Chapter 21
Six faces stared back from the wall and none of them were smiling.
Callie stood in front of the board with her arms folded, studying the photographs the way a person studies a puzzle they've been working on too long.
The faces had been identified over the past forty-eight hours as forensics and missing persons databases did their slow, grinding work.
College girls. All of them. Ages ranging from nineteen to twenty-three.
Gone missing over a span of four to six years from various points across the Adirondacks and northern New York.
Some had been reported immediately. Some had taken days.
One, a girl named Tessa Garland from Potsdam, hadn't been reported at all until her roommate came back from winter break and found her things still sitting in their dorm exactly where she'd left them.
Six faces. Six sets of parents who had been called. Six conversations that no one in this building wanted to have and that everyone in this building would remember.
Noah walked in with a cup of coffee in each hand.
The war room smelled like dry-erase markers and the industrial carpet cleaner the janitor used on the overnight shift.
Morning light came through the single window and caught the edges of the photographs, giving them a brightness they didn't deserve.
"You look tired," Noah said. He held one of the cups out to her. "You should get some sleep."
"Not while this animal is out there." She didn't take the coffee. Her eyes stayed on the board.
Noah set the cup on the table beside her.
"I respect your dedication, Callie. And your desire to prove yourself.
Maybe that's because you're about to take your detective exam.
But don't forget that sleep is vital. Without it we make mistakes.
You can't really afford to make mistakes in this business. "
She yawned, as if the word sleep had given her body permission to admit what her mind wouldn't. She picked up the coffee and drank.
"Kara Ellison and Fiona Spence weren't among them, Noah." She shook her head at the wall. "Five years. Five years and no one has caught this sicko. What makes us think it will be any different this time?"
Noah said nothing. He studied her instead.
The look in her eyes. He'd seen it before in the faces of detectives who had been at this long enough to know what it cost. That hollow intensity.
The inability to look away from the work even when the work was looking back at you with six dead faces.
The hooks were in. She couldn't let go now even if she wanted to.
It was the same feeling he carried about Luther Ashford.
That gnawing question of whether the target was simply untouchable, whether all the hours and all the sacrifice would amount to nothing more than a case file that gathered dust while the people responsible kept breathing.
"Like, why is he doing it?" Callie said. "What's the motivation? Is it sex? Control? Both? Or just the thrill?" She glanced at him. "Did you speak to Lyle?"
Noah nodded. "He says he doesn't recognize Hollis."
"And you believe him?"
"He's days away from being executed. If he could see an out, he would take it. Even if it meant throwing someone else under the bus. I believe him."
Callie shook her head. "It just doesn't make sense.
I mean, if it wasn't for the jacket and ID on Brooke Danvers, this would be like any other case of murdered college girls.
Sure, maybe Carter Lyle is responsible for the women in the bog, that spans cases from four to six years ago when he was out.
But not Brooke Danvers. Not Fiona Spence. Not Hailey Benton."
"Could be a copycat," Noah said. "Or a partner."
"But what's the common thread through them all?
" Callie turned from the board and leaned against the edge of the table.
"All of them are college girls. All of them were driving.
All of them had rags in their tailpipes, clearly to get their vehicles to stall.
All of them at one time or another worked at White Stone Deli.
Some of them modeled, some didn't. So who do you blame?
" She spread her hands. "It's maddening. "
"Welcome to detective work. Where things aren't clear cut." Noah took a deep breath. "All we can do is stay with it. Follow the crumbs and piece it together."
"You have much luck with the old witnesses from the Kara Ellison case?"
Noah thought about Ray and Luke and the knife.
The chain of custody gap. The corrupted body cam.
The prosecution summary that said confirmed where the lab report said inconclusive.
He thought about the knife itself, which Ray had said was in evidence storage at the Adirondack County Sheriff's Office.
Noah had made a call. The evidence clerk couldn't locate it.
Said she'd look into it and get back to him. She hadn't.
He shrugged. "Nothing that stands out." He paused. "Listen, did you get the rags checked for DNA?"
"Yes. Nothing. They must have worn gloves. That's probably why they left the rags behind. No trace to worry about."
"And what about the stalling itself?"
Callie pushed off the table and went to a folder on the far end. She pulled a sheet and handed it to him. "That's what I can't figure out. One of the guys put Fiona Spence's vehicle up on the lift and ran it with a rag stuffed in the exhaust. The engine spat it out."
"Just by revving?"
"Yeah."
Noah shook his head. "That's an apples-to-oranges comparison. Running a vehicle stationary on a lift isn't the same as driving it at speed. The back pressure, the exhaust temperature, the airflow, it's all different. It would make more sense to run a real-time test."
"Driving it with the rag in?"
He nodded and perched on the edge of the table.
"Look, what do we know that all of these girls have in common?
Their vehicles were found along Route 73 over the course of many years.
