Tension stiffened Bonnie’s shoulders, but Melina sensed it had nothing to do with missing the girl. Bonnie was worried about what the girl would say.
“I don’t know any kid named Elena.” Bonnie pounded on the door.
“She’s been talking about Sonny.”
Bonnie shook her head. “Sorry, can’t help you.”
“DNA will tell us if you and Elena are related, but I’d say not.”
Bonnie faced the door but did not speak.
“If you can walk away from Elena this easily, makes me think you have a habit of leaving children. What other children have you abandoned?” Melina wanted to worm her way under Bonnie’s skin so that she would drop her guard just for a second or two.
Bonnie slowly turned and studied Melina with narrowing eyes. Then very slowly the smile returned. “Baby, sounds like you aren’t talking about Elena anymore, are you?”
The room felt as if it had dropped from underneath her feet. An unwanted edge crept into her tone. “Who would I be talking about?”
“I don’t know, baby. You tell me.”
“Did you wreck your car intentionally?” Melina asked.
“Who would do such a thing?”
The guard opened the door and Bonnie stepped through it, glancing back and winking at Melina before she vanished. The door slammed behind her.
Melina sat back in her chair, her fingers curling into fists. “Don’t say it.”
“Say what?” Ramsey asked.
“I let my personal feelings get the better of me,” she said.
“Maybe. But you did get under Bonnie’s skin. Tension in the eyes and a slight flattening of her lips suggested stress.”
“She looked pretty comfortable to me,” she said.
“BB puts on a good show. That’s what she does for a living.”
“She can try to look as cool as possible, but she won’t be able to talk her way out of forensic evidence. We have her prints on the car seat but not on the steering wheel or front seat. There’s also credit card fraud.”
“That should be enough to hold her,” Ramsey said. “But I’ve been surprised by judges before. She’s safer in jail right now,” he said. “One thing to sell out a kid. Quite another to betray a serial killer.”
As Ramsey and Shepard retrieved their weapons from the jailhouse lockers, he glanced down at her. Her lips were compressed, and her brow was knotted. As she shoved her gun in its holster, he was close enough to see the fast pulse of her carotid artery. She was still shaken by her encounter with Bonnie.
He opened the door for her and followed her across the lobby to the front steps. “Bonnie Guthrie has returned to Nashville not just because of Sonny, but because she has been here before. She’s familiar with Nashville.”
Though Shepard’s face appeared outwardly stoic, he noted the microexpressions, the shift of her stance and her breathing, which all pointed toward her unsettledness.
“I agree,” she said.
“We can assume she has been using Elena as a means to an end. The child is likely a good distraction that enables Bonnie to manipulate and steal. She might also have some kind of appeal for Sonny.”
She raised her chin a fraction. “Agreed.”
“Bonnie tilted her head to the left slightly when you mentioned Elena’s name. She knows the girl, but she’s calculating if the child is still of use to her.”
Shepard removed her sunglasses from her backpack and slid them on. “No argument here.”
“Bonnie has used other children just as she has Elena. Do you think Sonny might have been one of those kids?”
“It’s very possible.”
“The mother figure is a powerful force in a child’s life, and children naturally want to please,” Ramsey said.
Shepard remained silent.
Ramsey added, “Bonnie pointed out that your name is unusual.”
“I picked up on that. She was trying to get into my head. She’s not the first.”
“I can dance around this a little longer, but I don’t have the patience.” He dropped his voice a notch. “Is there any way you and Bonnie are connected from back in the day? Was she the woman who left you on the side of the road?”
Shepard stared at him from behind her dark glasses. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Did she seem familiar?”
“Yes. But this isn’t the first time I’ve looked at a woman and wondered if we were related or if she were the one who abandoned me. It’s common for adopted kids to wonder about their birth parents.”
“I don’t think she’s your birth mother,” he said.
He sensed her interest had sharpened to a fine point. “A DNA test would answer that question. I’m game to provide a cheek swab.”
“Have you ever had your DNA tested?”
“Yeah. About a year ago, I sent it off to one of those sites that promised to tell you about your ancestry.”
“Did you ever follow up and look for family matches?”
“No. I can tell you that I’m sixty-seven percent European, and the remaining thirty-three percent is Native Mexican.”
“I would think you would want to know. Investigating people is what you do.”
“Easier to peel back the layers of a suspect’s life than my own. I decided to let sleeping dogs lie.”
“Does meeting Bonnie make you curious? A lot of cases are getting solved via DNA these days.”
“Yeah, I hear you,” she said.
“And?”
Shepard laughed, but it sounded joyless and hollow. “Honestly? Meeting Bonnie makes me want to bury my test results. I’m not sure if I want a personal connection to her or her little pal Sonny.” She shoved out a sigh. “But you’re right. I need to think like a cop.”
“If it helps, Bonnie isn’t in town for you. She’s here for Sonny because he has something she wants. Safe bet it’s money.”
“I hope it is just about money for her. I don’t want to be connected to Bonnie or Sonny.”
His phone rang. Irritated by the interruption, he glanced at the number and recognized it as his contact with the Nashville Police Department. “I better take this.”
She looked relieved. “Certainly.”
“Jeff, what do you have for me?” Detective Jeff Granger was with Nashville Homicide and had worked with Ramsey a couple of years ago on a case.
Ramsey watched as Shepard pulled her phone from her back pocket and dropped her gaze to it.
“We did a search on the credit cards that were found with Bonnie Guthrie. We contacted one of the victims and found something you’re going to want to see.”
“That was fast,” he said.
“There was one card that was not reported missing. We started with that one.”
“And?”
“Like I said, you better come and have a look for yourself. I’m texting you an address.”
“I’ll leave now.” When he hung up, he noted the slight shift in Shepard’s posture. She’d been listening. She was inquisitive by nature. That made her avoidance of her own past even more curious. “Nashville police have located the owner of one of the stolen credit cards. They want us to come and have a look.”
“Interesting,” she said.
“Care to join me?”
“You couldn’t keep me away.”
Shepard stayed close on his bumper as the two made their way north up I-24 toward the west side of Nashville. GPS guided him off the interstate and then down a collection of roads until he found himself in a small neighborhood filled with clapboard houses that looked as if they had been built in the twenties and thirties.
When Ramsey rounded the final neighborhood corner, he spotted a half dozen cop cars parked in front of a small one-level blue house. Yellow crime scene tape marked off the front and side yards.
Cops did not trick out a crime scene like this for a stolen credit card.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Wednesday, August 26, 3:00 p.m.
So far, there was no sign of a forensic van, but it was just a matter of time before half the Nashville police force was on scene. Ramsey parked a half block beyond the house and then strode back to meet Shepard at the edge of the tape.
“Things are heating up.” She removed her sunglasses and swapped them for a set of latex gloves in her jacket pocket. She handed him a pair and threaded her fingers through her own set.
They introduced themselves to the uniformed officer, who directed them inside, where Detective Jeff Granger was waiting.
“You worked with Granger before?” she asked.
“On a task force,” Ramsey said. “He’s solid. Professional.”
“I agree.”
Ramsey’s and Shepard’s paths had come close to crossing several times in recent years, and he was sorry they had not met sooner.
They ducked under the tape and, at the edge of the front porch, slipped on paper booties. As soon as they reached the front door, he stopped.
“Jesus,” Shepard muttered.
No one ever got used to the smell of decaying flesh. Some cops developed tricks to beat the stench, but he found rubbing Vicks on his upper lip just coated the rot with a menthol flavor. Eventually, the odor receptors in the nose stopped sending messages to the brain.