Page 15 of The Children of Eve (Charlie Parker #22)

CHAPTER XV

Howie’s proximity to the highway meant that I was back in Scarborough in the time it took the radio to play only a couple of songs, none memorable enough to hum along with or offensive enough to turn off. Once home, I made a mug of instant coffee, took it to my office, and read through the material that Zetta Nadeau had provided about her missing boyfriend. It didn’t amount to much. Riggins had an account with a bank in Portland, but it contained only a few hundred dollars. I could try to have the account monitored, which would reveal when and where any withdrawals were made, but gaining access would be expensive and illegal, and I preferred not to go down that road unless absolutely necessary. The rest of the paperwork related to his employment at BrightBlown and not much else. I searched in vain for a photocopy of his driver’s license, and none of the paperwork, not even the BrightBlown material, included Riggins’s social security number. Either he’d stored the critical material—military discharge papers, birth certificate, photos, his dad’s old wristwatch, a lock of his mother’s hair—back at Zetta’s place and she’d missed it, or he was keeping it elsewhere. I was leaning toward the second option. Like Zetta said, Wyatt Riggins was a man who didn’t like to leave a trail.

Zetta had declined to give the Nokia to me, which was fine. Not much could be gleaned from it anyway, and maybe she was hoping Riggins might call, if only in an effort to establish whether anyone had found it. But I doubted the phone would ever ring again. The Nokia had served its function. It had alerted Riggins to an approaching threat, which raised two issues: first, the nature of that threat, and second, whether it was still heading in this direction.

Because if someone was hunting for Wyatt Riggins, Portland was the last place in which he’d been seen.

IN THE MARSHES, in the moonlight, Jennifer Parker listened. The children were calling out again, the same words repeated like an incantation or a summoning, howling like animals desperate to be found.

no, not that alone , she thought.

Desperate to be reunited.