Читать книгу Cold Case Murder - Shirlee McCoy - Страница 11

New Orleans, Louisiana

FBI Headquarters, Missing Persons Unit

At night, if she dreamed at all, Jodie Gilmore dreamed of Loomis, Louisiana—the thick, ugly scent of the swamp in summer heat, the shadowy gloom of stately manor homes gone to ruin, the tension that shrouded the little town. There were secrets there. And demons. Not the made-up kind. The real-life, haunt-you-forever kind. The kind that came from loss and heartache and loneliness. It didn’t matter that she’d left town the day she’d turned eighteen or that ten years had passed since then, Jodie still shuddered every time she thought of the place. The day she had gotten into her beat-up Mustang and headed for wherever the road would take her, she promised she’d never return.

It seemed she was about to break that promise.

“Well? What are your thoughts?” Miles Jordan’s voice held a note of impatience, and Jodie scanned the contents of the missing person’s file for the second time since she’d walked into her supervisor’s office, hoping that this time the words would stick.

Leah Farley. Twenty-eight. Widowed mother of a three-year-old girl. Went missing two weeks after her husband was found dead. Last seen in Loomis, Louisiana.

Jodie set the file down and met her supervisor’s emotionless gray eyes. “It looks pretty straightforward. The woman killed her husband, tried to make it look like a suicide and ran when the investigation revealed the truth.”

“Don’t be so quick to jump to conclusions, Agent Gilmore. As the file indicates, Leah Farley’s shoe was found on the grounds of a house out by the swamplands near a boarded-up tunnel on the porch of a house that once served as part of the Underground Railroad. There was blood on it.”

Jodie didn’t ask what house. She didn’t need to. She knew. Just as she knew every nook and cranny of the town she’d grown up in. What she didn’t know was why her mother had run from it twenty-five years ago. “The blood is probably her husband’s.”

“Like I said, let’s not jump to conclusions.” Miles steepled his fingers beneath his chin and eyed her from across the table. “There’s been a lot going on in Loomis. A couple of murders, an attempted kidnapping. The local PD is investigating, and we’re working in conjunction with them, assuming the incidents aren’t simply a succession of unrelated crimes.”

“Sam Pierce is the lead on this?”

“Right. He’s feeling like the locals would be more comfortable with someone they know. Maybe with you there, they’ll open up and talk a little more.”

“People in Loomis don’t talk. Not even to each other.” The words escaped, and Miles’s lips tightened into a hard line.

“Agent Gilmore, your assignment is to work as liaison between our team and the people of Loomis. Do you have a problem with that?”

“Of course not, sir.” Only six months into her FBI career and still on probation, Jodie couldn’t afford to get a reputation for balking at assignments. Not when she’d worked so hard to get where she was.

“Good. Go home. Pack your things and head out.”

“Now?” That was a million years too soon.

“Yes. Good luck, agent.” His curt nod was a dismissal Jodie couldn’t ignore, and she stepped blindly out the office door. The die had been cast. The decision made. There was absolutely nothing she could do about it. She was going back to Loomis whether she liked it or not.

And she didn’t like it.

She didn’t like it at all.