Page 42 of Dying to Meet You
“I read that in the paper.”
“Can you describe his wallet?” Fry asks. He has a pen poised above a legal pad.
“It’s...” I have to think. “A bright color. It’s that kind they make out of upcycled billboards. Maybe it’s blue and green? I can’t picture it exactly.”
He nods. “How about his laptop?”
“A gray MacBook.”
He writes that down. “Any distinguishing features?”
“Um... Yes. There was a sticker on the cover for theWall Street Journal.”
Across the room Beatrice gives a soft snort. She’s hovering, obviously eavesdropping.
“The computer is missing, as I mentioned,” Riley says. “But we were able to access his iCloud drive. It has recent backups from both the computer and the phone. And there were some of your photos on his device. Can I show them to you?”
“Photos of me?” I can’t keep the surprise out of my voice. “We didn’t take many.” I took a total of two selfies with him, because he didn’t seem that into it.
Probably because he’d already decided to bail on me.
“The pictures aren’tofyou,” she says. “Well, most of them. But the metadata indicates that they were transferred from your device to his.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Pictures of what?”
She unlocks an iPad and passes it to me. “Can you verify that you took these shots?”
The first two are selfies—the only ones I’d taken of the two of us. But when I swipe to the third photo, I’m astonished. It’s a shot I took of the interior of the Wincott Mansion. As I swipe through the photos, I find a few more shots, from every floor of the house.
And then I swipe again, and my heart practically stops. It’s the Wincott family Bible that I found under the floorboards. The one that was featured in the press. “He hadthis?Why?”
Riley stares back at me silently.
I keep flipping. Another shot of the Bible. Then photos of the other book we found under the floorboards—the ledger of babies born at the mansion.
The back of my neck prickles.
“Can you tell me what this is?” Riley asks.
“It’s—” My voice cracks. “It’s a ledger found right here in this room. It recorded the birth dates of babies born in this building.”
“He hadthat?” Beatrice gasps.
Fry gives her a dirty look. Beatrice returns it, and then strides over to me, peering at the screen as I zoom in on the ledger pages.
Each entry lists a birth date, the sex and weight of the child, and a name—first initial followed by a surname.4 April 1951—Baby girl—7 pounds, 4 ounces—to Miss M. Wattford.
He has every photo I took. There are eight in total—some interior pages, the front and back covers, and an undated list I’d found in the back of the book, which had included four names.
“What wasupwith that guy?” Beatrice murmurs.
That’s my question exactly.What the hell, Tim?
“He shouldn’t have had any of this,” I say quietly.
“Can you confirm—did you take those photos?” Riley asks.
“Yes, I did. I took them in March when I found these items here in the building. I sent them to Hank Wincott so he could see what I’d found.”
