Page 87 of Our Daughter's Bones

“Anthony just texted. He’s got something for us.”

“Yes.” She frowned. “I had to check something.”

She glanced at her phone one last time. Was Sterling sick of her? Was he giving up on their marriage too?

She noticed Nick was watching her closely. She knew her face betrayed what she was thinking. He looked at her with soft eyes and lips pressed in a hard line. She knew what he was asking her silently.

Why don’t you leave him, Mack?

A wail came from the other side of the door.

“It’s just me,” Mackenzie whispered, entering the washroom.

Melody sat on the floor, her back plastered to the tiled wall. Dressed in a green nightgown, she looked wraithlike. Snot slobbered its way down to her lips. She stared blankly past Mackenzie with puffy eyes. There was a cut on her lower lip. Her arms were red with handprints.

Melody blinked in surprise. “Where’s your father?”

“Sleeping.”

She sighed in relief. “Good. You go and play.”

But Mackenzie didn’t move. Her eyes flitted to the purple bruises on her mother’s leg. Melody deftly covered them with her robe.

Melody looked like fragile glass. Caked in her makeup, smiling with the neighbors, there was always a hesitance in her eyes. Like she was waiting for someone to jump and whack her.

“Why don’t you leave him?” Mackenzie asked.

Melody closed her eyes and banged her head against the wall. “It’s complicated, sweetheart.”

“No, it’s not. If he hits you, then you should leave him.”

“I know I should. But I can’t.”

“Why not? I don’t like seeing you like this. He’s not a good person. Is it because you made a vow in front of God?”

Melody’s sad smile waned. “No, baby. If I leave him, he will kill us both.”

Forty-Seven

“Why can’t we talk in your office?” Mackenzie sat across from Anthony in the crime lab’s lounge.

Anthony tilted his head back and squeezed an eyedropper. “My corneas feel plastered to my eyeballs.”

Nick glowered at the vending machine for a long time before punching it. Heads turned at the sharp noise. Skittles dropped from the rack. He retrieved them and shrugged. “What?”

“Have you actually ever paid to use our vending machine?” Anthony asked.

“Of course not,” he snorted and fell onto a chair. “What’s up with your office?”

“I’m getting pest control today—I didn’t know when I arranged it that our caseload was about to jump. I saw a cockroach. You know what that does to my blood pressure,” Anthony said.

“Well, what do you have?”

He sighed and pulled out a thick file. “Not much. But something.” He showed a blown-up picture of the cocktail napkin. “The initial analysis revealed that the blue ink along the border and the blue ink of the logo and the number are different. Took a few sophisticated imaging techniques, but the border is an ultramarine and the logo is Persian blue. We determined the age of the ink—the logo ink is only four years old. The border ink is definitely older.”

Four years old—four years ago, Daphne Cho went missing.

Mackenzie frowned at the picture. “Okay… so someone laser printed the logo and the number on top of an existing napkin. The entire thing isn’t new.”