CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER TWELVE
Matt held the station’s back door open for Bree. The damp wind smacked him in the face, and he was glad he hadn’t taken time to shave. The beard was as good as a scarf. He’d spotted a couple of news vans doing updates from the parking lot. Nothing compared to the previous day’s chaos, but the media focus would continue until they caught the killer, people got bored, or another juicy story took over the headlines.
In the squad room, Chief Deputy Todd Harvey sat at a desk, reviewing a stack of paperwork.
Bree stopped in front of him. “You’re better?”
“Yep.” He frowned. “Unfortunately, Cady has it now.”
Matt wasn’t surprised. Todd and Cady had been a couple since the previous fall. Matt made a note to call his sister and check on her.
Bree assessed her chief deputy with a squint. “Are you sure you’re ready for work?”
“Definitely,” Todd said. “I’m bored out of my mind.”
“In that case, we’re very happy to have you back,” Bree said. “We need to bring you up to speed on the murders.”
“Give me ten minutes to finish signing these.” Todd gestured to the forms in front of him.
“Make it fifteen. I need to check messages.” Bree headed for her office.
Matt commandeered a desk and deposited his jacket on the back of the chair. Then he carried his files to the conference room. He worked on the murder board, adding pictures of the clearing and a photo of Ally Swanson. He wrote the word Suspects in dry-erase marker, but he didn’t have a single name to add. He turned to the county map on the wall and inserted three yellow pushpins over the crime scene near Echo Road Bridge.
Bree walked into the room, a folder in her hand. She stopped just inside the door and leaned back against the wall, holding her files close to her chest. “I heard from Dr. Jones. The second victim is Trish Bitten. Not sure how, but I knew it when I talked to her parents last night.”
“I’m sorry.” Matt wanted to hug her.
Bree pushed off the wall and joined him to stare at the board. “Best thing we can do is stop him.”
Todd came in, carrying a laptop and a cup of coffee.
Bree gestured. “Doug and Steve Winner found a body hidden in a clearing while headed into the woods to camp. The most recent victim has been identified as Ally Swanson, age nineteen. She was killed by manual strangulation one to two weeks ago. Ally was approximately three months pregnant.”
“Her killer used restraints, probably black nylon rope. He kept her somewhere and tortured her.” Matt described the injuries to Ally’s feet. “Maybe he didn’t want her to run away or was punishing her for attempting to run away.”
“Do we have any suspects?” Todd opened his computer.
“Maybe.” Bree shook her folder. “I had a background check run on the two hikers. Doug has no criminal record, but Steve was arrested four years ago for stalking his ex-girlfriend.”
Matt’s head snapped up. “He’s fit. He knows the trails. Let’s get more details.”
“Why would a killer show us the bodies he took care to hide?” Todd asked.
“Boredom?” Matt suggested. “Or Doug insisted on using the Echo Road trail, and Steve hoped they’d pass the clearing without incident. Who knows? Serial killers don’t always make sense.” He noted the charge on the board and circled Steve’s name. “We’ll have to ask him about it.”
“He and his brother are supposed to come in to sign their official statements,” Bree said. “I’ll print them, and we’ll take them out to their homes instead. We can ask them some questions while we’re there.”
Matt started a new list with their names. “They wouldn’t be the first killers to pretend to discover bodies.”
“No,” Bree agreed.
“What about Ally’s family?” Todd asked.
Matt added Mr. Swanson’s name. “The father of Ally’s baby should go on the list too.”
“According to Mr. Swanson, Ally was gay,” Bree said. “So the pregnancy is especially meaningful.”
Todd’s fingers paused over his keyboard. “Or Mr. Swanson has it wrong. Parents are sometimes the least informed.”
Bree tapped her chin. “He seemed pretty sure, but we need to talk to her best friend, Jana Rynski. Girls of that age tell their besties everything.”
Matt started a column for interviews with Jana’s name.
“Is there a missing person report on Ally?” asked Todd.
“No.” Bree shook her head. “She left home on her own. The second victim, Trish Bitten, was eighteen, also petite and blonde.” She pulled a photo from a file and added it to the board. “We know she went missing January fourth.”
Matt moved their photos to hang side by side. “Both girls looked young for their ages.”
Bree nodded. “Trish’s cause of death is undetermined due to decomposition. She’s been dead six to twelve weeks.” She opened her phone. “She’s been gone for just over eleven weeks. He kept Ally long enough for wounds on her feet to heal. Trish suffered a fractured eye socket a week or two before she died.” Bree lifted her phone. “Assuming she didn’t have a broken eye socket before her abduction—and I think we can assume her parents would notice an injury that serious—he killed her somewhere between mid-January and the first week in February.”
Todd tapped on his keyboard. “I’m printing a calendar.” The machine in the corner chugged, then spit out a piece of paper. Todd rose and grabbed it. Back at the table, he circled January fourth. Then he picked up a highlighter and skipped a week and colored January eleventh through the first week in February in yellow. He grabbed an orange highlighter. “Ally has been dead for a week or two?”
“Yes,” Bree confirmed.
Todd marked the weeks in orange. “The third girl—young woman—was killed last summer at the latest. So, he went from more than six months between kills to less than six weeks. He could be escalating.”
The room went quiet for thirty seconds.
Matt picked up the calendar and affixed it to the whiteboard with a magnet. He looked at Todd and Bree. “Will he kill again soon? And how will we know?” He turned back to the map. “He won’t use the same dumping ground now that we’ve found it.”
Bree sighed. “We can’t predict him. But we can investigate the murders he’s already committed. Let’s get background checks and financial statements for Trish and her parents.”
“Cause of death for the third victim is undetermined. Identity unknown,” Todd said. “Much of her skeleton was not recovered, so identifying her will be difficult. We’ll pull local missing person reports for females who fit her description. We could get lucky.”
“What do we know about the killer?” Matt moved to a clean area of the board.
“He’s most likely male and strong,” Bree said. “Those bodies were carried well into the woods.”
“He must have an isolated spot to keep a woman tied up. Somewhere no one will hear her scream when he tortures her.” Todd glanced at the map.
So much green,Matt thought. Much of the county was rural and wooded. “We don’t know if the girls were raped, but we should check the sex offender registry anyway.”
Todd coughed. “We don’t know that these are his only victims. I’ll check ViCAP for similar crimes.” The FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program was a database of violent and sexual crimes.
“Matt and I will interview the Bittens and Jana Rynski.”
So much work for just the three of them.
Matt moved back to Ally’s photo. In it, her eyes were so full of sadness that he felt her pain. “We should also interview Ally’s coworkers at the motel, and we still don’t know where she was living after she left home.” He glanced at the board. The images of the dead girls were hard to look at, but he felt better having a plan. They gathered up their papers and headed for the door to perform yet another death notification.