What happens when you stumble across a case that should never have been closed?
Narrated by Leo Jones “A story that will keep you guessing” Bookbub Reviewer
Detective Mark Friessen uncovers a disturbing mystery: A little girl was taken, but when evidence disappeared, the case was closed.
While cleaning out closed cases, Mark discovers a file on a missing toddler, Gabby Martin. After reading the two pages within, he realizes evidence is missing. The only interviews, by the detective who previously had Mark’s job, was conducted with a bitter ex-wife and a former business partner, both of whom pointed at the father.
It appears to have been an open and shut case. The father took Gabby in retaliation for a bitter custody dispute with her mother, and then he killed her. Although no body was found, the father was charged and convicted, and the case was closed.
However, an old woman the town has dubbed Crazy Carla disagrees. She says she saw everything, and she contradicts the investigating detective’s notes, yet the local cops pursued only one lead, the father.
As Mark secretly delves into the closed case and realizes that nothing adds up, he reaches out to social worker Billy Jo McCabe. Did social services receive any suspicious reports about the girl or her parents? What Billy Jo soon discovers is a family of secrets, a volatile marriage, and a forbidden relationship—and the mystery of the missing girl, whose body has never been found, becomes a case that should never have been closed.
Genre: FICTION / Mystery & Detective / Hard-Boiled
NY Times & USA Today Bestselling Author
The feeling of being unprotected was one he knew well, a feeling no one should have to live with. Mark wondered when his instincts had become so deeply embedded, the warning that sent the hair on the back of his neck standing up whenever anything was off.
It was a feeling that just wouldn’t fade.
Mark could never be vulnerable, and though he would never be willing to admit to his weaknesses, he didn’t take kindly to the familiar sense of unease. After his fellow officers suddenly turned on him, everything he did had gone under a microscope, with problems coming at him in a way he couldn’t have explained reasonably.
That had been a painful lesson that he was the only person he could count on.
