Dawn Girl: An absolutely gripping serial killer thriller (Tess Winnett) by Leslie Wolfe

Author:Leslie Wolfe [Wolfe, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Italics Publishing
Published: 2016-08-30T00:00:00+00:00

26

Missing

Tess made it to Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office by mid-afternoon, covered in dust, sweat, and airplane grime. She climbed the stairs two at a time and entered the almost-empty squad room, looking for Michowsky and Fradella. They weren’t anywhere to be seen, but a uniformed cop lifted his eyes from a report he was typing.

“Where are they?”

The cop pointed his finger at the conference room, then resumed his work on the report.

She entered the conference room without knocking and stopped the conversation that was taking place in there.

“Finally,” Michowsky greeted her and moved away from the whiteboard.

She noticed they’d finally hung the whiteboard on the wall, and a second, smaller one, right next to the first, where they had pinned details about the new missing-person case.

At first, she studied May Lin’s face, patiently, carefully, as if she’d never seen her before. She wanted to capture all the new information gathered from her visit and make it work somehow, give some results. Then she remembered something. She pulled out her phone and retrieved an image, then handed it to one of the uniformed cops who leaned against the wall doing nothing.

“Please have this printed letter size, full color, and bring it back.”

The cop shifted his weight from one foot to the other, uncomfortable and undecided.

“What, now?”

“Yes, now.”

He left the room scoffing, without closing the door. Tess was still revisiting May Lin’s notes on the board when he came back with the print. It was the photo of May Lin’s family at the investors’ gala, and Tess pasted it on the board with two pieces of tape.

Then she studied Shanequa with new eyes, remembering what her adoptive mother had shared. Not going out much, working hard, had lost a lot of people. She tried to see those details in the way Shanequa looked before her abduction. Then she looked at the crime scene photos again and found herself grinding her teeth.

Finally, she moved on to the second wallboard, where they’d pasted the photo of a beautiful and confident young woman. In the photo, she wore a thin-strapped, red dress, matching the color of her lipstick. She had smiling green eyes and wavy brown hair, shoulder length, worn casually styled, parted on the right. “Julie Reynolds, 21,” Michowsky had written in black marker, right above her photo. Missing since 10:30PM the night before. Already 16 hours since she’d been gone.

Tess frowned and clenched her jaws, trying not to think of what Julie was going through right at that moment, how she must have felt. She knew it too well. Unwanted memories invaded her brain and clouded her vision. Sixteen hours already… sixteen hours of torture, of screams no one heard, of wishing she were dead. How the hell did that happen?

She muttered curses under her breath, reading the rest of the notes and blaming herself for being away in Atlanta when Julie had gone missing. Maybe if she’d been there, they would have found Julie already.

“Talk to me,” she asked Michowsky between clenched jaws.

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