Chapter Two #2
Leah sighed.
“Well, he’s worked up.”
Dannie didn’t blame him.
“If I came home and my wife was missing, I’d be just as worked up,” he admitted.
Yeah, her too.
“He’s not going to get anywhere with the business. It’s not going to be open. Coffee places are barely open,” she admitted.
He was aware, but you had to pick your battles, and arguing with Dave wasn’t on his list for today.
Pass.
“Well, he’ll canvas or get arrested. Either way, until we clear him with his place of employment...”
She understood.
Out of the three missing women, Phylis was the ONLY one with a spouse. It was hard not to think like a homicide detective, and already, she was planning on seeing if good old Dave had any connection to the others.
Later.
For now, they had other things to do.
“Let’s check the house,” Leah suggested.
Dannie was good with that.
After all, the man had told them to head on in. It was best to kill two birds with one stone here. They could look around and see what piqued their interest regarding Phylis.
“Let’s do it.”
As they headed into the house, the one detective was curious what her partner was thinking.
“Do you think it’s connected?” Leah asked.
Did he?
Yes.
Did he hope it wasn’t and that this was going to be a coincidence?
Also, yes.
“If it is, we have a HUGE issue. Three missing women in two days? That’s bad, Leah. That’s serial killer bad because we’ve worked homicides. We know that if three women go missing, we aren’t getting them back alive. After forty-eight hours, the trail goes cold.”
She was aware.
It was wild they’d offered to help the other division out while they were down detectives, and the three cases the division caught might all be handed off to homicide.
THEM.
That was some shit luck on their behalf.
Inside, they moved around the house, and in all of the pictures, they saw two happy people.
“She’s beautiful,” Leah admitted. “They look happy together.”
Yeah, but they all knew the rule of thumb. If a wife went missing, you had to look at the spouse.
They were ALWAYS the first suspect.
Sadly, the person who supposedly loved them tended to be the ones who hurt them, more often than not.
“We’ll talk to neighbors and see if that was the case. Then, we’ll talk to his employer to cover our bases.”
Yeah, they’d have to dig around. Just like they’d done it for the other two women.
“What does she do for a living?” Leah asked.
Dannie had gotten the transcript of the call to nine-one-one emailed to him. Pulling out his phone, he read it over.
“She works in retail at one of the shops down on Main Street.”
Leah was thinking about it.
“Well, this is crazy,” she admitted. “The first woman is a teacher, then a bartender, and now a retail clerk?” she asked. “This feels random to me, and weird.”
Yeah, he thought it was bizarre too.
Together, they kept looking around the house to see if there was any sign that Phylis came home after all.
Or if there had been a struggle.
Only, there wasn’t any. Dannie didn’t see a purse, keys, or anything out of order. It would be easier if the husband hadn’t left, but that was neither here nor there.
“No struggle here. We can’t have the techs come here because we don’t know that anything nefarious happened. We don’t know if she’s missing or passed out at a hotel.”
That was true.
What they needed was something more to give them a direction. There was no doubt they both wanted this to be just a miscommunication and not another missing person.
Fingers were crossed.
“I don’t like working for this division. Give me a good old-fashioned homicide any day,” Leah admitted.
Yeah, him too.
These cases were going to stay tagged as missing persons until they could prove otherwise.
That meant bodies.
Or remains.
As they cleared the lower part of the house, there was nothing out of the ordinary there.
Leah sighed.
“Of course, it’s our luck we get asked to help out during a flu outbreak, and we catch not one, but three cases that we can’t even pass off because they’re going to go to our actual division.”
Dannie laughed.
“Yeah, our luck sucks. Tag, we’re it.”
That it did.
There was no arguing that. This was a clusterfuck for sure. Leah could feel it in her bones.
As they headed upstairs, they checked each room and they were nice. They guest rooms were filled with pretty things, and well decorated.
There wasn’t a sign of a kid to be found.
“I don’t think she had children,” Dannie admitted. “The other two women didn’t either. That’s something they have in common.”
Leah agreed.
“Well, if this is far worse than we know, at least no children lost their mothers.”
Truth.
“I don’t see any sign that something nefarious happened here,” Dannie admitted. “We’re going to have to hit up the friends he mentioned, and check that business.”
Leah clued him in.
“The Tipsy Easel is a nice place. I can’t see some creepy woman abductor running amok there,” she admitted. “It’s run by a couple.”
He lifted a brow.
“And you go there?” he asked.
She laughed.
