Trail of Secrets(8)

                “I don’t understand. What kind of case would he need help with? He’s not a policeman anymore. He’s a judge, and judges don’t investigate cases.”

                Seth stood up and paced to the far wall before he turned and walked back to stand in front of her. Dan had mentioned several times that Callie knew nothing about the case he’d worked on for years because he knew she would be upset he was investigating a murder. It had been something he didn’t share with many of the people in his life. Seth happened to be the exception to the rule. But it was time Callie knew, especially if that case was the reason Dan was in surgery fighting for his life.

                He dropped back in his chair and nodded. “I guess it’s time you learned about the burden Dan has carried for years. He knew you would try to persuade him to give up if he told you about it, so he never did.”

                Callie clasped her hands in her lap and swallowed hard. “What kind of case is it?”

                He spread his hands in a helpless gesture and shook his head. “I can only tell you what Dan has told me. This case dates back to when he was on the police force.”

                She sat up straighter, her eyes wide. “On the force? But that was years ago.”

                Seth nodded. “Twenty-five years, in fact. One morning he was called to the banks of the Mississippi River just south of downtown where a woman’s body had washed up. She looked to be in her early thirties, and she’d been shot. There was no identification on the body, but Dan felt sure that as pretty and as well dressed as she was, someone would report her missing.”

                “Did they?” Callie asked.

                Seth shook his head. “When he didn’t hear anything, he went by the medical examiner’s office and learned she didn’t fit the description of anyone who’d been reported as missing in Memphis. That made him wonder if she was from somewhere else. He asked about her personal effects, and they gave him an envelope that only contained a locket she was wearing. Inside was the picture of a little boy who looked to be about five or six. Then he asked to see her body. That’s when something strange happened to him.”

                “What?”

                “He said he stood there and looked down at her and there was something about her face that reminded him of your mother.”

                “My mother?” Callie’s question was barely more than a whisper.

                “Yes. He said your mother had died a few weeks before, and you had just come to live with him. You’d cried the night before for your mother, and he wondered if the little boy in the picture in the locket was crying for his mother. So he made a pledge to the dead woman that he wouldn’t rest until he’d found her family and returned her body to them. When no one ever came forward to claim the body, Dan bought a burial plot and a tombstone and had the woman buried at his own expense. For the past twenty-five years, every time he read or heard about a missing woman, he’d check it out to see if it was his victim, but it never has been.”

                “He had her buried and a tombstone placed at her grave?”

                “Yes.”

                “What name did he put on the tombstone?”

                “Since he didn’t know her name, he decided to give her one. He thought she deserved more than Jane Doe. She needed a special name, so he put the name Hope on her tombstone.”

                “Hope?”

                “Yes. He said it was a name that fit his feelings toward her—hope that he could return her to her family. Through the years, every time he grew discouraged and ready to give up, he’d visit her grave. Seeing that name on her tombstone would remind him that somewhere there had to be somebody hanging on to the hope that their wife or mother or daughter would be returned to them. And he’d promise her again that he wouldn’t give up. He would find her killer, and he’d return her to her family.”