The Daughter (blurb 1)

 

Blue Creek's golden girl had many admirers. One of them killed her. "It shouldn't have happened," thinks Richard Carter. "It shouldn't happen to anyone's daughter."

When Shara McGregor's blood-soaked car is found near an abandoned graveyard in the Irish Wilderness, Deputy Richard Carter begins an investigation which can have no good end. Pressed by the crying need ofthe girl's mother Okinawa, and pressured by an old politician who knows how to throw his weight around, Richard seeks for clues. He has no body, no murder weapon, and no crime scene. All he has is the girl's face on a billboard advertising the local junior college, and the sound of her voice on a voicemail.

When Richard's wife Jill notices something disturbing on security video from the store where the girl worked, a sordid tale of blackmail, sexual extortion and murder begins to emerge.  

What happened to Okinawa McGregor's daughter was a tragedy. It would have been no less tragic had happened to someone less beautiful, intelligent, and full of promise than Shara. Precisely because of those things, it bore all the heavier on Richard Carter. Perhaps it was her face of the billboard advertising Blue Creek Community College. Perhaps it was because he had a recorded voice to go with the brilliant smile. Or perhaps it was just because Richard had a daughter of his own.

 

Shara McGregor is gone. The only trace left behind is her abandoned car, found in the forest by a old graveyard in the "Irish Wilderness," a hundred miles from Blue Creek and one hundred and eighty degrees from the direction she should have traveled.

 

As Hawthorn County's undermanned and cash-strapped sheriff's department investigates her disappearance, a powerful retired politician inserts himself into the case. Friend of Okinawa and benfactor of Shara, Willis Sparkes will spage no effort to discover what happened. He throws money around as well as his political clout. His efforts are not only inappropriate. They put him firmly on the list euphamistically called "Persons of Interest."