CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER TEN
Matt called forensics for an update from the passenger seat of Bree’s vehicle. “They’re still logging evidence.” Forensics had worked in the cold rain for nearly twenty-four hours. “Outdoor scenes are a bitch to process, but they didn’t find much other than the bones. The clearing is isolated. They didn’t find a single water bottle or protein bar wrapper.”
“They’re shorthanded too.” Bree turned toward the sheriff’s station, slowing the SUV.
“I’m almost glad I was sick last week.” Matt hoped he was now immune. “The press is here.”
Ahead, news vans clogged the street and filled the station parking lot. Crews clustered in groups, no doubt giving sound bites.
Matt spotted a major network. “They’re not all local. I see two national stations.”
“Serial killers are major news.” Bree grimaced, then sighed. “People are scared. The public does have a right to know.”
“But using that fear to drive clicks, amplify panic, and then profit from that escalation is wrong.”
“I agree, but I can’t control that.” She drove into the rear lot. Cameras pointed at them as they went in the back door. Inside, the squad room was empty. But Matt could hear what sounded like chaos in the front of the building.
Marge appeared in the hall. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“What’s happening?” Matt draped his jacket over the back of a chair.
Bree dropped her things in her office. She flipped through reports on her desk. Two more deputies had the flu, but two who were sick the previous week were back. No net loss at least. Howard Killian had been released on bail that afternoon. “The press conference isn’t for another thirty minutes.”
“Reporters started showing up an hour ago. Also some parents of missing girls have arrived.” Marge gestured toward the lobby. “Juarez is out there, doing his best to keep the reporters outside and reserving the lobby for families. But he’s alone, so you can imagine how that’s going.”
Bree reappeared in her doorway. “Assuming not well. How many deputies are out on patrol?”
“Four,” Marge answered.
“Let’s call two back here,” Bree said.
“Already done.” Marge really could run the office.
Matt started toward the lobby. “I’ll give Juarez a hand. I wish Collins and Greta weren’t off duty. The K-9 unit would keep those reporters in line.”
But the dog needed downtime after the long night.
“It’s funny.” Bree fell into step beside him. “I’ll call in a human to work overtime, but I’m more considerate of the dog.”
“That’s a good practice.” Matt nodded. “Dogs will work themselves into the ground. They don’t know when to stop. You have to provide the pacing for them.”
The lobby was swarming with people. Spotting Bree and Matt, a reporter with a microphone tried to shove his way to the front of the crowd. A tall, gray-haired man turned and pushed him back. Juarez was on the other side of the room, speaking with a couple in their sixties. He started toward the altercation. People moved out of the way for him, but Matt and Bree were closer. Matt, being larger and taller, cut more easily through the fray.
“Sheriff!” The reporter surged forward again.
What did that dumbass think he was doing? Did he think Bree would give him an exclusive when she was already giving a statement shortly? Matt knew most of the local media. With a few exceptions, they were generally respectful. This guy wasn’t one of them.
The tall man grabbed the reporter by the shoulder and yanked him backward. “Wait your turn! You think you have more rights than people with missing kids?” His face flushed.
The reporter, younger and stronger, shook off the hand. “Get your hands off me. This is my job, man. Back the fuck off.”
“Your job?” the man shouted. “You think that’s more important than my daughter?”
“Fuck you, man,” the reporter yelled back.
Someone grabbed the tall man’s arm, but he would not be held back. He gripped the reporter’s jacket, spun him around, and punched him squarely in the face.
Honestly, even as Matt trudged toward the pair to stop the fight, he couldn’t blame the man.
Blood spurted from the reporter’s nose. He dropped his mic, his hands automatically covering his face. The crowd shifted away, leaving an empty circle around the two men. The reporter lowered his hand, looked at the blood on his fingers, then drew back an arm, ready to strike.
Matt stepped between the two men, catching the reporter’s fist with his much-larger hand. He towered over both of them. But the desperation that shone from the tall man’s face put him on warning. This was the one to watch. This was the man with nothing to lose. Matt turned his back on the reporter, barking a single order over his shoulder. “Stand down.”
In his peripheral vision, Matt saw the reporter take a step backward. One hand returned to his nose as he stooped to recover his dropped mic. “I want to press charges,” he said in a nasally voice.
Ignoring the reporter’s statement, Matt faced the tall man. “Come with me.” He took the man’s arm to steer him through the throng.
Bree positioned herself on the man’s other side and raised her voice. “If you’re with the media, you’ll wait in the parking lot. If you’re a family member, you may stay in the lobby.” Grumbles sounded, but her tone allowed for no argument. “Except for you.”
