lined up to the edge of the coffee table where she always left it. The blanket was neatly folded in its usual spot over the back of the chair. Her gym bag waited by the kitchen door. The keys were on the console table just inside the hallway. Her purse hung from the back of the kitchen chair.
The bowl where she always kept her pink scrunchie with the white daisies was still empty.
Gina typed on the iPad—
Can I buy a gun and have it delivered to my house in Atlanta, Georgia?
17
Sara jotted down some notes from the briefing as she sat at her desk. She stared at Rebecca Caterino’s name. She found herself silently listing the same what ifs that she had asked herself eight years ago. What if Lena had found a pulse? What if Sara had gotten to the woods more quickly? What if those lost thirty minutes had meant the difference between a victim who could identify her attacker and a young woman sentenced to a life of unknown suffering?
Leslie Truong might still be alive. Joan Feeney. Pia Danske. Shay Van Dorne. Alexandra McAllister. All of those stolen lives could’ve been returned if only they had found Beckey Caterino’s real attacker.
Or Tommi Humphrey’s.
Sara felt her stomach tighten at the thought of Tommi. She had been wrong to agree to Amanda’s request to reach out to the girl. Every time Sara thought about locating Tommi, her mind flashed up the image of the broken young woman chain-smoking in the backyard of her parents’ home. Sara had been gripping together her hands under the picnic table. Jeffrey had been silently listening, oblivious to the shared trauma of the two women sitting across from him.
Sara returned to her notes.
Heath Caterino. Almost eight years old. He would begin experiencing growing pains. His permanent teeth would push through. His critical thinking would begin to hone. He would start to use language to express humor.
He would ask questions—
Who am I? Where did I come from? How did I get here?
Perhaps not soon, but eventually, the boy might uncover the devastating circumstances of his birth. The internet could offer answers his mother could not give and his grandfather refused to provide. Heath could read about his mother’s attack. He could do the same math that Sara had done, make the same observations as Faith, and find himself forced to shoulder a burden no child should ever have to carry.
So many lives damningly altered by a multitude of what ifs.
Sara could not let herself drown in the past again. She pulled up Faith’s scanned notes on her laptop. She focused her thoughts on the women in front of her.
Joan Feeney. Pia Danske. Shay Van Dorne. Alexandra McAllister.
Faith had clearly gotten a head start on the investigations before the briefing began. According to her records, the bodies of Feeney and Danske had been cremated. There were no autopsy reports. In each instance, the coroners had done a rough sketch of the body and documented most of the injuries, but beyond that, the trail had effectively gone cold.
Shay Van Dorne was a different matter. Her body had been buried. Faith had listed the parents’ information alongside the number for the funeral home that had handled her internment. In Faith’s usual thoroughness, she had called the home and ascertained the location of the body. Shay Van Dorne was buried in Villa Rica, sixty miles east of GBI headquarters. There was one word that caught Sara’s attention. Faith had written VAULT in caps, then circled it.
Sara dialed Amanda’s extension into her phone.
Amanda answered, “Quickly, I’m expected on a conference call in four minutes.”
“I understand why you’re reluctant to expand the investigation into the women from the articles.”
“But?”
“What if it was just one jurisdiction, one coroner, one police department?”
“Continue.”
“Shay Van Dorne.”
“You want to exhume the body?”
“She was buried in a vault.” Sara explained, “That’s an outer seal around the casket. It’s made of one of four materials—concrete, metal, plastic or composite. They’re watertight to keep out the elements and prevent the earth from crushing open the casket. The more expensive ones are air-sealed, but not hermetically. Legally, funeral homes can’t make guarantees that the decedent will be preserved, but I’ve done exhumations where the body is mostly intact.”
“You’re saying that a three-year-old body could be perfectly preserved?”
“I’m saying she’ll be decomposed, but the damage could be minimized,” Sara said. “If Shay was mutilated in the same way as Alexandra McAllister and the others, then we’ll know she was a victim.