CHAPTER 17

“H ey. Thanks for coming over here,” Dylan said.

“No thanks necessary; you’re doing me a favor,” Raleigh replied.

“I just have everything set up in my office, so it’s easier to work from there. Come in.” Dylan motioned for Raleigh to walk into the house. “Want the tour?” she checked. “I’m guessing the answer is no because you want to get right to it, but I thought I’d be polite.”

“Um… No, I’m good. It looks nice, though,” Raleigh replied, taking a look around.

“Something to drink?” Dylan offered.

“Water would be great. I tend to lose a lot of my tears whenever I talk about Eden, so I might need to hydrate.”

“Sure,” Dylan replied with a half-smile. “Let me grab it in the kitchen, and we’ll go to my office.”

Raleigh stood and waited for Dylan to return. As she took in the foyer, she noticed there were several pictures of Dylan and Ada. The one in the center was of their wedding day. The rest seemed to be more candid shots than posed, but they were a good-looking couple. There were also a few with Ada and a man who looked to be about her age, and one with Ada, Dylan, and two older people who were likely either her parents or Dylan’s, but if Raleigh had to guess, she’d say they were Ada’s.

“Okay. It’s just through here,” Dylan told her, handing her a glass of cold water and motioning for Raleigh to go down the hall.

Once inside the office, Dylan closed the door and told Raleigh to have a seat on the soft-looking leather loveseat. Dylan herself went behind her desk and grabbed something, returning a second later to sit down next to Raleigh.

“How have you been?” she asked.

“Good. You?” Raleigh said before taking a drink of the water and placing the glass on the coaster on the table.

“Anything come to mind after our last chat?”

“You mean, did I remember something?”

“Yes. Sometimes, having the cognitive interview can make you think of something later, even while you sleep in a dream.”

“I don’t really dream. Never have. If I do, I never remember them.”

“And that hasn’t changed since Eden?”

“No, but I also don’t sleep well ever since I had Eden. I probably haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since early in my pregnancy. Then, the belly gets so big that you can’t get comfortable no matter what you do. After they’re born, you can’t sleep because they’re always up. And once they sleep through the night, it feels like you’re always at least half-awake, worried about them, or waiting for them to come in and wake you up. Then, in my case, she disappears, and you can’t sleep well because you’re constantly wondering where she is, if she’s in pain, if she’s asking for you, and you’re not there. So, it’s been over four years for me.” Raleigh squinted her eyes then and thought about it. “Actually, that’s not true. I slept really well the other night.”

“Yeah?” Dylan asked.

“Yeah. But I don’t remember having a dream.”

“No big deal. We can continue with the cognitive stuff, or, if you’d rather we not, I can just ask you some questions and show you what I’ve got.”

“I can handle it if we need it,” Raleigh replied. “It’s just really hard to go back there. I do it all the time on my own in one way or another, but when you got me to remember her that morning, it got to me. She was just coloring… One minute, we’re having a normal morning, and I’m taking her to the park to play, and the next, she’s gone. ”

“Why don’t we start with just some questions, then? Or, an update.”

Raleigh nodded and asked, “You have something to update me on?”

“Not any leads yet. I tend to work how everyone else does: eliminating people until I can’t eliminate someone,” Dylan told her. “It’s tedious, and I know it can be frustrating because it feels like I’m not moving the investigation along, but part of the reason you asked for my help is that I can offer a fresh set of investigative eyes.”

“It’s true.”

The voice came from the office door, which was now open. It was Ada.

“Hey. Sorry to interrupt,” she added. “I saw Dylan grab water and thought I’d see if you wanted a snack or something.”

“Oh. Thank you. I’m okay, though. I don’t think eating is such a good idea right now. My stomach is in knots,” Raleigh replied.

“No problem,” Ada said, walking in a few steps. “And Dylan is right about the fresh set of eyes. She sees things others don’t, and she’s able to put those things in context. It’s what makes her good at her job. And yes, I’m the wife, so I’m kind of supposed to say that she’s good at her job, but Dylan will tell you that I don’t tend to just say stuff when it’s not true. Also, she did that with me long before we were married, and I was just the sister of a kid who went missing.”

“Your brother,” Raleigh recalled. “I’m sorry. Dylan mentioned it at the diner.”

“I’m sure what she’s failed to mention was that she worked tirelessly for more than a decade to find him. When we met again, I was still so angry with her. Then, she told me everything she’d done to try to find him, and I couldn’t believe someone would be so dedicated to helping someone else.” Ada took a few steps into the room and stood behind Dylan, running her hand along the back of her wife’s shoulders. “She was the one who figured out that Noah wasn’t my biological brother. No one else had even thought to check that out. Once she knew that, though, she found Oliver, my biological brother.” Ada paused before adding, “And later, much later, she was still looking for Noah, and she found him.”

“Hikers, really, did–”

“Babe, you’re awful at taking compliments,” Ada stated. “And I don’t give them often, so you might want to just accept this one since it could be a minute before I drop another one.” She winked at Dylan then, letting her know she was just teasing.

“Can I ask what happened?” Raleigh spoke. “I avoided looking it up online. I didn’t want to be disrespectful when Dylan is helping me so much.”

