20
Mandy sat before her computer and did her best to choose wisely.
Start by investigating Theo Collins or Raquel? Definitely Raquel.
Next up, pulling together the personal information required, including Raquel Collins’s DOB.
Usually, Mandy would have the individual’s driver’s license in hand, making this part easy.
Now she utilized a tidy little workaround she’d learned several years ago—call up the relevant state’s DMV, mutter about issues with her MDT—mobile display terminal—and pretty please, could they send her the info for one Raquel Collins?
As expected, they had multiple people with that name. She requested they shoot her images of all four licenses, with number three proving to be the winner. She plugged that info into the system and promptly learned:
Raquel Collins, no arrests, convictions, or outstanding warrants. And that was that. One pristine taxpayer and new community member coming up.
Mandy sat back, blew out a puff of air.
“All right then,” she muttered. “Let’s do this.”
She hit social media, because hell, who needed sophisticated government databases in this day and age of self-reporting? She found a LinkedIn page identifying Raquel’s business. Used that name to identify an Instagram page. Bull’s-eye, she thought.
Except, five minutes later…another bust of sorts.
Raquel’s official bio consisted of three words—Boston interior decorator.
The posts, images of gorgeous rooms, fabrics, furniture, were pretty much exactly what one would expect.
Beautiful high-end shots, from Back Bay chic to country club exclusive to yacht club dazzling.
If Mandy ever had a few million in spare change to spend on her ten million in miscellaneous real estate, she’d absolutely engage Raquel Collins’s services.
She searched a few more platforms, came up empty. Returned to Insta. Sat back.
The basic investigative principle she’d heard from her father most often: First you look for what’s there, next you look for what’s not.
Case in point, Raquel’s three-word bio. The woman had provided a job description, but no high school or college affiliations.
Also no local connections, organizations, or interests.
Not even the obligatory photo of her with a pet, which was pretty funny given the recent addition to Theo and Raquel’s life.
The entire theme of Raquel’s online presence seemed to be a carefully curated suggestion of the woman more so than the reality.
Next possibility: If she could identify Raquel’s hometown, she could ring the local PD and strike up a conversation officer to officer. What can you share, remember, volunteer. Oh, really? And then…?
She was back to Google-stalking when her phone rang. She looked at the number and smiled. Then greeted her favorite cold case detective/Boston lager/founding father who was finally calling her back.
“Detective Adams.” Her voice came out warm. Just being collegial, she told herself.
“Chief Grady. I hear your town’s had some excitement.”
“Oh, never a dull moment.”
Adams’s voice dropped. “A second crime scene? With a skeleton? On the Dixon property?”
She gave him the highlights. Adams let her talk without interrupting, a good trait in a detective.
“I have some news as well,” he said when she was finished. She thought she detected a trace of tension. “Thought it might be easier to deliver in person.” Yep, he definitely sounded nervous. “Would this afternoon work?”
“Sure!” Belatedly she pulled her phone away from her ear long enough to scroll through her calendar. “Any time after twelve should work.”
He named a time; she mentioned they could grab sandwiches at the local deli. He said he was familiar with the area, being an avid hiker and skier.
“Do you have updates on the DNA evidence, or is it about the footprints?” she asked.
That subtle pause again. “Both. I’ll tell you more when I see you.”
Mandy ended the call, no longer feeling quite so certain about things.
They started at the deli, a Main Street establishment that managed to seamlessly offer quaint historic charm for the tourists as well as great food at a reasonable price for the locals. She highly recommended the split pea soup. He added a turkey, fig jam, and goat cheese wrap for them to split.
Finally seeing him in person, Mandy was willing to bet Adams’s parents had named him for the beer, not the statesman.
She pegged his age at around late thirties—his short-cropped sandy-brown hair was just beginning to go silver at the temples.
A lean guy with a wiry build, he looked the part of an avid outdoorsman, ready to conquer the next mountain at a moment’s notice.
He also walked with a subtle limp. Maybe an old skiing injury?
Or maybe on-the-job damage that had resulted in his move deskside with the cold case unit.
She could probably just ask him, but tying herself up in knots seemed to be the theme for the day.
“I met your father once,” Adams told her. He was reaching for his wallet, but she waved him off. Her town, her treat.
“Oh, yeah?”
