Page 44 of Kiss Her Goodbye (Frankie Elkin #4)

A LIAH’S TRADITIONAL BOLT LOCK RENDERS Daryl’s high-tech gadget useless. His lock-picking skills, however, quickly get the job done. As someone who leads a fringe lifestyle, generally populated by other shadowy sorts, I have no idea how people living in the straight and narrow accomplish anything.

“What are we looking for?” Daryl wants to know.

He’s back to being his dapper-clad self, a suit and tie being one of the best camouflages for a life of crime.

He’d already given me the requisite lecture that I should be in bed.

I’d given him my standard refusal to take it easy. We’re both now over it.

“Something personal,” I inform him. “Family photos, correspondence, Dear Diary, that sort of thing.”

He gives me a look.

“Yeah, I know.”

I’ve searched many places in my time. But generally, my ransacking involves the home and belongings of someone who’s gone missing and, more important, that I’ve never met. This, on the other hand, feels intrusive, borderline icky.

Daryl shoulders the load like a true B the backgrounds of the shots appear more spartan, the subjects younger and in dated outfits.

My vision isn’t the best, so I teach him the tricks I know.

Instead of looking for a subjective family resemblance, study physical details that can’t easily be altered—the space between a person’s eyes, the shape of their mouth, the contour of their cheekbones.

“How do you know all this?” Daryl asks, scrutinizing each picture.

“Work mostly cold cases, remember? Often involves age-progressed images, especially when the missing was originally a child. Can’t look for a seven-year-old face ten years later. Must fast-forward physical appearance accordingly.”

Daryl shakes his head. “Sad work.”

“It is and it isn’t.”

“You find dead people,” he states bluntly.

“Their story still matters. Do you want to be the little kid who grows up hearing her mother ran away, or do you want to be the little kid who learns her mother never came home due to an accident that sent her vehicle to the bottom of a lake? Either way, I can’t bring Mommy home.

But the difference of that narrative for her daughter… ”

Daryl nods. “All right, using your expertise… This older group photo. The women are all wearing head coverings, which makes it harder, but I think that’s Aliah as a little girl, next to her mother and sister. Meaning the older couple in the middle—”

“Aliah’s grandparents?” I ask.

“Yeah. With a layer of aunts and uncles, then cousins.”

“Her cousin’s son,” I murmur. “She mentioned that he died when Kabul fell. How many cousins are we talking about?”

A pause as Daryl counts. “At least fourteen. And most are young, like Aliah. Meaning their parents could’ve still had more.”

Big families. Nageenah had commented that Afghans lived in large families and all were welcome…

“Only Aliah’s mother emigrated with her two daughters.” I think about it, at least as much as I can through the pounding in my skull. “The family units on either side of Aliah’s… can you take a close-up shot with your phone? Even among relatives, we gravitate toward the people we like best.”

“You think these are the siblings closest to Aliah’s mother; meaning also the cousins closest to Aliah and her sister?”

“Gotta start somewhere…”

Daryl snaps away with his phone. Sets down that picture, finishes scanning the room. “Hang on, another group shot.”

He pulls it down from the top shelf. This one contains noticeably fewer people while definitely having been shot more recently. I glance at it, nod slowly. Family reunion at least one, if not two, decades later. Daryl sighs, practices his new facial identity skills.

“Okay, got the two siblings that were on either side of Aliah’s mother in photo one, plus their now grown-up kids, many with older children of their own.”

I’m trying to picture a family tree in my head. If Aliah is now in her fifties, her first cousins would also be around her age. Meaning their offspring would be the official next generation of older teens, young adults. University aged, such as Sabera.

Daryl rattles off the age-appropriate options. Of the ten second cousins, four are male. One probably too young, leaving us with three candidates.

He brings me the photo, points out the figures in question.

Three young men, dressed in Western garb.

Good-looking kids, no doubt about it. Thick, dark hair, broad shoulders, lean forms. I try to figure out which one of them screams activist, but honestly, they all look like hope to me.

Now, apparently one of these young men is dead, while the other two live under a regime that hates them for their taste in wardrobe alone.

The sadness hits my concussed brain hard. The huge waste of it all. What is it about humans that we can’t get out of our own way? There’s a classic observation about crabs in a bucket—none of them can escape because anytime one of them makes progress climbing out, the other crabs pull it back down.

I think only humans can recognize such behavior in crustaceans, without catching the irony of our own self-destructive history.

“Names on the back?” I ask at last.

Daryl takes apart the frame. “Not big on notations,” he confirms.

He snaps more photos of the young men; then we return to our rifling of Aliah’s personal possessions. Pictures are good, but personal correspondence, a beautifully hand-scripted journal, containing real stories, motivations, understandings, would be even better.

We search every drawer, cabinet, and closet in the living room, home office, and master bedroom. No such luck. Which leaves us with…

Both Daryl and I stare at her personal computer.

“Email correspondence,” he states.

“Fucking internet,” I gripe. “Has ruined everything.”

“Luddite?”

“Traditionalist.”

He takes a seat. “Know her email address?”

“Yes, but I’m assuming her account is password protected. Isn’t everything?”

“Give me a sec.”

“You have another electronic gizmo? Or, are you secretly a master hacker?” I’m genuinely enthused for either possibility.

Daryl gives me a look. “No. However, most people can’t remember all their passwords, meaning…” He gestures around the office. “Let’s do some digging.”

A documented code or master sheet of codes. I’m on it.

Except the room is starting to spin, and I’m just so damn tired, and is that a stapler in the drawer or a murder weapon? I don’t know anymore.

Daryl: “Got it.”

Me. “Huh?”

“Sticky note, under the keyboard. Works every time.”

He logs in as Aliah. I collapse on the floor, where I can gaze up at the white ceiling and identify shapes in the floating clouds…

Sheetrock… clouds. My mind drifts. I think of my father, his lopsided grin that was both welcoming and a sign that he was already three sheets to the wind.

Compared to my mother’s grim-faced expression as she returned late from her second, third, fourth job.

Did they love me? I want to think so, but even now, I recognize they were two adults very lost in their own problems. They loved me in their own ways, I think, which means, basically, when they managed to think of something outside of themselves.

Yet another trait I inherited.

“I’m in,” Daryl says. “Now what?”

Which is a truly excellent question.