I told John about my visit with the Garcias, and he called Mark in to talk that over. He decided, as I had thought he would, that I should keep my mitts off the story, since it so closely involved the Las Piernas Police Department. If it had gone to certain other reporters on our staff, I might not have been so complacent about it.
I got back to my desk and started picking up messages from my voice mail. I had another set of calls from parents of children who were missing, all of whom wanted me to put a story in the paper about their own child. I could understand their desperation. I doubted they would understand that I was already pushing the limit on the number of stories I’d be able to write on the subject, and that I wasn’t the one who decided what would be in the paper each day. I spent a brief moment contemplating what the paper would be like if I did, another contemplating the headaches that went along with that power, and went back to listening to calls. Several were about children allegedly taken by noncustodial parents.
A few were from people who thought they’d seen a girl who looked something like Carla Ives. Two of these I recognized as people who called the paper about twice a week, claiming some connection to various stories. I made a list of the others, although most sounded vague-like the man who said he had seen her in a grocery store with another little girl in Huntington Beach, but had no idea where she lived or who she was with. When he added that he thought she might be deaf now, because the two girls were using sign language, I was almost positive he had seen someone else.
I got a real surprise about halfway through the playback process. A woman’s voice said, “My daughter Jenny has been missing for five years, and my son was wrongfully convicted of killing her and my husband. My name is Elisa Fletcher…”
She went on to leave a callback number and a request that I contact her as soon as possible. I hesitated over it, then copied her name and phone number on a second slip of paper and gave it to Mark. “Curiosity is killing me,” I admitted. “I’ll want to talk to her at some point, but I don’t want to step on your story.”
When I got back to my desk, I got a call from Reed. He had some questions about the Fletcher dentists, most of which I couldn’t answer.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Sheila’s presence at the scene of Gerry Serre’s burial, though,” I said.
“Oh?”
“Are they rushing the DNA on the cigarette butts found at the scene?”
“That’s not something for publication,” he said. “How did you find out about it?”
“I’d rather not say. And I couldn’t write about it, anyway. You know that.”
“You could talk to Mark.”
“This sounds like a roundabout way to try to get me to tell you who talked to me.”
He laughed. “The DNA in the cigarettes was tested. No hits in any of our databases.”
“Did you check it against the shoe DNA?”
“That hasn’t come back yet. We’re hoping they’ll finish it this afternoon.”
“How about comparing the cigarettes to Sheila’s DNA?”
There was a pause. “Now, what makes you ask something like that?”
“I can’t help but think that she had some reason to be at the scene out at the Sheffield Estate. Some reason other than searching with Altair. She wasn’t really trying to find anything, and if it was supposedly for attention, why did she arrive there before the press was on hand? She didn’t know I was going to be there-she damned near ran me off the road when I got there, and kept going, so if it was publicity she was after, what was up with that?”
“She made sure the Express was there that evening, for the show with the teeth.”
“Yes. A show.”
“If she knew something about the death of Gerald Serre, that little show probably got her killed by his murderer.”
“Hmm. Maybe.”
“What’s on your mind, Irene?”
“What if she knew something about his murder or burial because she was there when it happened? Or killed him herself?”
“Revisiting the site in full view of the newspaper and investigators?”
“Offering to be of help in the investigation. Don’t tell me she’d be the first killer to do that.”
“No, of course not.”
“Reed, what if she wanted the press to be able to say there was a reason for her DNA to be found there? That we had seen her smoking there, and so on?”
Another pause. “Ben documented every step of that recovery process.”
“Did she know that?”
He thought about this for a moment. “Maybe not. She got there after the coroner left. Anyway, we’ll be running her DNA as part of the investigation of her murder. I’ll ask the lab to do a comparison.”
I went back to listening to messages and making notes. About three messages after the one Caleb’s mom left, I heard another one that piqued my interest.
“This is Martha Hayes. I used to be Martha Faroe. Reggie Faroe was my son. I’m very sorry about that man’s little girl, but Reggie had nothing to do with her being taken, and I can prove that. Please call me.” She left a number, so I gave her a call.
She thanked me for returning her call, then said, “Reggie was no angel, and nobody knows that better’n me. His daddy was trouble, too-got killed in a bar fight. He passed his drinking along to Reggie, I guess. And his ability to charm the ladies. That boy was in trouble one way or another most of his life.”
“You speak of him using the past tense…”
“That’s exactly my point. Reggie was dead a week before that little girl went missing.”
“I’m sorry…”
“Absolutely no need to be. I loved him, I was his mama, and I wished he’d straightened out. But I would be a liar if I didn’t tell you that he made life miserable for me and Mr. Hayes and my children from my second marriage.”
“How did he die?”
“No certain answer to that. His body was found in Arizona.”
I was silent, thumbing through the photocopies I had from Blake Ives. When I found what I was looking for, I said, “Mr. Ives hired a private investigator, who was able to trace Reggie to a Nevada trailer park around the time Mr. Ives’s daughter disappeared. And your son and a female companion disappeared from the trailer park around that same time.”
“I know all about that PI-he come by here asking about Reggie, told me he thought Reggie and Bonnie had that little girl.” She laughed. “I told him that I could no more picture Reggie wantin’ to live with a little kid than I could picture him flyin’ to the moon, and that’s the truth.” She paused. “I even told him that Reggie and Bonnie wasn’t together, but I seen he didn’t believe me. I don’t know who that-what’d you call her?”
“The PI called her a ‘female companion.’”
“Yeah, well, I know some cops who’d like to know who she was. Anyway, back then I didn’t know Reggie was dead.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Reggie was left for dead out in the desert. He might have been murdered, but it wasn’t a sure thing-he was at the bottom of some cliff out there, and it was a question whether he fell or was pushed. Nobody saw him fall, or even ever saw him out there or knew why he was there. Didn’t have no wallet or anything on him to say who he was.”
“And you say he was found before Carla Ives went missing?”
“The date they give me for the body being brought in was a week before that little girl went missing, if she went missing when you said she did.”
“What’s your theory about what happened to him?”
“I tend to think he pissed somebody off and got himself killed, because he wasn’t exactly the type to go hikin’ in the desert. Anyway, I don’t think whoever it was left him there expected he’d ever be found, but as it happened, some rock hunter out looking for gems come across the body and called the sheriff. Well, they didn’t have nothin’ to go by, because Reggie wasn’t missed by no one.”