Chapters (46)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- thirteen
- fourteen
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- thirty-eight
- thirty-nine
- forty
- forty-one
- forty-two
He eased back in his seat. “That first lunch was hellishly awkward. But ... there was something there. Enough for me to look her up when I had a seminar near her college the next month. We eventually got to the whole brother and sister thing. Calls every few weeks, e-mails, visits when we were nearby, Christmas and birthday presents.
“When Tamara joined Alastair Koppel’s group, Claire called me. Tamara and Claire had been friends forever. Grew up together, double-dated, planned to go to college together. Tamara didn’t get in the same one as Claire, though, so they drifted apart over the next couple of years. Still kept in touch, just ... drifted. Claire blamed herself for that. She got caught up in school and made new friends. Tamara was struggling, and Claire knew it, and kept telling herself they’d spend this summer together and everything would be fine.”
“Then Tamara joined the commune.”
Michael nodded. “Claire freaked. She was sure her friend was mixed up in a cult. She wanted me to check it out. I pulled some strings, got the file, and found the FBI had looked into Alastair’s operation after some parents complained. But they’d concluded it was nothing more than a New Age commune. After Tamara disappeared, I forwarded Claire’s concerns to the local FBI. That was all I could do. I didn’t know she was in Columbus until ... well, until she wasn’t.”
Michael went quiet for a few minutes after that. Then he reached into the backseat and grabbed a folder.
“This is for you,” he said. “Notes on Claire. I thought ...” He shrugged. “It might help. You can read them later. Or, if you want to read them now, ask me questions ...”
I pulled over and gave him the keys.
THE FILE WAS a mix of the personal and the professional, the brother vying with the investigator. For most of it, the brother prevailed.
There were photos of Claire, including some from her childhood that he must have gotten from his father. Tamara was in three of them—a small, freckled girl with earnest eyes, staring at the camera, with Claire beside her, arm thrown around her shoulders, grinning as if to say “cheer up, life’s not so bad.” Life had been bad for Tamara. The sketchy biography Michael included told the story of a child caught between divorced parents, neither of whom seemed to want her. A girl who’d grown into a young woman probably desperate for approval, for acceptance, for family. A young woman custom-made for Alastair’s commune.