Chapter 54
RICH CONKLIN AND I were on the move again right after lunch. We got a call from a detective from Palo Alto who’d seen our digital composite of the young woman found at Marshall’s Beach and said he knew of a young woman who’d disappeared almost two months ago.
He texted me a photograph of the girl, Donna Harris. Hadn’t Donna also been the real name of “Missy,” the girl our Yerba Buena Gardens informant—Rachel—had told us about?
I held up the photo to show Conklin. “Does this look like the composite sketch they made of the body from Marshall’s Beach?”
My partner studied the photo on my phone carefully. Slowly, he started to nod. “Could be. Hard to tell, of course.”
When I told him the tip had come from Palo Alto, Conklin did what everyone in the Bay Area does: He looked at his watch to judge the traffic. “Didn’t Rachel say the girl she thought might be our victim was from farther down the peninsula?”
“Like Palo Alto.”
“Exactly.” Conklin jumped up from his chair. “Let’s go right now. Otherwise we’re going to get caught in the crush of techies sprinting home.”
Less than an hour from when I’d gotten the call, we were in Palo Alto, in a nice but not stunning neighborhood.
Most of the houses were older with simple lines, not like the newer neighborhoods the tech workers preferred, where all the houses seemed to have three-car garages, gables, and etched-glass doors.
The house we were visiting was modest but well-kept. Single story with a one-car garage attached to it. The houses on either side looked exactly the same. Some defunct cookie-cutter development company had obviously started this neighborhood.
We knocked on the door, and an attractive woman in her fifties opened it. “Are you the San Francisco detectives who called?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Louise Harris still had a trace of her Georgia accent. I noticed photos of the missing girl, her daughter, Donna, all over the living room. I wasn’t sure if it helped ease this woman’s grief or reminded her of her daughter.
She ushered us into the house, then led us to a comfortable couch, where a pitcher of iced tea and three glasses were already sitting on the coffee table.
We ran through all the standard questions. Things like the last time she’d seen her daughter, if they were on good terms, if her daughter had left without notice before.
The long sigh Ms. Harris let out before responding told me the answer to most of my questions. She gazed out the wide picture window. She was perfectly still and quiet. I wasn’t going to rush her.
Finally, she wiped a tear away with her thumb.
She looked at me and said, “Missy could be a little wild.” She stopped for a moment.
She looked between Rich and me. “Her name was Donna, but everyone called her Missy.
It was a nickname her older brother gave her when she was a little girl. It just sort of stuck.
“She could be a handful. God blessed her with beauty. Or cursed her with it—I’m not sure which.
But she was so much more than just a pretty face.
She was funny. She could make a joke out of almost anything.
There’s a saying that I’ve always agreed with: Not all smart people are funny, but all funny people are smart.
That was my Missy. Smart as a whip and beautiful to boot. ”
“Do you know why Missy would’ve left home?”
“She didn’t run away, if that’s what you’re asking.
She told me she was moving to San Francisco.
Said she wanted to live in the big city.
Wanted to be some kind of stand-up comedian.
I tried to tell her she could still live here and commute to San Francisco if she got any gigs.
She just got frustrated with me and left. ”
“Did she call you after she left?”
“For about the first two weeks, she’d call a couple times a week.
Let me know she was all right. Said she was working on lining up some gigs at comedy clubs.
Then the calls became less frequent. The last time I heard from her was probably six weeks ago.
When I didn’t hear from her for about ten days, I filed a report with the police.
I have a couple of friends in San Francisco who’ve been looking for her as well.
I’ve been up to the city a couple of times, just hoping to see her walking around North Beach, on Broadway, places like that.
I even talked to the managers of a couple of the comedy and improv places she mentioned, and a few I looked up myself. None of them were any help.”
Ms. Harris excused herself and left the room.
Rich Conklin leaned in close to me. “Everything she’s saying lines up with what Rachel told us at Yerba Buena Gardens.”
I agreed. “This is sensitive. She knows we’re trying to identify a body. We need to ask for something with her daughter’s DNA so we can confirm it.”
“She may not want to confirm the body in the morgue is her daughter.”
I nodded. After a minute or two, Ms. Harris came back into the room, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue.
We chatted about different things for a few minutes. We wanted to give Ms. Harris a chance to recover. I eventually got around to asking if she had something Missy handled a lot. Something we could use for a DNA comparison.
She nodded. She had known it was coming. She stood up on unsteady legs and went into her bedroom, then returned with a small silver box. As she showed it to us, she said, “These are Missy’s baby teeth. They mean a lot to me. I’m going to get them back, right?”
Now I was a little choked up, trying not to think about how I’d feel if Julie disappeared.
“Unfortunately, no. How about you just give us one? I don’t have a DNA swab with me, but—”
Ms. Harris looked back up at me. “Do you need something from me for comparison? My toothbrush? Hairbrush?”
“Either one.”
She disappeared and returned quickly with a large, clear ziplock bag containing both items, which she handed to me. Then she opened the silver box.
Rich Conklin gently took the baby tooth from her. “Thank you, Ms. Harris.”