Chapter Thirty-Two
THIRTY-TWO
Tim
The Patten family home looked more like it belonged in Italy than a quiet residential street in Syracuse.
A villa-style house of gray brick and stone, it was located in the Sedgwick Farm Historic District and had once belonged to a salt manufacturer who, apparently, had also been the mayor.
Up until last year, Claudia Patten had lived there with her husband.
Then Bill had died after a long battle with colon cancer, and their daughter, Angelica, had moved back home, only to vanish a mere two months later. Claudia had been alone ever since.
“Angelica,” Shana had repeated when, in her office, Tim had explained what he’d found. “Why does that name sound familiar?”
“Does it? She lived in Syracuse,” Tim said, “but given the timing of her death I’m guessing she was a summer renter. A weekend visitor, maybe. I’d like to go down there to connect with the detective who worked her missing person case, assuming there was one.”
Tim had arrived at Claudia’s door with Kenneth Strada, the Syracuse PD detective with slicked-back raven hair whom he’d talked with by phone on the ninety-minute drive downstate.
The missing person report for Angelica Patten had been filed the previous September, right after the Labor Day long weekend. The timing fit.
Kenneth, who had a dimple in his boxy chin, had been very interested to hear the news about the discovered remains. His investigation into Angelica’s disappearance had stalled out, and both men now knew why. The Syracuse detective had been looking for the girl in the wrong place.
For almost nine months, Angelica had been ninety miles north in a Cape Vincent basement.
Claudia Patten wept when Tim showed her photographs of the ring.
It had been a high school graduation gift from her parents, and Angelica never took it off.
Tim would get Angelica’s dental records sent to the Crime Lab to check for a match, but he knew with a grim sense of certainty what the results would be.
Kenneth had filled him in on the case, but it had been cold for so long that they agreed Tim, with his fresh information, should take the lead.
“Were you aware that she was going up to the Thousand Islands that weekend?” he asked as he and Kenneth faced the woman where she sat, each of them perched on the edge of a spindly upholstered chair.
The room reminded Tim of an ostentatious parlor in a wealthy family’s island home at which he’d once spent time while working a case, and he felt a familiar ripple of discomfort, like he’d been set loose in a period room at a museum.
“I didn’t know she was going anywhere,” Claudia said. “I was out of town that weekend, visiting my sister in Ithaca. Angelica said she needed to work. When I got home on Monday, she wasn’t here.”
“Any idea why she chose the Thousand Islands?”
The woman nodded. “She’d been there before. We took several trips up north when she was little. Bill loved it. When he died last summer,” Claudia said, pressing a tissue against her pink eyes, “Angelica took it hard. We both did.”
“I’m so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Patten. Was that unusual for her?” Tim asked. “Being that spontaneous? Not checking in with you?”
“Not really. Angelica was always a free spirit, ever since she was little. It’s why we didn’t have more kids, if I’m honest. That girl was a handful.
” A soft laugh escaped her lips and then she was crying again, her shoulders heaving in time with her sobs.
“She was twenty-four. She lived here, with me, but she was an adult with her own life.”
Tim asked Claudia Patten about Angelica’s work, and learned that—while she held a degree in sports marketing from Pace University—her first job out of college hadn’t worked out.
She’d started taking shifts at a Lakeland sporting goods retailer called Wins while on the hunt for something new.
To Tim’s questions about whether she had trouble with anyone at the store, Claudia shook her head.
She did the same when asked whether Angelica had a boyfriend.
“Nothing serious. She had a big friend group, though. Everyone loved her. She was fun. A free spirit, you know?”
With a nod, Tim said, “I can imagine. This trip she took. Do you think she went alone, or would she have brought a friend?” He was fishing for details about Jenny Smith.
Trying to gauge whether Angelica knew the phrogger.
It was the kind of question that should have come up in the missing person investigation, only Angelica’s mother and Detective Strada hadn’t known about Angelica’s travels.
She’d owned a car, but it had still been in the driveway when Claudia Patten got home from Ithaca.
“I really don’t know,” the woman said, “but I don’t think she would have gone solo. Angelica didn’t like to be alone.”
Tim pictured the skeleton, curled up in the cold, empty room beneath Mikko’s cellar floor, and felt his heart kink in his chest.
“Mrs. Patten gave us a list of Angelica’s friends last year,” Kenneth told Tim. “We interviewed them all, but none had information on where she might be.”
Drawing a breath, Tim said, “We found a woman squatting in the house where Angelica’s body was hidden. We think she may have known Angelica, and now I’m wondering if she might have gone along with her that weekend.”
Claudia’s eyes widened. “What’s her name?”
“Jenny Smith is what she told us, but that may be an alias.”
“An alias! That sounds so … so …” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “This woman, is she the one who did this?”
“We’re still gathering information,” Tim replied, opting not to tell the victim’s mother that Jenny had escaped custody.
Instead, he did his best to describe her, agonizingly aware that the characteristics he was using to paint the picture—red hair, brown eyes, around five foot five and one hundred forty pounds—could have described hundreds of other young women in the city.
