Page 28 of The Change
For a moment, all Nessa could hear was Jordan’s breathing. “Oh my God. Does that mean Mandy’s dead?” Jordan finally asked.
“I think so,” Nessa said. “I didn’t find her body. It must be somewhere out in the ocean.”
“Mom.” Jordan was using her no-nonsense voice. “This isn’t what Great-grandma used to do—finding women whose husbands beat them to death. There’s more than one dead girl this time. This sounds like a serial killer. You’re out of your league. Did you tell the police you saw a redhead, too?”
“What was I supposed to say without a body to back me up? What do you think they’d do if I told them I see dead people?”
“Mom. Someone killed two girls.”
Nessa didn’t have the heart to tell her there had been a third girl on the beach.
“Franklin Rees is the detective on the case,” she said. “I’ll give him a call.”
“Franklin Rees?” Jordan repeated cautiously. “The guy who found Daddy?He’sthe detective on the case?”
“Yeah,” Nessa said with a sigh. “He works out here now.”
“You’re joking.” Jordan sounded frightened. “Mama, this is getting way too weird.” She put the phone down. “Remember Franklin Rees?” she asked her sister. “Mama says he works for Mattauk PD.”
Breanna grabbed the phone away. “Is he still handsome?” she wanted to know.
“Oh, Lord, Breanna, you too?” Her mother sighed.
“Sounds like he’s still handsome,” Breanna informed her sister as she handed the phone back.
Jordan wasn’t amused. “I don’t care if he’s Idris damned Elba. Just promise me you’ll tell him about Mandy Welsh.”
“I promise,” Nessa said with a groan.
She downed a second glass of wine before she looked up Franklin’s number. She’d hoped the alcohol would relax her. Instead, her heart pounded faster.
“Nessa,” Franklin said when he answered. “We go years without talking, now I get to hear your voice twice in one day. Everything okay?”
“I’ve had two glasses of wine and I’m a little bit tipsy,” Nessa confessed. She wasn’t sure what was happening to her. First she’d taken up cursing, and now she’d started drinking alone. There was no telling what she’d end up doing next.
“I’ve found a few bodies in my day,” he responded. “Sometimes a drink or two is the only thing that helps.”
Nessa’s spine stiffened. She hadn’t meant to get personal. “What’s the latest on my girl?” she asked.
Franklin sighed. “Fentanyl overdose,” he said. “There were signs she’d had intercourse shortly before she died. Odds are, she was a sex worker who took one pill too many while she was out with a client. When she died, he didn’t know what to do, so he dumpedher body on the side of the road. It happens around here—a lot more often than any of us like to think.”
“How often?” Nessa asked.
“A few times a year,” Franklin said.
“InMattauk?”
“The general vicinity.”
The statistic was hard to swallow. “Then why haven’t I heard about it?” Nessa demanded.
“Because the deaths of drug-addicted sex workers rarely make the news,” Franklin said. “That’s not how I’d like it, but that’s how it is. You’re a nurse, Nessa. You know I’m right.”
She did. Nurses know better than anyone just how dark the world gets. “Okay, but that’s not what happened to my girl,” Nessa said. “She was clean.”
“The test showed high levels of fentanyl in her system.”
“Then someone drugged her,” Nessa shot back.
