Trail of Secrets(69)
“Maybe he knew something they didn’t want him telling anyone.”
She picked up her napkin and wiped at her eyes. “Do you think he might have been killed because he talked to me?”
Seth shook his head. “I don’t think a conversation that lasted only a few minutes would have been a reason for him to be killed. He didn’t divulge any secrets, did he? Like who burned his shop down?”
“No.”
“Then I doubt if it did.”
She picked up her plate, walked to the trash can and dumped her food. When she set her plate in the sink, she gripped the side of the counter and stared down for a few moments. “Hope and Herman, two people I’d never heard of before coming back to Memphis, and my heart is breaking for both of them. It’s so unfair. What harm could a young woman and an old man do to anyone?” She turned back to Seth. “Do you think we’ll ever find out the truth about either one of their deaths?”
Seth wanted to reassure her, and he knew that’s what she wanted, too. But he had worked the Cold Case Unit long enough to know that some cases were never solved, and some families never received the answers they wanted. “I don’t know, Callie.”
She brushed at her eyes with her fingers and nodded. “I think I’ll go upstairs. Tell your mother good-night for me when she comes home.”
Before he could say anything, she hurried from the room and ran up the stairs. A few minutes later he heard her bedroom door close, and he sat back down at the table. He glanced down at his plate and discovered his hunger had disappeared.
He pushed the plate away, rose to his feet and walked out the door into the backyard. With his hands thrust in his pockets he stood underneath the night sky and gazed up at the stars twinkling above. Pictures flashed like a slideshow in his mind—a homeless man whose face he couldn’t see as he walked down the street pushing his cart; Dan lying in a coma, still in a hospital bed; Hope’s lifeless body on a medical examiner’s table and Callie walking away from him two years ago. So much tragedy. All of it had impacted his life, and he didn’t have a clue what he could do about any of it. Suddenly he felt alone. “God, have You left me? Why can’t I find the answers I need?”
Than an answer welled up in his heart as a Bible verse came to mind. Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world.
Seth closed his eyes and smiled. The answers were going to come, and from the way his heart was beating, he didn’t think he had too long to wait.
* * *
Seth still felt hopeful the next afternoon when he delivered Callie to the front door of the Midtown Mission. He fought back the uneasy feeling he had about her continued presence at the shelter.
“Be careful,” he warned for perhaps the fourth time since they left home.
She laughed and opened the door. “I will, Seth. Don’t worry. You’re going to be just around the corner. If I need you, I’ll call.”
“Be sure and do that,” he said as she closed the door and walked toward the shelter entrance.
He waited for a few moments to see if she looked back out the door. When she didn’t, he shook his head and drove down the street. Why was he so jumpy today? Ever since last night he’d had this thought that it wasn’t going to be long before he had the answers he’d been helping Dan try to find for years.
He pulled around the corner, parked in the same spot from the previous day, and settled back to wait for Callie to return. The clock on the dash displayed 4:50 p.m., and he suddenly remembered he’d forgotten to call the data entry clerk at the TBI office today to ask if there’d been any hits on Hope’s DNA.