To Trust a Friend Page 6

  Late Thursday afternoon Josh went into the lab to tell Kyra he was leaving for the day. He’d hit one dead end too many in the past nine hours, and it was time to go home for a while. Most of his body hurt from concentrating on the task of identifying the murder victims. His back and neck ached from hours at the computer, and a tension headache made his temples throb and his muscles tense.

  Almost all of that evaporated when he walked into the lab and found Kyra at work. She had her back to him and the droop in her shoulders made Josh think she felt as discouraged as he did. Instead of giving up, though, Kyra was leaning over gurney A in a posture he’d come to recognize as prayer. She was praying over the bones as she worked, and he suspected she was asking for help in her task. It touched him deeply to think of her doing this. Her slender hands spread out over the steel of the gurney, and her hair fanned over the collar of her lab coat.

  “Hey, there,” she said softly. “I’m not turning around, but I can hear you, Josh. Am I getting used to the quiet way you walk or have you been making an effort to be louder so you don’t startle me?”

  “A little bit of both, I think.” Josh didn’t want to admit that he’d been extremely deliberate in his movements when he went into the lab, trying to make just a little noise in order not to scare her. “You call her Abigail, don’t you?”

  She turned toward him, away from the gurney. Her green eyes were wide and a tiny line creased her brow. “Yes, but how did you know that? It’s not exactly common knowledge.”

  “I heard you talking to Allie the other day,” he admitted.

  She seemed to blush a little. “You probably think I’m a little bit crazy.”

  “No, not at all. I think it’s a good thing to do. A name makes us all look at things a different way. This isn’t just an unknown body that’s been out in the elements for years, it’s a young woman whose family would probably want to come visit her if they could.”

  Kyra appeared to do a double take. “Yes, that’s exactly how I feel, but I didn’t think…”

  “That you’d ever hear me say that? I wouldn’t have a couple of weeks ago. But working here with you, I’ve come to see things your way. Not everything,” he added quickly. “But I agree with you on this issue.”

  She smiled a slow and tentative smile that gave his heart a jump. “I know you still don’t agree with the way I feel about God, but seeing each person as valuable is a good first step.”

  “It may be the only step in that direction that I ever take.”

  Kyra was still smiling. “I don’t know. I suspect you might surprise yourself in that respect. We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we?”

  “We will,” he agreed. “But for now I’m going home. I’m tired, hungry and I feel sore all over.”

  “I can understand all of that. It’s the way I feel, too.” She was silent for a minute, and then turned toward him. “If you give me about fifteen minutes to close down here, I’ll offer to take you home for dinner.”

  “That would be great,” Josh said, wondering what to say next. “While you get things done here, I’ll run one small errand and meet you there.”

  “Okay. But don’t you need me to tell you where I live first?”

  Now Josh felt himself turning red. “Yeah, I guess I do.” He’d been so glad that she’d asked, yet so focused on what he had to do before he got there, that he’d forgotten that little point. “Tell me what I can bring.”

  Kyra waved him away. “Just yourself. This isn’t going to be fancy. I put stuff for soup in the slow cooker this morning and there’s plenty for two.”

  “All right.” Kyra gave him directions to her house and he jotted them down so he wouldn’t get lost. He was still learning parts of this corner of Maryland, so far from his haunts around D.C. Until now there hadn’t been much to draw him out to this area.

  His errand didn’t take long; he went to a local pharmacy for antihistamines. If he was going to hang out with Kyra’s feline housemate without sneezing his head off, he needed to medicate beforehand.

  Kyra’s house was small but comfortable. It looked like a sixties tract home that had seen a lot of renovation. Her kitchen table was oak, with a smooth top that Josh imagined had seen thousands of meals. “Did you refinish this yourself?” He ran a hand over the golden surface.

  “The last time, yes. It was my grandmother’s table, and I know she and Gramps redid it at least once themselves. But that was before I was old enough to remember anything like that. By the time I was seven she was a widow. Ranger, no!”

