Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Air leaves my lungs in a whoosh. “My God. Here, in Finn River?”
Luke’s mouth crimps in a hard line, like he’s thinking. “There’s a lot we don’t yet understand, but I’m sure this guy at least has a connection to this region.”
My skin prickles with icy dread. “Like he lives here?”
Luke gives a subtle shrug of his shoulders. “Or did. Or he works here. Or travels through here.”
“That’s a lot of possibilities.” I eye the sheriff, but he’s focused on Luke.
“True. But his profile has some very unique aspects.”
This is psych stuff that sort of turns my gut, so I don’t ask for details. “The girl I found in the mine, who is she?”
“Her name is Michelle Swanson. She was twenty-three when she went missing from Cascade six years ago.”
I grimace. “Cascade’s just north of the lake.”
“There are two more. Jane Beasley, a waitress and college student from Nevada, and Nichole-Renée Page, a?—”
I bolt to my feet. “No fucking way!” I shout over the sudden buzzing in my head.
Luke’s eyes widen in shock. “You know her?”
I scrub my face with my hands, but they’re shaking. “No,” I grit out. “But I know who she is.” I start to pace, needing to move so my rising terror doesn’t rip me to shreds.
Luke and the sheriff exchange another glance. “How would you know a pharmacy student at UCSF?”
Breathe, Rye . I force in a series of breaths, but my throat feels raw and I’m shaking like a leaf. “Because she lived near Ava. Went missing right around the same time Ava had a break-in at her apartment, and I was worried sick.”
“The detective working that case didn’t think they were linked,” Sheriff Olson says, his brows knitted together in a deep scowl.
This should give me some measure of peace, but my brain is lit by too many scary what-ifs. “Is this killer—” I force another breath “—after Ava?”
A muscle in Luke’s jaw pops. “We don’t know.”
“Did these women have a stalker? Did he ever leave a white rose where they’d be sure to find it?”
“Whoa,” Luke says, flashing his palm. “Slow down a sec.”
“Ava could be in danger and you want me to slow down? The fuck, Luke!” I keep moving, otherwise I’m going to blow through the roof.
“We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” Luke says, his tone firm. “It’s going to feel like swimming through molasses, but I promise you we’re taking this seriously. Ava’s here right now, correct? We’ll make a plan to keep her safe.”
I rub the back of my neck and force another series of breaths. Luke’s right. Ava’s in this very building, protected by not just its secure walls but several armed officers. I’ve worked with Sheriff Olson enough through the years to know he runs a tight ship. When Ava leaves, she’ll be escorted to and from work by one of his capable deputies or by me. I push thoughts of my looming deadline out of my mind.
How can I leave knowing what’s happening?
“Okay,” I say as my spiraling thoughts begin to slow. I have trusted Luke with my life on more than one occasion, and he’s never let me down. Though the circumstances are different here, that trust is solid. Luke has the skills and the resources we need to crack this case. I have to believe that he will or I’m going to lose my fucking mind.
Luke nods. “All right. Let’s give the sheriff his office back and move into one of the interview rooms.”
I grip my waist and give the sheriff a parting glance, but he’s already typing away at his computer, his face tense.
Luke leads me to a small room with a round table. He must be using it as a makeshift office because a laptop is plugged into the wall and a messenger bag is slung on the back of the chair. I drop into the seat facing his.
“I’m going to record this, okay?” Luke says.
I release a tight breath. “Fine.”
Luke sets his phone on the table and rattles off a quick intro. “Bear with me, Hutch. We need to go back to the search for Marin. Then we’ll cover your discovery of Michelle’s remains. And then I want to hear about this rose incident with Ava too. You can take a break at any point, just ask.”
“Understood.” For the next hour, I walk Luke through the search for Marin, answering his questions as they pop up, then we switch to my discovery of the remains in York Springs Mine, all while trying to tamp down my growing panic. Is the killer the same as Ava’s stalker? Everett told me he doesn’t believe in coincidences, and I’m not sure I do either.
It makes me furious that the detective in San Francisco failed to solve the case of Ava’s break-in. If he’d done his fucking job, would Marin and Michelle still be alive? Are there other victims yet to be revealed? From what little I know about serial murderers, they don’t wake up one day and stop killing.
Another one of Everett’s musings rattles through my thoughts. If the same person was stalking Ava back then, where have they been since? That’s a big gap for a perp like that .
