To Trust a Stranger. Lynn Bulock
turned away from the computer, her heart beating faster. Had they found Laura? “Certainly. Do you want to set up a time to meet?”
There was silence for a few seconds. “Actually, I’d like to come over now if you don’t mind.”
“All right.” They hung up and Jessie shut down her computer and went to the kitchen to make a pot of tea. Coffee was out of the question because she knew there was no milk in the house to offer the deputy. She sighed. “Maybe once I get the dog we can walk to the store together,” she said to the empty kitchen.
Deputy Gardner refused her offer of tea, and sat in the living room in the most upright chair available. “Have you gotten a lead on Laura? Do you know where she is?”
His brow wrinkled. “Not exactly.” He leaned forward in his chair. “Is there anything about your family situation that you haven’t told me? Anything that might change the way our investigation is going?”
Jessie’s palms began to sweat. She had only known this man for a week. There was no way she could trust him. “No. What does this have to do with finding my sister?”
“I’m not sure yet. But it has a great deal to do with identifying the victim in the morgue who isn’t your sister.” His eyes narrowed, making him look much more like an investigator than the compassionate man she had started getting to know in the hospital. “How much do you know about DNA?”
“Enough. I teach history, not science. But I’m sure you’re going to enlighten me,” Jessie snapped.
“I won’t go into deep detail. But we had a surprise with that sample we took from you to prove that the victim wasn’t your sister. It proved that all right, but it gave us another interesting fact. The victim shares half your DNA profile.”
“Only half?” She wanted to ask more, but it was all she could choke out. Jessie always thought fainting from shock was one of those things that only happened to Victorian women who wore whalebone corsets. Surely it wasn’t possible today. But suddenly she had this funny buzzing in her head and there didn’t seem to be enough air in the room.
“Only half,” Steve Gardner said. “Which makes the story you told me about losing your parents in a car crash just that—a story. Now I’ll repeat my earlier question. Is there anything you’d like to tell me?”
The buzzing was getting louder. “Only that I’m glad there’s no statute of limitations on murder because now I’m sure that someone killed my father.” After that her vision blurred and Jessie quickly lay down on the couch before she pitched forward into the coffee table. The last thing she remembered thinking was that when they found Laura she didn’t want to have to tell her that she’d ruined the veneer on the furniture, so she better pass out in a different direction.
Steve Gardner lunged for Jessie as she slumped sideways on her own living room couch. Before now he’d never seen anybody truly faint from stress or shock, but there was always a first for everything. Of course he’d never before confronted anybody with the news that a dead person thought to be a complete stranger was actually their parent, either. Had that really come as a shock to the woman, or was she only buying time?
The pallor of her skin and her general wooziness as he tried to make her sit up seemed to attest to the shock being real. He looked behind him and picked up the mug of tea she’d poured herself after he’d declined her offer to pour him some, as well. It was still quite warm, but not too hot to drink. “Why don’t you take this and sip it slowly. Then when you’re a little more composed we can start talking about this.”
She did as she was told; something he felt was probably out of character for Jessie Barker. What he’d seen so far told him that she liked to be in control of most situations. She didn’t seem to be in control of this one. Her hands shook slightly as she drank a little of the aromatic tea. “Are you going to be all right?” He didn’t want to go back to his seat until he was sure she wasn’t going to faint again.
She took one hand and pushed back waves of deep chestnut hair away from her face. In the hospital she’d worn her hair caught back rather severely in clips. Today it was gathered loosely at the nape of her neck, and shorter strands had worked their way out to brush around her cheeks. “I think I’ll be okay.” She put the cup down, placing it carefully on a coaster. “I don’t even know where to start to try and explain this.”
“Well, that makes two of us. Why did you tell me before that your parents were dead, when you must have known that your mother was still alive?”
She gave a short, mirthless laugh. “Well, see, that’s the problem. Nobody knew that but me and Laura. At least nobody else ever believed it. That car crash when we were small really happened. I’m sure you can find reports of it in the newspapers in the little town where my father taught at the state university. And in the cemetery at the edge of that same town there’s a very lovely monument with both of my parents’ names on it.”
Okay, this made even less sense than he’d expected. “How did that happen? Were you adopted?”
“No. I wondered that, too, when I got old enough to try and figure all of this out myself, but I checked the birth certificates for my sister and me and they both list our parents. I know that can be faked but nobody ever suggested that was the case. I figured that if we’d actually had another mother somewhere, the courts would probably have notified her and she would have come and gotten us. We wouldn’t have had to spend so much time in foster care.” Her gray eyes flashed with anger. “I mean, nobody would have abandoned two kids like that if they didn’t have to. I think our mother actually saved our lives by leaving us that night.”
He must have looked even more confused, because she took a deep breath and sat back on the couch. “I’m going to tell you this story once, and afterward you can ask any question you want as long as you give me the benefit of the doubt believing me. All right?”
He didn’t know why he should agree, but he had nothing to lose. If she shut down now he had no other real avenue to explore. “All right. Do you want me to keep from interrupting while you tell the story?”
“It would probably help. I haven’t told anyone all of this in more than twenty years. And I’ve never told it to anybody who believed me.”
The thought roused Steve’s interest like nothing else could. What could be so fantastic that an eyewitness account wouldn’t be believed, even that of a child? He got ready to write down what Jessie said, wondering where this tale would take him.
“Remember, I was only six,” she began. “My parents were arguing in the front seat of the car, which wasn’t unusual. It was more like squabbling most of the time, but they didn’t always get along. I don’t know how far away from home we were, and I don’t really remember where we’d been that day. Laura and I fell asleep in the backseat and I remember waking up after hearing a bang.”
“Was the car still moving?” Steve knew he shouldn’t interrupt but he couldn’t help himself.
Jessie didn’t seem to mind the simple question. “No. We were pulled over on the side of the road, not exactly like we’d been in an accident or anything. There were several strange men there, at least three of them. One of them pulled Laura and me out of the car and we stood in some weeds and watched our life fall apart.”
“Did any of them talk to you? And what about your parents?”
Jessie’s brow wrinkled. “From an adult perspective I know now that my father was already dead. I think he’d been shot, but I can’t tell you why I believe that. I didn’t see a shot fired.”
“You said you heard a bang as you woke up. Could it have been a gunshot?”
“Maybe. It’s hard to know.”
“How about the men. Do you remember anything about them, what they looked like or if anybody mentioned any names?”
She looked at him and her eyes filled with tears. “I’m