Chapter Ten
Sunday morning proved things always looked better in the light of day. But Lake had still spent a restless night. It wasn’t like break-ins were a common occurrence around town. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had complained about a burglary ring breaking into houses in broad daylight. Bicycle thieves, yeah, but burglars who left notes were rare.
She knew Linus hadn’t slept any better than she had. He had been up and down several times checking windows and doors. Old houses tended to creak and moan. And last night was no exception. Their extra cautionary measures hadn’t made either of them feel any better.
Theo had arrived last night to take the police report. During his walkthrough, he’d also informed them that Greta Wilding’s rental had been hit an hour before Lake’s. Since both worked at the library, Theo figured the two break-ins were related.
She could still hear Theo’s words. “The footprints are from the same Adidas shoe, a size eleven with a distinctive diamond pattern on the sole.”
As she cracked eggs into a bowl, she realized the whole thing was unnerving. Through Theo, she’d learned that Greta had met up with friends at the Shipwreck until about eight-thirty when she’d left to head straight home to study. She’d found her little bungalow turned upside down, muddy footprints everywhere, and a note that read, “Remember.”
Lake jumped when Linus came up behind her to put his arms around her waist. “You scared me.”
“Sorry. But understandable.”
“You know what just occurred to me,” Lake began, “everything seems to tie back to the library, including the missing true-crime books on serial killers. Greta and I both work there. We must have interacted with this person more than once. And now he’s been in our houses.”
Linus had already thought of that. Something else nagged at him, but he wasn’t sure he should mention it. Lake seemed spooked enough. But he couldn’t ignore that both women fell within the killer’s targeted victimology.
She turned to face him. “What is it?”
When he didn’t say anything, she pushed. “You’re holding something back.”
He scratched his chin. “Okay. Here goes. But promise me this won’t freak you out. Okay?”
“I’m afraid that ship already sailed.”
“Yeah, but this might push you over the top. You and Greta fit the profile compared to the other women who disappeared on or near that bridge. Look at their ages. The first was a thirty-four-year-old woman named Joanna Hawkins. In 2015 Amanda Jenner was thirty-two. Gail Pinter was twenty-nine in 2016. A year later, Cillia French went missing when she was twenty-five. In 2018, Maggie Dover was twenty-four. Susan Crawford in 2019 had just turned twenty-two. Britney Parks in 2020 was another twenty-two-year-old. In 2021, Keri Davis was only nineteen. Then there’s Gabby last fall. Gabby was his youngest victim at seventeen. See? You and Greta fit into his preferred victim’s age group.”
“And those that got away?”
“Same deal. They fit the age group up to thirty-five. He could’ve become fixated on you and Greta when he was at the library.”
“That doesn’t spook me at all.”
“Look, I’m not trying to do that. You’re about to attend a meeting where these kinds of things should be addressed. The more women who know, the more likely they can prepare themselves.”
“There’s something that bothers me, though. Our serial killer goes after women on the bridge, correct? Then why does he bother changing his pattern and coming into our houses now?”
“I have a theory about that. He’s changing his pattern because he needs to. Word is out. Women are no longer stopping along the bridge. So now he comes after them.”
“But Gabby must’ve stopped,” Lake pointed out. “And that was only six months ago.”
“That’s true, but who knows? Maybe he fixated on them enough to know where they were headed, like over the bridge, and he waited to intercept them at that remote location. I don’t have any experience with knowing how serial killers think. And if I wanted to learn, he stole all the true crime books out of the library that might give us a clue.”
Lake huffed out a breath. “I suppose anything is possible. Are you coming to the meeting?”
“I was planning to, but Beckett just texted me. He wanted to know if I would consider riding along with him and Birk and show them where I found the pendant.”
“You should do that,” Lake urged. “This meeting is just a get-together to brainstorm about how to stay safe. After last night, I don’t have any suggestions about how to do that. And poor Greta. She’s in the same boat.”
“My theory might be wrong. Think about it. If he wanted to harm Greta and yourself, he would’ve waited until you were both at home alone. His reasoning for breaking into your homes doesn’t make sense. Unless he wanted to send you both the same message.”
“Remember,” Lake repeated. “Some message. I don’t even know what that means. When are you heading out?”
“Beckett’s leaving now.”
“Then go. I have brownies to whip up and mac and cheese to throw together as soon as we finish breakfast. But I’d planned to head to church and catch the 10:30 service so I could mingle with the others. Greta’s picking me up.”
“I told Beckett I’d catch up. I don’t want to leave you here alone.”
She turned from the counter. “Linus, I have three dogs here to protect me. It’s okay to leave. Jack, Scout, and Farley are no pushovers when it comes to letting someone inside.”
