“My God, you’re all grown up. You look just like your father,” she cried, fat tears rolling from beneath her round spectacles.
“Mom, I was grown up when I left Washington.”
“But you didn’t have this beard, and these clothes…” She touched his shirt, and then stopped as if remembering Orla, who stood next to him, smiling. “You’re Orla?” she asked, wiping at her face and smiling.
Before Orla could answer, his mother embraced her, crying into her shoulder. “Abraham, she looks just like Cher from Sonny and Cher. My goodness, you are lovely. Look at her, Abe.”
Abe smiled apologetically at Orla.
“I’ve seen her, Mom,” he assured his mother. “You are lovely, though.” He lifted Orla’s hand and kissed her palm.
His mother beamed at them, her gray eyes enormous and shining.
“Thank you. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Levett.”
“Call me Bernice,” his mother insisted, grabbing Orla’s arm and steering her toward the door.
“Don’t worry about me,” Abe called after them. “I’ve got the bags.”
“I’m making my legendary beef burgundy,” Abe’s mother announced. “Has Abraham told you all about it? I made it every year for his birthday, until he left, of course. You’re not vegetarian, are you?”
Oral laughed and winked at Abe.
“No, I’m a meat-eater, and Abe has mentioned your legendary beef burgundy. Sounds amazing, Bernice. I can’t wait to see your home. Abe tells me you raise miniature Schnauzers.”
“Oh, I do, Orla. I do. They are the most precious things. I have six pups right now, three weeks from adoption, bless their little hearts.”
Orla
“You don’t have to do this,” Abe said for the tenth or eleventh time since they left his mother’s house to make the short drive to the Spokane police station.
“Abe.” Orla put her hand on his knee. “I want to do this. It’s the right thing. And not just for you. I met Liz. I saw what the families go through. I want to do it.”
Abe clutched the wheel, his knuckles the same white as his face.
A detective met them in the lobby before leading them to a basement room filled with cold case files.
A single table stood in the center of the dimly lit room. A cardboard box sat on top. The name Dawn Piper was written on the side in black marker with a case number listed beneath it.
“This isn’t standard procedure,” the detective grumbled, looking at Orla and then Abe. “But since I have your mom to thank for my Schnauzer, Sugarplum, I’m making an exception.”
“Sugarplum?” Abe asked.
Orla gently elbowed Abe in the ribs.
“That’s an adorable name,” Orla added.
The detective eyed them for another moment.
“This box stays here. Everything in it needs to be there when I come back from lunch. It’s an open investigation. If we ever find the perp, a defense attorney could call this evidence tampering.”
“Our lips are sealed,” Abe said.
Orla peered into the box. She wore her gloves, sliding her hand over documents, pulling out small plastic bags. When she lifted a baggie containing a black button, she knew she’d found it.
She opened the bag and took the button out. Removing one glove, she held the button over her naked palm.
“Here goes nothing,” she murmured, dropping the button into her hand.
The image rocked her. In an instant, she was transported to a long-ago summer night, to a dusty parking lot near a convenience store.
A large man, his breath stinking of whiskey, held Dawn by her hair, pulling her towards his truck. His eyes were bloodshot, and his lips big and heavy. Dawn cried out, clawing at the man, tearing at his hair, screaming for help. In the struggle, she grabbed his shirt and ripped it. The button flew to the ground.
Orla felt both their energies, the man’s lust and the girl’s terror.
Despite the years, the energy was strong - strong enough for Orla to follow the trail.
He dragged Dawn to his truck and forced her inside. In her mind, Orla spun the truck, memorized the license plate. The button was giving up its ghosts. The struggle continued inside the cab as they sped down the road and passed Abe. Orla saw his car spin around. She felt Dawn’s exhilaration, her hope at seeing Abe. The man lifted a wrench from the console and struck her in the head. She slumped against the passenger window. The vision had begun to fade, but there was paperwork on the dashboard, letters. Orla read the name Jasper Moran.
Th button fell from her hand.
She took in a shaky breath and opened her eyes. The dark night and Dawn’s screams had dissipated, but the lingering terror made her heart thud against her ribs.
“Did you…?” Abe started and seemed to choke on the words. He looked like he might be sick.
Orla knew he could see it in her face, the truth - that yes, she knew who abducted and murdered Dawn all those years ago.
She rattled off the license plate number, and Abe wrote it in his notebook.
“His name was Jasper Moran,” she told him.
Abe
“It’s Dawn,” Abe’s younger sister, Trudy exclaimed, pointing at the television.
She jumped up from the Monopoly game they’d been playing, Abe getting his butt handed to him by Orla, who’d put a hotel on Boardwalk one roll before he landed there.
Trudy adjusted the volume.
A bright-eyed male reporter, wearing a tan trench coat, stood in front of a ramshackle house with peeling blue paint and a large, black tarp covering one corner of the roof. Old tires, steel barrels, and bags of garbage spotted the yard.
“I’m standing in front of the home of Jasper Moran, a local Spokane man suspected in the disappearance of eighteen-year-old Dawn Piper, who was abducted from Daryl’s Convenience Store on June 11th, 1966. The police recently searched Moran’s property based on an anonymous tip. Skeletal remains were located in a sealed drum in the home’s basement.”
Abe stared at the house in the background, but he felt nothing - no relief, no indignation. A strange numbness settled over him.
“Though dental records have not confirmed the match, police believe they’ve found the skeletal remains of Dawn Piper, missing for ten years in June. Despite an exhaustive search in 1966, including an eyewitness statement, Moran was never a suspect or a person of interest in the case. Fingerprints lifted from the phone booth the night Dawn went missing have been matched to Jasper Moran. Additionally, a distinctive gold necklace, containing a gold lamb pendant, was located with the remains. According to sources close to Dawn, she wore a necklace fitting that description.”
Trudy glanced at Abe, her expression pained.
“They found her,” she murmured.
Abe stood and turned off the television.
He returned to Orla, knelt in front of her, and laid his head in her lap. She leaned down and kissed his temple where a small scar from Spencer’s hammer remained. He sighed, feeling as if a decade of sorrow had finally begun to shake loose and fall away.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to the people who made this book possible. Thank you to Rena Hoberman of Cover Quill for the beautiful cover. Thank you to Sonya, my copy editor. Many thanks to Irvene, Donamarie, Will, and Barbara for beta reading the original manuscript. Thank you to my amazing Advanced Reader Team. Lastly, and most of all, thank you to my family for always supporting and encouraging me on this journey.