The Missing

thought of as the whitest, fakest smile in the South.

    With a grunt, Cullen stepped aside. There probably wasn’t any progress, but now was as good a time as any to let the agent come inside. The man was not going to stop trying to bully Jillian, and with Jilly not being there, now was an excellent time to make that known.

    “I don’t suppose you’ve given any more thought to what we discussed,” Jones said as he followed Cullen into the kitchen at the back of the house.

    “Hell, no. I already gave you my answer on that.”

    “You do know, I could take this before a judge. She’s the only surviving victim of a serial killer. We need to find out what she knows.”

    Cullen said, as he’d said a hundred times already, “She doesn’t know anything. If she did, I’d be happy to let her help you. I want that bastard caught. But she doesn’t know anything.” He smirked and added, “And you’re welcome to try taking this before a judge. You ought to know by now that my lawyer is the best around, and she isn’t any more interested in letting you bully Jillian than I am.”

    “Well, just keep it in mind,” Jones said. But his voice was preoccupied. They sat at the table, one on either side, and met each other’s stare levelly. Cullen knew that Jones had a job to do, and he could appreciate the man’s desire to find Jillian’s kidnapper. Jones probably knew that Cullen’s main concern was Jillian’s safety and happiness. The father would do whatever was necessary to protect his child.

    “Is that all you wanted to say?” Cullen asked, making sure the man had nothing else.

    Jones shook his head, a queer little smile on his face.

    Cullen, already silently forming his thoughts so he could lay his cards on the table, didn’t like that smile. “Then why don’t you tell me the rest?”

    “While we were here back in June, one of my agents found a sketchbook of Jillian’s.”

    “She loves to draw. She has a lot of them.”

    “Hmmm. Well, I was particularly interested in this one.” Jones reached into his briefcase and pulled one out.

    “What in the hell were you doing, taking . . .” His voice trailed off as he stared at the sketch pad. He recognized it. The date on the front of it corresponded with the dates when they had been in Atlanta. For no particular reason, he remembered the sketch Jillian had shown him at the airport.

    “The first to disappear.” A young girl, younger than Jillian. Then two others.

    “Disappear from where?”

    “Around.”

    Voice rusty, Cullen asked, “Why do you have her sketch pad?” Instead of answering Cullen’s question, Jones flipped open the sketch pad and asked one of his own. “Care to explain this?”

    He didn’t bother clarifying what he wanted explained, and it wasn’t necessary. Cullen stared down at the sketch, feeling like he had been sucker punched. It was the one from the airport. But it no longer had three kids.

    It had four, and Jillian was the fourth. Still trying to take in that particular shock, he was left floundering as Jones removed something else from the briefcase, three pictures, to be exact. And each picture bore a striking resemblance to one of the faces that Jillian had sketched.

    Jones tapped his finger on the one that looked the oldest. It had that yellowish cast to it, and the background was that fake, woodsy looking backdrop that had been used in a lot of school portraits in the seventies. Her hair was long, parted down the middle—again giving him the idea that the picture had been taken a good thirty years earlier.

    “Her name was Leslie. She disappeared from Birmingham when she was ten. Back in 1974. As of this summer, she was still presumed dead.”

    Something about Jones’s voice made Cullen’s gut knot. “Presumed?”

    Jones acted as though Cullen hadn’t said a word. He pushed another picture toward Cullen. This one was the black boy with the impish smile, and Jillian had captured the mischief in the boy’s smile almost perfectly. “Kendrick. Disappeared from Atlanta in 1982. Presumed dead.”

    Cullen asked hoarsely, “What do you want me to say, Jones? You already know about Jilly. Obviously. But she can’t help you. She’s tried. And I won’t let you traumatize her.”

    “Amy. Disappeared 1992. Perdido Key, Florida. Presumed—”

    “I get the picture. Why in the hell do you have this, and what do you want me to say?”

    Jones leaned back and stared at Cullen. “Your daughter knew