Cops find abandoned vehicles all the time.
People ditch them after drinking. Usually it's because they run out of gas.
Whatever. Often the driver returns the next day and collects the car, or if it's impounded they show up with some story about someone stealing it.
It's not unusual." He set his coffee down.
"Now we know they didn't run out of gas because all of them had full tanks.
Some had receipts in the car from stopping at the gas station.
Which brings us to the gas station itself.
You said their surveillance wasn't operational. "
“I know. Convenient," Callie said. "You know, this whole thing reminds me of that case up in Canada."
"The Highway of Tears?"
"Yeah. That occurred over forty-odd years."
"Similar," Noah agreed. "Same kind of stretch. Remote. Limited witnesses. Vulnerable women in transit."
"So our perp is placing a rag in the exhaust while the girl goes in to pay for gas. But if the connection is related to modeling or the deli, that means these girls are known. Their schedules are known." Callie folded her arms again. "Hailey wasn't heading to work or a photoshoot."
"That we know," Noah added.
"So how did our perp know she would be at that station? How does he know that station has no surveillance?"
"These are all good questions and ones to follow up on."
"And even if we ran a test on one of the victims' cars with the rag in the exhaust, wouldn't all of the vehicles stall at roughly the same area? Going back over the case files, their vehicles were found in various places."
"Every car is different. Every driver drives differently. The rag could be stuffed further in on some than others. Different diameter exhaust pipe. Different engine. I'm not sure there's an exact science to it." He picked up his coffee again. "We're spitting theories right now."
"So our perp follows from a distance, sees them break down, and pulls up offering a ride." Callie looked at the wall of faces. "Why get in?"
"Why does anyone get into a vehicle? It's an isolated stretch. Fear of staying out there alone. No cell signal. A long way to walk. Maybe a sense of safety with the person offering."
"Reminds me of some of Ted Bundy's cases." She shook her head. "If I was twenty, I don't think I would take a ride from a man. No matter what."
"We all did a lot of dumb things at twenty," Noah said.
Neither of them spoke for a moment. The board stared at them.
Six faces. Six girls who had gotten into a vehicle and never returned.
Callie drank her coffee. Noah watched the morning light shift across the photographs and thought about how every one of those girls had been somebody's version of Mia.
Somebody's daughter heading out into the world believing the worst thing that could happen was a flat tire or a dead battery.
Right then a door slammed somewhere down the hall. The sound carried through the station the way bad news always does, arriving before the words that explain it. Raised voices from the direction of Ray's office. Noah and Callie both turned.
The door to Ray's office opened and McKenzie came out first, walking fast, his face tight. Ray was right behind him, and Ray looked like he wanted to tear the building apart. His jaw was tight and his hands were at his sides and his shoulders were up around his ears.
"What happened?" Noah asked.
McKenzie reached them and stopped. He glanced at Callie, then back at Noah. "Hailey Benton bounced."
"What?"
"She's gone. Walked out of the hospital. No idea where."
"Well don't they have cameras?"
"Not everywhere, it seems." McKenzie ran a hand over his face. "There's coverage in the main corridors and the lobby. Not in the basement level. Not in the stairwells on the east wing."
Ray stopped a few feet behind McKenzie. "Our only witness," he said, and the words came out like each one cost him something. "Find her. Get out there and find her."
He turned and walked back toward his office. The door closed behind him hard enough to rattle the frame.
"How?" Noah asked, looking at McKenzie.
"The cop posted outside her room went to take a leak. Two, three minutes. When he came back the room was empty."
"But she was seen leaving the room?"
"Hallway camera caught her exiting and heading toward the east stairwell. After that we lose her. The cameras in the basement didn't pick her up."
"She never went out the main doors?"
"If she had, we would have seen it. She either went out through a service entrance in the basement or she's still in the building somewhere, which I doubt because the hospital ran a floor-by-floor sweep after we called it in."
"What did the footage look like? Was she running? Did she look scared?"
McKenzie hesitated. "That's the thing. She wasn't running. She wasn't panicked. She just walked out. Calm. Blank expression."
Noah glanced at Callie. She was already reaching for her jacket.
"That's not someone escaping," Noah said. "That's someone who was told to leave."
"By who? The deputy was right there."
"Not in person. A phone call. A text. Someone got to her." Noah grabbed his keys from the table. "Maybe she headed home. Let's start there."
Callie was already at the door. Noah followed.
Behind them the war room sat empty, the six faces still pinned to the board, still waiting.
And now there was another girl out there somewhere, the only one who had survived, and she had walked out of the only safe place she had left as if someone had reached into her head and flipped a switch.
They pushed through the station doors and into the morning light. Noah's vehicle was parked at the curb. Callie got in the passenger side without asking and he pulled out onto Main Street heading north toward the address they had on file for Hailey Benton.