Page 23 of The Missing Half

“That sounds great.” Sandy’s meals are the only home-cooked ones I get.

“Good. We’ll get something on the calendar, then. In the meantime, take these.” She hands me the Tupperware. “The staff won’t know what they’re missing.”

“For real?” There have to be a dozen brownies inside, but I’m not about to refuse.

She smiles. “They’re rocky road.”

Her rocky road brownies have been a favorite of mine since I was a kid, and because neither she nor Brad likes marshmallows, I understand that she made them with me in mind. “Thanks.” I pull out my phone to check the time—I must be running late for the bus—but I’m distracted by a flurry of texts from Jenna.

“Everything okay?” Sandy says.

I look up, startled. “Yeah. Fine. I just—I have to go. Sorry.”

“Of course,” she says lightly, though her expression is shadowed with concern. She pulls me into another hug that I return too briefly.

“See you tomorrow, Nic,” Brad says, but I’m already slipping out the door.

The moment I’m alone, I click on Jenna’s messages and our text thread fills my screen.

Holy Shit,the first one reads.

Steve McLean is all over the internet. Lauren only knew the tip of the iceberg.

Call me!

Chapter Twelve

The Grand Rapids police station hasn’t changed much over the years, and walking into it is like walking into an old forgotten nightmare. Around every corner is another memory I’d prefer to keep buried. That’s the room where I sat, a cup of weak tea in my hands, as Detective Wyler took down my statement about the day Kasey went missing. That’s where some uniformed officer got my fingerprints so they could compare them to the prints found in our car. That’s the door to the bathroom where I once ran to throw up in the middle of an interview. Wyler and I had been talking about something relatively benign when it happened. I’d been telling him how Kasey always took care of me when we were kids, making me breakfast on the weekends when our mom was asleep, too hungover to remember to feed us, and suddenly my stomach lurched. When I came back, there was a soda and vending machine chips on the little table, which he slid over to me. Adrenaline, he said, was a fickle thing.

Wyler did eventually call me back, though it took two more voicemails to get his attention. When he did, two days after I first reached out to him, I told him Jenna Connor and I were looking into our sisters’ cases and we had a few questions. Would he mind sittingdown with us sometime within the next week? It was obvious he was surprised to hear from me, and he seemed skeptical about the visit, but he agreed. “I have a window this Friday afternoon,” he said. “You can swing by the station then.”

Jenna had to use a sick day, and I asked Brad if I could come in this weekend instead and, as I knew he would, he said yes. So, here I am again, in a place teeming with bad memories. But this time, I’m not alone. I have Jenna by my side now, and we have ammunition in our pockets.

Jenna did her due diligence when researching Steve McLean, and what she found makes Lauren’s account of him seem almost juvenile. According to the internet, McLean has racked up a hefty list of offenses over the years. He was charged with intimidation and multiple instances of domestic violence against his ex-wife, and there are protection orders against him filed by two other women. Most disturbingly, he was charged with rape but took a plea deal before it ever went to trial. That seems to be his legal MO: In almost every case, he took some kind of plea that lowered the charges to misdemeanors. Jenna says the offenses are the kind police and judges chalk up to an inability to have decent relations with a woman, nothing criminal. But the implications are clear.

And these are just the things for which he’s gotten caught. Which makes me wonder: What else has he done that he’s gotten away with?

On top of all this, Jenna found that McLean’s family owns a small piece of land in Kentucky. I wouldn’t have thought anything of this if it weren’t for what Wyler told my family all those years ago: that the man the police were looking for most likely owns or is familiar with some sort of property where he brought Kasey after the abduction.

I’ve never been in Detective Wyler’s office. Back when I came to the station during Kasey’s investigation, he didn’t have one, and I was always led to the conference rooms. But he’s the sergeant in charge now, and an office came with the promotion, though it’s dinkier than I would’ve imagined. It’s not that different from Brad’s, actually, just a small, run-down room drowning in files.

“Sorry I wasn’t able to meet earlier,” Wyler says after he shakes hands with me and Jenna. “Things around here have been busy. In fact, I’m feeling a bit guilty you girls came all this way. A new case fell into my lap the other day, so I’m afraid I don’t have much time.”

Once, Kasey had been his number one priority, and a phone call from me would have made him drop everything. I know I shouldn’t blame him for not still working on a seven-year-old cold case, but I do. I resent waiting days for an audience with the man who did nothing but let us down. Briefly, I think about the family in Wyler’s “new case,” the people he doesn’t wait to respond to. I envy the hope they undoubtedly have. I pity them for what’s coming.

“And as I mentioned over the phone,” he continues, “I’m no longer the lead on your sister’s case. It was passed on to another detective a few years ago when I took the promotion.”

“We know,” Jenna says. “But it’s you we wanted to see.”

He nods. “I also feel it’s prudent to add, since both of you are here, that while we always theorized Kasey’s disappearance was connected to Jules Connor’s, Jules’s case was not within my jurisdiction, so I can’t speak to it with any authority.”

“It’s Kasey we’re here to talk about.”

Jenna offered to spearhead this interview, which was fine with me. She was going to ask open-ended questions, she said, let Wyler do most of the talking. Most important, she—we—were not going to mention Steve McLean’s name until we had to. McLean is our trump card, the only card we have.

“Well,” Wyler says, “you have my attention.”

“We understand that the police have to keep some things under wraps during an active investigation, but now that it’s been so long, we were wondering…were there any leads you didn’t tell Nic’s family about?”

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