“I understand how upset you must have been when you reported Shannon missing and the local police blew you off,” Andrew said. “I’m sorry for the way you were treated.”

Edith looked from Andrew to Dorsey and back again.

“Come in.” She closed the door behind them and relocked the door.

They followed her into a small living room that was surprisingly neat and girly. The sofa was covered with quilts, and there was a worn hooked rug on the floor. On the top of a chest that had been painted white sat a small television, and a glass topped trunk served as a coffee table. On the table was a blue vase filled with daisies and a bottle of dark pink nail polish.

Edith gestured to the sofa and both agents sat.

“Miss Chiong-may I call you Edith?” Dorsey asked, and the woman nodded.

“Is it like I said, the FBI is interested because of that sister being a senator?”

“Actually, no,” Andrew said carefully. “We were called in because there’s a relationship between this case and an old case the Bureau handled a long time ago.”

“What case was that?” She leaned against the doorway with one hand on her hip.

“How long had you known Shannon, Edith?” Dorsey asked.

“Six, seven years.”

Dorsey stole a quick glance at Andrew. She knew he was supposed to lead, but they had agreed Edith would most likely respond better to her questioning, and now was as good a time as any to test that. Andrew sat back against the sofa cushions, and Dorsey took that as a green light.

“Where did you meet? Here in Deptford?” she continued.

“ Savannah. We were both working Savannah at the time.” Her voice softened and she seemed to debate with herself for a moment before walking into the small kitchen area. She returned with a wooden folding chair and placed it next to the coffee table, opposite Dorsey. “Both of us were on the street for the same guy.”

“You worked for the same pimp?”

Edith nodded. “His name was Bass. He was one mean son of a bitch. There was just no pleasing that man. No matter how hard you worked, how much you made, it was never enough, you know?”

Dorsey nodded, but Edith appeared not to notice.

“Me and Shannon got to be friends. We were always talking about moving on, moving out. Getting a place of our own, saving some money so that someday we could do something else. Something better. But we knew there was no chance of that while we worked for scum like him.”

“How did you get involved with him?”

Edith snorted. “The same way any girl gets into it. It’s such a…what you call it, a cliché? You come to town thinking you’re gonna get a nice job, and you get off that bus and realize those few dollars you got in your pocket aren’t going to be near enough. Guys hang around the station, just waiting-you know that. You know the story.” She looked directly into Dorsey’s eyes. “You know you do.”

“Young girl, no place to go. Nice looking guy promises you a job, he tells you he can get you a place to stay with a friend of his…” Dorsey nodded. Edith was right. She’d heard it a hundred times before with minor variations.

“Yada, yada, yada.” Edith finished Dorsey’s sentence. “What can I say? I was stupid but I thought I was so grown-up, you know? I thought I was leaving something bad for something better. Thought I could handle the city, thought I could handle anything.” She bit her bottom lip. “Well, I guess Bass showed me.”

“And Shannon?”

“Same story.” Edith nodded. “Way back when, some guy picked her out at the bus station, same as me. Same promises. Same job. Same yada yada. Then she comes to Savannah, same thing all over again.”

“She arrived in Savannah before you? How much before?”

“She’d been working for Bass for maybe a year by the time I got there.”

“Where had she been before Savannah, do you know?”

“Bunch of places.” Edith shrugged. “I remember her talking about being in Tennessee for a while. Nashville. Knoxville. Memphis. She said how she used to go to Graceland and stand outside the gates with the tourists.”

“Where’d you come from, Edith?” Dorsey asked.

“What difference does it make?” Edith snapped, then softened and told Dorsey, “ Virginia. But that was a long time ago.”

“You have family there?”

“I guess they’re still around. Most likely.” Edith licked her lips. “Let’s stick to Shannon.”

“Did she ever talk about why she left home?”

Edith shook her head. “Shannon didn’t talk much about where she was from, except that it was called Hatton and it was in South Carolina. She talked some about her family-she said she had sisters-but she never said why she left.”

“And you didn’t ask?”

“She’d have told me if she wanted me to know.”

“She have any contact with her family that you know of?” Andrew asked.

“No. None.”

“So how do you know one of her sisters is a senator?”

“The cops said.”

“When?”

“When they came to get her stuff. Day before yesterday.”

“What stuff?” Andrew stopped writing and looked up.

“Just some stuff of hers they wanted,” Edith told him. “They said her family was coming into town and that they wanted her things. That’s when they said her sister was a senator. I heard them talking in her room.”

“What did you give them?”

“Stuff.” Edith’s mouth curved in a half smile.

“Everything?” Dorsey asked.

“Sure,” Edith replied flatly.

“So tell us how you got from Savannah to Deptford,” Andrew said, changing the subject. There was no question in his mind that Edith had not handed over all of her roommate’s possessions willingly.

“No way was Bass gonna let us go, just walk out, so we planned it. Went out one night like we always did, worked our way uptown a bit. Turned what we had to, had the johns drop us off at the bus station. Got on the first bus that was leaving, took us into Charleston. From there we took the first bus out, that took us to Raleigh. We thought maybe we’d try to cover our tracks some, in case Bass sent someone after us. We worked Raleigh for a while, then worked our way down here to Deptford.”

“Why Deptford?” Dorsey asked.

“ Shannon liked that it wasn’t far from the ocean. She liked the beach. We thought if we lived here, we’d go to the beach.” Edith’s eyes grew haunted. “We did go sometimes. Not as much as we planned, but we did go a time or two.”

She got up and walked into the kitchen and ran water in the sink. When she came back into the living room, she held a glass of water in one hand. She did not ask the agents if they were thirsty.

“It’s weird, don’t you think? We moved here ’cause she wanted to be near water, and that’s where she died. Out there someplace near the water.”

“Well, we’re not really sure where she died,” Andrew told her.

“She wasn’t killed out there on that island where they found her?” Edith looked surprised.

“It doesn’t look like it. We’re pretty sure she was killed someplace else and taken there by car,” Dorsey explained.

“Damn cops tell me nothing.” She was angry again. “Like I don’t have the right to know what happened. Every thing I ask, they say, ‘We’re only releasing information to the family.’” She spit out the word. “I tried to tell them, I’m her family. I’m the one who cared about her. Where has her family been all these years, she’s missing and they don’t come looking for her?”

“I’d be happy to keep you informed of the arrangements, as soon as we find out when and where,” Dorsey promised, noting that Edith didn’t seem to be aware Shannon was supposed to have been dead for years.

“Like I’m really going to go?” Edith got up and began to pace. “I said my good-byes there in the morgue. I don’t need to say good-bye again.”

“You identified the body?”

“Well, yeah. It isn’t like there was anybody else to do it.” Edith sat back down again. “The cops called and said they’d found a body and I needed to come see if it was Shannon. And it was.”