Chapter Forty-Seven DAWSON

Thursday, August 1, 2024

12:00 noon

Dawson had no trouble getting the search warrant for Lynn Yeats’s town house. He and two other detectives were quickly given the green light to search every crevice of the space. However, he’d not notified Margo because she was still on leave, and frankly, he wanted to see this place without her clouding his insights.

The search team broke into two groups and began to methodically comb through what amounted to a very ordinary town house. Beige walls and carpet, living room furniture that appeared to have been purchased years ago as a matched set, printed posters of the Chesapeake Bay hanging on the walls, and framed pictures of Lynn and her family. Mother, father, sister. There’d even been pictures of a few cats, though there was no sign of any living creature in the house.

He’d learned an hour ago that the text from Lynn to Scarlett had been sent from a disposable phone, and it had also been purchased from the same convenience store where the Sandra Taylor 9-1-1 caller had bought their burner.

After he climbed the stairs to the second floor, he flexed gloved hands as he entered her bedroom. The bed was neatly made. There were two books and a pair of reading glasses on the bedside table. A half-drunk glass of water. The bathroom was clean, the mirror sparkling. Nothing stronger than aspirin in the medicine chest.

In Lynn’s walk-in closet, her clothes had been arranged by color and hung on matching hangers. A dozen pairs of shoes lined up like soldiers. He scanned the brown, blue, and white blouses and skirts. There was a stack of neatly folded scrubs on a back shelf, and he saw several pairs of white running shoes. He glanced up toward clear storage boxes stuffed with purses, scarves, and hats. Behind one container, his fingers skimmed over a twelve-by-twelve square metal box. Pulling it down, he discovered a small lock securing the latch.

A half smile quirked his lips as he wrapped his hand around the lock and twisted hard. The lock didn’t give, but the latch separated from the box. He opened the lid and realized it was a collection of mementos.

The first was a sketch of a young girl whom he recognized immediately as Scarlett. When she’d first encountered Della on that side street, she’d been trying to sell her art. She’d called her self-portrait Girl Ready to Escape . He carefully dropped the paper in an evidence bag, knowing there could be fingerprints.

Next, he found a silver necklace that matched the bracelet found on Sandra’s body. SC was carved into the single medallion. There were other trinkets that didn’t appear to relate to Della, Sandra, or Scarlett, and he feared this could be evidence of more victims.

At the bottom of the box was a white envelope, and in it, three Polaroid pictures. The first was Sandra. She was clearly distressed and scared. The second picture was of Scarlett. Like Sandra, her eyes were red and her face bruised. Dawson rubbed his chin, doing his best to tamp down rage.

The last Polaroid featured a young girl with dark curly hair. Unlike the other two, she stared defiantly into the camera just as she did in the portrait Scarlett had painted. Della.

The girl who’d lured Scarlett.

Who’d thought she could save Sandra.

Who’d been starved.

Locked in a wooden box.

And beaten.

This was physical evidence of Della. And as he studied the eyes and the curve of the lips, all his doubts vanished. Della was Margo.

He slipped the pictures of Sandra and Scarlett into evidence bags and then tucked Della’s picture into his side coat pocket. As far as he was now concerned, Della had never existed.