Page 73 of Little Stolen Memories

“Yeah, me too.”

I was hoping for something more, a clue to point me in the right direction. Looked like I wouldn’t find any here.

“You have any suspects yet?” he asked.

“A few.”

“Anyone stand out more than the others?”

“You know how it is with these cases. I always seem to stumble before I get to the truth.”

“You always get there in the end. Hey, I’m not sure how much help it would be to you, but Foley dropped off a box of evidence from the old investigation. Wanna look through it while you’re here?”

I nodded and walked with Silas to his office.

He pointed to a box sitting on top of a chair next to the printer and said, “There you go.”

I slid some gloves on, approached the box, and lifted the lid. Reaching inside, I pulled out several evidence bags. As I looked at the labels, I came across samples of the clothes the teens had been wearing that day, along with other things like soil, fibers, and hair. I set them to the side, and something caught my eye—a small baggie at the bottom of the box. I grabbed it out and held it in front of me.

“They filled out information on the location, but there’s no description on that one,” Silas said.

The location information indicated the bag’s contents were found in the soil next to Owen’s body.

“They may not have known what it was when they bagged it, but I do,” I said.

“You do?”

The bag contained two tiny gold fragments, which at first glance would be hard to identify. But given what I’d recently learned, I knew what I was looking at.

“They’re pieces off of a gold chain,” I said.

“How do you know?”

I told him about the gold chains the boys had been given, and my theory about them being removed from their necks after they were murdered.

If I was right, and I believed I was, the killer had taken Owen’s chain, and he may have taken the others too.

But why?

CHAPTER 31

I was sitting across the street from Ray and Valerie’s house, hoping Ray would leave the house so I could speak to Valerie alone. At the three-hour mark, I started getting antsy. There was at least one more stop I wanted to make today, and I was beginning to wonder if I was wasting my time.

I’d passed the minutes checking in with Hunter and Simone and catching up with Foley. Hunter had found out some things about Ray’s past. He had nothing before he met Valerie, and he worked minimum-wage jobs, never staying in any one position for long.

In my conversation with Foley, he let me know he’d tried calling Danny Donovan about an hour before, but Danny hadn’t answered. He’d also tried Danny’s sister, Dorothy, and got the same result. I wanted to believe the story Danny had told me, and I wanted to believe he was innocent. But the fact neither of them had answered their phones or returning their calls was suspect. Before the call ended, Foley let me know he was sending Whitlock to Danny’s residence to check in.

As my concerns about Danny grew, I started second-guessing myself. Perhaps I’d been naïve, buying into the story he’d told me about stumbling across the bodies and being too afraid to talk to the police. If he was guilty, he’d done a good job of fooling me so far.

The day took a turn in my favor when I caught a glimpse of Ray walking out of the house, twirling a key ring around his fingers. He was dressed like he had a date with the gym. I watched him walk to his pickup, adjusting his rearview mirror after he hopped inside.

Although I’d lowered myself down in my seat, for a moment, I thought he’d seen me. He’d backed out of the driveway and was idling in the middle of the road for no apparent reason. He reached for what looked like a pack of gum, popped a piece in his mouth, and put the truck in drive.

After he rounded the corner, I waited a few minutes just in case he came back for some reason. When it appeared I was in the clear, I got out of the car.

No one came to the door when I knocked, but there was a vehicle in the driveway, suggesting someone was home.

Looking around, I spotted a doorbell.

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