Page 61 of The Missing Half

I step forward to take her hand.

“Nice to meet you,” she says. “Why don’t you come on back to my office.”

Her office is a glorified cubicle, made up of one true wall and three partitions. Boxes and picture frames lay scattered around her computer. Folders of paper burst at the seams.

“It may look like I’ve just moved in,” she says, settling behind herdesk and gesturing at the chair opposite her for me to sit. “But this is the organized mess of four long years.”

She smiles, and I return it. I’m determined to make a good impression. Without Jenna to smooth things over for me, I know I’ll have to play nice.

“How can I help you, Nic?”

I’ve prepared for this—I had the weekend and a two-hour bus ride to think about what I want to ask—but without Jenna here, I feel jittery and unmoored. “Detective Wyler may have told you,” I say, “but I’ve been looking into my sister’s case.”

“He mentioned it.”

“And, well, I was wondering if you’ve uncovered anything new since you took over.”

Detective Aimes stares at me for a moment. Then she leans back in her chair, clasping her hands across her middle. “Let me ask you something, Nic. What do you think happened to your sister?”

In all the years since Kasey went missing, I have been asked countless questions by countless members of law enforcement, yet never before have I been asked what I believe. The question is so unexpected, for a moment I think I must have misheard her. “I don’t know,” I say eventually.

“I’m not sure I believe that.”

“Well, I guess I’ve always assumed what the police told us from the start. That whoever took Jules Connor took Kasey.” I see Wyler sitting on our couch, telling us to give up hope that we’d ever find Kasey alive. Even after all this time, the memory still forms a lump in my throat. “And I think whoever took them killed them too.”

Detective Aimes nods. “Any theories about why? Why the two of them, I mean.”

My mind flashes to that conversation with Jenna in her truck last week. “I think there’s a chance Jules and Kasey were involved in something that made them targets.”

“Something like what?”

“I don’t know exactly.”

“What makes you think that, then?” she says.

I hadn’t been planning on telling her any of what Jenna and I havediscovered over the past month. I know I accused Brad and Sandy of complicity in murder for doing just that, so I suppose on top of everything else, I’m also a big fucking hypocrite, but after that conversation with Wyler, I lost my faith and trust in the police. And yet, Detective Aimes has already proven herself to be vastly different from him. Perhaps she’ll continue to.

So I tell her. I tell her about how Jules and Kasey both went through periods of acting unusual. I tell her about Jules moving to Osceola and Kasey asking for money the night she disappeared. “I think it’s possible,” I say when I’ve finished, “that whatever they were wrapped up in could have involved Steve McLean. Jules worked with him right before she started acting off, and Kasey worked near him just before she did. Plus, I know he has a track record.”

“Back up,” Detective Aimes says. “How do you know your sister was asking for money? This is the first I’m hearing of that.”

I hesitate. I don’t have any lingering loyalty to Brad or Sandy at this point, but I can’t quite get myself to believe that they’re directly responsible for Kasey’s disappearance, and I’m not ready to take away the only people my dad has left in his life. More important, I want Detective Aimes focused on why Kasey needed money, not the affair. So I tell her I know about the ten thousand because Kasey asked our family friend for it. When Detective Aimes asks for the family friend’s name, I tell her the truth.

“And you think that this all points to Steve McLean?” she says.

“Well…it doesn’tnotpoint to him.”

She cracks a half smile. “Wyler told me you’d bring him up. McLean.”

“I know Wyler doesn’t think it was him,” I say, heat blistering my neck. “I know he thinks McLean’s alibi is—”

“Nic—”

“I know he thinks it’s solid,” I continue over her. I realize that I’m no longer playing nice, but I don’t care. I’m sick of the police not listening to what I have to say about McLean, sick of the way they defend him for seemingly the flimsiest of reasons. I don’t know that he’s the one who took Kasey and Jules, but I at least have the rightto voice my suspicions about him. “I know Wyler ruled him out a long time ago—”

“Nic—” she says again.

But I barrel through. “If you’d just—”

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