Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
EVERETT
Inside my rig, Zach climbs into the passenger seat while I take a charging cord and connect it to the phone we found hidden in the dresser.
I knew at first glance it wasn’t the smartphone her parents bought her for her seventeenth birthday. The one we’ve been looking for. This phone was something she kept hidden. A secret.
I dial Special Agent Luke Ballard.
“Ho-ly fuck,” he says.
“I’ve got Zach here, too.” I put my phone on the dashboard.
“Where did you find the phone?” Ballard asks. From our quick text exchange in Marin’s bedroom fifteen minutes ago, I know he’s driving somewhere in eastern Oregon.
“In a hidden space beneath her dresser,” Zach says, grimacing. “I feel like shit for missing it the first time.”
Marin’s phone chirps, startling me, but the screen is still dark.
“Send it to our lab by courier as soon as you get back to the station,” Ballard says.
“Will do,” I say, willing the phone to juice up .
I check the time again. I’m going to need to reschedule my interview with Beverly Ovenell.
“There’s something else,” Zach says to Ballard, snapping me back to our conversation.
“I’m all ears,” Ballard replies.
Zach turns to me, but I shake my head. “You came up with it, not me,” I tell him.
He gives me a grave nod. “We had an idea that maybe our unsub is selecting his victims through a job offer. They’re all either recent college grads or graduate students. The one thing they have in common, even more than the science or health care field is they’re all broke. Marin was only just entering college, but she was at Bitterroot to save money.”
“We’ve been stuck on the science angle,” I add. “We believed maybe the killer worked in that field too, interacted with his victims in that capacity somehow. But what if the science and health care connection is secondary?”
“Maybe he advertises some kind of job offer through these colleges,” Zach says. “My wife Sofie ran a couple of psych experiments for her graduate degree at Western.”
Ballard gives an appreciative hum. “I like this idea.”
“Get this,” I say. “According to Marin’s father, she participated in a research study late in the winter quarter. Something that paid in cash. He remembers the flyer she brought home.”
“Did he still have it?” Ballard asks, his tone sharp.
“No,” Zach says with a grimace.
“Okay,” Ballard replies. “I can definitely check financial records again of the other vics. Though I don’t remember any big deposits.”
“What if he never actually pays them?” I say. “Or the day he pays is the day he kills, and after they’re dead, he takes the money back.”
“Fuck!” Zach says, slamming his head back against the seat. “I thought I hated this guy before.”
The phone chirps again., letting me know it’s unlocked. “Okay, we’re in business,” I say. “What am I looking for? ”
“Check the call log,” he says.
I navigate to the right option.
Only one number shows up.
Because I’ve studied every detail of this case for sixteen months, I know exactly what number it is: the burner phone’s.
All along, I’ve felt the burner belonged to our killer, but without the content of the text messages, it was just an educated guess and not enough for a phone company to turn over what meager information they had.
Marin used her smartphone to text the burner three times. The first was two months before she died, the next two were a few weeks later. Then nothing. Now I know why.
Marin had switched to using her secret phone to communicate with the killer.
When I open the most recent text message, I’m confused. It’s a picture.
“Shit,” Zach says.
Then it hits me what I’m looking at. My lungs freeze. I blink, but I don’t want a clearer image of what’s on the little screen.
“It’s him,” I say. Before I lose my nerve, I force myself to flip through the other messages, but they tell the same story. Marin was sending pictures of herself in various states of undress to the man who took her life.
“She was sending selfies to him,” I say.
“He was grooming her,” Ballard says with a heavy tone. “Do any of the messages have content besides the photos?”
“Not that I saw.” I set the phone in the evidence envelope and peel off my gloves.
“God, her parents,” Zach says in a pained voice before looking away.
I ball my fists and tap my steering wheel. Though I know Marin was coerced into this situation, it’s so frustrating I want to scream. Parents and teachers warn kids about sending photos of any kind via their phone or social media. It’s too risky .
Yet Marin decided it was okay to send these to a man she thought she trusted. That it was okay to keep secrets. To lie.
Lies that her killer used to manipulate her.
Lies she paid for with her life.
“What happens now?” Zach asks.
Ballard launches into a detailed explanation of what his forensic team will do to access the serial number of the burner phone, which will reveal where and when the phone was purchased.
If, by some miracle, the killer kept location tracking on when he bought the phone, then we would get GPS hits from where each text and phone call was made from.
“If we have the time and place the phone was sold, at the very least, we can review security footage and get a visual,” Zach says.
“If they still have it,” I say, leaning back in my seat. It’s been over a year since Marin’s murder. Most stores only keep footage for ninety days. Keeping them past a year is almost unheard of.
“I thought this guy wasn’t sexually motivated,” Zach says, shaking his head. “Why these pictures?”