“At the academy. He presented the Dixon case as an example of multi-jurisdictional cooperation.”
“Uh-oh.”
Adams chuckled. “Actually, he was pretty matter-of-fact on the subject. This is what worked, this is what didn’t. And this is what he’d definitely do differently next time around.”
“And what would that be?”
“Find the damn family,” Adams deadpanned. Mandy had to laugh. Yep, that certainly sounded like her dad.
“How long have you been on the cold case unit?” They walked out of the deli with food in hand. Adams made a move to climb back into his vehicle, but Mandy shook her head.
“See that picturesque deep red bungalow down there with the dark green trim?”
“Sure.”
“Welcome to the Shereford PD. You can just leave your car here. They won’t mind.”
“That’s your police station?”
“We take our small-town charm very seriously, even for law enforcement.”
“No kidding. Huh.” He collected himself. “Has anyone told your growing number of infamous crime scenes that?”
“Only a matter of time before the Chamber of Commerce adds a haunted tour to the October lineup,” she assured him.
They fell in step walking down the sidewalk. She slowed slightly to accommodate his gait. He seemed to notice.
“I’d say you should see the other guy, but there’s no other guy. Just a chainsaw, a downed tree, and my own sorry self in too big of a hurry to do things right.”
“No way!” She actually stumbled slightly, caught off guard by the image.
“Nah, it was actually an IED, a foreign country, and my own sorry self in too big of a hurry to do things right, but let’s face it, the chainsaw story is much more fun.”
She honestly had no idea how to respond.
He grinned slowly. “See, and now you’re no longer feeling sorry for me or my prosthetic.”
“You’re an interesting man, Detective Adams.”
That frisson of tension again.
“Let’s hope by the end of the day, you still think so.”
He liked her murder board. Mandy had never had a man—or woman—say that about her before. Or was it, he liked her father’s murder board? That twisted her head, so she decided she’d stick with the honor.
“You know, I’ve been staring at these pictures for years now,” Adams confessed, “given it’s the cold case in New Hampshire.
But our space is a little tight for creating a complete diorama of each crime we’re reviewing.
Seeing it all together, the victims, the rooms, the close-ups of the house…
” His voice trailed off. “Sometimes I feel like I know these people better than my own family.”
Mandy was startled to hear her own thoughts about the Dixons stated out loud.
“Do you have siblings?” he asked her. They had lunch unpacked on her desk, but were both eating and walking as they perused her photo arrangement in the back room.
“No.”
“Me neither. I sometimes think that’s part of my fascination. An entire family of six, active, rambunctious, well known, vanished without a trace. Seriously, how could such a thing happen?”
He smoothed a hand over his buzz-cut hair. This close, Mandy could make out a two-inch scar furrowed above his left ear. As shrapnel damage went, that had definitely been close.
“There was a dog?” he asked now, reaching toward the faded Polaroid. “I don’t remember reading about a family pet in the Major Crimes reports.”
“My father purposefully excluded most of the canine-related details. The classic hold-back as a way to test the legitimacy of future claims.”
“Huh. When I was young, I was obsessed with dogs. I made friends with this big, bouncy stray at a camp I was at, but my father was allergic, so I was forced to leave him behind.” Adams turned toward her. “What happened to this furry guy?”
“Dog the dog was a local stray, who by all accounts was adopted by the Dixons over the course of the summer. Twenty-four hours after their disappearance, he also vanished, which was one of the details that bugged my father. Where? Why? How? Of course, we now have a new homeless mutt that could be the first stray’s twin.
And just to be truly nutso, this canine is the one that found the new crime scene—a hand-dug well so completely overgrown that even thirty years ago, none of the search teams noted it. ”
“Damn.” Adams appeared speechless. Which boosted Mandy’s morale. At least she wasn’t insane to feel this crazy.
“Think the remains are historic?” he asked finally.
She shrugged. “Contextual data suggests colonial American times, say, late eighteenth, early nineteenth century.”
“This is gonna be one of those ‘can’t make this shit up’ kinda cases, huh?”
Mandy stared at the tacked-up cluster of photographs. “Yep.”
“So, you wanna know what I found?”
“Way to keep a girl in suspense.”
“It was a long drive. Plus, I like soup. What the hell is in that split pea, anyway? Something a tad different…Maybe a hint of cloves?”