“Yeah, in my free time—the few hours a day I have, I head there and paint. Who needs sleep?” she asked, sarcastically. “My dude, I’m with you almost twenty-four-seven. Have you seen me painting shit?”
He actually laughed.
“We all gotta have hobbies,” he joked.
Yeah, well, she didn’t.
“I live around the block,” she stated. “I drive by on the way to and from work. I know it’s run by a couple because they have social media. I’ve seen it pop up on mine.”
He got it now.
“I’m sure they won’t be thrilled if this gets out,” he admitted. “If you’re offering a business that caters to the ladies, and a lady goes missing after being in there…”
Yeah, that would sink that business.
They kept searching.
“This must be the master,” he said, as they reached the much bigger room down at the end of the hall. If they didn’t find anything here, it was clear that the woman never came home.
The place was spotless.
Going in, they looked around.
The bed wasn’t made, and there was no sign of a struggle. In fact, there was nothing out of the ordinary. Across from the bed was a dresser and a vanity. It had the usual things on it.
Makeup.
Lotions.
Perfumes.
“No purse up here either,” Leah stated, heading toward the piece of furniture to continue looking.
Dannie sighed.
“It looks like she disappeared from the painting place,” he admitted. “She must not have made it back home. That connects to the two other women, too. They went missing in broad daylight—or moonlight in Phylis’ case.”
At the antique-looking mirror beside the vanity, the full-length one, she came to a stop and gasped.
That had her partner’s attention.
“What?” Dannie asked, heading her way.
Leah was pointing at something.
“Look.”
When he reached his partner’s side, he saw what she was focused on, and he couldn’t believe his eyes.
On the mirror, tucked around the edges, there were Polaroid pictures. On them, there were three very familiar faces.
Their missing persons.
He moved closer.
“Uh, are those three photos of dead women?” he asked. “The three cases we’ve caught?” he added.
Leah just nodded.
Oh, holy fuck.
Immediately, Leah pulled out her phone, and she held it up after doing her search on Phylis Lizney. On the screen, they stared at her face.
Then, they both looked at the one Polaroid.
To make sure, they did the same thing to the other two women in the photos.
Well, now they knew one thing.
The missing women weren’t completely missing anymore. They were in the photos, and someone knew where they were.
DEAD.
“Oh, crap. They were all taken and killed,” Dannie said, grateful that Dave hadn’t noticed the pictures.
They weren’t pleasant.
Not.
At.
All.
One woman was missing her eyes. The other’s lips were stitched shut, and Phylis had no ears. They looked to be burned off, or they had been lopped off of her head.
What they could see of her had splatters of blood all over her face like someone had sprayed her—or hit an artery.
This was gruesome.
Unfortunately for the women, the dead look in their eyes said it all.
They were too late.
This wouldn’t be about finding missing people alive. This would be about finding them dead.
“We have a serial killer,” Leah said.
Dannie knew it was worse than that.
“We have a serial killer and no bodies. How the fuck do we work this?”
That was a good question.
One neither had the answer for either.
* * * Blackhawk & Cantrell * * *
The J Edgar Hoover Building
Friday
Late Morning
Well, this was a predicament.
As Gene Cantrell stared down the barrel of the Glock, the woman on the other end was watching him.
Oh, and her finger was on the trigger.
There was no mistaking the fact that she appeared to be willing to shoot first and ask questions later.
“Your move, sunshine,” she said to him, hoping Gene didn’t make her get mean. You couldn’t just kick in a door at the Hoover Building and not have a problem.
This had better be damn good.
“What the fuck?” Gabe asked, standing behind his desk.
He’d been having a meeting with Elizabeth, talking about her next case, and his office door had flown in, slamming against the wall.
Elizabeth had been up so fast, drawing her gun, that Gabe was caught off guard again.
Gene stared past the woman, pointing a gun at him, and focused on Gabe.
He was the issue here.
NOT.
HIM.
“You’re an asshole! Why the holy fuck would you let my partner quit? Why would you try to do this? Are you that big of a douchebag?” Gene asked.
The minute she heard him, Elizabeth lowered her gun and put it back in the holster.
Someone was pissed, and Gabe had, apparently, done something questionable.
When would he learn?
Seriously.
Well, this kind of bullshittery was the most normal thing at this god-forsaken shithole.
Gabe sputtered.
“Are you out of your mind?”
Gene headed his way as Elizabeth moved toward the door to get the secretary to go back to her desk.
Oh, and to call off security.
She waved them off, signaling she had it in control.