“I would like to be at the bridge from the onset.”
“Then do it. Go. I’ll be fine.”
From the moment Lake and Greta walked into the church auditorium, they knew something had happened. People were huddled together, chattering like magpies.
“What’s going on?” Lake asked Jordan.
“No one has seen Geniece Darrow since she left work last night around one o’clock.”
Lake’s heart sank. She knew Geniece worked at The Shipwreck as a waitress. Geniece also frequented the library on a regular basis because, as a student at UC Davis, she often spent a good deal of her time doing research and homework there. Lake had gotten to know her well. The girl was a hard worker, reliable, and fit their killer’s profile.
Without wasting another minute, she sought out Eastlyn Parker, who was dressed in her full uniform, her golden wheat hair bunched into a ponytail. The cop stood huddled together with the others near the sanctuary, making notes on her tablet.
Determined to find any clue that could lead them to Geniece’s whereabouts, Lake cleared her throat. “I don’t understand. Why are we just hearing about this now?”
“Because no one reported her missing until an hour ago,” Eastlyn explained. “The only reason we know she didn’t come home last night is that her sister Jill went in to wake her up for some study group she had scheduled and found her bed hadn’t been slept in.”
“We should organize a search, put up missing person posters, send out city-wide text messages,” Lake suggested, reaching for her phone as she texted the update to Linus.
As the churchgoers exchanged worried glances and whispered speculations, a sudden thought hit Lake. She remembered several conversations she’d had recently with Geniece. Could it be that simple?
Inching up to the cop, she whispered, “I think I might know something.”
Eastlyn narrowed her eyes in Lake’s direction. “Don’t keep it to yourself.”
Lake grabbed the cop’s arm, veering Eastlyn to the side out of earshot of the others. In a soft voice, so no one else could hear, she muttered, “Geniece has been dating her boss, Durke Pedasco, for the past several weeks. She wanted to keep it a secret from Jill. Do you think she might’ve gone home with Durke, and that’s why she wasn’t at her place?”
Eastlyn rolled her eyes and took out her phone. “Durke’s an old friend of mine from Bakersfield and old enough to know better than to zero in on one of his employees.”
“Geniece gave me the impression that she was sort of smitten with Durke.”
“That’s no excuse on Durke’s part. I’ll make this call and be right back,” Eastlyn said, walking down the middle aisle between the pews with the phone to her ear and out the double doors.
Ten minutes later, when Eastlyn came back inside, she waved her arms. “False alarm, folks. Geniece Darrow has been located. Fortunately, she’s safe and headed home to her sister’s place as we speak. If you’re here for the potluck meeting after church service, don’t worry, it will start on time as scheduled.”
“Thank you,” Lake whispered to Eastlyn.
“No, thank you. Help from the public is always our best source of solving a crime. In this case, we located Geniece before her disappearance went out on the comm.”
“That reminds me, I need to text Linus and tell him everything’s okay.”
After standing around for an hour, Linus regretted his decision. He realized that trudging through the wetlands and muddy ground wouldn’t have been his first choice for spending his Sunday morning. If he were honest, lounging in bed with Lake until noon would top that list every time.
But at least it wasn’t pouring rain.
Today, the sun beat down. The birds circled overhead when they weren’t nesting in the ground cover or chirping their little heads off. The high tides from the rain had receded, leaving behind piles of seaweed and dead fish that had washed ashore and sand flies flitting from one pile to the other.
Linus wiped the sweat from his brow before glancing at all the faces. In addition to Brent, Colt, and Theo, the sheriff’s department had a forensic unit on standby just in case they uncovered more evidence. A positive ID had been made on the skull and the partial ribcage Linus had discovered. Both belonged to Gabby Moreland. The coroner determined that the rib bones had deep nicks, indicating Gabby had died of at least four stab wounds to her chest area with one jab to the heart that ended her life.
Arms crossed over his chest, Linus stood back and watched Terra Search Recovery do the dirty work. Beckett Callahan, with his Golden Retriever Brodie, kept to the trail—if you could call it that—the path Linus had taken on Friday.
Next to Linus stood Birk Callahan, who held onto the leash of another superstar search dog named Journey, a two-year-old female German Shepherd Alaskan Husky mix that had made headlines two months earlier for sniffing out a wanted fugitive dubbed the Highland Park Killer, a nasty piece of work who had professed to strangling nine women in the upscale part of Dallas County known as Highland Park, Texas. He had escaped from custody and fled to California before Journey had tracked him down through the Santa Cruz Mountains for the U.S. Marshals.