“Everyone’s asked, the chef still won’t say.” Was it her imagination, or was he stalling? She’d swear when the cold case detective tossed his take-out container in the trash, his hands were shaking.
“Let’s start with the footprints.”
“Let’s.”
He’d been carrying a black duffel. Now he crossed to it, pulling out a laptop as well as a manila folder.
He absently handed her the file, then booted up his computer.
She flipped open the cover to discover dozens of photos of the bloody footprints, including an overhead shot as well as a close-up of a single multilayered imprint.
“So, the photo experts I told you about.”
She nodded.
“Got the initial report.” Adams pulled out the bottom image, which contained one of the broader room shots, but this one came with three color-coded looping overlays.
It took only a second for Mandy to realize the blue dashed lines followed one path, red solid line a second, and deep purple a third.
Three different patterns, for three different levels—X, Y, and Z.
Adams had his laptop booted up. “Look, here’s a working model.”
He loaded the program, which offered an animated rendition, showcasing the first frantic line of bloody footprints, topped shortly by the second go-round, then finished with the top layer of madness.
“It’s like Wile E. Coyote,” she exclaimed. “Looking at all these randomly looping tracks, my father was absolutely correct. No way this makes any kind of sense.”
“It gets more interesting,” Adams said. He clicked several more screens. Mandy’s eyes widened.
“Fuck me.”
“Yeah, this kind of analysis wasn’t done back then. Cuz now, seeing this…”
“Fuck me,” Mandy repeated.
As the layers were peeled back one by one, a fourth, previously undiscernible pattern emerged. A faint trail of considerably larger footprints leading from the back door into the dining room, where they tapered out.
“That’s not an average-size adult female or young male,” Mandy stated.
“Men’s size eleven,” Adams confirmed.
“Dave Dixon?”
“No. Size ten.”
Of course it wasn’t that simple.
“Two sets of footprints,” she murmured. “Two separate individuals.” Her mind was whirling. “So, subject A, an adult male, enters the house from the back door in bare feet, ostensibly injured, and heads into the dining room.”
“That’s what the model suggests.”
“Then…someone else, subject B, possibly/probably a female, ends up covering up those footprints with her own.” She sighed heavily.
“Dear Lord, unless there’s like an unknown femoral vein somewhere in our big toe, no way anyone can magically bleed this much, this evenly. They’re less footprints, more…”
“Foot stamps?” Adams offered helpfully.
“Fuck.” Honestly, she did know more words than this, but at the moment, they all escaped her. “My father and Betty were right. This whole scene was staged. One person intruded. Then a second person covered it up.”
She glanced at Adams and suddenly didn’t feel so good again. “The DNA sample.”
He nodded, face inscrutable. “First time around it was declared inconclusive.”
She waited.
“Thirty years ago, plenty of reasons why a sample could be ruled inconclusive. Including mixed donors.”
“As in multiple people?” She frowned. “But the testing revealed only one blood type.”
“Which means there was only one blood type present—not that there was only one donor. Welcome to the weakness of that analysis. Also, the result was O-positive, which is the most common.”
“So same blood type, but two different donors.”
“Three, actually.”
“Three? But, but…There are only two different footprints.”
He shrugged. “The DNA test results were conclusive. Three different gene pools present, though the lab could match only one out of the three samples.”
She got it then, felt the full import in her bones. To give him credit, he’d warned her. To give her credit, she’d almost understood.
“It came back to Ian Grady, police chief, Shereford, New Hampshire,” Adams finished quietly.
“Cross-contamination,” she stated immediately.
“I had multiple samples tested—plenty of blood evidence, remember? And his shoe size…”
Mandy knew her father’s measurements; as a little girl, she used to stick her much smaller feet inside his boots and stomp all over the house. Still:
“Why would my father be running around the Dixons’ house in his bare feet? You’d have shoeprints, not footprints.”
“It was a dark and stormy night, remember. Yet no dirt or debris was tracked into the home. Most logically, because the intruders were smart enough to take off their muddy boots before entering.”
“Nope. Just nope, nope, and nope.” Her father involved in some possible way? Never in a million years.
She stared at Adams. He didn’t back down.
“No way in fucking hell,” she tried again.
He spread his hands, clearly inviting her to provide another explanation.
If only she had one.