Dylan wrapped an arm around Ada’s waist and said, “I’d checked everywhere in town so many times that I was certain he couldn’t be there. He’d gone missing at a lake when he and Ada had been playing near the water.” Dylan cleared her throat. “The woods surrounding the lake butt up against private acreage that we’d asked to search years ago, but the owner had denied it, and the judge wouldn’t issue a warrant because we didn’t have any evidence that Noah could be anywhere near that property. Then, a couple of years after he’d disappeared, we finally got a new judge to agree to a search, but we didn’t find anything there. So, we moved on. Anyway, there’s another property on the other side of that one. It’s technically in another jurisdiction, miles away from where Noah went missing. It was also more than a decade later, so I didn’t think we’d find anything, but I’d searched everywhere else around that lake.”

“And inside it,” Ada added.

“He wasn’t there, either, or I would’ve found him,” Dylan said. “So, if he’d been taken and then immediately… killed or left, he could only be on that other property. And if he wasn’t, I’d likely never find him. Whoever took him would’ve been long gone by the time we arrived on scene the day he’d gone missing. I have a friend of a friend who ru ns a ground-penetrating radar company. He volunteered his time, and we went over the property. It took days, and we still didn’t find anything. Then, on the last day we were there scanning, there were some hikers who were on the outskirts of the property on a county trail. They spotted a tennis shoe under some brush and thought it was weird that one shoe was just sticking out. One of them got closer, and they noticed that it wasn’t just a shoe.”

Raleigh watched as Ada turned away toward the wall.

“Anyway, the news had done a story about our search, so they called 911, and we checked it out. It was Noah.”

“God, I’m so sorry,” Raleigh replied, trying hard not to think of her own situation right now and just focus on Ada and her brother’s story.

“We still don’t know exactly what happened,” Ada shared. “If he’d been buried, it wasn’t deep. And it had been a long time, so there wasn’t much… left to…”

“We had to get a forensic anthropologist,” Dylan explained. “To look at the bones.”

“And all they could tell us was that he’d been hit over the back of the head with a blunt object,” Ada added.

“Like I told you and Hollis at the diner, he likely died that day or soon after, but it’s too hard to tell exactly.”

“Who took him?”

“We still don’t know,” Dylan replied.

“What about that property owner who wouldn’t let you search his property?” Raleigh asked.

“He was one of those gun-toting, ‘free speech means I can say whatever I want whenever I want,’ ‘my property,’ anti-government assholes,” Ada said.

“Finding the body next door to his place got us a warrant to search in-depth, but we didn’t find anything. He was out of town at gun shows around the region for two weeks before and after Noah’s disappearance, and he lived alone,” Dylan said.

“What woman would want to live with that dick?” Ada asked .

Raleigh couldn’t help but laugh and say, “Agreed.”

Ada smiled at her and said, “You were with Hollis at the diner before. She’s your girlfriend?”

“What? Oh, no,” Raleigh said, shaking her head.

“No? You looked close. Sorry, I just say what I think a lot.”

Dylan shook her head as she smiled at her wife and said, “Try all the time .”

“You love me,” Ada replied, running a hand into Dylan’s hair.

“Hollis is just a friend,” Raleigh explained. “We’re both going through something. I lost my daughter. She was taken by her father.”

“Right,” Ada said, squinting a little.

“She’s dealing with a lot right now; not just her dad, either. Her mom has stage-four breast cancer. They only just found each other after all this time, and she could lose her soon.”

“That’s awful,” Ada said. “You know, my brother is an oncologist.”

“Oliver, right?”

“Yes. He has his own practice now with his wife. I’m sure Hollis’s mom has a good doctor, but if she wants a second or third opinion, I could ask him to take a look at her records.”

“Really?”

“Sure. He owes me,” Ada stated. “He walked in on Dylan and I having sex more than once when we lived in the same apartment building. Thankfully, he’s learned to knock.”

“Ada!”

“What? We’re married. Everyone knows we have sex, Lieutenant,” Ada replied. “Anyway, just let me know. I’m happy to ask him to take a look. He’s always got these trials going on, too. Maybe there’s something that could help her; give them more time.”

“I’d have to ask Hollis.”

“Sure. No rush on my part. Oliver’s a good guy, but he’s a great doctor. ”

“She doesn’t give compliments that often, remember? So, this one you should believe,” Dylan pointed out.

“I’ll leave you two alone.” Ada moved out of Dylan’s embrace as she chuckled. “Text my wife once you talk to Hollis, if she’s interested, okay?”

“I will. Thank you.”

Ada left the room, closing the door behind her, and Dylan and Raleigh got down to business, with Dylan updating her on the people she’d been able to eliminate from having anything to do with Eden’s disappearance. Then, she asked Raleigh a few more questions to help her with some of the others still on her list. They went through the pictures Raleigh had given her, and Raleigh was able to name most of the people in them, but some of them had been taken in public places, so there were people she didn’t know. Dylan made notes, and Raleigh left, feeling, for the first time, like someone was actually doing something to help her find her daughter.

◆◆◆

“How did it go?” Hollis asked as soon as she answered Raleigh’s call.

“Surprisingly, well,” Raleigh told her as she slipped out of her shoes by the door. “And I have something I want to run by you.”

“Okay,” Hollis said.

“It’s about your mom.”