The Complete Colony Series. Lisa Jackson

was dark by the time they took Hudson’s truck to the Laurelton police station where a tech swabbed both their cheeks, labeling each vial carefully. Becca couldn’t see how giving her DNA could help. There was no way there could be any trace of DNA from whoever had killed the girl, be it Jessie or someone else, after all these years, but hey, if that’s what McNally wanted, fine.

      When Becca and Hudson stepped out of the room together, they encountered McNally himself standing by the station’s front doors and looking toward someone who was just heading out to the parking lot: Renee.

      “Hey!” Hudson yelled, hurrying after his sister. Becca would have followed but McNally said softly, “Have you got a minute, Ms. Sutcliff?”

      No, Becca thought, but she hesitated, watching Hudson approach his sister. Renee’s body language said she was in a hurry and didn’t want to wait. Reluctantly, Becca turned her attention back to the cop and followed him down to a cubicle in a large open room where other detectives were seated at desks, talking on phones, typing reports.

      She sat carefully in the chair next to his cluttered desk and noted a picture of a blond boy of about six, his big smile showing a spot where he was missing a baby tooth—a school picture. So McNally had a kid. Somehow that surprised her.

      The detective gazed at her for a long moment, enough to make Becca feel uncomfortable. She wondered if this was one of those police tactics meant to intimidate criminals into spilling all. She felt like blabbing her fool head off, and he hadn’t yet asked her a single question.

      “Was Jessie pregnant when she disappeared?” he finally inquired.

      “Pregnant?” Becca could feel her eyes widen in surprise, her lips part.

      “The bones of a fetus were found with the dead girl’s remains.”

      Becca felt blood rush to her head, roaring through her ears. Pregnant? Jessie? “I…don’t know,” she heard herself say. Was that what Jessie had been trying to tell her? Was that the secret she wasn’t supposed to speak of?

      She felt faint and she gazed past him to Hudson who, as if called by her urgent need, had appeared in the door to the large room. He strode purposely in her direction, and she swallowed hard as she thought that the baby McNally had told her about was undoubtedly his.

      What the hell was this? Hudson wondered, seeing Becca’s white face and the shoulder she’d turned toward the detective, as if she were trying to block him out.

      “I’ll let you know when I’m coming back from the beach,” Renee had called after him.

      Hudson had hesitated. He’d asked her to postpone her trip. With the strange nursery rhyme notes, Glenn’s sudden death, and her sense of persecution, Hudson wanted his sister to stay within reach. But she was on a mission of her own, apparently, and wasn’t listening either to him or the feeling that something was very, very wrong.

      More people were leaving the station, a group of them, and Hudson had felt like he was swimming upstream as he pushed his way to reach Becca and McNally. But he found them, Becca seated at the cop’s desk in the Homicide Department.

      “Can I help you?” A tall, African American cop with a name tag that read Detective Pelligree stepped in his way.

      “Lookin’ for McNally. Found him.”

      Pelligree watched as Hudson made his way to McNally’s desk where Becca sat, white as a sheet, her eyes wide. Oh, hell, was she about to have one of her spells again. “You okay?”

      “No,” she was saying to the detective, shaking her head, and Hudson saw that her hands were curled into trembling fists.

      “What’s going on?” He looked to Mac for an explanation.

      “He asked if Jessie was pregnant,” Becca said. “There was a baby…The bones of an unborn child…were there, in the maze, too.”

      Hudson stared at Mac. “You think Jessie was pregnant?”

      “The girl in the maze was.”

      “So that’s why you’re doing the DNA swabs,” he said slowly, thinking. “If I’m the baby’s father, then it’s a pretty sure bet the mother is Jessie.”

      McNally nodded.

      “Jesus H. Christ.” He couldn’t believe it. This had to be wrong. Had to be. “Then…then the remains aren’t Jessie’s.” But even as he said the words, he knew he could be mistaken.

      “Was that the trouble she was talking about?” Becca asked softly.

      “She would have told me.”

      “Would she, Mr. Walker?” McNally asked and Hudson had no answer.

      Gretchen stalked toward Mac like an angry jungle cat, meeting him at the station’s front doors as he came back inside after watching Hudson Walker and Rebecca Sutcliff leave. They were a couple, no doubt about it, and they’d both offered up their DNA. Actually, he’d had no resistence for the request even from that bastard of a lawyer Delacroix.

      Which was interesting.

      But he didn’t have time to think about it as now he was facing the she-cat, all ruffled, claws extended, fangs showing. God, she was wearying.

      She met him at the door and walked with him back to his desk. “You leave me with the tech while you do the interviewing?” Her blue eyes shimmered with annoyance.

      “You could have come to the memorial service.”

      “You remember Johnny Ray, the meth cooker? And the dead body found at his lab?”

      “It wasn’t homicide. It was an accidental explosion. Johnny Ray at his baking worst. I didn’t think I needed to be there.”

      “You did need to be there, rather than running after those rich boys you wanna bring down so badly. The Preppy Pricks,” she harrumphed. “You’d better hope the press never gets wind of that or they’ll crucify you.”

      Not that he cared.

      “As for our meth boy, the sheriff’s department is trying to take over this one, but Johnny Ray’s place is in Laurelton’s lovely city limits.”

      Gretchen’s mockery was because their resident meth problem, Johnny Ray, had a tract house on the edge of the city, where railroad tracks vied with Scotch broom and scraggly volunteer pine trees, all making a hardscrabble living out of rocky dirt. Perfect place for a meth kitchen, successful until Johnny Ray tried to start making pounds of crystal meth rather than mere ounces for his own use. Then he got on the PD’s radar when the neighbors grew alarmed at the smells emanating from the place. With Johnny Ray’s lack of focus, it was only a matter of time before someone stopped paying attention and the place exploded.

      Mac just wasn’t interested. Drug use and abuse amounted to a large percentage of the homicides he investigated, but there was no mystery to the method, means, or motive. It was more an exercise for the legal system: were they guilty of murder, manslaughter, or simple stupidity, and the only question that remained after they were apprehended was for how long they should be put away.

      “Did you ask them about the notes?” Gretchen asked, looking out the window toward the station lot, seeing Hudson Walker’s beat-up truck rumble away.

      “I called everyone. The only one who didn’t get one was Zeke St. John, but it might still be coming because Scott Pascal got his a day late.”

      “And they’ve all given DNA samples.”

      “Yep.”

      “They were all mailed from the same post office, right? In Sellwood. Maybe they were sent at different times,” Gretchen said, though she was looking past him, her tone distracted. She couldn’t care less about the notes, though Mac was fascinated by the mind that would put them together.

      “What are they for?” he asked aloud, thinking about Mitch Bellotti’s