“Where should I start?” Kathryn asked.
“First of all,” Hayley said, “how old was Zachary the last time you saw him?”
“He was eighteen, a senior in high school. I was seventeen.”
“Great. It would be helpful for me to start off with the shape of his face.”
“Normal,” she offered.
“How about this,” Hayley said. “I’ll give you a few choices, and then you pick the closest thing to how you picture him in your mind’s eye.”
“OK.”
Lizzy was sitting at the table, too, but she appeared to be far, far away. Hayley found herself feeling bad for giving her shit, and yet she wasn’t sure why she should feel bad about it. Lizzy had needed to make a decision and stick to it for once in her life. She liked to ramble on about how they needed to be safe and not get caught, and yet they had all put themselves in danger of being exposed last night. And for what?
The clink of a teacup pulled Hayley back to the matter at hand. “OK,” Hayley said, “would you describe his face as round, square, thin, or heart shaped?”
“Heart shaped, I guess. Or maybe more like an egg. Yes, he had an egg-shaped face.”
“That’s great.” Hayley began to sketch. When she was done with that, she looked up at Kathryn again. “Do you remember anything about his eyes?”
“Oh, yes. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, and his certainly were. His eyes were gray-blue. Intense-looking eyes. When he looked at you, it was as if he were sucking you in. Pure seduction. When he looked at me, I couldn’t look away. Magnetic. That’s the word I would use to describe his eyes.”
Wow, Hayley thought. She wondered if Lizzy realized Kathryn had feelings for Zachary Tucker. “That’s really great,” Hayley told her, “but now I need some details. For instance, were his eyes set far apart or close together? Were they deeply set?”
She shook her head. “None of those things. All in all, he had a very symmetrical face. Nose where it should be. Eyes, too—not round or narrow, either, but normal,” she said with a sigh. “I’m sorry. I’m no help at all.”
“No, this is good. I won’t make his eyes too large or too small. Let’s talk about his nose. Was it crooked or straight—”
“Straight,” she blurted out before Hayley could finish. “And he had generous lips. And firm. A handsome face, overall; no doubt about it.”
“What about his ears?”
She tilted her head as she thought about it. “He had a good amount of thick dark-brown hair that covered his ears, but his hair wasn’t too long when I knew him. It touched low on his neck and had a slight curl to it. I never saw his ears peeking out, so I would guess normal-sized ears that were flat to his head.”
Hayley sketched as the woman talked. More details shook loose as she went—a wide jaw, a sharp chin. Bright, even teeth. The image that was appearing on paper would certainly be considered by most to be a good-looking man, but the guy in the picture could be just about anybody. At last she handed the drawing to Kathryn and said, “What do you think?”
The woman put a hand to her chest right over her heart. “My goodness. It looks like Zachary.”
Lizzy examined the picture. It clearly bummed her out that she didn’t recognize him. “He looks nothing like Jovan Massing,” she told Hayley.
“Who is Jovan Massing?” Kathryn asked.
“He’s the FBI’s number one suspect at the moment.” Lizzy handed the picture back to Kathryn and asked her to make sure there was nothing else that needed to be tweaked, and then she looked at Hayley and said, “Great work. This was no simple crush you had on Zachary,” Lizzy said to Kathryn. “You’re still in love with him, aren’t you?”
That took Hayley completely by surprise. She hadn’t thought Lizzy was paying any attention at all.
Kathryn’s eyes brimmed with tears. Unable to find her voice, she nodded instead.
“Why didn’t you mention this before?”
“Because if he did kill his sister,” she managed, “what would that make me? Over the years, I tried to convince myself that my imagination had gotten the best of me. As I came to know Zachary, I chose to believe he could never harm anyone. He was good to his family pets, and he doted on his parents. He was good to me, too.”
“Did he know you were in love with him?”
“I don’t know. Probably. I think Zachary knew all the girls at school were in love with him. Like I said, he had magnetism. He could have had any woman he wanted.”
“Did he date anyone?”
“No. Not that I know of.”
“Do you think he preferred the same sex?”
“I don’t think so. It never once crossed my mind. I think he liked the girls to know he was single and yet they couldn’t have him. I don’t know for sure; it’s just the feeling I got back then.”
“Sorry to break things up,” Hayley said, “but if we’re done here, I need to get going.”
Lizzy thanked Kathryn, and they all walked to the door.
When Lizzy got to the car, she looked back at Kathryn with a flash of concern, hoping the woman would stay safe until they found Zachary.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Hayley and Kitally found Naomi Griffiths searching through a Dumpster outside a grocery store off Ahern.
“Naomi,” Hayley called out. “I brought you some food.”
The woman turned, and recognition lit up her face. “Thank you, Jesus. I’m starved.” She might’ve been in her forties or early fifties, but she looked much older.
As they watched her eat a hamburger from a fast-food chain, Hayley told Naomi their plan. They wanted her to do exactly what she always did each evening, but for the next few nights they were going to stay close by and keep an eye on her.
After Naomi finished eating, she spent most of the night talking, telling them her story. It was, no surprise, a sad one. It all started in 2009 when she was laid off from her job as an administrative assistant. She was working for the state, and she had all kinds of great ideas about retiring someday, putting her face to the sun and watching her grandkids a few times a week. But the state budget had become strained, and she was one of the first to be laid off. She hadn’t been worried, though. She’d saved some money and was confident she’d be able to find another job quickly. But it didn’t happen that way. A week became a month, and a month became years. She lost her apartment. Her daughters lived in other states and had problems of their own.
And yet Naomi still had hope that someday she would find a way to get out of this mess and find a job. Most of the women she knew on the streets had been abused and had nowhere to go.
At a little past eleven, Naomi had fallen asleep in a doorway down the alley from them. It was one in the morning now, and the sky was lit up with stars.
“I’m freezing,” Kitally said.
Hayley sat up in her sleeping bag, pulled her sweatshirt off over her head, and handed it to Kitally.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m not cold. Take it.”
“Thanks.” Kitally slipped it on over the rest of her clothes. Then she rubbed warmth into her arms and snuggled deep into her sleeping bag, trying to get comfortable.
Hayley hunkered down. It wouldn’t do any good if the Ghost came by and saw them chatting.
“Any sign of her?” Kitally asked.
“Nope.”
“Any sign of life at all out there?”
“Just the stars and the moon.”
Kitally peeked out. “It’s pretty, isn’t it?”
“Hmm,” Hayley said with a nod.
“Are you still mad at Lizzy?”
“Yeah, a little. She put us all in danger without any thought to what she was doing. Her actions were shortsighted and she acted on emotion. Big mistake.”
They were quiet after that, lost in their own thoughts until they both drifted off to sleep.