16
His brain spinning, Max sat in silence in his office for a long moment after Noelle’s phone call about Crystal Chambers’s gun.
He’d agreed that she’d done the right thing by telling Emma.
The teenager was tough and didn’t deserve to be kept in the dark.
She’d lived through more trauma than most people see in a lifetime.
Are those remains her mother’s?
He glanced at the clock, wondering what time they’d receive an answer about the identification.
And will it give us a lead on finding Belle Beason?
Somehow there was a connection between all those remains and the little girl’s disappearance. But that connection wasn’t clear. At all.
His phone rang.
“Rhodes.”
“Hey, Max. It’s Darius Green.”
Green worked at the FBI’s computer lab in Portland, where Max had sent Sydney Beason’s computer yesterday.
Max straightened in his chair. “You’ve got something for me already?”
“I’ve got a Word doc with a list of women’s phone numbers and addresses from her computer. It’s titled ‘Playground Posse.’ You’d mentioned you needed contacts for the victim’s moms group. Figured this could be it. I’m emailing it as we speak but wanted to give you a heads-up.”
“Excellent.” Max opened his email. “Appreciate it.”
“No problem. I’ll let you know if I find anything else.”
“Nothing so far that could indicate the last name of her roommate?” Max asked quickly before the man hung up.
“We’ve run several programs searching Beason’s emails,” said Darius. “Nothing from or to someone who could be a roommate.”
“What about emails from her ex or her boyfriend?”
“Yeah, those are in there. Our scans didn’t pick up anything that resembled a threat.”
Max pressed his lips together. The FBI was using AI to sort through the emails, and he knew it could miss things.
He wanted human eyes to go through them, but speed was the priority right now.
They needed to find a lead on Belle Beason as soon as possible.
“Thanks, Darius.” He ended the call and turned his attention to the Word doc in his email.
Twenty-one names, phone numbers, and addresses.
The Playground Posse.
He rubbed his eyes. He didn’t have time to make twenty-one calls, so he forwarded the list to Evan and sent the detective a quick text, asking him to assign it to someone on the task force.
The women on the list warranted in-person interviews, but to quickly search for leads on Belle right now, all he wanted from each woman was to know if she had been or could further identify Sydney’s roommate, if she knew where Belle could be, and if she knew of someone who’d threatened Sydney.
In-depth questions would come later based on their responses.
His phone buzzed with an acknowledgment from Evan.
He started to scan the rest of his emails to see what the task force had accomplished overnight.
No sighting of the Toyota they believed belonged to Sydney’s roommate, Elise.
And no white Toyota Corollas had been stolen in the northern half of California over the last few months.
But expanding that search to the whole state and going back a year created a list of twenty-six stolen cars.
He ran his gaze over the list of California cities, hoping for one that jumped out for some reason.
Nothing did.
Another list to assign to someone.
He picked up his phone to message Evan only to have a text come through from the detective that he’d just done exactly that.
I’m not the only one working through my email.
His brain ran down a familiar tangent where he wondered for the hundredth time if the roommate was behind Sydney’s death or even all the deaths. Her vehicle had last been seen leaving at the same time as Sydney’s. Neither vehicle ever returned.
Was Belle in one of those cars?
Since they had Elise’s car on video at that date, it was unlikely she was one of the other recent victims buried in the forest. Dr. Lockhart believed Sydney was definitely the most recent.
What if someone else was driving that white Toyota? Elise could still be one of the other bodies.
He made a note, blew out a breath, and forced himself to read on.
Dr. Lockhart had the other two autopsies scheduled for today. Max was hoping to learn some identities when the odontologist compared the dead women’s dental records to those of the small stack of missing women from the area. But he wanted Crystal Chambers’s films looked at first.
“Hey, Max.” He looked up to see Darby at his office door. “Last night Noelle asked if there’d been anyone who’d recently been released from prison who had shot someone in the head. I’ve been digging.”
“What’d you find?”
“If I use a time period of fifteen years, no one fits that description in Oregon, Washington, or Idaho. If I extend that time to twenty years, I’ve got one person in Washington. It’d be helpful if we had a more precise time of when the first two victims were killed.”
Max thought about Crystal’s gun. “Even fifteen years might be too long,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t know this before you did the work, but I just found out the gun found in one of the older graves was last registered twelve years ago.”
“Then there is no one on my list.”
“Expand your search to other states,” said Max.
“Someone committed murder here, went to another state, where they ended up in prison, and then came back for more victims after they got out?” she asked skeptically.
Max leaned back in his chair. “I know you were told to look for someone who shot victims in the head, but what if they were in prison for something else?”
“Without a specific crime, I’ve got thousands of people in Oregon and its closest states who’ve gone to prison less than twelve years ago and gotten out recently.”
“Narrow it. Start in Deschutes County with sentences for violent crimes. Then slowly expand by location.”
The look on Darby’s face indicated he was making her search for a needle in a haystack.
He didn’t disagree.
She glanced down the hall and then turned back with a grin. “Your grandmother is here. I can hear her in the lobby.”
Max closed his eyes. “But it’s Tuesday. I’d assumed I missed her regular Monday visit yesterday.”
