“Agent Collins,” Dorsey told her.

“My husband had a terrible accident about three years ago, run off the road one night coming back from a home visit-he took over his daddy’s church when Father Randall passed on-and was just left for dead. He’s been in a wheelchair ever since. It’s made him…a bit bitter.” She lowered her voice. “This thing with Shannon has just about killed that man now. He’s been sitting in the back room staring out the windows ever since Chief Bowden came down here and told us about that girl’s body being found on that island and it turnin’ out to be Shannon.”

She swallowed hard and stood, her arms across her chest, staring at Andrew.

“Now, you just tell me how that could be.”

“Mrs. Randall, I promise you we’re doing everything we can to find out,” he replied.

“Can you find out how my baby girl could have been alive all these years, and I didn’t know?” Her voice grew husky. “Can you tell me how it could be that her mother’s heart didn’t know she was still on this earth?”

“No, ma’am, I can’t.” He shook his head. “I am very sorry-I cannot imagine what you must be feeling right now.”

“Right now, I’m mostly feeling numb,” she told him, “so if you have any questions you want to ask me, better ask them now, before the numbness goes away. I’m afraid that once they bring her back here, once I see her, I’m not going to be of much use to y’all.”

“I understand that.” He nodded.

“So you haven’t seen your daughter yet, is that correct?” Dorsey had waited an appropriate moment before asking.

“Yes, that’s true.” She fussed with the rings on her left hand. “Only our oldest girl, Natalie, has seen her. When Chief Bowden came here and told us they’d found Shannon-I still find it hard to speak of it, you’re going to have to forgive me-why, we just all thought he was crazy, that those folks down there in Georgia were all just crazy, too. He wanted to know if we had anything that might still have her fingerprints on it, and of course, I did. I had everything of hers up there in the attic.”

She looked from Dorsey to Andrew and back again, as if needing to explain. “You just don’t throw everything away, you understand. You need to keep the things that meant the most.”

They both nodded.

“So I gave him her things-her Bible, her hairbrush-things she’d mostly touched, and he put them in plastic bags and took them down to Georgia himself. Came back the next day and told us the fingerprints matched. Well, you just can’t imagine…” Nervous fingers scratched the back of her neck.

“But we wanted to make sure there wasn’t somehow some mistake, so Doctor Ellis, he’s been our dentist forever, he sent her dental records down.” She sighed heavily. “They matched, too. They said they’d try to get DNA from the hairbrush, but it would be weeks before those results would be back. Doesn’t matter, though. We know it was her, Natalie saw her. Natalie saw the birthmark on her shoulder. She knew it was Shannon.”

She patted her lap, and the dog jumped onto her from his spot on the floor. She petted him with shaking hands.

“When we first heard, we were thinking, well, mistakes are made every day, but there was that birthmark on the back of her left shoulder the police officer down there described, so one of us had to go to Georgia to look. My husband…well, that was out of the question, and I just couldn’t…even if it wasn’t her, it was somebody’s baby girl, do you see? So Natalie said, don’t worry, Momma, I’ll go. And she did, bless her heart.”

“Were Natalie and Shannon particularly close?” Dorsey asked.

“Not so much as Shannon and Aubrey, due to the age difference. Natalie was in college, and Shannon was just a high school freshman when all this happened.”

“And your youngest?”

“She was just everyone’s baby, you know how that is with the baby sister. She was too young to be too close to any of the others, I’m afraid.” She wiped tears from her face. “I’m sorry, it’s just so hard to understand. So hard to accept…”

“I’m sure it is. We respect what you’re going through, Mrs. Randall,” Dorsey said sympathetically, “and we’re sorry we’re going to have to ask you to relive that all over again. I’m sure looking back is going to be very painful.”

“It isn’t that”-Judith Randall shook her head-“as much as realizing that all these years we’ve spent grieving for her, we should have been searching for her instead…”

8

“Judith, who you talking to out there?” a man’s voice called from the back of the house.

“Some FBI folks, come to talk about Shannon,” Mrs. Randall replied.

The sound of rapidly approaching wheels on the wooden floor preceded Franklin Randall’s appearance in the doorway, where he sat for a very long moment, his dark angry eyes boring holes through the agents he found sitting in his living room.

“Well, of course the FBI would show up,” he said without emotion. “Gotta cover your tracks from last time, right? I’m surprised they didn’t send that fool who told us all back then Shannon was dead. Lost no time arresting that Beale boy. Gettin’ him convicted. Gettin’ him the death sentence.”

His stony glare focused on Dorsey, and she held her breath, as if expecting him to know.

“Sir, I respect what you’ve gone through, and I’m really sorry for everything,” Andrew told him.

“Sorry isn’t going to make up for all those years-twenty-four goddamn years-when we thought our daughter was dead. And instead of being here, with her family, where she belonged, she’s out doing the devil’s work for someone.” He shook his head. “You sorry about that, too?”

“Yes, sir, we are. We don’t know what happened back then. We’re trying to find out what went wrong with the investigation, and get to the truth,” Andrew said solemnly, adding, “and yes, we are sorry, but we do have to ask some questions of you and your family.”

“You got questions, why don’t you just ask Agent Hot Shot Ranieri? Or is he too busy with his TV appearances to talk to the FBI these days?” Randall spit the words out, and Dorsey felt a deep flush creep up from under her collar and spread clear up to her scalp. “He had all the answers back then, didn’t he? Bet he doesn’t have a lot to say now. Bet we won’t see him on TV admitting he’d jumped to the wrong conclusion, left my baby to be forced into a life of sin all these years, sent that Beale boy to his grave. Much as he did come from the wrong side, he still didn’t need to die back then.”

Randall looked as if he was about to jump from the chair and attack them both.

“I understand how terrible this must be-” Andrew began.

“You don’t understand jack-shit, boy.” Franklin Randall turned in his chair and wheeled from the room as quickly as he’d entered it, leaving his wife and the two agents locked in an embarrassed silence in his wake.

“He’s terribly overwrought,” Judith finally said. “He’s feeling the guilt of not having found her before this happened to her. The past few years, since the accident, his focus has been on himself, on his…condition. Having to step down as minister at his daddy’s church was just one more blow. He just didn’t have the stamina anymore. It’s more than he can stand.”

Andrew nodded. “We’re not here to add to your pain, Mrs. Randall, but if we’re going to find out what really happened to Shannon, we’re going to have to speak with everyone in the family. Including your husband.”

“Of course. Maybe leave him till last, if you could? Maybe by the time you get to him, you’ll have learned something to share with him that might help.” She was fiddling with her rings again. “Maybe you should start with me.”

“We appreciate that, Mrs. Randall,” Andrew told her. “Maybe we can start with you telling us a little about Shannon.”

“I don’t know what more I can tell you. A top student. Top athlete. Popular,” Mrs. Randall began, her bottom lip quivering.