Chapter 20
Brooklyn Sloane
“There’s no entrance to a cellar anywhere inside this structure.
” Dr. Kessler had pulled her respirator down to her chin before gesturing toward the packed earth floor.
“My team has been working in this space for nearly a week. We’ve excavated eight burial sites down to undisturbed subsoil.
If there were a hatch, a stairwell, or any kind of access point underneath us, we would have encountered it by now. ”
“There were no cellars on the blueprints of the estate, either,” Brook said, more to herself than to Kessler.
Brook had been holding onto the possibility that Nestor had built a hidden workspace that explained where his equipment had gone and why Gwenyth kept pointing her back to this place, but the evidence wasn’t cooperating with that theory.
“I appreciate you and your team double-checking for us.”
She’d opted to hold off on the press release until noon.
The Bureau had given their approval, and the statement would go out on schedule, but Brook had no interest in dealing with the press any earlier than necessary.
The morning was better spent here, inside this humid glass structure where the work lights hummed, and the forensics team moved between excavation sites with the patient, methodical rhythm that had become the background tempo of the estate.
“Since you’re here, it saves me a walk to the main house.” Kessler reached for the tablet on the nearest worktable and pulled up a file. “We’ve identified the third set of remains.”
Brook gave Kessler her undivided attention.
The air between them was thick with humidity, and the green-filtered light through the algae-clouded panes gave everything the same submerged quality she’d noticed on her first visit, as though the greenhouse existed at the bottom of something rather than on the surface.
“The identification came through a serial number on an orthopedic plate screwed into the left femur. Surgical hardware is traceable through the manufacturer, and the serial number led us to a patient named Ruth Okafor. She was fifty-one at the time of her disappearance.”
“Fifty-one,” Brook repeated, filing the age against the emerging pattern. “Age didn’t seem to matter for the unsub.”
“I’m in the process of sending you and your team the full report, but there’s something you should know before it hits your inbox.
” Kessler set the tablet down. “Ruth Okafor was a cancer patient in hospice care at the time she went missing. Pancreatic cancer, stage four. According to the facility’s records, she had days…
maybe weeks…to live. It was the staff at the hospice center who reported her missing thirty years ago, though her family believed she’d left of her own free will. To spare them from watching her die.”
Brook absorbed the new details.
A woman with terminal cancer, days from death, had either walked out of a hospice facility of her own free will or been abducted and brought here to be some type of test subject.
To a botanist who believed he could cure the disease that was killing her.
It was the same pattern as Helen Uche, causing Brook’s first profile to shift slightly.
She was becoming more confident by the hour that Nestor Ellingham was the initial unsub.
Brook turned slowly and took in the greenhouse around her. The raised beds, the overgrown plants, the evidence flags marking the sites where seven women had been laid to rest with care.
Deliberate care.
“They all had cancer,” Brook murmured, her statement not garnering any type of disagreement from Dr. Kessler.
“Bit has pulled together a list of missing persons from thirty years ago who had been diagnosed with cancer at the time of their disappearance. I’ll have the names sent to you.
It might speed up the identification of the others. ”
“That would be—”
The sound of multiple engines cut through the morning air, followed almost immediately by the slam of a car door.
Then a second door.
Then raised voices.
Brook stepped out of the greenhouse and into the July heat.
The transition was immediate, from the humid, enclosed world of the greenhouse to the open, bright glare of the property, and it took her eyes a moment to adjust. Two men were standing near the gravel drive that ran alongside the structure, and she recognized both before she’d even taken a step.
Dale Ellingham and Cal Brennan faced each other, with the kind of rigid posture that suggested the argument could turn physical at any moment.
Dale’s face was flushed, his collar loosened, and whatever composure he’d carried into the courtroom that morning had been stripped away entirely.
Cal was quieter in his anger, but the tension in his frame was unmistakable.
The gravel between them had been scuffed by their shoes, and neither man was making any effort to keep his voice down despite the forensics team working fifty yards away.
The emergency hearing had been this morning, and from the expression on Dale’s face, the result hadn’t gone his way.
“This is far from over,” Dale was saying as Brook approached. “Gwenyth cannot remain on this property without supervision. It’s negligent, it’s dangerous, and any reasonable judge will see that once the evidence is properly presented.”
“The judge saw it just fine this morning,” Cal replied, his voice low and controlled. “Gwenyth has legal representation now, Dale. You can’t steamroll her the way you’ve been trying to for the past few months.”
Dale turned when he registered Brook’s presence. Whatever he observed in her expression didn’t improve his mood. He directed his frustration toward her.
“The second your forensics team is finished in that greenhouse, I want you and your people off this property.”
“That isn’t up to you,” Cal exclaimed before Brook could respond with an attempt to de-escalate the situation. “It’s up to Gwenyth. And she wants them here. She wants them to find out who killed her father.”
“That’s bullshit.” Dale’s voice cracked on the word, and the frustration that had been simmering beneath his composure for days finally boiled over.
“You don’t know what Gwenyth wants, Cal.
None of us do, because she’s not mentally there.
She talks to people who aren’t in the room.
She doesn’t eat for days. She wanders the house at all hours like she’s looking for someone who’s been dead for thirty years. ”
He jabbed a finger toward the mansion.
