The Hunted Girls by Jenna Kernan (best book club books for discussion txt) 📕

He offered to go buy them something and she agreed to wait with Molly. Demko headed inside and she took his dog to the strip of grass and gravel so Molly could relieve herself. Afterward, they waited outside the market, in front of the windows, covered with Spanish advertisements. She suspected this was a place serving the migrant pickers that worked on the many farms and groves here.

One handprinted poster grabbed her attention.

The flyer taped to the window included a color photo of a smiling woman with light brown skin, long straight black hair, wearing bright red lipstick on her full mouth. She had a hand on her hip and gazed back at the photographer, her eyes full of mischief. The photo had obviously been touched up, removing imperfections along with personality to give the subject’s skin an unnatural shimmer and making her eyes larger than normal. Below her image were three words.

Desaparecida

Bianca Santander

Desaparecida… as she puzzled the unfamiliar word, she knew. She was already on her feet and heading inside to find Demko.

They had another possible missing person.

Eight

FRIDAY

Demko met her for breakfast on Friday just before eight. Last night, something on an unrelated homicide investigation had pulled Demko from their dinner and she had not seen him again. They’d said good night via text, which was wholly unsatisfactory.

“Missed you last night,” she said.

“Sorry. Did you get the waiver logged as evidence?”

“Gave it to Skogen’s second.”

“Is that Coleman?”

“Yes.” She sipped her coffee.

“Listen, I ran a background check on that woman on the flyer from Belleview, Santander,” he said.

“And?”

“Nothing. She doesn’t exist,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“Illegal immigrant is the most likely explanation,” he said.

“Is that why the cashier at the market wouldn’t talk to us yesterday?”

“Possibly. I don’t like it.”

Neither did she.

“Did you mention it to Skogen?” asked Demko.

“Yes. We spoke by phone last night. He said he’d send someone over to Belleview to look into the disappearance.”

“They won’t speak to the Feds.” He sighed. “I mentioned it to the sheriff.”

“You think they’ll speak to him?”

He shook his head. “I doubt it.”

She picked at her oatmeal, wishing she’d chosen the bacon.

“How is the profile coming?”

“Moving along, now that I have the victims’ identities and some of their timeline.”

“You question Arnold yet?” he asked.

Barney Arnold was the parks’ employee who discovered the bodies.

“He’s coming in for questioning at nine. So I’ll have a better idea after that interview.”

“Should be interesting.”

At the sheriff’s department, Nadine asked Skogen if they had anything on the missing woman, Santander. Until she was located or her disappearance shown to be unrelated, her absence seemed more important than interviews with suspects.

“Who?” he asked.

“The Belleview poster. I mentioned about her—”

He interrupted. “Oh yeah, yeah. No one would speak to my agents.”

“Did she turn up?”

“Unknown. The posters were taken down.”

She frowned. “This might be connected.”

“I can send my team again. But…”

“What?”

“She’s Latina and our two victims were white. Seems unrelated.”

“It’s related until I know it isn’t.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Send a social worker. One who works with migrants and speaks Spanish.”

“A little busy right now.” He thumbed over his shoulder at the interrogation room.

“Okay. I’ll do it.” She lifted her phone.

“You coming in?”

“We’ll observe from here,” she said, the “we” referring to her and Detective Demko.

Skogen’s eyes narrowed on her. But he strode away as Nadine called Tina, asking her to find a social worker who spoke Spanish and was willing to go to Belleview.

“I speak Spanish,” said Tina.

“You can go with a social worker. Not alone.”

“I’m on it.”

Nadine gave Tina the details, tucking away her phone as Skogen entered the interrogation room accompanied by a sheriff and one of his team, Agent Layah Coleman.

Coleman, his second in command, was a tall, slender black woman with close-cropped hair. Today she wore a navy-blue suit with a tapered leg, accentuating her athletic form.

“You pissed off Skogen, not following him like a puppy,” whispered Demko.

She had. “Not his hound.”

He gave her hand a quick squeeze and cast her a warm smile. The tingle at his touch darted up her arm and she smiled back. It was finally Friday and she planned to be certain that she and Clint carved out some alone time.

In the interview room, Skogen took his seat facing Arnold.

“You check Arnold’s priors?” Demko asked.

“Yes. DUIs don’t bother me as much as the charges of indecent exposure.”

“One including a sexual act,” he said.

“Masturbation. Plea deal struck.”

“Sexual offenders’ registry?” asked Demko.

“Nope.”

Nadine stared at the man. He was short, fit and dressed in his parks uniform, including a tan ball cap.

He began tapping his foot before the first question. Although he showed no other fidgeting, his stutter grew worse the more he was pressed to go over the details of the discovery.

Their request that he begin at the discovery and take them backward from that point flummoxed him.

“I told you b-before, she was lying th-there naked. I could see her perfect ass under the branches.”

Nadine found this description of a corpse both odd and disturbing. She jotted the word perfect on her pad.

“You previously said the body you discovered was not covered with debris.”

His eyes rolled up and to the left as he thought.

Nadine leaned forward, interest piqued.

Arnold shifted in his seat. “I mean under th-th-the tree’s b-branches. She wasn’t covered with nothing.”

To Nadine this looked like a possible attempt to conceal his mistake. The use of a double negative could be seen as rendering the sentence a positive. A woman not covered by nothing was covered with something. Was that an unintentional blunder or just indicative of a poor education?

“Did you touch her body?” asked Skogen.

“No. I just nudged her a l-little to see if she was real.”

So he did move her. By the blood pooling, Juliette noted that the second body had been repositioned after death. Postmortem, blood moved downward with gravity. The lividity—purplish discoloration on the skin—should occur at the lowest point, which in this case was the victim’s side. Yet she was found on her stomach. Was that Arnold’s doing? Nadine reminded