Dying Memories Read Online Free Page A

the fuck leaked Hawes’s statement to him.
    “Come on, Detective, I can’t tell you that. If you want to insist on asking, I’ll have to tell you it came from a bystander.”
    “Fuck you it did, there weren’t any bystanders close enough to hear what she said.”
    “Again, if you’re going to insist, let’s just say that one of them could read lips. Maybe even had a pair of binoculars, or at least opera glasses.”
    There was a silence over the other end, and while Bill waited for a barrage in response to his ludicrous claim, he checked his emails. One of them had as its subject ‘ insight into Gail Hawes and her mystery daughter’ , with the field showing where the email came from left blank. Bill opened up the email. The message said:

    You need to speak to Janet Larson. 418 Pleasant Street, Arlington. No thanks necessary. Just happy to help.–yer pal, G.

    The street address given matched Gail Hawes’s apartment building. At the bottom of the email was a link to a newspaper article from a Raleigh, North Carolina newspaper. Boxer had said something, but Bill was too distracted to pay attention to what it was. He clicked on the link while asking the detective to repeat what he had said. Instead of the detective trying to tear Bill a new one for not giving up his source, Boxer was asking Bill what he thought.
    “About what?” Bill asked, still too distracted from what he was looking at. The story that the link took him to was from three years earlier, and was about an eleven year-old Smithfield girl named Jenny Larson whose body was discovered left in a ditch. His pulse quickened as his first thoughts were that Gail Hawes had had a daughter after all and that the baby was adopted by Janet Larson. As he scrolled through the article and saw a picture of Jenny’s parents he realized that wasn’t the case—that this was something entirely different. Janet Larson looked like she could’ve almost been a twin of Gail Hawes.
    “What the fuck do you think I’m asking about?” Boxer growled angrily, interrupting Bill’s thoughts. His gruff voice showing some embarrassment, Boxer added, “Did you find anything that pointed to Hawes having a daughter? Maybe a kid that she gave up for adoption?”
    “I don’t think that’s what happened,” Bill said. “I couldn’t find anyone who remembered her being pregnant.” As he talked he scanned the article. At the time it was written there were no suspects for the girl’s murder, and it suggested that Jenny Larson had also been sexually abused with death caused by strangulation. The article had a picture taken several months before Jenny’s murder with her in a girl scout uniform, and as Bill looked at it his voice died in his throat. She was as thin as a stick, dirty blond hair, a shy smile, and near toothpick arms and legs. Bill stared silently at the picture for several seconds before looking away and asking Boxer whether they’d sent Hawes to Bridgewater yet for a psychiatric evaluation. “If you haven’t you probably should,” Bill added.
    “I don’t believe I asked your opinion about that,” Boxer said flatly, and then the connection went dead as he hung up.
    Bill had no idea who G was, and he forwarded the email to the Tribune’ s computer guy to see if he could get him a return email address. He reread the newspaper article, then did a search for more recent articles concerning Jenny Larson’s murder. He found one from a year ago which was about how the chief suspect for the murder, a John Gandre, was killed in an alleyway behind a bar. Bill got on the phone to the Smithfield police, and without too much trouble tracked down the investigating officer, who told him they had little doubt that Gandre had killed Jenny but the problem was they could never get enough evidence to arrest him. “Eventually justice caught up to him,” the detective told Bill.
    “You’re sure he was your guy?”
    “Yep.”
    “No other suspects?”
    “None. We closed the