Searching for Dani (Book 4)

I disposed of the B plot, such as it was, previously.

An Ineffective Search

In the A plot, the FBI has arrived to look for Dani, Logan’s daughter, who was kidnapped by Jamie, the daughter-by-rape of Dani’s deceased mother, Marie.

Here is a very important passage to remember from the previous book:

Jamie stood in front of the breakfast nook staring at her computer. Her plan was coming together. She had the funds, the new birth certificates and social security numbers. They both had new identities.

Now, the FBI doesn’t know about the new birth certificates, social security numbers, and new identities, but they do know about the funds. They also know that Jamie has absolutely no ties to the area. She has no relatives there. She’s never lived there except for a few days or possibly weeks while she hung out trying to get custody of Dani. In short, they know she has no reason to stick around, has every reason to get out of there, and has plenty of money to travel with.

We, the readers, do know about the new birth certificates, social security numbers, and new identities, and we also know she was planning to go to Portland.

Here’s the FBI agent explaining to Logan:

“It looks like Jamie had been planning this. She’d withdrawn all the money in her checking account regularly over the last few weeks, and even from her husband’s as well. She took everything he had in the bank and left. She even left behind her cards so we couldn’t trace them. Can you think of any place she might go?”

They know that Jamie slashed her own mother’s throat and buried her body in the back garden. They know she was determined to get hold of Dani. And they found Bonnie dead with her throat slashed, Dani missing, and Jamie also gone. This could, of course, all be a coincidence. Jamie ran off after burying her mother, one of the many serial killers in this small town slashed Bonnie’s throat, Dani saw this, panicked, and ran out the door, and some other person snatched her (hold that thought). But that’s not the way to place your bets.

So the FBI should be putting out APBs for Jamie’s car and alerting police departments around the country to look for Jamie and Dani. There’s no evidence that they’re doing that. Instead, they are acting exactly as the authorities act when a child goes missing and no one knows what happened. They put up flyers, and they go door to door in the local area. That makes no sense when you have every reason to believe the child was kidnapped and taken out of state.

But it’s okay; they’ve read the plot so they know Jamie’s still around. Pretty soon, they get a hit on their tip line. Someone in the immediate area, “an hour past Oceanway”, which seems to be the next town over, saw Jamie and Dani.

Why? Why is Jamie still here? Why isn’t she in Portland with Dani, chilling out with her new identity? Given the time elapsed, she could easily be in Portland, Maine, by now. Did the author (unlike me) just forget about the new birth certificates, social security numbers, and new identities, and the plan to go to Portland?

Logan overhears the FBI getting the address from the caller, and he and Riley go out to intrude on and contaminate the crime scene before the police get there. And here’s the cliffhanger to end the book as they find:

The blood splatter on the wall near the door caught my attention immediately.

But that wasn’t the most gut-wrenching sight. The pool of blood in front of the TV was large, thick, and dark. The blood had been there for a while. The floor in my kitchen flashed in my mind. It wasn’t that dark yet. 

In the middle, stuck in the gelatinous macabre pool, was a small shoe with Sailor Moon stickers on the sides.

We are meant to think, “Oh, no! Is Dani dead?”

My reaction was, “Who would have thought the child to have had so much blood in her?”

Obviously all that blood can’t have come from a seven-year-old child, and an experienced doctor ought to know that. So Dani wasn’t murdered there. She ran out or Jamie carried her out, and she lost a shoe along the way.

Details

The FBI did a pretty poor job of interviewing Jamie’s family before Logan and Riley went talk to them. It appears her husband, Chris, didn’t know what was going on.

The author has no clue how to write children’s dialogue. This is supposed to come from the mouth of a six-year-old, almost seven:

“Whether she comes back into this house or not is something we should talk about,” said Zoe.

Logan goes to Everly’s house, goes through her stuff (with her boyfriend’s permission), and find hatboxes in her closet with interesting papers, like her journal and her deceased husband’s will. The journal discloses that she had Marie smother her husband in his bed. It also contains this:

I know she doesn’t like the baby. I can see that. I can’t blame her. But maybe this is my chance to get it right. She is my grandchild, after all. Maybe this will give me a chance to get it right. Do all the things I should have done with Marie. I could make it right. Marie will just have to suck it up. Jamie is her child. If I can bear to look at Marie, then she can look at Jamie. It’s not that hard. I know what the nuns said at the school, but Marie will change her mind eventually. I did.

So it seems Marie was also the product of rape.

In addition to not knowing how to write children’s dialogue, the author doesn’t know probate. Consider this:

I started with the papers while he took an emerald-green journal out of the other box. The papers were a will. Not hers but her former husband’s. 

“Why would she have her husband’s will in a hat box?”

“If I had to take a guess, I would say it was to keep an eye on it. She could make sure that no one else got ahold of it. Was someone trying to challenge the will?”

I looked up. “I don’t know. I don’t know a lot about her marriage to him. He was dead by the time I met Marie. She didn’t seem like a big fan of his.”

That’s not how it works. Dani, daughter of Logan and Marie, is seven years old, so Everly’s husband has been dead eight years or more. His estate has been probated. If that is his last will, it should have been presented to the court, and it would remain in the files of the court clerk. It would not be in her hands.

So there are only two options. It isn’t his last will and she just kept it around while filing the later will in his probate case. More likely, it is his last will, and she suppressed it so she could inherit under a prior will or through intestacy. But she would not be holding onto that will to be sure no one contested it.