Daniel hung his jacket behind his door. “Don’t you have a job?”

“Hey, I’m working.” Luke held up the laptop. “I’m running a diagnostic on the chief’s machine. It’s been running ‘buggy.’ ” He quirked the air with his fingers, a smile on his face, but Daniel heard the tension in his friend’s voice.

He sat at his desk and did some studying of his own. There were no dark circles under Luke’s eyes, but within them was a bleakness few got to see. “Bad day?”

Luke’s smile disappeared, and closing his eyes, he swallowed audibly. “Yeah.” The single word was harsh and filled with a pain few truly understood. Luke was on the GBI’s task force against Internet crime, and for the last year he’d been focused on crime involving children. Daniel thought he’d rather watch a thousand autopsies than look at the obscenities Luke was forced to view every day. Luke drew a breath and opened his eyes, control restored even if serenity was not.

Daniel wondered if any cop ever got to serenity.

“I needed a break,” Luke said simply, and Daniel nodded.

“I just came from the morgue. My Jane Doe went to Fun-N-Sun on Thursday and plays the violin.”

“Well, the violin might narrow it down some. I brought you something.” Luke pulled a thick stack of papers from his computer bag. “I ran a deeper search on Alicia Tremaine and came up with all these articles. She had a twin sister.”

“I know,” Daniel said wryly. “Too bad you didn’t tell me before she walked in here this morning and scared the ever-livin’ shit outta me.”

Luke’s dark brows shot up. “She was here? Alexandra Tremaine?”

“She calls herself Fallon now. Alex Fallon. She’s an ER nurse from Cincinnati.”

“So she lived then,” Luke said thoughtfully and Daniel frowned.

“What do you mean?”

Luke handed the stack of papers over the table. “Well, the story didn’t stop with Alicia’s murder. The day Alicia’s body was found, Kathy Tremaine, that’s their mother, shot herself in the head. She was apparently discovered by her daughter Alexandra, who then took all the pills the doctor had prescribed for the mother, who was hysterical after having to identify her daughter’s body.”

Daniel thought of Jane Doe on the table at the morgue and of a mother having to identify her child looking like that. Still, suicide was the coward’s way out… and for Alex to have discovered her that way. “My God,” he murmured.

“Kathy Tremaine’s sister had come down from Ohio because of Alicia and discovered them both. Her name was Kim Fallon.”

“Alex said she’d been adopted by her aunt and uncle, so that makes sense.”

“There’s more in the stack, obits and articles about the trial of Gary Fulmore, the man they charged with the murder. But there was no other mention of Alexandra after the article on Fulmore’s arrest. I guess Kim Fallon took her to Ohio after that.”

Daniel leafed through the pages. “Did you see mention of a Bailey Crighton?”

“Craig Crighton, yes, but not Bailey. Craig was the man Kathy Tremaine was living with at the time of her death. Why?”

“That’s why Alex Fallon came to see me today. Her stepsister Bailey went missing Thursday night and she thought she was the Arcadia woman.”

Luke whistled softly. “Well, that had to have been a shock.”

Daniel thought of the fists she’d squeezed nearly bloodless, and the way her hand felt in his. “I imagine it was, but she held herself together well.”

“I was actually talking about it being a shock for you.” Luke swung his feet off the desk and stood up. “I’ve got to be getting back now. Break’s over.”

Daniel narrowed his eyes. “You gonna be okay?”

Luke nodded. “Sure.” But there was little conviction in his voice. “I’ll see you later.”

Daniel lifted the papers. “Thanks, Luke.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Ripples, Daniel thought as he watched him go. They changed the lives of the victims and their families. And sometimes they change us. Usually they change us. With a sigh he turned to his own computer to look up the number for Fun-N-Sun. He had a victim to identify.

Dutton, Monday, January 29, 1:00 p.m.

“Here’s all the stuff.” Alex dumped it on the sofa in her hotel room. “Play-Doh, Legos, Mr. Potato Head, more crayons, paper, and more coloring books.”

Meredith was sitting next to Hope at the little dinette table. “And the Barbie head?”

“In the bag, but they were out of Barbies. You got Princess Fiona from Shrek.”

“But she has hair we can cut? I’m thinking since Bailey was a hairdresser they might have played that way together.”

“Yep. I checked. And I got Hope some clothes. Man, kids’ clothes are expensive.”

“Get used to it, Auntie.”

“You moved her from the desk in the bedroom.”

“Had to. Wasn’t room for both of us to color in there and I needed a change in scenery.” Meredith chose a blue crayon from a pile. “Hope, I’m picking periwinkle this time. Periwinkle sounds like a happy color, like it’s winking at me.”

Meredith continued to chatter as she colored and Alex could see this had been going on for some time while she’d been gone. There was a stack of pages with ragged edges that Meredith had torn from Hope’s coloring book. All were colored with blue.

“Can we talk while you color?”

Meredith smiled. “Sure. Or you can sit down and color with us. Hope and I don’t mind, do we, Hope?”

Hope didn’t appear to even hear her. Alex dragged the chair from the bedroom desk up to the dinette and sat down, meeting Meredith’s eyes over Hope’s head. “Anything?”

“Nope,” Meredith said cheerfully. “There are no magic wands, Alex.”

Hope’s hand stopped abruptly, still clutching the red crayon in her small fist. She kept her eyes on the coloring book, but she’d gone completely still. Alex opened her mouth, but Meredith shot her a warning glance and Alex remained silent.

“At least not in that sack from the store,” Meredith went on. “I like magic wands.” Hope didn’t move a muscle. “When I was little, I used to pretend celery stalks were magic wands. My mom would get so mad when she’d go to make a salad and all the celery was gone.” Meredith chuckled and kept coloring with her periwinkle. “She’d fuss, but she’d play with me. Celery was cheap, she’d say, but playtime was precious.”

Alex swallowed hard. “My mom used to say that, too. ‘Playtime is precious.’ ”

“Probably because our moms were sisters. Did your mom say that, too, Hope?”

Slowly, Hope’s crayon began to move again, then faster, until she colored with the same focus as before. Alex wanted to sigh, but Meredith was smiling.

“Baby steps,” she murmured. “Sometimes the best therapy’s just in being there, Alex.” She tore a page from her coloring book. “Try it. It’s really very relaxing.”

Alex drew a deep breath, steadying herself. “You did that for me. Sat with me, when I first came to live with you. Every day after school and all that summer. You’d just come into my room and read a book. You never said a word.”

“I didn’t know what to say,” Meredith said. “But you were sad and you seemed happier when I sat with you. Then one day you said, ‘Hi.’ It was days later before you said any more and weeks before you were carrying on any conversation at all.”

“I think you saved my life,” Alex murmured. “You and Kim and Steve.” The Fallons had been her salvation. “I miss them.” Her aunt and uncle had died the year before when Steve’s little plane had crashed into an Ohio cornfield.

Meredith’s hand faltered and her throat worked as she swallowed hard. “I miss them, too.” She rested her cheek on Hope’s pretty curls for a brief moment. “That’s a very nice caterpillar, Hope. I’m going to use the periwinkle on the butterfly.” She chattered on for another few minutes, then casually turned the topic. “I would love to see some butterflies. Did you find a park where we can take Hope, Alex?”