on a mother than a father. It just was. It just is.

“Look,” she said, tears welling and threatening to roll down the crisp planes of her face, “I know that everyone says their kids are perfect, but Lisa was. She really, really was.”

The reporter went on to cite Lisa’s achievements, and there were many: basketball letter as a freshman, honor roll every year through high school, leader of a group of students who sought greater understanding for those with handicaps. Lisa was a dream child.

“She wanted to be a social worker or maybe a counselor for troubled kids. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to be because there were so many things that interested her.”

The tears finally fell.

The camera cut away to a wide shot of the campus parking lot, then the reporter, who stood shaking her head slightly.

“Such a sad story unfolding here in Tacoma. If anyone has any information-saw, heard anything, please contact the Tacoma Police Department.”

The last image on the screen was a photo of Lisa and a phone number.

Down in Olympia a few miles south of Tacoma, a man named Dennis Caldwell was watching the Seattle TV news when the image of Lisa Lancaster made him do a double take and reach for the phone. He was almost shaking when the detective handling the case of his daughter’s disappearance answered.

“Hey, Dennis,” Detective Jonathan Stevens said. “I know you’re calling for an update, but, sorry, nothing new.”

“No update. I mean, I think I might have an update for you,” Dennis said, his voice quavering.

“How’s that? Remember something, did you?”

“No. I just saw something I think you should check out. I saw on KING-5 just now. There’s a missing girl’s case in Tacoma. The girl was abducted from one of those colleges up there. Taken, just like my Kelsey.”

“I’m sure it might seem that way to you, Dennis,” Detective Stevens said. He was not trying to shut down the anguished father. Although it sounded like he’d been drinking, he wasn’t going to hold that against him. His daughter had been abducted. No one ever gets over that. Never. “We’re still on top of the case.”

“Like hell you are. You don’t know who took her now any more than you did the day she went missing. You don’t know a thing.”

“We’re on it,” he said.

“The girl up in Tacoma looks just like my Kelsey. The same hair. Same features. A beautiful girl. Maybe the guy who took her is the same one who took my little girl. Will you promise to check it out?”

Jonathan Stevens never failed to check out any lead, no matter how tangential.

“You hang in there, Dennis,” he said.

“You catch who abducted her.”

After the call, Jonathan did a quick computer check and found information about Lisa Lancaster’s disappearance. Lisa did look a lot like Kelsey, that was true. But she was much older. Kelsey Caldwell was seventeen and had been abducted after drama practice-she had been cast as Fiona in Brigadoon. Lisa Lancaster was twenty-four, a college student. He did have to hand it to Dennis Caldwell, drunk or not. He was right. The two girls looked like sisters.

Jonathan Stevens made a call up to Tacoma. It was more due diligence than anything. The chances of the two cases being connected in any way were slim to none. He just didn’t want to be the cop who didn’t act on a desperate father’s request for justice. He couldn’t live with that at all.