A chill races down my spine. What if there hasn’t been a gap at all, and this sicko has been actively killing all these years? I sweep that thought back to where it came from, before it derails me. If I’m going to be helpful, I need to stay focused on the here and now.
“Did you see a rose during the rescue or near where you found Marin?” Luke asks.
“No, but I wasn’t looking. And it could have easily fallen between the rocks.”
“There’s no mention of it in the crime scene report.”
“How about what they found on the top of the boulder?” I ask, my heart skipping a beat inside my chest.
Luke shakes his head. “And if there was one in the York Springs Mine, it would have long since disintegrated.”
He ends the recording, then logs into his computer and swivels it to share his screen, where a map of the western U.S. is scattered with dots of different colors. He points at the dot in Truckee, California. “Nichole-Renée. Found buried in the woods near Lake Tahoe.” He taps a dot located east of Elk Flats. “Michelle Swanson, found at the bottom of York Springs Mine.” He taps the dot near a place called Humboldt Ridge, Nevada. “Jane Beasley, also found in a mine, but it was much closer to a road.” He points at the second red dot near Finn River. “Marin Lambert.”
“Who wasn’t found in a mine,” I say.
He huffs a soft sigh, his eyes on the screen. “Right now, it’s only a gut feeling, but I think it’s our unsub.”
I’m not sure I want to know how he’s decided this. Instead, I focus on the remaining dots. Some are blue, some yellow, scattered between southwestern Montana, Idaho, northwestern Nevada, and the Bay Area. “What are these others? ”
“Green dots are missing persons who match the profile. Yellow are unsolved murders that also match.”
Meaning they could all be victims of the same killer. The sheer magnitude of this overwhelms me. How in the hell could someone get away with this? “What’s the profile?”
He sits back and crosses his arms. “Young women, early- to mid-twenties, all of them educated, which is significant. Often serial killers target women who live on the fringes of society. Prostitutes, runaways, or women from marginalized groups. This means our unsub had to get to know his victims enough to decide if they are worth his attention.”
Another chill walks over my skin. “So he’s picky. Great. How does that help us?”
“It helps us find connections. If he’s spending time watching and learning about his victims, it means he has access to them. A job, a shared community like school, a sport, or an activity, even a commute. It’s how we’ll find him.”
“Nichole-Renée was the only one who was found in a different location than where she lived. Does that mean something?”
“If I’m right, she would have been his first murder.” He grimaces. “He didn’t have his M.O. dialed in yet. It might mean that the murder happened on accident, or it was an impulse. After, he needed someplace to dispose of the body. Maybe he has a connection to Lake Tahoe. Maybe he just started driving, and it was the first place with access to forest land where he could dig a grave.”
I flex my fingers on the edge of the table and exhale a measured breath. “Everything about what you just said is fucked up.”
“Agreed.” His keen eyes fix on me for a moment, as if giving me the time to process before he taps his pen on the dots near Finn River. “But there’s a pattern here, and it’s important. After Nichole-Renée, he kills Michelle and leaves her in the bottom of York Springs Mine. Then he kills Jane in Humboldt Ridge. She’s also found in a mine, but this one is much closer to a road. It’s another pattern, I think. One that shows he’s becoming impatient with the disposal process, taking risks to get it done quickly.”
I let this information slide off the back of my thoughts because it’s too fucking disturbing to process. “Do you think the mines have any special meaning?”
He gives the map a thoughtful glance. “One obvious thing is it means he has knowledge of them. For example, would a person who grew up in urban San Francisco or a tourist town like Lake Tahoe even know those mines existed? Or that they’d be so easy to access?” He shakes his head. “Doubtful. That means the unsub has likely spent time in the outdoors, either here or in places like it. A lot of mountain towns in this region have a history of mining activity. He could even be a rockhound or amateur geologist, someone who maybe has poked around in those mines for fun.”
“So he’s from here, that’s what you’re saying?”
“Here or someplace like it, but the fact that two victims were found near Finn River makes me think he’s spent time here.” He glances at the map. “Based on the other two murders, though, he also travels, maybe for school, or work, like a salesman. We’ve had several serial murder cases involving long-haul truckers, but all of them targeted prostitutes and runaways.”