Claudia looked suddenly lost, as if the surreal nature of the situation had finally seeped into her mind and short-circuited the wires. “I just don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know all of Angelica’s friends. She has photos, though.”
“The collage.” Kenneth’s head had snapped up from the notes he’d been reviewing on his phone. “That was really helpful last summer. Angelica made a collage on her bedroom wall. Is it still there?” he asked Claudia.
“It is. She updated it with new pictures quite often. I can show you.”
“I’d appreciate that, ma’am,” Tim said with a tender smile.
Angelica’s room was at the end of the second-floor hall, the décor consistent with the era of the historic house. On the wall opposite her huge four-poster bed stood a heavy bird’s eye maple dresser, above which the collage bloomed like a multicolored cumulus cloud.
The photos seemed to date back to high school, if not later, but there were plenty that looked more recent too.
Up until then Tim had only seen Angelica’s driver’s license photo, which hadn’t come close to capturing the effervescence he saw on the wall.
Angelica Patten had been attractive, with a triangular face, well-defined cheekbones, a cute little chin.
Based on her evolution from child to adult, she’d been a petite brunette.
Narrow shoulders, an impossibly tiny waist. She’d looked young on her college graduation day, and Tim suspected that, even in her mid-twenties, she’d been carded every time she set foot in a bar.
“I should have asked more questions,” Claudia said as Tim scanned the faces of people, as many boys as girls, who’d starred in Angelica’s too-brief life.
“I would have, but Bill always said we should let her be. I’ve been having a hard time since he passed, and last summer …
I wasn’t as present as I should have been. ”
Tim couldn’t fathom how this woman, this mother whose only child had gone missing shortly after she’d lost her husband, had survived the past year.
Where had she found the strength to come into this room day after day and face a visual reminder of her daughter’s absence?
Tim’s stomach was doing something he couldn’t make sense of.
It felt like the early stages of food poisoning. His gut churned like a bucket of fish.
“She had an interview lined up with a marketing company downtown.” Claudia Patten’s voice wavered. “They seemed really interested. She was so excited. Oh God, why did I leave that weekend? Why didn’t I just stay home with her?”
Tim’s body spasmed and he gritted his teeth against the pain. Why can’t I just stay home with her? he’d said to Shana, again and again.
“This isn’t your fault, Mrs. Patten,” said Kenneth. “She was a grown woman with her own life, like you said. We’re not giving up on finding who did this to her, I can promise you that.”
For the first time since his daughter’s birth, Tim didn’t want to think about the two-year-old he’d left behind—but suddenly he saw Darcy’s face, right there on the wall.
She was older; this was his kid two decades from now, but her hair was still red above soft gray eyes and curled candy-apple lips. It was Darcy.
Except it wasn’t. The face was familiar for a different reason. He’d spent an hour staring at it just two days prior, in Mikko Helle’s great room.
Tim was looking at Jenny Smith.
“Her.” He pointed at the photograph. “Do you know this woman, Mrs. Patten?”
She came closer, and froze. “Oh,” she said, her tone darkening. “That’s Molly. She works at Wins. But that can’t be who Angelica went away with.”
Tim turned to face Detective Kenneth Strada, whose mouth had tipped into a frown that deepened the hollow in his chin.
“I interviewed all of her coworkers myself,” he said, retrieving his phone once more.
“There was a Molly, yeah … Molly Kranz. She told me she’d shared some shifts with Angelica, but that they didn’t hang out much. ”
“It can’t be her,” Claudia repeated. “Angelica knew I didn’t like her spending time with Molly.”
“Why was that?” Tim asked.
The woman sighed. “There was a day, early last summer. Angelica and I were watching a movie. It was late, after midnight, and Molly came here, to my door. She’d been drinking, that was obvious.
She wanted to stay over, said she’d had a fight with a boy and was scared to go home.
Angelica set her up in the guest bedroom, but I didn’t like it.
I hadn’t heard a car—how did she even get to our house?
She was acting … I don’t know. Shifty. The whole thing felt suspicious.
In the morning she was gone again before I even came downstairs, but later, when I went to get my purse, there was money missing from my wallet. Close to a hundred in cash.”
Tim was listening closely. Thinking. He could tell by the look on Kenneth’s face that this was the first he’d heard of the story.
She had a big friend group, Claudia had said.
Molly was one of many, so it hadn’t come up when the investigation began.
“Is there any way your daughter could have taken the money?” Tim asked.
“No. She knew I’d give her money if she asked for it.
My purse was hanging right by the front door, in full view of that girl when she was leaving.
I asked Angelica about it. She got very upset.
She didn’t want to believe her friend would steal from me, but I knew better.
After that, I told Angelica I didn’t want her spending time with Molly.
I really don’t think she would have gone behind my back on that. ”
“There’s something you should know,” Tim said. “The woman we apprehended in that house? We believe she broke into multiple homes in the area too. Every one of those homeowners reported items missing.”
“Oh my God.”
Kenneth caught Claudia Patten before her knees gave out, and helped her to the edge of the bed.
The phrogger had a name. She’d known the victim.
And finding Molly Kranz was more crucial than ever.