Chapter 1 #2
“If that’s what you’d prefer,” she said, her voice calm but her body tense. The lawyer was inevitable, but Matt wished they
had gotten more out of him first.
Matt and John Anson walked down the hall. “We have enough to keep him over the weekend,” John said. “Once the search is complete,
we’ll have more.”
“I don’t like that he’s not worried,” Matt said. “As if he knows we won’t find anything in his car or apartment. We need to
find the secondary location.”
Catherine had determined from the beginning that there was a remote, secondary location where the victims had been detained
for several days before they were killed. That was based partly on forensics, and partly on logistics. So Reid likely had
good reason to believe they wouldn’t find evidence in his apartment. Fortunately, now that he’d been arrested, the FBI and
sheriff’s department were going to learn every detail of his life: friends and family, if he had access to a vacant building,
if he had a second vehicle.
“We have a good team here,” John said. “We’ll find a thread and pull. No one is going to rest until we have what we need to
keep Garrett Reid behind bars for the rest of his life.”
Matt hoped that was true, but hoping wasn’t one of the pillars of law enforcement. His confidence was shaken, and he wished
they had found at least ketamine on Reid’s person, which would have been far more damning.
John opened the door to the small conference room that they’d been using for their task force meetings after Matt and his
team came down from Quantico. Matt walked over to the credenza and grabbed a lukewarm bottle of water. Kara hadn’t checked
in yet; she was part of the team searching Reid’s apartment.
“Have you heard anything from the search?” he asked John.
“Not yet,” he said, unconcerned, glancing through messages next to where he had a small workstation. “I need to work on getting
the warrant expanded to cover Reid’s finances, credit reports, phone records. I want to get to the judge before he leaves
for the night. If I interrupt his weekend, he’ll be in a dour mood. You can use this conference room if you need it. I’ll
check in once I have more.”
John tossed half the notes, and put the rest under a notepad, on which he wrote a quick note. “If you need me, text.”
John left and Matt pulled out his phone to text Tony a status report.
Garrett Reid was only one of fourteen men with access to the resort who fit Catherine’s profile. When they took race out of
the profile, there were forty-two possibilities. Of those, two-thirds were vendors or part-time employees. But they had prioritized
the initial fourteen men because most serial killers rarely deviated from their own race. So they’d run basic background and
criminal searches on the forty-two, but deeper backgrounds on the fourteen.
And none of them had any serious bumps.
In addition, Catherine was adamant that the first victim would connect to the killer, even if only in passing. The first victims
were Emily and Josh Henderson. And while Emily was originally from California, like Reid, they were raised a hundred miles
apart and had no obvious friends or associations in common.
Matt was certain Catherine would say the answer lay in one of two possibilities: either they hadn’t yet uncovered the connection
that surely existed between Reid and the Hendersons, or there had been another victim—someone killed before the Hendersons.
Historically, a serial killer’s first victim was often someone familiar to them: a neighbor, a co-worker, a casual acquaintance.
Someone who unknowingly ignited the spark of violence and ended up on the killer’s radar.
The FBI research team had already combed through unsolved homicides, but they hadn’t found any missing couples matching the
demographics of the three murdered pairs. If Garrett had started with a single victim—most likely a woman—it would be far
more difficult to identify her, given the much higher number of unsolved single-victim murders.
Because Matt’s Mobile Response Team had only been brought in three weeks ago, they were playing catch-up. It was impractical
to follow the fourteen men who fit each point of Catherine’s profile, but now they could home in on Garrett Reid. Matt lamented
that they didn’t already have more information about this guy. They knew he was born in Pasadena, California, and had worked
at several resorts over the last five years, but there were gaps in his employment history. He had no criminal record, no
active social media, and was living in an eight-hundred-square-foot one-bedroom apartment twenty minutes southwest of the
resort, right off I-95.
An apartment that would be near impossible to bring any of his victims to without being seen.
Forensics confirmed the victims were kept alive for up to five days after their abduction—again, confirming Reid’s apartment
was impractical and he had access to a second location. While there was no evidence of sexual assault, each body bore signs
of brutal torture: blunt force trauma, shallow cuts, stab wounds, and widespread bruising. Once dead, each victim had been
wrapped separately in plain cotton sheets, then the couples were tied together at the waist with common nylon cord, and dumped
in the ocean. The tide carried them to shore within days. Yet, Reid didn’t own a boat and they hadn’t identified a boat he
could easily access.
