Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
In my five years as a prosecutor of violent crimes, I’d walked more crime scenes than I could count. But what they found at Daniel Palicki’s house chilled me to my core.
“They’ve brought in trauma counselors to work with the search crews,” Roy said. “This video has already been sent out to the rest of the TRACE team, but I need you to see it.” Roy popped a flash drive into his laptop and played the video footage from yesterday morning’s search.
The camera person walked through the front of the home.
Daniel Palicki lived in Manchester, a small town just outside of Ann Arbor.
It was a mid-century ranch home on twelve acres of mostly wooded land.
A large pole barn sat in the northeast quadrant.
Crews were still conducting their search out there.
But what they found in Palicki’s basement was damning enough.
The camera panned around a dimly lit corner of the basement with tall metal shelving. There were four shoeboxes lined up on the bottom shelf. One by one, each box had been opened and catalogued.
“It’s going to take some time for DNA, fingerprints, blood analysis,” Roy said. “But we’ve got at least a preliminary match to the owners of some of these items.”
The first box contained a pink, lacy bra. “Jade Darby wore one fitting that description, according to her husband,” Roy said. “There’s a substance that looks like blood on the clasp.”
“He kept souvenirs,” I said.
“Looks that way,” Roy agreed. He froze the video at the next frame, showing the contents of the second box.
It was a silver pendant necklace. The pendant resembled an Egyptian hieroglyph.
“Amy Pasko described a necklace like this. Lara was wearing it the last time her sister saw her. There were some strands of hair caught in the clasp. We’re hoping to extract DNA.
If it’s Lara’s, will that be enough to charge him for her disappearance? ”
“That’ll be up to the Ingham County prosecutor,” I said. “I know her. She’s good, but she’s a stickler. She’s going to want more. If you find more of her DNA in the house or on the grounds, she’ll charge. Is there any other evidence so far indicating he may have brought her there?”
“Not yet. It’ll take weeks before the analysis comes back. But they found something even worse beneath the floorboards in the back corner of the basement.”
He advanced the video and then paused it. The screen filled with a shot of the basement floor with several of the wooden planks pulled away.
“Bones,” Roy said. “Cadaver dogs hit right away. These particular K9s are trained to alert on human remains.”
I tilted my head to the side. I could make out what looked like a femur, and a skeletal hand, jutting out of the dirt.
“They could have been there a long time,” I said. “You’re going to have to figure out how long Palicki’s been in that house. I’m not an expert in human decomposition, but…”
“Those don’t look fresh,” Roy said.
My stomach dropped. “What if he’s been at this for years?”
“We’re expanding the scope,” Roy said. “This might go way beyond WhisprMatch.”
“Palicki’s what, thirty?” I asked. I tried to imagine it. Could this man have been killing back in his teens? “What do you know about him?” I asked. “His background. His family.”
“Nothing about any family,” he answered.
“We’re still piecing together his criminal history.
He did two ninety-day stints in prison on drug-related charges over the past two years.
The neighbor said that as far as she knows, he was working handyman-type jobs.
All under the table. She said he’s lived in that house for eight years.
She didn’t see him very much. Nice lady.
Elderly. She’s got aides that come in, but a few years ago, her granddaughter lived with her. ”
I rubbed my temple. “Does she know her whereabouts?” I didn’t want to let my mind go there, but I wondered if the neighbor’s granddaughter was under those floorboards.
“She hasn’t talked to her in a while,” Roy answered. “They had a falling out a few years ago. That’s why she moved out. Heller, our FBI guy, is trying to track her down. The lady says the granddaughter used to feed Palicki’s dog sometimes and knew him better than she did.”
“What does she know? The grandmother?” I asked.
“Not much,” he answered. “She’s figured out his home’s being searched. It’s hard to miss with all the vans out there, patrol cars, and crime scene tape.”
“The fewer leaks the better,” I said. “We don’t even know where charges might be brought yet.
You can charge in any county where an element of the crime occurred.
These women were abducted from multiple counties.
But if he killed them here, at his house, he could also be charged in Washtenaw County.
Jade Darby disappeared from Fort Wayne. If it can be proved he brought her across state lines to this house, then we’re talking the potential for federal charges. ”
“Understood,” Roy said. He rewound the video to the images of the shoeboxes. “Tube of lipstick in the third box. We’re hoping for DNA on that one too. It’ll be hard to match up to a victim otherwise.”
“What about the fourth box?” I asked.
Roy advanced and then froze the video once more. It took my eyes a moment to adjust to the poor lighting on screen. When I could clearly make out the box’s contents, it felt like the temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees.
“Red silk ribbon,” Roy said. “An entire spool of it. Eyeballing it, it looks like the kind found wrapped around Gretchen Small’s smartwatch that we found in the center console cup holder. I want to get Corrine Egan back in here, see if she recognizes it.”
“She couldn’t make a positive ID from the lineup,” I said.
“That’s been bothering me,” he said. “From what we know, she’s the potential victim who had the most one-on-one contact with this guy. I mean, she slept with him. But even Amy Pasko admitted he looked a lot different from when she saw him with her sister. Shaved head. Gained weight.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not feeling confident about Amy’s ID,” I said. “I’m telling you, if she takes the stand, I don’t think she’ll survive a robust cross-examination. I’d feel a whole lot better about this if Corrine could have made a positive ID.”