“She didn’t come in. Melissa mentioned to me at lunch that she hadn’t shown. I think Melissa was about to call in a welfare check.”
Max’s grandmother had brought food to the FBI office every Monday morning since he’d started there.
It had begun with doughnuts, but now she sometimes brought a casserole or sandwiches.
She claimed she was just being neighborly and making sure he was fed, but he knew she was hunting for gossip.
Paulette lived in a small house that was part of a large retirement community, and whoever had juicy gossip quickly rose to the top of the popularity charts among the residents.
Paulette enjoyed being the center of attention.
Max was skilled at avoiding her questions, but he knew she sometimes got bits of information from Melissa or other agents who were more susceptible to her subtle but probing questions.
She was a tyrant but also knew how to turn on the charm to get what she wanted.
Max loved his grandmother very much, but he mostly enjoyed her in small doses.
A message from Melissa popped up on his screen. It simply said, She’s here.
He pushed out of his chair and avoided eye contact as he passed Darby into the hall.
“Let me know what she brought,” she called after him.
Max could hear Paulette chatting with Melissa in the lobby.
She was recapping a Sunday dinner he’d missed at the home of his sister Keira.
He paused at the solid lobby door to scan his badge and heard his grandmother state that she knew Max was a very busy man, but he could use some advice on how to balance family and work.
Melissa gave the tactful reply that it was a struggle for many agents.
Max steeled himself and opened the door.
“Max!” Paulette exclaimed as if she were surprised to see him. The tall woman embraced him in a tight hug. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t make it yesterday. Melissa here said she was about to call and check on me.” Her gray eyes blinked innocently.
Translation: Max hadn’t called to check on her.
“Everyone here adores you,” said Max. “I was out of the office most of yesterday, so I didn’t realize you hadn’t been in.”
“I’m sure you were very busy. I heard about those bodies found in the forest. Horrible business, that.” She looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to add information.
He didn’t bite. “It’s very sad.” He looked past her to the covered dish on the lobby counter. “What’d you bring today?” He crossed his fingers it wasn’t vegetables; he was in dire need of some sugar.
Disappointment flashed across her face at his change of topic. “It’s a summer salad–type thing. Mainly diced watermelon, mango, and cucumbers, tossed with some lime juice and basil.”
“Sounds amazing.”
“Not exactly something to go with your morning coffee,” she added. “But maybe with your lunch.”
“Definitely.”
“What did Noelle pack you for lunch?”
Translation: He needed a woman to take care of him.
“I pack my own lunch. Always have. Your salad sounds perfect with my sandwich.”
He rarely brought a lunch unless there were leftovers from dinner the night before. But he did pack them himself.
Paulette pulled down the sleeves of her light cardigan. “It’s freezing in here. I hope your office is warmer.”
“It is. The lobby is always a little chilly,” he lied smoothly. Paulette was always cold.
“I saw Daisy Swanson the other day. She was raving about the homemade pie Noelle had made for her.”
Daisy was Noelle’s great-aunt, who lived at the same retirement community.
There was an unspoken competition between the two women regarding Max and Noelle.
Both women liked to subtly brag, trying to one-up each other about who was working the more dramatic or important law enforcement case.
And whose relative visited the most often.
Max had known about the pie. And he also knew it wasn’t homemade.
It’d been in a Costco box, so he assumed Daisy knew it wasn’t homemade too.
He wondered if the exaggeration had been on Daisy’s part or Paulette’s.
“Next time Noelle bakes, I’ll have her make two,” said Max as he grabbed the salad bowl.
“You’ll have to excuse me. I’ve got a ton of stuff on my desk from those five deaths that I need to sort through.
Hopefully we can identify another victim or two today with dental records,” he added, throwing Paulette a very small bone so she had something to mention to friends.
“Of course, dear.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “Get those cases solved.”
Max thought he was home free and turned toward the security door.
“I’ll just chat with Melissa for a bit longer since she’s available,” Paulette said.
Max paused at the door, fumbling with his badge. Her subtle zinger about the amount of time he’d spent on her visit made him wince.
Keep going.
“That sounds great,” he said lamely and escaped, firmly closing the door behind him.
He should rescue Melissa. Her job as office manager was nonstop, and Paulette could easily tie up her time for another half hour, but he just couldn’t bring himself to do it at the moment.
“Whatcha got?” asked Darby, who’d clearly been waiting for him to return.
“Some sort of fruit thing.” He grimaced. “Could you rescue Melissa in a minute?”
“Chicken.”
“I love my grandmother,” he said emphatically. “But she can be a little much. How come you never have family stop by?”
“Because I’m smart enough to live in a different state.” She took the bowl and headed to the break room. “This smells amazing,” she tossed over her shoulder.
“I was in that situation,” Max muttered to himself, striding back to his office.
Now he lived in the same state as his three sisters, mother, and grandmother.
And even though he was estranged from two of his sisters and his mother due to a huge disagreement more than a decade ago, and even though Paulette knew how to push his buttons, he knew he’d made the right decision. He liked being close to his family.
Now I just need to get the rest of them to speak to me.