It was then that Brook caught sight of a curtain being slightly parted on the second floor.
“When the next hearing is set, I’m going to prove it. I’m going to bring in physicians, medical records, testimony from everyone who’s watched her deteriorate, and the court will see what the rest of us have known for years.”
“What medical records? What physicians?” Cal practically barked out a laugh of disgust. “If you had been the loving uncle you’re trying to portray in court, Gwenyth might have had the proper care instead of…”
Cal let his voice trail off, and Brook wasn’t sure if it was in frustration or to prevent himself from making an admission. After all, he had taught science his entire career. He would have the knowledge to make anti-psychotic medication.
Had Owen Pruitt been truthful?
Had he merely been bringing Gwenyth natural supplements?
Cal continued to mutter under his breath.
Brook only caught small fragments before Dale turned on his heel, walked back to his car, and slammed the door hard enough to echo off the stone portico.
The engine eventually turned over, and gravel sprayed behind the tires as he completed a U-turn right into the lawn, then drove down the lane, a cloud of dust hanging in the air long after the car had disappeared.
The dust settled slowly over the gravel and the grass, drifting in the still morning air like something reluctant to land.
Cal slid his hands into his pockets, his gaze shifting from Dale’s vehicle to Brook.
He shook his head in remorse.
“I’m sorry about that,” Cal said after a moment.
“Don’t be. Emotions are running high.” Brook positioned herself beside him, both of them facing the driveway.
The morning sun was warm on her shoulders, and the baby had shifted during the confrontation, settling lower, pressing on her hips.
“In my experience, people have very different responses when met with this kind of news. Dale is taking his frustration out on the people he sees as a threat to his plans.”
Cal nodded in agreement.
“You’d think he’d want to know who killed his brother. Or who might be responsible for the seven women buried in that greenhouse. But all he can see is the property value and his bank account.”
“Grief takes different shapes,” Brook said, though she wasn’t entirely sure that what Dale was experiencing qualified as grief.
She turned to face Cal. “Maybe you can help me with something. All of Nestor’s equipment is missing from the greenhouse.
Microscopes, journals...all of it. Everything a researcher of his caliber would have accumulated over a decade of work. It’s all gone.”
“It’s probably in his lab.”
“That’s the thing,” Brook said as she monitored his reaction. “We can’t find the lab.”
“It’s inside the house,” Cal replied as he gestured toward the front door. “Somewhere in there, though I don’t know what room. As close as Nestor and I were back then, the man never showed it to me. He was private about certain things.”
“Inside the house?” Brook was skeptical of Cal’s answer. “Are you certain? Porter gave my colleague a tour on the day we arrived, and there was no lab to be found. Can you recall if there was ever any construction on the property? Any renovation work that Nestor had done?”
“Yes, actually. Nestor had some work done on the kitchen at one point. And then to the guest cottage, I believe. I remember seeing a crew out here a time or two.”
“The guest cottage,” Brook repeated as she began to walk toward the main house. Cal fell into step beside her, and the gravel crunched beneath their shoes in an uneven rhythm, his stride longer than hers. “You mean Porter’s cottage?”
“That’s right.”
“Thank you, Cal. That’s helpful.”
“Of course.” He pulled his hands from his pockets and straightened his glasses. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to share some good news with Gwenyth. The lawyer I hired was able to get the hearing delayed until the investigation is concluded. That should buy her some time.”
“I’m sure Gwenyth will appreciate everything you’ve done for her.”
Cal gave her a brief nod and walked at a quicker pace toward the main house.
Brook observed his departure before switching her attention to the upper window, where there had been movement earlier.
The curtain had been left to fall back in place, and the pane was dark and still.
Whether Gwenyth had been watching the confrontation or simply standing at the window the way she often did was impossible to say, but the timing was difficult to dismiss.
Someone had been giving Gwenyth medication for some time now.
Owen had denied the accusation, but no one had asked Cal such a question.
“Mr. Brennan?”
Cal turned back around, his hands still in his pockets.
“Have you ever given Gwenyth medication without a physician’s approval?”
There was no denying the effect of her question. He’d gone perfectly still, and the morning sun seemed to highlight the narrowing of his eyes behind his glasses. Given the situation, her question shouldn’t have come as a shock.
Cal had mentioned that he and Porter had done the best they could when it came to Gwenyth’s care over the years. Porter had confessed to Sylvie that Owen Pruitt had been the one supplying Gwenyth with pills, and clearly, Gwenyth believed that, as well.
Someone was lying.
“No,” Cal finally replied, the word rather clipped.
“No, I did not. I understand you have an investigation to conduct, Ms. Sloane. And while I do hope that you figure out who murdered those women and Nestor, please leave Gwenyth alone. She’s already been through too much.
She deserves some peace, don’t you agree? ”
Cal turned and walked away, not waiting for Brook’s reply. Had she pushed too hard? She didn’t believe so, and she didn’t appreciate the brush-off. Everyone connected with this case didn’t seem affected by the fact that seven women had taken their last breaths on this property.
Porter hadn’t been dead for twenty-four hours, and he seemed to have been forgotten, too.
While Brook didn’t believe in coincidences, one couldn’t argue with facts.