The Truth About Rachel

was listening to them. “Mind if I join you? I’d like to talk.”
She waved her hand to the opposite side of the booth. “Sure. Why not?”
The waiter came and took his order. He had the same as her, except he asked for a beer on tap. Then he smiled at Rachel. “I’m not on duty, and I really need a beer.”
His smile didn’t reassure her. His eyes were still too close together, although his face was fuller than when he was a teenager. Still, she was as wary of him now as she had been at eight years old. Rachel pushed down her uneasiness and took another bite of her burger. “What do you want to talk about?”
Jeremy leaned on the table toward her. “Gladys did tell me what she’d discovered. And now I’m finding the whole thing strange. I thought you were conning us, but after I had time to think about it, I couldn’t come up with a good reason why. Your parents have no money. Keith definitely has nothing. So why do a con job? Unless you’re some nut case who wants attention.”
“I’m not a nut,” she said.
Jeremy studied her a moment. “I believe that. Until today, you lived in Florida, working as a graphic designer and living a quiet life. You had no reason to fly out here and pretend to be Rachel Parnell.”
Her eyes flew up to his. “How do you know about my life in Florida?”
“Don’t be so surprised. I’m in law enforcement. I did some digging to make sure you weren’t a crazy person. I also know that your husband is deceased, your Aunt Julie is in a memory care facility in Tallahassee, and your daughter goes to college. So, you weren’t lying about your Aunt Julie and Uncle Gordon Scott. I remember her from back when we were young. So, some of what you say checks out.”
Rachel’s heart pounded with anger. She hated that he’d dug into her personal life. She was a very private person. But she should have expected it. “So now you believe me?”
His food came, and he waited for the waiter to leave before speaking again. “I’m beginning to. But the fake birth certificate makes no sense. And the fact that you disappeared the same day as the murder of the little girl is a strange coincidence.” He took a bite of his burger and a swig of beer.
“I’ll give you that,” she said. “I can’t figure that out either.”
“Well, and the fact that I swore I saw you that day and your own father identified the body as his daughter. It’s baffling.”
“I don’t understand that either,” Rachel said. She imagined her father going to the morgue to identify her body. It must have been traumatizing for him. “Maybe he misidentified me because he was so upset.”
Jeremy shook his head. “I’ve read those files over and over again. They state he recognized your clothes and hair. He was sure it was you.”
Rachel had been sipping her Coke while he spoke. She stopped and frowned at him. “I don’t get how, though. I left the house early that morning before he even woke up. My dad was always gone trucking, so I’m sure he barely knew what type of clothes I owned. And how could he not have known the difference between my face and the other girl’s face?”
Jeremy set his burger down. “You don’t know?”
“Don’t know what?” she asked.
He lowered his voice. “The girl’s face was unrecognizable. It had been bashed in with a rock so many times, the skull was broken into fragments. There was no way of identifying her from her features.”
Rachel’s stomach lurched. She fell back against the booth, her mind picturing the mutilated girl lying on the ground by the river. “I had no idea,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry I had to tell you. It was a horrific crime. I’m sure it was heart-wrenching for your father to see it,” Jeremy said.
Rachel swallowed hard, trying not to be sick. Her poor father, thinking she was the little girl with her head smashed in. It had to have broken his heart. “So that’s why he misidentified me.”
“Maybe,” Jeremy said, eating his burger again. “But it doesn’t explain why no one reported a missing child. If it wasn’t Rachel Parnell, someone would have come forward to say their daughter was missing.”
Rachel nodded. That was true. None of this made sense. And the thoughts in her mind were too horrible to contemplate. Would her aunt and uncle have been able to pull off such a gruesome murder to make it look like she was dead? Rachel shook that thought away. No. They would never have killed another child just so they could have her.
“Is there any chance I could look at those case files? And the evidence?” Rachel asked. Maybe she could piece together what had happened if she saw everything.
Jeremy contemplated her question. “Maybe. But only if we can determine that you are who you say you are first.”
Rachel sighed. “And how are we going to do that?”
He grinned. “We may not have had DNA when you were eight, but we have it now. Since your brother is in prison, his DNA is in CODIS, so we can match his to yours. That is if you really want to prove you’re related.”
Her brows rose. “CODIS?”
“Yeah. The Combined DNA Index System. Prisoners who have committed a felony in California have their DNA submitted automatically.”
She smiled. “Let’s do it.”
***
Rachel didn’t sleep well that night. She wasn’t worried about the DNA results—she was one-hundred percent certain it would prove her relationship to Keith. What bothered her was being on the first floor of the motel with a door directly out to the parking lot. Earlier that evening, she’d glanced out the window while closing the drapes and had seen an older four-door car sitting out on the street. Someone was sitting in it. Then, right before bed, she saw it was still there—and so was the driver. An