Mariah Stewart - Last Look

“Dorsey, Steven Decker.”

The SAC she’d worked for after graduating from the academy.

“Hey.” She brightened, happy in spite of herself to hear his voice. He’d been a great boss, fair and smart and always accessible. She’d missed him. It had been what, two years since they’d last been in touch? “It’s good to hear your voice.”

“Yours, too. Listen, Dorsey, I wish this call was strictly social, I’d love to catch up, but there’s something that’s come to my attention that I think you need to know.”

“Make it good news, please.”

“Wish I could, but I’m afraid there’s no way to clean this up.” His voice was sober, serious.

Not a good sign.

“What?” She frowned and lowered herself onto one of the chairs, a bad feeling snaking its way around her insides.

“I just caught a report that was coming in from HQ. Case in Georgia I thought you should know about.”

“Go on,” she said cautiously. It wasn’t like him to hedge.

“The body of a woman was found a couple of weeks ago. The ME’s best guess is she’d been dead less than eight hours.”

“Cause of death?”

“From the preliminary report, looks like multiple stab wounds to the torso, exsanguination.”

“Sexual assault?”

“Not sure.”

“O-kay…” She dragged out the word. And I need to know this because…?

It wasn’t as if she had no corpses of her own to deal with. Georgia wasn’t her territory, so what was Decker’s point?

Decker sighed. “The woman had no identification on her, so the locals faxed her description to other agencies in the surrounding area hoping someone would be able to match her to a missing persons report.”

“No TV, no newspaper reports?”

“Nothing. The body was found on Shelter Island, which is about as big as your thumb, and is just an inch south of the line separating South Carolina and Georgia. No local paper. Nearest city is Savannah.” He cleared his throat. “The police in Deptford-Georgia, right over the border-had been sitting on a report that appeared to be a match. Seems a woman had come in to the station a few weeks back, said her roommate had been missing since the night before. Said they always kept in touch with each other throughout the night-both of them are working girls-so when the girl didn’t return by morning, the roommate knew something was wrong. I got the feeling the Deptford cops didn’t invest a lot of time looking for her-hookers come and hookers go. The roommate apparently had gone in to talk to the cops several times, but not much was done. No APBs, no mention in the news, nothing.”

“And…?” Dorsey felt impatience rise within her chest.

“And…I’ll cut to the chase. The victim has been positively identified as Shannon Randall.”

“Not possible.” Dorsey felt herself relax. This had nothing to do with her after all. “Shannon Randall died in 1983. The state of South Carolina executed her killer, remember? This has to be a mistake, Decker.”

“Shannon Randall’s family was notified, Dorsey. Her sister went to the morgue and identified her. It’s Shannon.”

“Someone’s playing a nasty hoax on them. Not funny.”

“The dental records match. Fingerprints from the body matched fingerprints on items from Shannon ’s room that her mother had kept all these years. They’re running DNA from the hairbrush the mother sent down. The results won’t be back from the lab for at least a week, you know how that goes. But the sister was positive once she saw the birthmarks. The body is definitely that of Shannon Randall.”

“It has to be a mistake,” she insisted, a buzzing starting inside her head.

“If a mistake was made, it was made in 1983,” he said softly.

“If this is true…” She shook her head, swallowed hard. “If this is true…if this is really Shannon Randall… the Shannon Randall…”

She took a deep breath, blew it out again, still trying to gather her thoughts.

“If this is true, who’s going to tell my father?”

“Well, we were hoping you could give us a hand with that…”

The ringing phone sounded so far away, farther still if one pulled a pillow over one’s head.

Which is what Special Agent Andrew Shields had done in an effort to muffle the incessant noise. Finally, recognizing the futility of his efforts, he rolled out from under the pillow and felt along the bedside table for his cell phone.

He blinked several times to clear his vision. He picked up his watch and blinked again. It was barely five in the morning. There was only one person who’d be calling him this early. And odds were, it wasn’t going to be a social call.

“Shields.”

A cheery voice greeted him. “Good morning, Andrew.”

He knew it. John Mancini. His boss. Andrew sat up and ran a hand over his face.

“Morning, John.”

“How’s it going?”

“Not bad, for the middle of the night.”

“Oh, did I wake you?”

“Very funny.” Andrew covered a yawn.

“So I was looking over the assignments last night, and I noticed you’re working on the Gilchrist case.”

“Right.”

“I need you somewhere else.”

Andrew waited. He’d been half-expecting this. The Gilchrist case wasn’t exactly low profile, and he knew several of the other agents working the case were less than happy when he’d been assigned to join them. Less than happy? Who was he kidding? A couple of them looked downright pissed to see him show up on the job that first day.

Andrew wasn’t sure he could blame them.

“Andy?”

“Yeah-I’m listening.”

“I need you to pack for maybe a week.”

“Where am I going?”

“ Shelter Island, Georgia, to start…”

“What’s there?” Andy asked.

“A public-relations nightmare, if what I’m hearing is true.” John sighed.

“What’s this all about?”

“It’s about a twenty-four-year-old case that just came back to life.”

“Want to fill me in?”

“In 1983, the Bureau got a call to lend a hand with an investigation in Hatton, South Carolina. One of the daughters of the local preacher had gone missing two days earlier, and all indications were that she’d been murdered by a young guy she knew from town. The Bureau sent a team with one of its up-and-comers-Matt Ranieri-to lead the investigation.”

“Ranieri. He’s the guy on TV every time there’s a big case ongoing. He’s like Mr. Crime on the talk show circuit.”

“Right. After the Randall case-that was her name, Shannon Randall-Ranieri landed a lot of TV gigs.” John cleared his throat. “Anyway, the young kid was arrested, the case went to trial even though the body had never been found-revolutionary down there in that day-and the kid was convicted on circumstantial evidence.”

“What evidence?”

“A shirt covered with her blood was found under the seat of his car, along with her school assignment book, and an eyewitness saw him driving her out of town. She was never seen again.”

“And the boy’s explanation?”

“The kid admitted he picked her up that afternoon, but said she was bloody when she got into his car, that someone had worked her over, and he’d given her the shirt to wipe her face on.”

“He say who beat her up?”

“He maintained he asked, but she refused to tell him. Says he drove her to a park, she went into the ladies’ room and cleaned up, and then he drove her home. Says she asked to get out a few blocks from home, so he let her.”

“And the cops didn’t believe him.”

“They had a witness who said otherwise.”

“Who was the witness?” Andrew asked.

“A friend of the girl’s. Said the guy had a big crush on Shannon, was hanging around her all the time but Shannon wouldn’t give him the time of day. You know the rest.”