Free Three Dog Day by Lia Farrell Page B

the fall, so I was filling in there. I raised the issue again with Sheriff Bradley recently. He said he would look into it. Whenever I wasn’t busy on an active case, Ben said I could use the office and resources available to the police to try to find my foster mother. I haven’t had much progress so far. I’m meeting tomorrow with Mark Schneider, Captain Paula’s computer whiz kid. I’m hoping together we can locate her.”
    â€œ If anyone can, it’s you,” Lucy said. She lay down and put her arm across Wayne’s chest. He was stirred by her scent and closeness, wanting to share every second of the searing night he unearthed his brother’s body, buried in sand toward the back of their property, but there were still things he couldn’t talk about.
    He flashed back, standing in the dark, putting an arm around his foster mother, feeling her violent quivering.
    â€œ I stabbed him like the pig he was,” Jocelyn said. Her breathing was noisy; she was baring her teeth like an enraged animal.
    Wayne and Jocelyn walked out to the driveway and opened the door to Aarne’s pickup. His body fell out on the gravel. Wayne tried to get Jocelyn to go to the authorities, saying her sentence would be short since she’d killed Aarne in self-defense, but he couldn’t convince her.
    Now, almost forty years later, he was unable to escape the past any longer. He had to locate Jocelyn, ask for her forgiveness, give his brother a final resting place, and pay for his own crime. Against every rule of police procedure, the gun used to kill his little brother was hidden in Wayne’s apartment. He had never turned in the evidence or reported the murders , afraid that the gun would lead the police to charge Jocelyn with his foster brother’s killing .
    While waiting for his leave to be approved, Wayne had continued to perform his regular duties at the office. However, whenever he was caught up, he used personal contacts, letters and databases both civilian and criminal in what so far had proved a fruitless search for Jocelyn Outinen.
    Because Jocelyn was his foster mother, he began by investigating whether she received a subsidy from the Department of Children’s Services for support of her foster children. Their records showed that the payments had stopped decades ago. There was only a single note in the file. It read “Family moved. No forwarding address.”
    He had searched extensively for Jocelyn’s social security number. She was Native American, had probably been born at home and many Indians did not have social security numbers. Confusion existed over names, ages, and family relationships because of the intricate sociological structure of Native American tribes. Proof-of-age problems were so intractable that special tolerance was provided for most Indian claims. Despite his efforts, he found nothing.
    Wayne moved on to the National Missing and Unidentified Person’s System. Called NamUS, it was a huge database maintained by the U.S. Department of Justice. To his surprise, someone had reported Jocelyn missing a few months after Aarne’s murder. After contacting the Justice system, he learned two reports had come in with an address in Hannahville, a Potawatomi reservation town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Wayne knew Jocelyn Outinen was a member of the Potawatomi tribe. He could still recall some words from that lovely language.
    â€œ Wayne, can you stay over tonight?” Lucy’s voice called him back to the present.
    He replied with regret, “No, I’d better get up and go.”
    â€œ Too bad. I don’t have a shift until eleven tomorrow,” she said. Her eyes were teasing, sparkling with amusement.
    He smiled down at her and ruffled her hair. “I’ve got that meeting in Nashville early.” Moonlight shone through a crack in the bedroom drapes. Seeing the swell of her breasts under the sheets, he pulled the blanket down