Autopsies confirmed the victims were already dead before entering the water. The lab was still analyzing trace evidence but hadn’t pinpointed the location of the killings or where the bodies were dumped. The best estimate put the range along the coast—from South Carolina to northern Florida.
Jim Esteban, their forensic crime scene expert, believed the bodies had been discarded no more than two miles out from shore.
Any farther, and the damage from currents or marine activity would have been more severe.
Reid had access to a secure second location, someplace he could hold the victims for days without fear of discovery. But he
had maintained a normal schedule. No sudden leave. No extended absence. Catherine narrowed the search radius: the secondary
site had to be within a four-hour drive. Eight hours, round trip. Close. Controlled. Hidden.
Matt’s phone vibrated. It was Kara.
“Hello,” he answered.
“Nothing,” Kara said.
“I need more than nothing.”
“You and me both,” she grumbled. “Reid’s apartment is more barren than my old condo. A set of four plates, bowls, and utensils
in the kitchen. Two pots and a pan. Some condiments and one leftover Chinese food container that even I wouldn’t eat, and
I have a steel-lined stomach. Couch, chair, television—the TV is nice, new, wall-mounted. Queen bed, made. Some clothes and
an extra maintenance uniform. Toiletries. But the place is immaculate. He’s been here, but I don’t think he lives here.”
“Talk to the neighbors, see what they say—”
“Done. The place has eight apartments, four up, four down. Made contact with three neighbors, all have talked to him. He helps
one of the older women with her trash every week, and the single mom with two kids? Says he’s the nicest guy, didn’t even
hit on her but went out of his way to pick up a bunk bed she bought on Facebook Marketplace and helped her put it together. Everyone likes him. He’s a good neighbor, works a lot, keeps to himself.”
“Have they seen him with anyone?”
“No men, no women. He told his next-door neighbor that he took the job last fall because he wanted to see if he liked living
in Florida, but wasn’t sure he would stay. Didn’t talk about friends or family, but if it got personal he talked about his
job and the resort. He signed a year lease on October 3, two days after he was hired. He paid first, last, deposit. That was
nearly four thousand upfront. Never been late.”
“Nothing to connect him to even one of the victims?”
“Nope. No diary confessing to a crime, no calendar stating ‘today I’m grabbing a blonde and her husband,’ no ketamine or other
drugs anywhere—and we looked deep—and no signs of violence. And there’s no way he could get a body in and out of his apartment,
dead or alive, without someone seeing or hearing. These walls aren’t thick.”
“Okay. Stick with the deputies while they finish processing, collect any information we can follow up on. I’ll wait for you
here.”
“Roger that, boss.” The line went dead.
They needed an expanded search warrant, and Matt wasn’t certain they would get it with what they had. Though the attempted
kidnapping of a federal agent might be enough.
John came back into the room. “Reid’s lawyer didn’t answer—we offered a public defender, but Reid wants his own guy. So we’re
on hold until he gets here.”
“Status of the warrant?”
“I’m going before the judge in an hour,” John said.
“We need to find his second location,” Matt reiterated. “That info might be in his credit card statements, gas bill, any speeding
or parking tickets, even utilities in his name.”
“I’m working on it.”
“His vehicle?”
“He drives a small pickup truck. I doubt he’d use it to move bodies, but it’s not out of the question. It’s already at the
crime lab being processed. Bianca’s team is sweeping every large vehicle on resort property. Vans, box trucks, oversized sedans.
Anything that could hide two bodies.” John looked glum, his earlier enthusiasm had flatlined. “This wasn’t how I thought it
would go.”
“Me, either,” Matt said. “But we couldn’t let him overpower us or remove us from the property. It was too great a risk to
the safety of my team.”
“The plan was solid—I just expected, I don’t know, something more. A secret room in his apartment, walls covered in photos of his victims, a memento from his kills. But there was nothing.
His place, his car, so far both are completely clean. The guy lived like a damn ghost.”
Matt exhaled slowly, staring at the wall that held the photos of all six victims. Their driver’s license photos and their
wedding pictures. Six people who had celebrated the happiest day of their life . . . and then were killed.
“We know what he’s capable of,” Matt said. “But without proof, it won’t matter.”
“We need something to fry this guy.”
Matt agreed, but what could he say? Garrett Reid might walk. And if he did, someone else would end up dead.