  Kyra was fussing at the cat, who’d plumped his heavy black body on Josh’s lap and was busy rubbing the side of his head on Josh’s shirt buttons. He was glad he’d taken that antihistamine; cats had a way of sensing his discomfort and heading for him instinctively. “Come on, cat. You don’t really want to sit on me.”

  The cat disagreed, settling in and actually purring. Kyra came over and picked up the animal, who protested just a little. “I should have fed him the minute I got home. That way he would have left us alone. But I wanted to tidy up a little before you got here. You didn’t need to see the four pairs of shoes in my living room.”

  “Probably not. I wouldn’t even have known about them if you hadn’t told me. I could have imagined that you’re just a terribly neat individual.”

  “That would be imagination, all right.” Kyra went across the open space and deposited Ranger on the raised hearth of the family room fireplace, where two small dishes sat. Before he could complain she opened a large tin and poured out dry cat kibble. Ranger settled down to his dinner and Kyra came back to the kitchen, washed her hands and set about serving their meal.

  “I’d ask you to say grace, but I don’t want to embarrass you,” she said as she sat down a few minutes later. Instead, she said a brief simple blessing over the steaming soup and passed Josh the bread basket.

  They ate in silence for a few minutes, the only sound being Ranger across the room crunching on cat food. Finally Josh spoke up. “This is great. You may not think it’s fancy, but it’s really good soup. At my place soup comes out of a can.”

  Kyra laughed a little. “Not here. I take a few shortcuts, but that isn’t one of them. I might use frozen vegetables or store-bought stock, but real beef and barley and mushrooms went in there, too.”

  “And you did a good job. In fact, I’d like another bowl if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all.” Kyra took his bowl and dished up more soup. “It’s nice to see my cooking appreciated.”

  Josh felt like telling her that he appreciated much more than her cooking, but he didn’t want that to be taken the wrong way, so he said nothing. He was saved from getting into trouble by the cat, who started weaving around one of his ankles, meowing loudly.

  “You’re not getting any soup, not from Josh and not from me,” Kyra said, looking down at the cat. She watched the animal for a while, then took her attention from Ranger to Josh. “Are you allergic to cats?”

  “And dogs. What did I do to give myself away?”

  “Nothing,” she said. “It just seems to be part of life that cats pay the most attention to people who would rather not have them around.”

  Josh shrugged. “For a cat, he’s okay. And the antihistamine I took before I came seems to be working, so I don’t mind the attention too much.”

  “Maybe we can keep being friends after all,” Kyra said softly, leaving Josh wondering exactly what she meant. He was still wondering when he drove home that night, seeing the image of Kyra’s sparkling green eyes as he thought about her words.

  SIX

  “Ranger says hi,” Kyra said as she dropped her things on the desk Friday. Josh grimaced slightly but didn’t turn around from his focus on the computer screen.

  “Did he send anything with his greetings? A catnip mouse or a hairball?”

  “No, but I’ll make sure that you get the next one he’s ready to give away.” She went over to the coffeepot and poured a mug of the steaming li
quid that had just finished brewing. “You’re in early this morning.”

  “Yeah, well, I had an idea that woke me up in the middle of the night, so I came in to check it out. I might have a possible identity for Chloe.”

  Kyra felt a chill go up her spine. “That’s great. Tell me about it.”

  “I got to thinking about one of the guidelines we’ve been using to determine age, and it reminded me of my sister.”

  She was tempted to break in and say that she didn’t know Josh had a sister, but Kyra kept the statement to herself. He wouldn’t appreciate anything that led away from the point he was trying to make. She nodded in encouragement.

  “I know you said that most people have their wisdom teeth by eighteen, but not everybody does. My sister was twenty-three before she had the surgery to remove hers that were impacted. That made me think that maybe I had narrowed the field a little too much.”

  “So you went up a couple of years on the age of the young women you were looking at?”

  “Just a little bit. And that led me to Gen Bailey. Gen disappeared shortly after she aged out of the foster care system, leaving behind a two-year-old son, Andre.”