Without looking, Matt knew she was talking to the bloody reporter.
Matt led the tall man behind the counter and through the locked door that separated the lobby from the rest of the station. Before taking him any farther, Matt halted. “Raise your hands.”
The man obeyed, and Matt patted him down. Desperate people did desperate things. While he sensed the man was grieving, he could take no safety risks. When he was satisfied the man had nothing but keys, a wallet, and a cell phone in his pockets, Matt ushered him into the first conference room.
A few minutes later, Bree entered the room and closed the door behind her.
“Where’s the reporter?” Matt asked.
Bree jerked her head sideways. “Next room.”
“Does he still want to file a complaint?” Matt asked.
Bree shrugged.
The tall man’s body sagged, as if the anger had bled from him—and taken all his energy with it. Having just dealt with Mr. Swanson, Matt recognized the man’s anguish. He pulled a wheeled chair closer and guided the man into it.
Bree sat in a chair facing him. She leaned forward, her hands on her knees, giving him her full attention. “What’s your name?”
“Joel Hopkins.” He swiped at his face again.
“Why are you here, Joel?” Bree asked.
“My daughter, Sabrina—” His voice broke, and he began to sob.
They gave him a minute to vent his frustration.
He drew a shaky breath. “I’m sorry. My wife told me not to come. She refused. She said we’d know if one of the bodies was Sabrina soon enough. We’ve been through this before.”
“When did she go missing?” Matt asked.
Raising his head, Mr. Hopkins wiped his face with his sleeve. “She disappeared last August. I reported her missing to the Redhaven police. They barely looked for her.”
“How old is she?” Matt asked. He and Bree had dealt with the Redhaven police chief recently. Matt wasn’t a fan.
“Seventeen then, but she turned eighteen in February. They said she was almost an adult, but she was still in high school. She’s just a kid, really. No sign of foul play, they said.” He stared at his hands. “We’d had an argument. They said she probably ran away. Who hasn’t had an argument with their teenager? She didn’t pack anything. Nothing. She went to work and never came home.”
Matt pictured Mr. Swanson and his brutal grief. Would Mr. Hopkins be getting similar news soon?
“What does she look like?” Bree asked.
Mr. Swanson brushed a fingertip under his eyes. “Five two, one oh five, blonde hair, brown eyes.” He recited her description as if he’d done so a hundred times.
Dread sank through Matt’s gut. Sabrina fit their rough assumption of the killer’s type. He couldn’t imagine his child going missing. Every discovery of remains would send him into panic mode. Like Mr. Hopkins, Matt would never give up looking.
Bree made a few notes. “Are Sabrina’s dental records on file?”
He nodded. “And recent X-rays, her DNA.”
“I’ll call the medical examiner.” Bree touched Mr. Hopkins’s arm. “She can pull the report. We’ll find out if Sabrina is there as soon as possible.” Bree ducked out into the hallway, returning in a few minutes. “The ME’s office is on it.”
Mr. Hopkins’s head jerked, and his shoulders trembled. “I want to know. I have to know. But I also don’t.”
“I understand,” Matt said. “You don’t have to explain. What did you and Sabrina argue about?”
Regret tightened Mr. Hopkins’s face. “She’d missed curfew the night before. She’s supposed to be home by ten on school nights. I grounded her for the next weekend. She was mad. She was turning eighteen in February. Soon I wouldn’t be able to tell her what to do.” He paused, staring at the wall as if he were replaying the argument in his mind. “Sometimes, you don’t know how to control them, and you hear your own parents’ words coming out of your mouth. I told her as long as she lived under my roof, she’d have to follow my rules.” He closed his eyes for a few seconds. When he opened them, utter desolation filled them. “Can you believe I actually said that? The rational response would have been to tell her we’d discuss it when she got home from work and to spend the day considering options. But I lost my temper. Damn it. I know better. She’s the teenager. I’m supposed to be the mature adult.”
Matt didn’t say anything. He sensed Mr. Hopkins wasn’t finished. Plus, words would not comfort him.
“I called her friends. I called the school. I called her boss. No one had seen her. That’s not like Sabrina. Sure, she’s gotten a little mouthy in the past year or so, but I hardly think that’s unusual. Our older kids did the same, though I think we spoiled Sabrina a bit. She’s the youngest. She tested our boundaries more than the others.”
“How many other kids do you have?”
“Two. A son and a daughter. Both in college.” He inhaled deeply. “They both tested limits their last year of high school. Kids that age are impatient to grow up. It’s natural.”
