Page 41 of Bad Mother

Sienna looked up at her, feeling an internal click as though a puzzle piece had just slid into place. “That would jibe with the state of the mummified body we just found,” she said before looking back at Xavier. “Great work. Anything else?”

“Look at the printout behind that one,” he said, pointing to the papers in her hand. Next to her, the phone rang, and Kat turned away from them as she took the call. Sienna looked down to what Xavier had indicated. On top of the stack of papers was a photo of the school he’d just mentioned. Underneath that was the “missing” poster that had been created in the wake of Sheldon Biel’s disappearance. He was a reasonably good-looking man with what appeared to be a genuine smile. But a feeling of deep distaste came over her as she looked from his buttoned-up shirt to his wire-framed glasses, the description “Danny Boy” had provided of his abuse running through her mind. She glanced over the rest of the information on the poster and then moved it behind the third printout, which was a news article detailing an update on the case. The photo that accompanied it was from a press conferencewhen the man had first gone missing. In it, a woman stood in front of a microphone, a police officer on one side of her and a little girl on the other. The girl appeared very serious, if not frightened.Solemn eyed.Sienna’s heart tightened. The article detailed the unfortunate fact that child pornography had been found on the missing man’s computer. The investigation was taking another turn, and police were questioning whether his disappearance was related to his illegal proclivities. The words from the writing she’d recently read about the case stalling came back to her.

Whether that was due to a lack of leads or because the police quietly decided the world was better off ifhestayedmissing, I didn’t know. All I cared about was that my “tutoring” sessions had ended.

The final printout was a photo of Sheldon Biel standing with a small group of students. The tagline beneath the photo identified them as the Copper Canyon High School Chess Team. He was wearing khakis, a button-down shirt, and a sports coat with patches on the elbows.

Sienna felt that trill again, though stronger.

Kat hung up the phone and turned back to them. “That was Art, the medical examiner,” she said. “He’s only given the body a precursory glance but can confirm that there are what appear to be knife marks on the bones.”

“That fits too,” she murmured, thinking of Danny Boy’s description of Mr.Patches’s violent murder. Sienna held the pictures she’d just looked at up for Kat to see.

Kat took them in before her gaze met Sienna’s. “Well, hello, Mr.Patches,” she said.

Sienna looked at Xavier, who was watching them expectantly. He was a cute kid, tall and kind of awkward, with smooth brown skin and watchful eyes with long lashes that curled upward. “I pulled everything I could find on him,” he said, “but there might be more.”

“Keep looking, if you don’t mind,” Kat said. “But you might have just broken this case wide open. Excellent work.”

The way the kid’s smile burst forth made Sienna grin as well. “Sure. Okay, yeah, will do,” he said, turning and all but skipping back to the small metal desk he’d been designated over in the corner of the room.

“Sheldon Biel, you dirty, dirty man,” Kat murmured, looking more closely through the printouts Sienna had just handed her.

“It’s him, isn’t it?” Sienna said, but she didn’t really need to ask. It had to be.

“Yes, and dental records will confirm if the body we just found belongs to this man as well, but if I was a betting girl, which I’m not, by the way—gambling makes me nauseous—then I’d say absolutely.”

“If this is our Mr.Patches, Kat, we’re only one degree from Danny Boy himself.”

“Which means those letters aren’t fiction, Sienna. He’s telling his story. Those things really happened. At least... some of it did.”

Sienna tapped her chin for a moment. “If thisisMr.Patches, he gave him to us. Literally. He had to know Mr.Patches’s identity might lead to his own. So why would he do that?”

“I don’t know. But I do know that we need to go to the school and get his class list from the year he disappeared,” Kat said, grabbing her purse. “One of those students might very well be named Daniel and have had a father who disappeared as well.”

“Agreed. We’ll ask Xavier to check and see if Reva Keeling or Bernadette Murray had any connection to Copper Canyon, which will free us up to meet with Bernadette’s sister if she’ll see us too,” Sienna said, grabbing her things as well and following Kat to the door. She had a strong feeling they were about to make another move forward on this elaborate game board Danny Boy had set up for them to play.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Sienna opened the yearbook on top of the short pile in her lap as Kat turned on the car, blasting the air conditioner. There was a large hand-drawn rendering of Copper Canyon High School on the inside spread, and Sienna took a moment to look at it. “It’s a nice school,” she said, glancing up at the corner of the building they could see from where they were parked. The inside had been nice, too, as far as old parochial-style buildings went. Well built. Nicely maintained. Obviously updated where needed. The district was located in an upper-middle-class area where the residents paid significant taxes and were proud of their academic successes.

The collective outrage over learning a purveyor of child pornography had taught their best and brightest must have been significant. But they hadn’t read Danny Boy’s writings. They didn’t know the half of it.

Sienna and Kat had met with the principal and explained as much as they needed to about what they were looking for. The man had been there a little over ten years, but that still wasn’t long enough to have known Sheldon Biel, a.k.a. Mr.Patches. But the principal had given them several yearbooks that they were now looking through.

Sienna started flipping the pages of the first one, from the year Sheldon Biel had gone missing, letting out a frustrated breath when none of the boys in the class pictures was named Daniel. “No such luck,” she muttered.

“Danny might not be his name, though, just like Mr.Patches wasn’t his. And Smiles doesn’t give us anything specific to go on. Did you expect him to make it easy?” Kat asked.

“I guess not,” Sienna said, her gaze moving from one boy to the next as though she’dknowhim the moment she saw his photo. But none of them stuck out at her for any particular reason. They all looked soyoung, and it broke her heart to know that a boy who—if he wasn’t one of these particular children—had looked just like them had been so horrifically abused. Her eyes moved over their faces, counting the number of boys versus girls. “Twenty boys and ten girls,” she murmured.

“We’ll have to look into each of the boys,” Kat said.

Sienna nodded, leafing through the next book in the stack. They’d figured Danny Boy might not have had his photograph taken the year Mr.Patches had gone missing. But perhaps he’d had one taken in one of the consecutive ones. Sienna had looked up the year the periodic table of elements was taught as a topic and found that it was in the ninth-grade lesson plan, which matched up with the grade Mr.Patches taught. “Danny Boy had a rough year that year,” Sienna had told Kat. “But maybe he was more up for picture day as a sophomore or a junior or senior.”

“Here,” Sienna said, a note of excitement in her voice as her finger hit on a sophomore boy from the following year. “Daniel Forester.” She tipped the book Kat’s way, and they both studied the boy for a moment. He was blond with a sharp chin and an overall elfin look. His grin was big and lopsided and like nothing Sienna would have pictured, but... well, she couldn’t let her own assumptions lead the way.

“Could be,” Kat said, but there was doubt in her inflection. “He looks a little bit too...”

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