“Unless we’re dealing with two different perpetrators,” Roy said. “We’ve both been doing this long enough not to make assumptions. We’re at the tip of the iceberg in this. We don’t know if Palicki acted alone. I’d really like Corrine to come back in and take another crack at it.”
“But there’s been nothing so far to point to an accomplice,” I said. “And you’re going to risk tainting her testimony if she makes a positive ID now.”
“I still want to talk to her again, now that we’ve got more evidence to work with.”
Roy opened a second file on his laptop marked Palicki Interview One. The footage started as Daniel Palicki was brought into a dingy interview room. The camera was placed at his eye level, just behind the detective’s shoulder.
Daniel Palicki was handsome. There was no denying it.
He had cold, piercing brown eyes, just like Amy Pasko had described.
Strong jaw. A cleft in his chin. If he grew out his hair, he would be an obvious match to the police sketch.
At the same time, Palicki looked nothing like Lock.
The sketch, however, looked like both of them somehow.
“I know you know why you’re here, Danny,” McCallister said. “And you know I’ve got law enforcement searching your house and car as we speak. You want to come out in front of this?”
Nothing. No reaction. Palicki shifted in his chair to make himself more comfortable.
He looked directly into the camera and smirked.
It felt like he was looking straight at me.
For the remaining ten minutes of the interview, he didn’t alter his gaze.
He didn’t ask for a lawyer. He said nothing at all.
Finally, Detective McCallister realized the exercise was getting her nowhere. She ended the interview.
Roy clicked off the screen.
“This was good work,” he said. “I think everyone’s happy with what we’ve accomplished so far.”
“So far?” I said.
“If and when we match those girls to the evidence we found at Palicki’s house, we’ll be able to retrace his digital steps. We can work on finding out who else he might have matched with on that app. Though it’s been tough to get the app developers to cooperate.”
“This is different,” I said. “You can show a pattern. You can make a case that the app itself was used to solicit these women. If you can show he had no other access to them except through the app. He didn’t meet them in a bar.
They weren’t close by. Not women he would have met casually out and about.
But for WhisprMatch, he wouldn’t have had a way to contact them.
It’s almost like the app itself aided and abetted. ”
“Can you write the subpoena?” Roy asked.
I nodded. “You’ll need a motion and brief in support.
But they’re going to claim lack of jurisdiction pretty much anywhere you file it since the thing’s probably hosted in a foreign country.
There are ways around that. They’re doing business here.
Their users are here. Give me a couple of days and I can have something for you. ”
“We can probably get you help on that,” Roy said. “Researchers. Paralegals. This is the kind of thing the Feds might write a blank check for.”
“I can get started and let you know,” I said.
Roy’s cell phone rang. He checked the caller ID and frowned. “I gotta take this. Give me one second.”
He stepped out of the room. Roy left a stack of photos on the table containing screenshots from the footage we’d just watched. I reached for them. I worked my way through them until I found the photo of the fourth shoebox, containing the spool of red silk. I looked closer.
The fabric was identical to what I wore around my own wrist. No.
Not again. I would not go down that road.
But Daniel Palicki was behind bars. The police were accumulating more and more evidence against him.
We were so close to being able to deliver justice for these poor women.
Every ridiculous fear I harbored had turned into nothing.
There was no connection between Corrine Egan, Lara Pasko, Jade Darby, Gretchen Small, and me.
Roy came back in. “That was McCallister. They’ve dug out the rest of the body under the floorboards.”
His phone rang again. Roy held up a finger and excused himself to take the call.
I flipped through the photos again. All these women.
Four now. What had been done to them? Were they tortured?
Did they know what was happening to them?
I heard Roy’s muffled voice as he spoke to his caller.
I kept landing on the photo of the spool of ribbon.
Why did Palicki have it? What was its significance?
I knew what mine meant and I cherished it.
I hated that this case had forever tarnished my feelings for it.
“That was Corrine,” Roy said as he came back. “She said she hasn’t been able to sleep since she looked at the lineup.”
“Does she think she recognizes Palicki now?” I asked.
“No,” Roy said. “But she said she kept something from her weekend with Matt Woodson. Something she was afraid to give to the police until now. She says she thinks it could have his DNA on it. If she’s right, and it matches Palicki, she could still make a powerful witness.
Do you see anything wrong with my thought process? ”
“No,” I said. “It’s worth looking into.” It was. But it would also be one more concrete piece of evidence that would put my doubts to rest once and for all.
Roy’s phone buzzed one last time. “Sorry,” he said. “Just another fire I have to put out. It never ends.” He left the room.
I looked through the rest of the photos. The house looked so dark. So cold. There was dust on every counter. Broken windowpanes. Everything about it seemed bleak. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but the house itself felt evil. One by one, I laid the photos facedown as I looked at them.
Several of the photos captured Palicki’s bedroom. The bed was unmade with dirty laundry on the floor. Even through photos, I imagined the place smelled dank and fetid. I flipped over another photo showing a nightstand with wadded-up tissues and a pair of earbuds on top.
Then every muscle in my body went hard. Fear stabbed through my chest. There was a painting on the wall.
I recognized it instantly but blinked, trying to clear my vision.
No. It could not be. It made no sense. I flipped to the next photo.
A different angle of the same wall but the painting was in sharper focus.
Frères Célestes.
Celestial brothers. Two fish forever chained together. The Duvayre. It was a replica of the painting that hung in the Manning Foundation lobby. Lock’s prized possession. I let the rest of the photographs flutter to the floor.