What the hell did that mean? Mason raised a brow but kept his jaws shut.

Lorenzo opened and closed his mouth a few times as he tried to phrase his next sentence. “I was gone, you understand, by the time she was grown. I had a family and had moved south to open a garage in Medford. I didn’t pay mind to my parents’ complaints about her wild ways. I thought they just didn’t understand young people, especially American young people. My sisters wanted to be American teens. They wanted to dress and speak like the others they went to school with. My parents struggled to keep up.”

Here it comes.

“Lucia had been gone for two weeks by the time my mother told me she’d left. She didn’t want me to know. My father was humiliated that his daughter had left him, and he wrote her off, declared she was dead to him. She had a boyfriend and had been out late a few times, but she’d never vanished before. According to my mother, her battles with my father were epic screaming matches. My mother sent her to live with my aunt for a while, hoping she’d settle down and get along with my father when she returned. It didn’t work. They fought worse. One day she left, swearing she wasn’t returning. And she never did.”

Lorenzo looked at Ray then at Mason. “I saw the old photos, grainy from the newspaper, on the news today. I’d never heard of the deaths before. I guess we lived too far away. Medford was very small and a good distance from the big city of Portland.”

“Surely your parents or siblings heard of the women’s deaths and wondered if one was Lucia,” said Ray.

Lorenzo shrugged. “To them, she wasn’t missing. She’d left. My parents never spoke of her again.”

“But what about your siblings? Your sisters had to wonder what happened?”

Lorenzo gave a sad smile. “You don’t know my father. If he said Lucia was dead to the family, then she was. My sisters may have wondered where she went, but as far as the few discussions I’ve had with them, they’ve always assumed she’d formed a new life elsewhere.”

“No one looked for her? No one asked questions?” Ray sounded flabbergasted.

Lorenzo shook his head. “If they did, I didn’t know about it. I had my own family to deal with. Five boys,” he added proudly.

Mason wanted to punch the old man. Holy shit. What kind of family lets a sister vanish and not ask questions?

When’s the last time you talked to your brother? Fuck that. Mason knew his brother was alive and ornery as ever in Washington.

“So you’re wondering if one of the women in the past was your sister,” Mason stated.

Lorenzo nodded. “The descriptions match. The date matches. Lucia vanished two weeks before the estimated date of those deaths.”

“You remember the date your sister left?” Ray asked, one brow rising. Mason had caught the same inconsistency in the man’s story. If he hadn’t been around and had brushed off his sister’s disappearance, why did the date stick in his head?

Lorenzo fiddled with the envelope. “She left on my father’s birthday.”

Mason nodded. No doubt the father took that very personally and frequently commented on the disrespect. Sounded like something his old man would have done.

Scowling, Lorenzo shoved the envelope across the table to Mason. Mason wondered what kind of relationship he’d had with his father. An immigrant with old country values, trying to survive and keep his history in a new world.

“Those are the only pictures I have of Lucia. They are old, of course. Perhaps there are photos of the dead that were not released to the public. Maybe you have something else that you can compare them to.”

“Our best bet would be a DNA sample,” said Ray. “We still have the skeletal remains of the women. They can extract DNA and create a comparison.”

Lorenzo stared at Ray, his mouth opening slightly, his face flushed. “They were never buried? No prayers said over them?”

Mason shifted in his seat. He wasn’t religious, but he tried to respect the beliefs of others. “Uh… no. No one knew who they were, let alone their religion. They were kept in the hopes that someday their mystery could be solved.” He cleared his throat. “We’ve already got one of the best forensic anthropologists in the country examining them, looking for identity indicators that our predecessors may have missed or not had the knowledge of.”

Lorenzo leaned back in his chair, nodding. Mason could tell the lack of interment upset him, but he’d understood the reasoning.

“Do you remember if Lucia ever broke any bones?” Ray asked, his pencil poised over his notebook. “Or any unusual characteristics about her teeth? I’ll get a tech in here to take a cheek swab for DNA if you consent. That will get things moving in the right direction. It can take a few weeks to get results.”

Lorenzo gestured at the envelope. “You can see her teeth. I don’t remember if any of my sisters ever broke bones. And yes, I’ll do the DNA testing.”

Mason unfolded the flap of the envelope. It smelled old. Like a bookstore full of used books. He shook the contents out onto the table. Three black-and-white photos slipped out, yellowed and faded with age. Two were small photos with thick white borders. They were family pictures, informal groupings with two adults and six children clustered together. Mason glanced at them and quickly discarded them; the faces were too small. The large school photo was the one he wanted. A beautiful girl met his scrutiny; her strong will shining from her eyes. Oh, yes. I bet you gave your father hell. The picture was a formal school shot with her hair in the popular bouffant style of that decade. Dark eyes, dark hair, and distinctively crooked upper front teeth.