Page 26 of Jar of Hearts
“We adopted him.” Amelia Bowen’s voice is soft and distant. “Tyson and I met in college, but we were so busy, we thought we’d wait to have kids until we were at least thirty, and just enjoy our time together.”
Tyson Bowen stops pacing. “Amelia, don’t—”
Kaiser raises a hand. It’s better to let her speak; she’ll be more responsive and apt to remember something if she’s allowed to think things through in her own way. The first question he’ll ask, of course, is about Henry’s biological mother, now that he knows Amelia didn’t give birth to him. He has the phone in his hand, the censor-bar photo of the female victim just a tap away.
But not yet.
“All our friends seemed to be waiting to have kids, too,” Amelia continues, “and it was nice to go out for dinner and drinks, to be twenty-six, and then twenty-eight, and then twenty-nine, and not have to worry about sleepless nights and babysitters and the expense of having a child. Then we turned thirty, and it still wasn’t the right time, because we decided we wanted to be further along in our careers before slowing down to become parents. We worked hard, both got promoted, and then we realized we needed the right house, in the right neighborhood, in a good school district. And then suddenly we were thirty-five, and we started trying to get pregnant, only to find out we’d waited too long and now we couldn’t. Four rounds of IVF, two miscarriages. We put ourselves on the adoption list, waited two years to get picked. And when we got word that Henry’s biological mother selected us, it was the greatest day of our lives.”
The disconnect in her voice fades. She pauses. The loose bun at the top of her head is askew, and she reaches up and plays with an errant lock of brown hair dangling down one side.
“We were in the delivery room. The first time I held him, a minute after he was born, he instantly felt like mine. It didn’t matter that he had just come out of another woman’s body. He was mine, and I felt it, and I know Henry felt it, because he looked up at me and we both just knew. And I thought, why the hell did we wait so long? Why did we think everything had to be perfect? Because children are perfect, and everything falls into place when you hold your child in your arms. All the things you think you’re going to worry about don’t matter.” She meets her husband’s gaze. Tyson Bowen is standing in the corner, watching her with tears in his eyes. “And now he’s gone. I don’t understand. I don’t understand. I don’t understand.”
She leans forward, her chest racked with sobs. Her husband sits down beside her and holds her tightly.
“I’ll give you a few minutes,” Kaiser says, but neither of them acknowledge him. Right now, it’s just them, wrapped around each other, their grief wrapped around them.
He slips out of the room, indicating to the grief counselor that she can go on in. The Bowens’ child is dead, and while there is a senseof urgency to find out what happened to him, he can allow them ten minutes to cry. He heads to his desk down the hall and logs into his computer.
“Report came back on the lipstick used to write on the kid’s chest,” Kim says. She’s seated at her desk, directly across from him. “I saw you were busy with the parents and didn’t want to interrupt you.”
“I see that,” he says, clicking on the report. “Shit, that was fast.”
“It’s because I had them narrow it down,” Kim says, and he looks up. “I asked them to check if it was a brand made by Shipp Pharmaceuticals.”
“Why would—” he begins, and then stops as he makes the connection. “Oh. Right.”
Shipp Pharmaceuticals, Georgina’s old company. And that, right there, is why he appreciates Kim. For every obvious detail she misses, there’s one she finds that nobody else would possibly have thought of.
“My hunch was right. Itisa Shipp-made product.” There’s a note of triumph in his partner’s voice. “They’re about to launch a new line of cosmetics, and this particular lipstick only comes in ten shades. The heart on the kid’s chest was drawn in one of them.”
“About to launch?”
“They’re not widely available yet. You can only buy the lipstick at Nordstrom, and only at the flagship store here in Seattle. It’s only been on sale for one week.”
“One week? That’s it?”
She smiles, pleased that he’s pleased. “That’s it.”
“Call the store and—”
“Done. They’ll send over the security footage shortly.”
He sits back in his chair and gives her a smile. “Great work.”
“It all ties back to Georgina Shaw, Kai.” Kim is bouncing in her chair, her ponytail bobbing behind her. “Clearly someone’s trying to get her attention. I called down to Hazelwood, requested copies of her visitor’s log, phone calls, mail. Maybe she’s been in contact with Calvin James.”
Even if she has, the reports won’t show that, as Kaiser well knows.But he can’t tell Kim he’s been paying a prison guard for information on Georgina, so he simply says, “Good thinking.”
“You could always talk to her, too. She gets out in a couple of days.”
Kaiser turns away. He doesn’t want his partner to see his face. His feelings for Georgina are complicated, and they always have been.
“I know you two were close once, but that was a long time ago,” Kim says. “Don’t let your bias get in the way of doing everything you can to solve these murders. The female victim was killed in the exact same way as Angela Wong. She was buried in the same woods, right by Georgina’s house. The lipstick is from a company she worked for. You know how many brands of lipstick there are in the United States, Kai? I looked it up. Thousands. Big names, small names, brands that are now discontinued but that you can still find on eBay. This wasn’t some old lipstick the killer had lying around. It was chosen deliberately.”
Kim’s mind is in full analytic mode. He can tell by the way she’s speaking but not looking at him, her speech rapid but extra clear. “It has to be Calvin James. He’s still out there. Maybe he’s back. And maybe your old friend Georgina knows all about it.”
“You didn’t see her at the trial five years ago, Kim,” he says. “She wouldn’t even look at him. She never made eye contact with him while she was testifying, not until the very end, and that’s only because he spoke to her.”
