That part of the story was inspired by a paperback book she had found in a box in the attic, called Emily and the Stranger, in which an earl falls off his horse and hits his head and loses his memory and is found by a woman who lives alone in the woods and who cares for him and marries him, and then she gets kidnapped and he hits his head again and remembers everything, then they learn that Emily was really not a poor girl after all. It was a book that Mom didn’t know she had hidden in her room, a book that had taught her many other surprising things. (She and Genie had been told about sex as an element of biological reproduction, but that was nothing like what the book described.)

Emily and the Stranger was now in a mailing envelope she had taken from the recycling pile and taped to the back of one of the sliding doors on her closet, one of several places where she kept small treasures. She never hid things under her mattress, though-Genie had told her that Mom hid things under her own mattress, so Carrie was sure Mom searched the kids’ beds every now and then.

In Carrie’s daydream, her father would be hit on his golden-haired head a second time, but not enough to hurt, just enough to make him remember his past and look for her.

He was her secret, just like the book. No one needed to know. Not even Grandfather. Especially not Grandfather or Uncle Giles, she decided, then wondered why such a thought should even cross her mind.

Monday, April 24

4:30 P.M.

NEWSROOM OF THE

LAS PIERNAS NEWS EXPRESS

ALTHOUGH the City Desk had put a few more people on the story of the drowning victims out on the oil island, Mark Baker still had his hands full with that one. Mark and I have worked together for a lot of years, though, and he knows just by looking at me when I’m on to something.

“They won’t tell me anything,” I said. “Probably because of Frank. His friends know that he’ll be suspected of being my source if any cop gives me anything for the paper. There are still a couple of those guys who will never forgive him for marrying a reporter.”

“Can you blame them?” Mark asked, laughing. “Besides, you know that attitude runs both ways.”

“True.”

“So what’s with the body in the woods?”

I told him what I knew about it, which wasn’t much. “But I have a feeling, Mark-something tells me it’s going to be big. Maybe not as big as the one you’re working on, but…I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the location-the Sheffield place has been abandoned so long. What was this guy doing out there?”

“Hmm…I’ll give Vince a call.”

“I’ll download the photos I took,” I said. “Let me know what’s up, okay?”

He agreed to keep me posted.

FRANK called, and after some discussion of what we each had left to do at work, we figured out that he’d be home first. “Looks like it’s going to start raining again,” he said, “but if it doesn’t, I’ll walk the dogs.” We talked about Ethan and the roster of our friends who took turns staying with him during the day while he was in this phase of his recovery. Ethan was due to see his doctor soon and would probably insist to him that he was now well enough to be left at home alone.

“He’ll say that,” Frank agreed, “but he likes the company.”

We spoke briefly about the parts of Frank’s current case that were already public knowledge. I could tell he was trying not to let on that he was feeling a little down-notification of families is one of his least favorite parts of the job.

“I hope you won’t mind,” I said, as much by way of distraction as confession, “I invited Ben and his grad student, Caleb Fletcher, to dinner tomorrow night. I would have talked this over with you first, but-”

“No, don’t worry about it. That will be great,” he said. “I’ve been concerned about Ben since he broke up with Anna. And I know Caleb-it will be good to see him again, too.”

AFTER I talked to Frank, I spent some time on my computer looking up archived stories on the Fletcher family.

Caleb’s name brought up a lot of matches to stories from the trial.

I spent a few minutes reviewing those. The paper had ferreted out family trouble then-his mother’s parents and the Fletchers had lined up against Caleb and his mother, Elisa Delacroix Fletcher. Nelson Fletcher’s testimony against Mason had helped the prosecution. He said Richard had confided to him that he was having difficulties with Mason, that Mason argued with Richard and often lost his temper.

Although the prosecutor had asked for the death penalty, Caleb and Elisa had apparently been persuasive at that point. Caleb had said, “I don’t believe for a moment that Mason killed my father or my sister. But if the jury believes it, I’ll ask you to keep him alive, or we’ll never find out what really became of her.” Mason was given a life sentence.

So now, five years after the trial, Caleb’s sister was still missing, his half brother still in prison.

I kept reading.

I got a lot of hits from the business section on the name Fletcher. I narrowed it down to Nelson and still came up with quite a few.

Nelson Fletcher was generally accounted to be a man who loved his privacy. He was the respected owner of several manufacturing firms. I learned that he was actually Nelson Fletcher, M.D.-he had a medical degree from UC Irvine but had practiced medicine for only three years after his residency, during which time he also took up a study of engineering. He held a number of patents on medical devices used in a wide variety of surgical procedures, a line of work that apparently paid very well.

I tried a search for Elisa Delacroix Fletcher and found only one other hit, but a relatively recent one. It was dated about two years ago.

To my surprise, the story was a small wedding announcement: Elisa had married her late husband’s brother Nelson Fletcher. First marriage for Nelson. Elisa had a son, Caleb Fletcher, by a previous marriage.

No mention of Mason. No mention of the drama of just three years earlier. Man, oh man, someone in Features had been asleep at the wheel to let that one go in without a shout. Didn’t they even notice that she wasn’t going to have to change the last name on her checks and return-address labels?

It seemed likely to me that this marriage had led to Caleb’s estrangement from his mom. What the hell had persuaded the woman to marry a man who had testified against her son?

I started to wonder if she knew more about her son’s guilt than had been said during the time of the trial, and looked more closely at those stories. The reporting was clumsy, not some of the best to come out of the Express. From all I could gather, the defense hadn’t put up much of a fight. I was trying to piece events together and thinking about looking up the trial transcripts, when Mark walked over.

“Kelly, you haven’t lost your touch. Damn if your instincts weren’t right about this one.”

“What one?” I said absently, still absorbed in my reading.

“The dead dude out at the Sheffield place. You were right-could go big.”

“Who is it?”

“If that’s his wallet, it’s one Gerald Serre.”

My jaw dropped. “Gerald Serre?” I spelled the last name out.

Mark frowned, as if I had spoiled a surprise. “Yes, he-”

“Supposedly kidnapped his own child…”

Mark gave me a suspicious look. “You talk to Frank or something?”

“No, no-I mean, I did, but not about this. Serre’s ex-wife called me today.”

Now the look was really suspicious, but I was worried about something that was far more important than dirty looks.

“Mark, if he’s dead, what happened to his little boy?”

He didn’t get a chance to answer, because Lydia Ames called out to us from the City Desk.

“Mark-Irene-either of you know a Sheila Dolson? Irene, she says you can vouch for her. She claims she and her dog are out at the Sheffield place. The dog just found more remains.”