Page 27 of Concealed in Death

“No.” And here, in a mother’s voice, a mother’s face, the grief after fifteen years was as fresh as it might have been at fifteen seconds. “No.”

“Here, Tien. Here.” Samuel simply drew his wife down, into the big chair with him, hugged her. “You’re going to tell us our illusions are finished, that the hope we’ve clung to all this time is gone. That our little girl is never coming back to us.”

There was no easy way, and a fast and clean cut was best.

“Dr. Penbroke, we discovered several remains of females between the ages of twelve and sixteen. We believe we’ve identified one of them as your daughter.”

“Remains,” Tien echoed.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m very sorry. You could help us confirm her identity. Did your daughter have any childhood injuries? Did she break any bones?”

“She fell,” Samuel said. “Airboarding in the park. A bad fall. She broke her arm, just above the elbow.” He clutched his own. “She was eleven.”

“Peabody.”

At Eve’s unspoken order, Peabody drew the hard copy of the reconstruction from her file bag. “We were able to approximate her face.”

Samuel reached out, took the picture. “Linh” was all he said.

“It’s my baby. It’s our baby, Sam. But the hair’s wrong. She had long hair, beautiful long hair. And... and her nose, the tip of her nose turned up just a tiny bit. She had a little beauty mark at the top right corner of her mouth.”

“Tien.”

“It should be right!” Tears fell in silent rivers down her face, but she pushed on. “It should be right. She was very proud of her hair!”

“We’ll see that it’s right,” Eve told her. “We’ll make it right.”

“Twelve, there were twelve,” Samuel murmured. “I heard, this morning, in the city you found twelve. She was one of them?”

“Yes.”

“When? How? When did she die? How did she die? Who did this to her?”

“I can promise you, both of you, we’re doing everything possible to find out. I can tell you that at this time, we believe she died about fifteen years ago.”

“All the time.” Tien turned her head, pressed her face to her husband’s shoulder. “All the time we looked, and prayed and waited. She was gone.”

“This is very hard, I know,” Eve continued. “Can you tell us why she left home, what happened?”

“She was very angry. Young girls have an angry time, a time they’re unhappy and rebellious. She wanted a tattoo, wanted to pierce her eyebrow, wanted to go with boys, not do her schoolwork or chores. We let her have the little nose stud—a compromise—but she wanted more. It’s a time, a phase many go through,” Tien said, with a plea in her voice. “They grow out of it.”

“She wanted to go to a concert,” Samuel explained. “We said no, as she’d skipped her classes, twice. And had behaved poorly at home. She said we were unfair, and hard things were said by all. We restricted her from her electronics as discipline. It was difficult, but...”

“It was normal,” Peabody put in.

“Yes. Yes.” Tien managed a smile through the rain of tears. “Her brother and sister had both had this stage. Not as dramatic as Linh, but she was always more passionate. And she was the youngest. Perhaps we indulged her more.”

“On the morning of September twelfth,” Samuel continued, “she didn’t come down for breakfast. We thought she was sulking. I sent her sister upstairs to get her. Hoa came down, told us Linh wasn’t upstairs, that some of her things were gone, and her backpack.”

“First we searched the house, then called friends, neighbors. Then the police.”

“Did she have friends in the city?” Eve asked. “In Manhattan?”

“Her friends were here, but she liked to go to the city. She loved it.” Tien paused to compose herself again. “The police looked, and we hired a private investigator. We went on screen, offered rewards. They found, finally, she’d taken the subway into the city, but they couldn’t find her.”

“She never contacted you, or any of her friends?”

“No.” Tien wiped at the tears. “She didn’t take her ’link. She’s a very smart girl. She knew we had a parental tracer on it, so we’d know where she was. She didn’t want us to know.”