  Josh typed on his laptop for a moment and pulled up a picture on the screen. Kyra looked over his shoulder to see a smiling young woman holding a toddler with dark hair and even darker wide eyes. “Gen’s mother was Vietnamese, her father African-American, and both had some major drug problems. Her dad went to prison and died there, and her mom abandoned her by the time she was six. She bounced around the system a lot, with her last placement being a group home for teen girls and their children.”

  Kyra felt a tension in her spine. “What happened to Andre once his mom disappeared?”

  “His father was tracked down, and his grandmother is raising him. He’s almost nine years old now.”

  “Does he still live in the area?”

  “He and his grandmother live in Baltimore. I’m not sure about the father. He doesn’t appear to be in the state prison system, at least. Do you think we can talk the grandmother into letting us take a DNA sample from Andre?”

  “Probably, especially if it means we can tell her what happened to Andre’s mom. We haven’t had too many people turn us down in situations like this.” Kyra looked at him, still at the computer. “If I call her and she says yes, do you want to come with me to get the sample?”

  “Yes. Let me know when. I can even drive if you like. I think my car might look a little more official than your pickup.” He smiled and Kyra found herself smiling back, because he was probably right.

  Three days later when they pulled up in front of the brick row house in the city of Baltimore, Kyra was sure that Josh had been right. The pickup truck would not have looked as official as his car. The sedan Josh drove looked as if it could be FBI issue—sedate and nondescript. It served well for an errand like this, though.

  Kyra noticed that Josh himself looked like an FBI agent today, in his dark suit, pale blue shirt and sedate tie. He let her go ahead, ringing the bell and waiting for an answer. In a few minutes a small woman with dark skin and espresso-colored hair flecked with silver opened the door. “Mrs. Quinn? I’m Dr. Elliott, we spoke on the phone.”

  The woman eyed her warily. “I’d like to see some identification. You hardly look old enough to be a doctor of anything.”

  Kyra felt like telling the woman that she hardly looked old enough to have a grandson in third grade herself, but she was used to doubts about her official status, so she merely reached into her purse and pulled out an ID wallet.

  Mrs. Quinn looked it over carefully before she closed it and handed it back. “Thank you. I always tell Andre that you just can’t be too careful, so I better practice what I preach to the child.” She tilted her head to see around Kyra. “And who’s your partner here? Another doctor?”

  “No, I’m just an investigator.” Josh held out his own identification. “Joshua Richards, on loan from the FBI.”

  Mrs. Quinn pressed her thin lips together into a thinner line. “If you think that’s going to impress me, you have another thing coming. But I don’t want you just standing out here on the stoop, so I better get you inside.”

  The inside of the brownstone was as neat as the outside. The furniture was slightly worn, but everything was clean. “Andre should be home from school soon. I told him there was going to be someone coming to get a sample from him and I told him it wouldn’t hurt. I hope I was right.”

  Kyra was glad that she didn’t have to tell this intense woman that she planned to hurt her grandson. “You were right. All we’ll do is swab the inside of his cheek. We’ll take the sample back to the lab and see if his DNA is related to the unidentified woman we have.”

  “I almost hope it is. It’s hard on a child when nobody can tell him where his mama went. I only met her twice, but Gen didn’t seem to be the kind of person who would walk out on her son.”

  She gestured toward a framed photo on top of a bookcase. It was the same shot that Josh had pulled up on the computer; perhaps the only one of Gen and Andre taken together, Kyra thought. Next to it were several smaller photos that were obviously school pictures of an older version of the toddler on Gen’s lap. The chubby cheeks of the baby gave way to a slender, solemn face with the same dark eyes looking out past the focus of the camera. Kyra felt compassion for the little boy being raised by his grandmother, wondering about his mother.

  “What about his father?” she found herself asking.

  “He’s around some. Not as often as I’d like him to be. I keep telling Deon that he’s nearly thirty, with a child to raise, and he needs to settle down and be the one to raise him.” Her resolute expression told Kyra that apparently her son didn’t always listen to what his mother had to say.

