“You abandoned me because I was crying.”
“No. That would be criminal. I came back to the car and you were gone.” Bonnie shook her head. “But to this day, I still don’t know how you were found. I asked Sonny, but he said he never knew.”
Bonnie was lying. The woman had abandoned her on the side of the road. And because she had not mentioned a call to the police from the diner pay phone, Melina realized the only other person who would have known she’d been dumped would have been the brother—Sonny, or Dean, or whatever name he was using now.
“I’m sorry I lost track of you. I was so tired, but that’s no real excuse. I should have been more careful.”
“And just like that you kept on driving.”
“Good Lord, no. I drove around looking for you. I was coming up on the spot where I left you when I saw the flash of the cop’s car. I knew you were in safe hands and thought you’d be better off if you weren’t living on the road.”
Blood rushed to Melina’s temples, and her heartbeat nearly drowned out her own voice. “What about my brother? Did you desert him, too?”
“We stuck together for a long time. Like I said, I can handle men.”
A memory, like a snippet of film, suddenly flashed. A little boy handed her half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “I made it with extra jelly,” he said softly.
Melina shifted in her seat.
“I know I failed you both in different ways and taking care of Elena reminded me of my mistakes. But when I saw that picture of you in the paper and read the story about you finding those poor children locked in the trunk of a car, I knew I had to come see you. I knew if I found you, Sonny would be close. He always looked out for you. I was hoping we all could make amends.”
She remembered the cigarette butts clustered by her car. They’d all been tipped in pink lipstick. Bonnie had been watching her apartment for a couple of days. “You sound sure of Sonny.”
“I know Sonny better than anyone.”
A part of her wanted to believe Bonnie, and another part prayed she was lying. “No one has ever identified himself to me as my brother.”
Bonnie looked oddly satisfied with her new captive audience. “He wouldn’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“He knows himself well enough to realize you would be safer if he kept his distance.”
She thought about the fingers in a pickle jar. If Sonny had been the one who had collected them, then her half brother was a serial killer.
Melina made a note to do a search on Dean Guthrie, who she guessed was in his midthirties. Whether or not Dean or Sonny was family, he was likely a killer. “What name does he use now?”
Bonnie shook her head and the grin returned. “You asked me that before. But I can’t give away all my secrets, baby. I have to keep some of my cards close to the vest until we can make a deal.”
“If I start digging, I’ll find out if you’re lying to me.”
“Oh, I’m not lying. You’ll find birth certificates for you and Sonny. Consider this the first of many meetings, baby. Go on and check on Elena’s history, and find out what you can about Howard Guthrie. He would be seventy-six now if he had lived. And when you realize that I’m telling you the truth, then we’ll talk again.”
Frustration bubbled up in Melina. “Who put the pickle jar in the back of the car?”
“I don’t even like pickles.” Bonnie rose, walked to the door, and knocked. “Do your homework first and then we’ll visit again.” The door opened and Bonnie vanished into the back halls of the jail.
Melina sat back and closed her eyes. Her cheeks flushed with heat. Slowly she rose, grateful she could stand straight and at least appear pulled together.
Melina returned to the TBI offices and found Ramsey again camped out in the conference room. On the table next to his laptop was a collection of files in a neat row. He had removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves and was wearing a pair of tortoiseshell glasses.
She knocked on the open door. He looked up at her, and the swirl of emotions, chasing her since the jailhouse, slowed. “Nice little setup you have here,” she said.
He removed the glasses and carefully set them down beside his laptop. “I used to pride myself on being able to work anywhere. Back of car, hotel room, fast-food restaurant. But the last few years since I’ve been overseeing the team, I stay in Quantico mostly. It’s a challenge to concentrate without the creature comforts.”
From her perspective, he looked focused. “You seem to be adapting well.”
“Managing.” He studied her closely as he sat back in his chair. “How did it go with Bonnie?”
She pulled out a chair and sat. So much for small talk. “She’s either one of the best con artists I’ve ever met, or she just blew my past apart.”
His eyebrows knitted with curiosity. “How so?”
Melina began to unpack Bonnie’s statements. Even as she recited the facts about Lizzie Guthrie, she could not believe that she was talking about her own life.
Ramsey sat quietly, absorbing each word. If not for this case, Melina would never have shared any of this with a colleague. This man now knew more about her life than the parents who had raised her.
“You’ve never heard of any of this before?” he asked.
“No. Nothing.”
“Would your parents have kept it from you to protect you?”
“No. They have always been straight with me. What they know, I know.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m not sure about a lot of things right now, but that is one of them. It explains why social services couldn’t find anything on me. There was never a missing persons report filed. No birth certificate was found. Even my birthday was fabricated. My parents made it official when my adoption was finalized.”
“This is all assuming that Bonnie is telling the truth.”
She stabbed her fingers through her hair. “Oh, I considered that. But, I, too, am good at sniffing out liars.”
“Do you believe her?”
“I do.”
“Do you believe her because you want to? It’s very common for adoptees to hunger for knowledge of their past, even if it’s not corroborated.”
A devil’s advocate’s job was to challenge statements and debunk theories. “I considered that. But she knew I was left on the side of the road.”
He tapped his finger on the edge of the polished table. “I’ll run Lizzie’s and Dean Guthrie’s names through the FBI databases.”
“Thanks.”
As he typed a text message, he asked, “What does Bonnie want?”
“I think she’s going to angle for a deal. She’ll soften me up with the missing pieces of my life and then trade what she knows about the pickle jar for immunity.”
“You believe she knows the killer.”
“I’m convinced she does. She came back to Nashville to see him. She calls him Sonny, but that’s not his real name. His birth name is Dean Guthrie, but he doesn’t use it.”
“Oh shit.”
“And before you ask, I have no clue who the guy is. However, Bonnie says he knows who I am.” The creep factor on this case had certainly kicked up a few more notches.
“Bonnie comes to town to look up Sonny, and somehow figures you’re nearby,” Ramsey says. “She asks him for help. He refuses. She gets pissed and takes the evidence of his dirty work. Only Bonnie screws it all up when she wrecks the car. And you’re the cop that lands the case. Is that the gist of it, Agent Shepard?”
“Did she screw it up?” Melina asked. “That’s a hell of a coincidence.”
“You think she staged the accident?”
“I don’t know. I found cigarette butts near my car. There were several, and each was tipped in pink lipstick. I dropped them off at the lab, so I’ll know soon enough if they belong to Bonnie.”
“How did she find you?”
“My name was in the paper on a child abduction case.”
He reached for a folder, pulled out a sheet of paper, and pushed it toward her. “We’ve identified two more pickle-jar fingerprints.”
She glanced at the sheet detailing the unsolved homicides. The other two women had vanished in 2014 from Denver and 2015 from Dallas. “Neither had ties to the Nashville area.”
“So far, we know this killer targeted his victims from all over the country in four different major cities: Kansas City, Portland, Denver, and Dallas.”
“Accessible, large populations. Easy for a serial killer to move around unnoticed.”
“I have also located the sister of our most recent victim. Jennifer Brown’s sister lives in Nashville,” he said.
“Has she been notified of her sister’s death?” Melina asked.
“No.”
“What’s her name?”
“Kelly Brown. She’s forty-one and works as a bartender.”
Melina had made death notifications before, but they never got easy. Nor forgotten. “Give me her contact information and I’ll visit her.”
“I’d like to come along, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure. Ready?”