“Shouldn’t I be down there with them?” Linus asked Birk. “I could point out exactly where that gnarly willow tree is located and pinpoint the exact spot where I found the gold chain?”
“Not necessary,” the former Navy Seal returned. “You gave Beck enough info already to pick up where you left off. We agreed that Brodie goes in first and does his thing, sniffing out anything the victim might’ve left behind or for human remains. When Brodie tires out, Journey stands ready to take up the slack. Too many dogs in this terrain—the water, the muck, and the marsh—won’t accomplish much if we can’t zero in on a particular spot that could be a dumping ground.”
Linus shifted his weight from one foot to the other, feeling frustration and impatience. He hated being sidelined, especially when it meant being resigned to spectator. The fact that other bones might still be out there somewhere only fueled his determination to uncover the truth behind what had happened to the teenager.
He glanced over at Theo Woodsong. “Thanks for responding so fast last night.”
“No problem. Saturday nights always keep us hopping. You know the drill. But since our department is stretched too thin, last night was a doozy. We’ve been working overtime since you discovered Gabby’s remains. Then we woke up this morning to hear that Geniece had gone missing. It’s been a stressful four days. Now this. The good news is we’re celebrating how we just scored our brand-new digitalized fingerprint machine that connects us to other police departments nationwide. We’re pumped.”
Linus nodded. “Hey, I hear ya. I know how I felt when we finally got portable EKG monitors that worked.”
“Exactly. Did your funding come from a certain anonymous donor? Brent won’t tell anyone who it is.”
“Honestly, I never asked where the money came from. I just enjoy the fruits of having new equipment in the field like a working defibrillator.”
Next to him, Journey let out a soft whine. Her ears perked up as the dog watched Brodie in action. The well-trained Golden Retriever splashed through the murky waters, nose to the ground, following a scent only he could detect.
Linus couldn’t help but admire the dedication and skill these dogs possessed. They were truly a remarkable tool in search and rescue.
As Brodie circled a particularly dense thicket of brush, his tail wagging furiously, Birk called out, “I think he’s got something!”
Beckett gave Brent a thumbs up and hollered, “Brodie’s found more clothing. You want us to go in deeper to see what’s what before you send in forensics?”
“Bag it,” Brent shouted back before motioning for the forensic team to move in.
“Wait,” Beckett bellowed. “It’s not just clothing. I see a partial skeletal outline. This isn’t related to Gabby. It’s another victim.”
“Okay, get out of there,” Brent directed. “Switch places with forensics. Let them handle the excavation while we devise a way to get through that wall of vines. God only knows what’s on the other side.”
Minutes turned into hours as the team worked to collect the bones, combing through the undergrowth where Brodie had led them.
The dense thicket seemed to loom larger now. A foreboding shadow hung over the discovery of the second victim. Linus could feel the weight of the unknown pressing down on him, a heavy burden that threatened to suffocate any hopes of finding closure for those affected by these gruesome crimes.
His face was grim and determined when he angled toward Brent. “That wall of vines is no ordinary obstacle. There’s something in there. I can feel it. Is there any way we could work to clear that area while forensics does their job? You have at least five guys standing around here in a holding pattern with nothing to do when we could be cutting through that wall.”
“He’s right,” Birk said to Brent. “We could save time and get this done before dark tonight.”
Linus saw indecision in Brent’s eyes. “What are you thinking?”
“I don’t want to compromise what we’ve already found,” Brent explained. “Search and recovery is a painstaking process, sometimes slow and methodical. You can’t hurry this along because it’s inconvenient timewise.” He scanned the faces of the men. “Every one of you should already know that.”
Theo traded looks with Colt. “Then we might as well be back on patrol taking calls.”
Colt scanned the terrain and scrubbed the stubble on his chin. “What if we cut through from the north side, completely avoiding the forensic team by approaching from the other direction? That way, we wouldn’t risk compromising what we have in hand.”
Beckett joined in the conversation. “Look, we’ll leave the dogs here while we cut through that mess. The ground’s higher over there, drier. Then afterward, when we’ve breached that side of the undergrowth, we turn Brodie and Journey loose to do their thing.”
“What do you say, Brent?” Linus prompted. “Coming in from the back side will take us hours. By that time maybe the forensic team will be finished extracting the second victim. Maybe we’ll find more bones. Who knows? It’s better than standing around here doing nothing.”
“Fine,” Brent finally uttered. “But you’ll need machetes to tackle that wall.”
“I have a bush axe in the truck,” Linus volunteered.