  “What does your son do for a living, Mrs. Quinn?” It was the first time Josh had spoken since introducing himself. Kyra had almost forgotten he was there with them. She knew that he’d been taking in the room in a different way than she had, and she was anxious to hear what he had to say about his perceptions.

  “He’s a security guard in a mall during the daytime, and goes to community college at night. He had his wild days when he was younger, but that’s over with now.” Kyra wondered whether the woman believed what she was saying. There was a hesitancy in her voice, as if she was trying to convince herself.

  “If he’s a security guard his wilder days can’t have been too wild,” Josh said. “What’s he studying?”

  “Administration of justice. He’s always been interested in being a policeman. I think it’s a dangerous job for somebody with a child, but Deon doesn’t see it that way. And he says he can’t be around more because he’s got to get into the academy soon or he’ll be too old.”

  “He has a point there,” Kyra conceded. Before she could say anything else, she heard a school bus pull to a stop somewhere close outside with a whoosh of brakes. In a few moments the front door opened and closed.

  “Hey, Grandma. Are the people here? The ones from the crime lab?” There was a thump in the hall behind them and a young boy appeared.

  “Take off your shoes before you come in here,” Mrs. Quinn cautioned her grandson. “I don’t want muddy prints everyplace. Then come in and say hello to our guests.”

  He nodded and headed swiftly back to the front door, and now Kyra could hear two smaller thumps that made her grin as she identified them as the thud on a hardwood floor of two heavy tennis shoes. Sliding a little in sock feet, Andre came back to the living room. “Chris at school said that they’d probably cut a big ol’ chunk of my hair off for the sample, and maybe poke me to get blood.” He eyed Kyra and Josh suspiciously, waiting to hear what they said in return.

  “Chris at school has been watching too much TV,” Josh said. He lowered himself to third-grade level as Andre came closer. “And he hasn’t even been watching the good shows. You can go back to school and tell Chris that we don’t need to stick you to get blood, and nobody cuts your hair unle
ss Grandma says it’s too long.” That drew a brief smile from the child. Josh might have said he didn’t know much about teenagers, but younger boys he was okay with.

  “All we’re going to do is what’s called a buccal swab, Andre. You open your mouth good and wide, and we rub the inside of your cheek. Some cells rub off on the swab and we take them back to the lab and run tests on them.”

  The child still looked suspicious. “Hey, you get to stick your tongue out at a grown-up without getting into trouble,” Josh told him, prompting a grin. “And if you’re worried about it hurting or anything, I’ll do it first. That way we can both stick our tongues out at Dr. Elliott, what do you say?”

  “Okay.” Kyra got her supplies out of her kit, and Josh counted to three. Then he and Andre both stuck their tongues out and Kyra took swabs from both of them.

  “You can close your mouth now,” she told Andre a moment later. “And you did a very good job. Thank you for being so cooperative.” He smiled at her and watched while she labeled the containers for the swabs, writing their names on the sides of the vials.

  “How long will it be before you get results?” Andre’s grandmother asked. “I have to expect that part of the television shows is wrong, too. They couldn’t wrap things up neatly in forty-five minutes unless they got instant results, could they?”

  “You’re right, Mrs. Quinn. DNA testing isn’t usually an overnight process. We might have some news in about a week. I’ll make sure that you know as soon as we do.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Elliott. After more than seven years, I guess we can wait one more week.”

  Kyra packed up and Mrs. Quinn showed them out of the house. “You did a good job in there,” she told Josh as they got into his car. “Despite what you’ve said about not being good with teens, you seemed to have a real knack with Andre.”

  Josh shrugged. “Yeah. I remember being his age and wishing that grown-ups would explain things to me. When I was ten and my dad died, nobody ever answered my questions or tried to help me understand the situation. I decided then that not only was I going to find out the truth about my father, but I wouldn’t ever treat a kid the way I had been treated then.”