My chest starts buzzing. That there are people out there preying on already-vulnerable women makes my tight stomach turn inside out. “Three years went by between when he killed Jane and Marin. What was he doing?”
Luke shakes his head. “I’m going to assume he has more victims we haven’t connected yet. But it’s also possible he could have been in a different area, or had some life event that prevented him from killing, like being incarcerated, getting married, or even receiving some form of treatment.”
“Marin wasn’t found in a mine. How does that fit your pattern?”
Luke swivels his laptop to him and shuts the lid. “It could mean he’s getting careless.”
“Is that good or bad?” I ask .
“It could give us an advantage, but it’s also a sign of escalation, which is dangerous.”
“Like he’s going to strike again?”
He gives me a grim nod.
“What if all along, he’s been after Ava?” I can’t look at him. My fear is too raw.
“The fact that he got into her apartment, but fled when she screamed…that’s not a pattern we see very often.”
“So it’s possible these two sets of crimes aren’t connected?”
He levels me with a serious gaze. “Right now I don’t have a good answer for that.”
With a groan, I run my hand through my hair but it doesn’t make me feel any less helpless, or frustrated.
“The rose,” I ask. “What’s it mean?”
He reaches for a bottle of water on the table and cracks the lid. “White roses are a traditionally a sign of young love, loyalty, even hope. It could mean her stalker has a romantic interest in her.”
“Isn’t that obvious?”
He takes a long sip from the water bottle. “The way the break-in is described, it almost sounds like the perp wasn’t planning to do harm. The rose could be a romantic gesture. A delusional one, but when Ava screamed, that delusion cracked, and he panicked.”
“Why would he leave the rose on her car six and a half years later? If it’s even the same asshole?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out, because if it is him, it could indicate what he plans to do next.”
The skin at the back my neck pulls tight. “What about the dead rabbit?”
With a grimace, he sets the water bottle down. “Assuming it’s not a neighbor’s cat. It could fit into a pattern.”
A queasy chill washes through my gut. “Like…a threat?”
“For a stalker with a romantic end game, it can be a way for him to express frustration. Maybe he thinks Ava isn’t coming around fast enough. Or he’s perceived some kind of rejection.” He shakes his head. “We really don’t know enough yet.”
I brush my fingertips across the smooth tabletop, but the simple motion doesn’t calm my racing thoughts. “Is there anything else I can do to help?”
“Sounds like you’re doing plenty keeping your people safe.”
“I’m not going to get any sleep until we put a stop to this.”
Luke nods, his mouth set in a tight line. “We’re working as fast as we can.”
“I know,” I say because the last thing he needs is pressure from me.
“How much longer are you in town?” Luke asks.
That he’s put together that my stay in Finn River will end soon isn’t a surprise, but his question sends a little shock wave through me. A reminder of the answers I don’t yet have.
“I’m supposed to leave Sunday.”
Luke’s expression turns calculating. “Supposed to?”
“It’s not so easy this time.”
“Ava,” he says.
I heave a full breath. “Yeah.” Of course he’s read between the lines. He’s probably known how I’ve felt about Ava all along. The way I’d light up when her letters came. How I’d stay up late just to talk to her. The picture of us that lived in the breast pocket of my uniform, closest to my heart.
A stillness settles between us. Heavy, but not awkward. Luke knows exactly the price we pay for working a job that demands everything.
“Would you give it up? For her?”
“I can’t have both.” I push back my chair and stand. I’m not taking up any more of his precious time.
He stands too and we share a quick hug. “You were a friend to me when I needed it. I’m here anytime to return the favor.”
I clap him on the back. Fuck, I’ve missed him. If anything good can come of this, it’s reconnecting with one of my best friends. “Might take you up on that.”
“Good,” he says as we part.
He follows me through the door and down the hall. At the conference room, he knocks before stepping inside. I get a flash of Ava sitting at the table, looking brave under the bright lights. Her gaze lifts to mine, and my heart somersaults.
Would you give it up? For her?
The answer ricochets through me as Luke closes the door. I force my feet to keep moving, down the hall and through the bullpen and out the big glass doors.
Outside, I try to drink in the fresh, warm air but my mind is buzzing and my fingers are shaking. When I get to the truck, I brace against the side of the bed and try to breathe, but the feelings inside me refuse to settle.
I’m in love with Ava Greely.
But what if she doesn’t love me back?