Baltimore 03 - Did You Miss Me?

He came thundering down the stairs and, following her gaze, looked up.
    ‘Oh my God,’ he breathed. It was pictures. Polaroid pictures. All in neat rows. The bottom row held ten, the middle row ten. And the top row held . . . six.
    ‘Twenty-six.’ Sounds were coming from her throat, whimpering, mewling sounds. She could hear them, but she couldn’t make them stop. Make them stop .
    ‘The one at the very top . . .’ she heard Heather say in a broken voice, ‘is me.’
    Get a hold of yourself . Stop this .
    Daphne closed her eyes, clenched them tight. Pursed her lips and breathed through her nose. Twenty-six, twenty-six, twenty-six .
    ‘Sonofabitch,’ Joseph hissed, shining his light on each photo. When his beam passed over the bottom row she saw Kelly on the far left. Kelly had been the first.
    And next to it . . .  Oh God . Can’t breathe . Next to it was a child. With blonde pigtails, huddled into a corner of the garage, her knees pulled tight into her chest.
    Beckett had taken it the day he told her she had to cook some more.
    Joseph switched off the flashlight, his whole body shaking with fury.
    Heather was crying pitifully. ‘I’m the last one. The last one,’ she kept saying.
    Daphne’s arms tightened around the girl and she began to rock herself, but held Heather so tightly that they rocked as one.
    ‘He took my picture and I couldn’t stop him,’ Heather sobbed. ‘He put it up there. I begged him not to. I begged. But he did it. He did . . . oh God. He did things.’
    ‘I know.’ Daphne soothed out of habit, staring at the photos, no longer able to see any details, but unable to look away. Feeling utterly dead inside. ‘I know what he did.’
    ‘No you don’t. You can’t know. You can’t know.’
    ‘Sshh. I can know. I do know. The first girl was my cousin. Kelly. He kept her down here. I heard it all. The second girl . . . That’s me, Heather. That little girl is me.’

Chapter Twenty-Six
    Thursday, December 5, 2.15 P.M.
    T his is priceless . Mitch had arrived at Beckett’s place in the nick of time. Hurry . Hurry . You can’t miss this now .
    He pulled his Jeep off to the side of the road at the end of the long drive and started to walk through the trees. If anyone saw him, he would say he saw someone that looked like the BOLO description of Beckett and had pulled over to investigate.
    He made his way to the place he’d scoped out weeks before – the place where the trees were cleared in a way that provided an unobstructed view of the garage door. He adjusted his binoculars so that when she came stumbling out, he’d have the perfect view. And now . . . on his smart phone he brought up his webcam app and selected the router connected to Beckett’s stolen satellite dish.
    And . . .  voilà . There was Daphne, sitting next to Heather, applying lip balm, giving her water. Sliding to sit behind her, propping her as she coughed and . . .
    Yes . Daphne was looking up at the Polaroids. All twenty-six of them. This . . . this was the moment he’d been waiting for. When she realized there had been twenty-four more after her and her cousin Kelly. Twenty-four more lives ruined. Ended. Because she’d been a coward. Selfish.
    Make that twenty-five more lives ended. Because Travis Elkhart and his millions hadn’t been enough for her. Because she’d wanted what belonged to someone else. The selfish child had grown into a selfish woman who’d taken his mother’s husband.
    The selfish woman had pushed his mother into despair, so it was only fitting that despair was what was on Daphne’s face right now.
    Mitch wished this moment would go on for all time, but all too soon it ended.
    Several squad cars and an ambulance raced past his Jeep and down the drive, parking near the garage. Dammit . The sudden influx of cops made him nervous. I should go. Now . But he’d waited so long for this moment. Just a few minutes more . EMTs jumped out of the ambulance, unloaded a gurney and disappeared into the garage.
    Three, two, one  . . . And there they were on the camera. Daphne moved away to make room for them and the EMTs carefully lifted Heather to the stretcher. And then it was just Daphne sobbing into her hands. Hope you choke on those tears, sugar .
    The EMTs were leaving with Heather Lipton. Soon Daphne would come out and he’d see her in all of her sobbing devastation.
    The EMTs emerged from the garage and lifted Heather into the ambulance. Heather