They sat in silence for a few seconds. Matt had no doubt Mr. Hopkins was thinking the same thing as him: Would Sabrina get to grow up? Or was she one of the bodies from the clearing?
“I looked for her everywhere.” Mr. Hopkins looked confused. “Drove all over town for weeks. But she was gone. Vanished. How does that happen in the modern world?”
“Did she have a credit card?” Matt asked.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s tied to my account, so I can see that it hasn’t been used. She worked at a clothing shop in the mall. She finished her shift at nine p.m. The parking lot surveillance camera showed her getting into her car and driving away, alone. She never came home. I drove every possible route to the mall and back. There was no sign of her car.”
Bree pushed to her feet. “OK, Mr. Hopkins. You need to wait here while I talk to the reporter.”
Mr. Hopkins nodded but didn’t look concerned about facing charges. Probably didn’t care at all.
On her way out, she gave Matt a look. He understood the silent request to babysit.
She returned in less than five minutes. “He isn’t filing a complaint.”
Mr. Hopkins stared at her with no reaction.
Bree gestured toward the door. “You’re free to go.”
“What about Sabrina?” he asked.
“I’ll call you when I hear from the—” Bree’s phone buzzed, cutting her off. She read the screen. “She isn’t one of the victims. Her dental records aren’t even close.”
Mr. Hopkins’s shoulders slumped. “I don’t know how to feel.” When he raised his head, his eyes were lost, the anger evaporated. “I should be relieved. Instead, I’m ... I don’t even know.”
Bree touched his forearm. “Go home, Mr. Hopkins. Tell your wife.”
Shaky, he got to his feet. “Thank you.”
“I hope you find Sabrina,” Bree said. “I’ll see you out.”
Matt followed them from the room, watched her escort him to the lobby door.
A minute later, she returned. “I wish I could have actually helped him.”
“You listened,” Matt said. “And you got the answer to his question.”
“Doesn’t feel like enough.” Bree turned back toward the lobby. “Let’s get this press conference out of the way.”
Matt thought of the sea of desperate faces he’d seen in the lobby. “All of the parents out there want—need—to be heard.”
She stopped. “How many people in the lobby didn’t look like press?”
“Twenty?”
Bree sighed. “Let’s offer to meet with them privately. We can give each family an interview.”
“If we split up, we can manage it this evening,” Matt said. “We might end up ID’ing another victim.”
Bree whipped out her phone. “I’ll let the kids and Dana know we won’t be home for dinner.”
The families they’d been meeting with sat down to dinner every night not knowing if their missing member was alive or dead. Would that change tonight?
Matt wanted answers. Identifying the victims was essential to finding the killer. But each victim had a family who would be devastated to learn their child was dead, tortured and left to rot in that clearing. In the third victim’s case, the family wouldn’t even be able to bring home a complete set of remains.
He followed Bree outside. There were too many reporters to hold the press con in the lobby. Under the roof’s overhang, she gave a brief statement on the facts of the case. “One of the victims has been identified as Ally Swanson, age nineteen. Ally was a resident of Grey’s Hollow. The other two victims’ identities are still pending.”
“The women were definitely murdered?” a reporter yelled.
“Yes,” Bree said, with more patience than Matt could have summoned.
More reporters clamored for attention, yelling questions.
“Is it a serial killer?”
“That is a definite possibility,” Bree answered without hesitation. “But it’s early days in this investigation, and I don’t want to make any premature proclamations.” She pointed to another reporter.
“Will you call in the FBI?”
“If I feel it’s warranted, definitely,” Bree said. “The only things that matter to me are finding this killer and keeping people safe. I’ll use whatever tools I have to do my job.”
“Should the residents of Randolph County be worried?”
Bree nodded. “I don’t want anyone to panic, but everyone should be extra careful and use commonsense precautions. Stay in groups. Lock your doors. Make sure people know where you are and when you’re expected to be home.”
After a few minutes, the questions became repetitive, and Bree raised a hand. “We don’t have any more information at this time. I will update you when we do.” She took a moment to stare directly into several cameras, as if making direct contact with viewers. Her hazel eyes narrowed with determination. “This killer thinks they’re smart, but they’re not. I will find whoever is responsible for these depraved acts.”
Her tone sounded almost menacing, and the crowd quieted, leaving Matt with an uncomfortable sensation that she had been talking not to the county residents but to the killer.
The move didn’t surprise him. Bree would do anything to save girls, even direct the killer’s attention toward herself.
Was the killer watching, and how would he react to a direct challenge?