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He carried the box to his office.
—
No tape or any other sealant. He lifted the lid.
Less than a quarter full. Papers and smaller objects that slid around like crumbs in a can.
Both of us had been holding our breath. I felt as if I needed to exhale willfully.
When we saw what was on top, he said, “Interesting.”
I said, “I’d start at the bottom.”
CHAPTER
40
Lowermost in the box was a two-inch-by-three-inch rectangle. One of the sliders.
State of Texas picture identification card issued to Persephone Sue Gilmore, age eighteen.
The picture was the adolescent face of the woman we’d known as Meagin March. Pallid, puffy, the hair long, stringy, medium blond. A few zit spots, but despite all that, markedly pretty.
Uncomfortable being photographed: pale eyes had shifted to the right in response to the flash.
Dated twenty-three years ago. Meagin March had done a lot of dissembling but she’d been truthful about her age. Given that, I wondered if she’d used her real name on the license. Considered the uniqueness of the name and figured she had.
On the I.D. was an address in Midland. Milo looked it up. A long-defunct oil field.
He studied the image some more. “Jumpy eyes. Reminds me of a mugshot.”
I said, “If I’m right, she’d been in a type of prison. Persephone was raped by Hades, her uncle. Some say also by Zeus, her father. Give that name to a girl and your intentions are clear.”
“Or she called herself that as kind of a victim statement.”
“Or that but my guess it’s the name she began with.”
He thought about that, tensed up and moved on to the next item.
Oklahoma driver’s license issued twenty years ago to Martha Erika Johnson. Same face, longer hair, platinum blond now, and complicated by flips and waves. No more pimples but the cheeks had hollowed and the eyes remained wary.
Address in Tulsa. Milo matched it to a truck stop. A call confirmed it had been a truck stop for half a century.
I’d spent the same time checking obituary files, had quickly found a grave for Martha Erika Johnson, age two at the time of her death in Oklahoma City. No hint of cause on a white marble gravestone, just the smiling, engraved face of a chubby-cheeked tot.
Our Little Angel, Taken From Us Far Too Soon.
Identity Theft 101: exploit the dead, the younger the better.
Next: an official United States of America Social Security card issued to Martha Erika Johnson and a pay slip from The Ol’ Oak Bucket Family Restaurant in Tulsa.
Then, a surprise: a diploma from Tulsa Community College dated seventeen years ago awarding Martha Erika Johnson an associate in applied sciences with a major in physical therapy assistance.
I said, “With the card, she got a job and enrolled part-time.”
Milo said, “Then this—a better job, American success story.”
He’d plucked out a plasticized, clip-on badge. Employee I.D. listing Martha E. Johnson as an asst. physical therapist at Bright Life Rehabilitation Center in Boise, Idaho. By the approximate age of twenty-five, she’d cut her hair short and business-like and had tinted it brown. Gone were the facial hollows and the blemishes, in their place, a somewhat blank demeanor barely brightened by a faint, off-center smile.