Birk slapped Linus on the back. “Go get it. We keep brushing tools in ours at all times. We never know what kind of search and rescue we’ll be handling. It helps to have weed whackers and brush hooks on hand to chop through undergrowth.”
With tools in hand, the five men got busy.
It wasn’t like hacking their way through the jungle. These vines were tough and dried out from years of drought conditions. Faced with removing several acres of brush, Theo and Colt worked in unison on one end while Linus and Beckett took the other. Linus used the weed whacker while Beckett chopped his way using the hook with a long, curved blade. The two followed behind Birk, wielding the bush axe with precision, hacking away at the thick branches he confronted every few feet. All they needed was to create an opening in the wall large enough for them to pass through.
Thorny, woody scrubs like hawthorn and acacia scraped along their skin. The sharp spikes tore at their clothes as the men chopped and hacked through the dense undergrowth. They pressed on, driven by the relentless need to rule out whether this place might be a dump site.
Finally, after what felt like hours of grueling labor, Birk struck the final blow with the bush axe, creating a large enough gap for them to walk through. They stepped into a small clearing surrounded by towering foliage, more gnarly vines, and tangled vegetation that had guarded this spot from outside intrusion. And there, lying in a patch of sunlight filtering through the dense canopy above, was the dump site. Bones and raggedy clothing were scattered everywhere.
The air was thick and heavy, filled with the musty scent of decay. A foul stench wafted out, causing Theo to gag and step back. Colt tried to cover his nose with his sleeve.
These men had been to war and were familiar with the odor of decomposition. They knew better than to disturb this makeshift graveyard.
“How on earth did he get his victims here?” Linus wondered aloud.
“No need to bury them,” Beckett noted as he stood without taking another step. “Who was ever going to get curious enough to discover what was here?”
“Are you forgetting that we’re standing underneath a bridge?” Colt pointed out. “How many cars travel overhead daily without anyone knowing this was here?”
“I’m counting seven skulls,” Linus offered.
“Negative. You missed the one nearest the perimeter,” Birk corrected, pointing straight ahead. “That makes eight.”
Linus liked to think he had a strong stomach. But a sickening feeling settled in the pit of his belly. He looked around at the horrific scene and almost lost the breakfast he’d eaten earlier.
The bones were weathered, some scattered in disarray while others were neatly arranged in grim patterns. It was clear that this was the work of someone meticulous, someone who took pleasure in displaying their victims like macabre trophies.
Revulsion crept over the group as they realized the magnitude of the horror laid out before them. The sunlight seemed to dim in this circle of hell as shadows fell around the bones and tattered remains.
Colt clenched his jaw, steeling himself against the urge to back away. “What kind of a monster does this kind of thing?”
Linus nodded in agreement as he dug out his cell phone. “I was thinking the same thing. I’ll let Brent know that we’re in. Should we start taking photos? Send him a picture or two of the bodies to warn him.”
“I’ll do it,” Theo volunteered. “We have Brent on speed dial.” But a shaken Theo fumbled with his phone, his hands trembling slightly as he captured the first image before swiping to Brent’s number. “Boss, we broke through the vines. We have a dump site of at least eight sets of remains, possibly more. You need to get down here. Don’t let forensics leave.”
While Theo reported to Brent, Linus knelt beside one of the skulls, his expression grim. “These poor souls have been here for a long time,” he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper. “Am I nuts, or does it seem like each victim has been left in a specific position like a circle or a clock?”
Beckett’s jaw tensed as he surveyed the clearing with a steely gaze. “I was thinking that, too. Maybe in a sundial pattern.”
“That’s it, a sundial,” Linus muttered, pointing to a tattered piece of fabric caught in a nearby bush. “Even with the animal activity, you can still see the outline where they were originally laid out. How do you know what clothing belongs to what victim? This will take weeks to sort out. How long do you think they’ve been here?”
Birk’s eyes narrowed as realization dawned on him. “I don’t know. But we might be dealing with two different killers. Otherwise, why did Gabby Moreland’s partial remains end up on the other side of the wall? Then there’s the second victim Brodie found. That’s two that didn’t make it this far.”
“Maybe the killer had difficulty returning to his dump site,” Linus proffered. “He needed to get rid of Gabby’s body quickly and decided to bury it in the dunes because he couldn’t hack his way through that wall of vines in the dark. I know I couldn’t. Same circumstance with the second victim.”
“Maybe,” Colt muttered. “But I think Birk is onto something. Either way, it will take time to sort this out. There’s no clear answer…yet.”
Colt stopped talking when he saw Brent standing at the entrance, taking in the chilling scene.
Brent, hands on his hips, stared straight at Linus. “How the hell did you know this was back here?”