Absolute focus.
“I can’t find anything new on the case,” Cate muttered, still studying her phone. “I know Phillip would have told me if it’d been solved. I just sent him an email asking for an update.”
There was a sharp knock on the door, and Deputy Tessa Black let herself in the room. “Where is it?” she asked without greeting anyone. Bruce pointed, and Tessa stepped closer, her gaze locked on the bone on top of the box.
“Are you sure it’s real?” she asked.
“Yes.” Henry had no doubt.
“Age?” asked Tessa.
“Three,” said Cate, still focused on her phone.
“That’s assuming it belongs to who you think it does,” said Tessa. She lifted a brow at Henry, silently asking his opinion.
“Age two to five,” he said. He’d done his own Google search to age the mandible by eruption of the teeth. “There’s a lot of leeway.”
“You’re sure this is related to your old case?” Tessa asked Cate.
“I’m ninety-nine percent positive this is from my old case. See the tiny silver crowns on her front teeth? And the silver fillings in the back? During the investigation, I talked to the dental student who did that work on Jade before she vanished. The FBI has dental x-rays of the girl’s mouth before and after the work was done. She had rampant tooth decay from the mother putting her to bed every night with a bottle.”
“I’ve seen toddlers with that before,” added Henry. “Sometimes they have to sedate the child to do the dental work. The parents are always upset to learn that what they thought was a comforting measure to help get their kid to sleep resulted in pain and a lot of dental work.”
“The mom, Kori, asked the dentist if it would be better to put diet soda in Jade’s bottle at night,” Cate said. “The poor guy was stunned. He said he had to tell her a dozen times that water was the only acceptable liquid.” Cate gave a sad smile. “Kori never finished high school and was very naive in many ways.”
“But there is a chance this bone could be from a different child,” Tessa stated.
Henry grimaced. “It’s possible but highly unlikely. Why would someone go to the extreme measure of finding a mandible of the right size with extensive dental work and deliver it to Cate if it wasn’t about her old case?”
“Who knows why people do anything these days,” said Tessa. “Who delivered it to Shiny Objects?”
“There’s no delivery label on the box,” said Cate. “I think it was dropped off by someone who didn’t want to be seen. Marsha assumed it was from a legit delivery service. And no, she doesn’t have cameras.”
“Hardly anyone on the island uses cameras,” said Bruce.
“I use them,” Henry stated firmly. A break-in at his medical clinic had once resulted in the loss of important police evidence. He’d installed cameras soon after. He wasn’t just the sole doctor on the island; he was also the coroner.
“Why wouldn’t they want to show their identity?” asked Bruce.
“Good question,” said Cate. “Someone feels nervous contacting law enforcement. Or they’re involved or don’t want to answer questions . . . but they want some truth to come out.”
“Start from the beginning, Cate. Tell me the whole story of this little girl,” Tessa ordered.
Cate pulled out a chair at the table and sat, taking a deep breath. “It’s been seven years this coming September. It was a kidnapping by the father. The mother came to us—”
“She went directly to the FBI?” Tessa asked sharply.
“No.” Cate pressed her lips together as she thought. “The case started with the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office. A young woman reported her three-year-old daughter had been kidnapped by the father. The three of them lived together in a small house near Oso, Washington, which is about an hour north of Seattle. It’s not really a town; it’s too small for that. It’s more like a community . . . the type of area that has a general store, a gas station, and not much else. The FBI was contacted two days after Jade Causey disappeared.”
“Why so long? I thought the FBI immediately jumped on missing-children cases,” Bruce asked.
“They do, but the sheriff’s office was familiar with the dad, Rich Causey. They assumed it was a simple domestic dispute and that he hadn’t gone far with his daughter.”
“Assumed.” Tessa looked furious.
“Exactly,” said Cate. “The mom, Kori Causey, had tried to convince them that Rich had no intentions of returning the girl, but no one believed her.” Cate grimaced. “Kori was young—only twenty-five—and Rich was nearly twenty years older. One of the responding deputies had been a drinking buddy of Rich’s and assured the other law enforcement that Rich would never leave his wife or hurt his daughter.”
“But the daughter was sick,” Henry pointed out. This was the part of the story from the news article that he couldn’t wrap his head around. “And Rich didn’t believe in modern medical care—especially for children.”
“He kidnapped his own daughter to keep the mother from taking her to the doctor?” Tessa looked stunned.
“I’ve come across it a few times,” said Cate. “Especially in some of the more rural areas. Either modern medicine goes against their faith or they simply don’t understand it, so it’s easier to simply refuse.”
“Who isn’t willing to try everything when their kids are ill?” asked Tessa.
“Too many people,” answered Cate. “Anyway, from Kori’s description back then it sounded like Jade might have had measles. Runny nose with a fever, and then a rash showed up.”
“Isn’t measles something kids normally get?” asked Bruce.
Henry tightened his jaw. “It didn’t used to be normal thanks to vaccinations, but we’re seeing a resurgence of it. One to three in a thousand will die from it. Maybe that doesn’t sound like many children, but it’s too many when it’s your child.”
“How sick was Jade?” asked Tessa.
“Kori had said that Jade wouldn’t wake up at one point,” continued Cate. “The child was still breathing, and she could feel a heartbeat, but she couldn’t get the girl to respond. Kori was about to take the girl to the hospital, and her husband refused to let her go. Kori said she was on her knees pleading, and it made him angry. They’d already been arguing for a few days about Jade’s condition. Rich claimed Jade would pull through and that Kori just needed to wait it out.” Cate paused, blinking rapidly. “Kori had told me that she knew her daughter would die even if they made it to a hospital. She simply knew.”
“What happened?” asked Bruce.
“By the time we got the case and I met with Kori Causey, Rich and Jade had been missing for two days,” said Cate. “Kori was hysterical one moment and then would fall into deep despair the next. She kept begging us to find Jade but was convinced we never would. She said Rich knew how to vanish into thin air, and that is exactly what he did.”
Henry gestured at the article. “This was published three weeks after the kidnapping. It said you had no leads.”