“Remember, it’s about power. He used her vulnerability to manipulate and control. Plus, we have no idea what he did with those pictures.”
My stomach sours and I close my eyes, but it doesn’t erase the images flashing through my mind.
“It bothers me that all these girls were smart,” Zach says. “Science majors and graduate students. They were all conscientious. Independent. Good girls in every way. And yet this guy still got to them.”
“It stokes his fragile ego,” Ballard says. “Makes the process even more meaningful to him.”
It’s fucking twisted.
“We found one other thing in that false bottom,” I say. “An empty valentines candy box.”
“Like chocolates?” Ballard asks.
“No. The kind shaped like hearts, with words stamped on them. ”
“Conversation hearts,” he says in a thoughtful tone, like he’s mulling this over.
“Yeah, that.”
“Why would Marin keep it?” Zach asks.
“Maybe he gave them to her? Send it with the phone and I’ll get our team on it.”
“One last thing from our visit,” I say. “Looks like Marin didn’t have the necklace before the day she was killed.”
“I think the key pendant is part of the killing ritual for him,” Ballard says.
How can someone this sick have the ability to function in real life, to the point he’s invisible to us?
“He places the pendant on the victim’s neck after death. There are no markings on the skin that would indicate it gets trapped there during the act.”
“Is the pendant for him, or for us?” I ask.
Ballard sighs. “Primarily for him. But he also enjoys the sense of superiority it gives him to leave the pendant for us to find. This is someone with severely crippled self-esteem. This killing ritual is his only source of power, the only way he feels any sense of accomplishment. He’s learned how to milk it for every ounce of pleasure he can get.”
I huff an impatient sigh. While I know the psychological angle is critical in our investigation, there’s a limit to how much of it I can tolerate.
“So how does the killer get his victims into place before he kills them?” I ask to get my head back in the game.
“One thing’s for sure, I think they go willingly. It would be extremely difficult for him to carry them that far, plus unless he takes extreme measures, we’d have his DNA on the bodies. Once inside a mine shaft, the killer has two things he needs. The first is privacy. Remember, he’s worked very hard to get his victim in exactly the right setting. He’ll feel justified in drawing out the ritual involved with killing.”
“I can guess the second thing,” I say. “A mine can conceal a body.” The map of missing girls Ballard identified as possible murder victims flashes through my mind. There are probably thousands of abandoned mine shafts in our region. How many of them are at this very moment doubling as graves?
“Exactly,” Ballard says. “Once the ritual is satisfied, the killer wants to dispose of his victims as quickly and as permanently as possible. A mine shaft is ideal.”
“He had to have scoped out these mines ahead of time,” Zach says. “Too bad none of them have a visitor log.”
“Right. Unless someone notices this guy out traipsing around, we’ll never know he was there.”
I think about a killer going to all this trouble to satisfy some sick urge. It paints a chilling picture.
One we need to crush, once and for all.
“So, what went wrong with Marin?” I ask.
“One theory is she refused to go with him. You also had that surprise snowstorm. Maybe that messed up his plans.”
There are several abandoned mine shafts in Lost River Canyon, but we never found any evidence they’d been disturbed. It’s most likely the killer was headed to one of them, but we’ll never be sure.
“Another theory is that Marin tried to escape, and the killer panicked.”
Could this case get any more heartbreaking? “Forcing him to adapt.”
“Your forensic team found her blood on top of that overlook, but I think the killer took her life somewhere else.”
“Like inside his vehicle,” Zach says. “Or possibly out on that road.”
When we found Marin, we weren’t sure what we were dealing with. Ballard had yet to link her murder to the others. We did our due diligence in collecting evidence, but there was no way to search every inch of that dirt road and the parking area at Thrasher’s Corner after the snow and rain had turned it to mush .
What if we missed something?
An image of a terrified Marin running for her life in the snowy darkness fills my vision. I close my eyes, but I only see snowflakes caught in the killer’s headlights as he chases her down.
“If he used his vehicle,” Ballard says. “Her DNA will be all over it.”
“That only helps us if we get someone in custody,” I say. Teresa’s bullshit story filters into my mind, but I shake it off.
“How long until we get the burner phone intel?” Zach asks.
“If all goes smoothly, a week,” Ballard says.
I cringe while Zach huffs a full breath, puffing his cheeks.
“You guys have furthered this case more in the last hour than we did in the last year,” Ballard says. “We’re getting closer to this guy.”
“Let’s get even closer,” Zach says in a tense voice. He collects the two evidence bags and the charging cord. “Later, Ballard,” he says, and slips from my rig.
Ballard and I end the call. I turn on my engine but sit a moment longer, the wiper blades swishing.
The Lamberts have waited over a year for answers.
But now that more of the puzzle pieces are falling into place, I don’t think those answers are going to bring them any peace.