“Let’s go inside and sit down,” Shea suggested and Shannon realized why he’d been checking his watch eve
ry two minutes. This had been a setup. He’d suggested she come home to change, just so they could all work her and try and get her to change her mind. Great. Just like when she was a kid, the youngest Flannery of six, and the only girl.
“Make it quick,” she suggested as they filed in and sat stiffly at the kitchen table. Half a dozen tiny fruit flies hovered over the basket of apples and bananas.
“The investigators found something odd in the fire,” Shea began. “At the point of origin, where obviously some kerosene had been poured there was a pattern in the burn path and it was placed upon a slab of concrete, something that wouldn’t burn.”
“Meaning?” she asked, not liking the sound of this.
“That whoever started the fire made this impression on purpose, knowing we’d find it.” Shea reached into his back pocket and extracted a small tablet. “The trail was in this shape, see…almost like a diamond, but part of it is cut off.”
She stared at the design and shook her head. “So?”
“So it’s the same kind of pattern that was on the birth certificate you found on your porch. The original’s with the lab, but here’s a copy and look, the charred edges are very similar to the burn pattern we found in the shed. I’m betting the paper was sprayed carefully with some kind of invisible retardant so that it wouldn’t burn completely and would retain this shape.” He pointed at the two images.
Shannon’s throat went dry as she saw the copy of her baby’s birth certificate, now placed on the table near Shea’s drawing.
“Not identical,” he said, “but similar.”
Her heart knocked as she stared at the symbols. What kind of macabre prank was this?…No, not a prank. A warning. A statement. A bold, taunting statement. “But there’s something in the middle of the burn pattern,” she said, pointing to Shea’s tablet. “A number six…or nine.”
“Definitely six,” Aaron said. “If we use the birth certificate as the template, and assume that the printing on it is upright, not upside down, then the burn pattern should have the same form, with the cutoff peak of the diamond at the top. Like this.”
Despite the sweltering heat trapped in the little house, Shannon’s blood seemed to turn to ice as she stared at the two images: two blackened threats somehow tied to the child she hadn’t seen since birth. “What does it mean?” she asked in a whisper. Her three brothers, who looked so much alike they were oftentimes confused, were staring at her, their blue eyes dark with anger, their thin lips even more compressed, their square jaws set and hard.
Shea said, “We hoped you’d know.”
Slowly she shook her head. “I have no idea.” Fear skittered down her spine. “Who would…?”
“We’ll find him,” Aaron insisted, but she saw no such assurance in Shea or Robert’s eyes.
“Maybe this is something we should show to Travis Settler.” Her stomach tightened painfully and her mind spun, trying to figure out how the adoptive father of her child could have anything to do with the fire, with the charred missive left on her porch. “It seems like more than a coincidence that he’s in Santa Lucia, my daughter’s missing, and part of her birth certificate was left on the porch on her birthday.”
“He was in Oregon when the birth certificate was left,” Shea said.
“You’re certain?” Aaron asked.
“Looks that way. We’re double-checking with the Oregon State Police and the local sheriff.”
“But he did just happen to be here when the fire broke out,” Robert said.
“That he did.” Shea nodded.
Shannon squared her shoulders. “So then, there’s no reason to wait, is there? Let’s go talk to him.”
Chapter 12
The last person Travis expected to see on the other side of his door was Shannon Flannery, but there she stood under the overhang of the porch that surrounded the rooms of the motel. Her face showed evidence of the beating she’d taken—cuts and swelling, some mottled bruising that no amount of makeup could hide, though it didn’t look as if she’d bothered. She was surrounded by three men who dwarfed her, three men who, though not identical, appeared enough alike that it didn’t take a geneticist to figure out they were brothers. Two of the six-footers were the same men he’d seen escort her down the courthouse steps during her trial; the third obviously another Flannery sibling.
“Travis Settler?” she asked, green eyes narrowed as she craned her neck to stare him full in the face. Her arm was in a sling and she stood stiffly. He remembered the gash in her side, the wound on the back of her head. There were also small pools of blood visible in the whites of her eyes. “I’m Shannon Flannery, but you already know that, don’t you? We met at my place, after someone torched it.”
“That’s right.”
“I asked you your name but you didn’t give it.”
“There wasn’t time.”
“Right,” she said, uninterested in hiding her cynicism.