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Sleep thou, sleep, and away with thy pain.
Sleep, O sleep in the guidance of guidance,
Sleep, O beloved, the rest of all rest.
25. MEGHAN
Salt Lake Valley, Utah
6 months before
I decided not to attend my own funeral.
My parents both made the drive from Wyoming to retrieve what little remained of me. Detective Domanska had already interviewed both of them over video chat. When they arrived at the morgue, she met them there and stood vigil while my mom signed the release forms with shaking hands.
It hurt to see my parents. Almost as much as it hurt them to see me.
I wanted to tell them that I was okay. That I loved them. That it wasn’t their fault it had happened while they were on their trip. That I’d found Grandma Rosie. That someday they’d find me again, too.
But for now, I couldn’t tell them anything.
And I couldn’t stay with them.
There was no going back. I was still here for one reason and one reason only.
* * *
Ninety-five percent of the tips that trickled in through the tip line were obvious duds.
Detective Domanska followed up on the remaining five percent herself.
Some were simple cases of mistaken identity. Just guys who looked really similar to the low-res profile photo on MatchStrike. I felt sorry for them.
Others gave me a distinctly sick feeling. One, a line cook who lived about three blocks away from Gracie’s, agreed to meet us at his home. I watched Detective Domanska’s hand go to her hip, a few inches from the holster of her gun, as he welcomed us inside with a smile. A girl from MatchStrike had called into the tip line. He’d gotten way too aggressive at the end of the date, grabbing her arm when she told him she was leaving early.
He wasn’t the guy we were looking for, though. His alibi was solid: He’d been at a party with at least a dozen witnesses for the entire night. But there was a flicker of something familiar in his eye as Detective Domanska interviewed him. Like he wasn’t really surprised that he was being interviewed—but didn’t anticipate anything to come of it.
* * *
Three days after the tip line went live, we got a message from a woman who spoke so quickly that it was hard to tell what she was saying at first. Detective Domanska listened to the message twice. The woman rattled off an address just outside Salt Lake. Her friend’s husband worked there, she said. He looked just like the photo she’d seen in the newspaper.
“His name is James,” she said, then hung up without giving her own name.
Detective Domanska looked up the address. It was one of those enormous shared-suite buildings that housed dozens of offices. “Dromo” was the name of the company in the suite number the woman had given. She drummed her fingers on the keyboard as she stared at the screen. Then she headed for the patrol car. It wasn’t a great tip, but there was something about the woman’s voice.
When we walked into the office suite, an older receptionist with kind eyes and a tight gray bun greeted Domanska. “How can I help you?” she asked, smiling. She glanced at the detective’s badge. “Everything okay?”
“I’d like to speak with one of your employees,” Detective Domanska began.
In my peripheral vision, I saw someone come around the corner, toward the reception desk.
“James Carson,” Domanska finished as the receptionist laughed and called out to the man who had almost disappeared into the office.
“Speak of the devil, he’s right here.”
The shock and disgust rippled through me. The computer on the receptionist’s desk suddenly froze as the lights flickered once, then twice.
Nobody seemed to notice.
