Chapter 29
TWENTY-NINE
Roy wore a T-shirt and jeans when I found him in his office the next morning. Agitated, he bounced on his heels, waiting for me to come in so he could shut the door.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “They need me back out at the site.”
“The site?”
“Palicki’s property. It’s a full-scale search over about twenty acres of property.
We’re hitting two adjoining wooded parcels as well.
We’re trying to keep this from hitting the internet until we’re ready to write another arrest warrant.
But we’ve got an ID on the body under the floorboards.
Her name was Fiona McBride. She disappeared almost six years ago.
She had an apartment in town. So it looks like Gilchrist might get his wish.
Her case could be charged in Benton County. ”
I took a beat, waiting for that to sink in. Fiona McBride. It was hard to reconcile the photographs of the bones I saw with a real human being. And she was one of our own?
“I don’t remember a missing persons case like that,” I said.
“It would have been before you got here,” he said. “She was never reported missing. Estranged from her parents for at least a decade. I talked to her sister though. They were on the outs as well. But we know who she is.”
“Six years ago?”
“Give or take. We’re going by the last known contact her sister had with her.
Plus an address. Fiona was renting a duplex a few miles from here.
I’m trying to find her landlord. The property has been sold twice.
Plus, Fiona was unemployed. Her sister said she was working on getting her real estate license.
But with no boss or co-workers to check with, it’s going to take longer to pinpoint a tighter window of when she was abducted. ”
“No cause of death yet?” I asked.
“Not officially,” he said. “But the back of her skull was caved in.”
“Oh, Roy,” I said. “Do you think he could have buried her alive?”
“My instinct says no, but she’s nothing but bones. Not enough soft tissue. I can’t tell if there was dirt under her fingernails or in her lungs. All we know is her approximate window of death.”
I had to come clean. I had to tell him about Lock and all of my suspicions. Roy kept talking but I couldn’t follow what he was saying. His words were drowned out by the hammering of my own heartbeat.
“Roy,” I started, my throat feeling like sandpaper. “There’s something—”
“This could be far bigger than anything we realized. There could be so many more victims. That’s what haunts me,” he said.
Roy’s words flew out of him in an unbroken stream.
I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. It was like I wasn’t even in the room.
“When will we know whether the court will grant an injunction against WhisprMatch? The sooner that app is taken down, the better.”
It took me a split second to realize he’d asked me a question. “Um, probably a month or so,” I said. “Everything we have has been forwarded to the Feds. They’ve asked me to file an amicus brief in support. Is there any way to establish that Palicki solicited Fiona McBride through the app too?”
“Still working on it. The sister said Fiona used dating apps in general though. If I hear anything before you do, I’ll let you know.”
“I’ll talk to the US attorney’s office. They’ve been shot down every time they tried to subpoena user data on WhisprMatch. Maybe this will change things. But listen, Roy—”
“I’d like five minutes alone in a room with the owners of that app,” he cut me off.
“I think you’d have to get in line,” I said. “Roy, I—”
“I need you to look at something,” he said. Roy pulled up a photograph on his laptop. “We got this from her sister.” His hands jittered as he tilted the screen toward me. The man was on a definite caffeine high.
Fiona McBride was pretty. Short blonde hair. It was a candid shot. She sat on a park bench, with a little boy in her lap. Fiona rested her chin on the child’s head as they both smiled for the camera.
“The sister’s kid,” he said.
“Did she tell you the root of their estrangement?” I zoomed in on Fiona’s face. She had a deep dimple on her right cheek. A beauty mark near the corner of her left eye. She looked familiar to me, but I couldn’t place why.
“Palicki doesn’t seem to have a type,” Roy said. “Lara Pasko was a long-haired brunette. Gretchen Small had red hair. Jade Darby was black. Fiona is a blonde.”
“His type is women,” I said.
“There is one common thread,” Roy said. “Every one of these girls so far had boyfriends or husbands immediately before meeting Palicki. Fiona too. Her sister said she had been dating some guy for a couple of months. She never met him, but Fiona was apparently crazy about him. She took the break-up hard. Their parents were super religious and didn’t approve of Fiona’s hooking up with men outside of marriage.
The sister followed a more traditional path. ”
“Such a waste,” I said. “And they let her just fall off the face of the earth over that?”
“Seems so.”
I couldn’t stop looking at her picture. Why was she familiar?
“Do you recognize her at all?” I asked. “You’ve lived in this county your whole life. Lasalle Harbor is tiny.”
Roy shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I know everyone. And she wasn’t native. Her family is from the Toledo area. Fiona followed this guy here. Her sister didn’t say it outright, but I got the feeling that was one of the last straws for her family.”
“And we have no idea who this guy was?”
“Not a clue.”
“Oh, one other thing. We’re probably going to close out Corrine Egan’s case. Everyone’s feeling is that whatever happened to her, it’s not related to Palicki.”
“Corrine’s actually something I want to talk to you about,” I said. “If—”
“Kalamazoo County deputies will take care of it,” Dennison said, cutting me off once more.
“She’s not our problem anymore. We’re going to have our hands full with the McBride case.
Palicki is still refusing to cooperate. I talked to Detective McCallister.
She thinks the Washtenaw County prosecutor is going to try to put a deal together. ”
“What kind of deal?” I said. “We don’t have the death penalty here. There is no scenario where Palicki should have a shot at parole. The only thing they have to bargain with is giving Palicki his choice of prisons. Maybe.”
“We still have three bodies unaccounted for. Their families want to know where their daughters are. Pray that they’re the only victims still out there.”
“I’d like to sit down with Palicki myself,” I said.
“He said something to you,” Roy said. “Right after Corrine’s lineup. I saw them walk him past you. You looked pretty rattled.”
“It was… nothing. He said he thought I’d look better in red.”
Roy frowned. “Those ribbons. That’s the only thing I can’t work out. It just seems like a pretty wild coincidence that Corrine Egan got the same kind we found at two different crime scenes.”
Sweat pooled between my breasts. “Okay. But, Roy… I need—”
“I’ve got to get back out to Manchester,” he said.
“It’s going to take a couple of days for a thorough search.
We’re bringing in a new team of cadaver dogs.
In the meantime, will you work the legal angle?
Write up a subpoena for Fiona McBride’s user data.
We need to find out if she was using WhisprMatch.
And it’s gotta come from them. We have no phone or computer for her. ”
“I’ll get on it right away. But—”
“Oh, one more thing about Corrine. DNA came back on the underwear she submitted,” he said.
Roy tapped a key on his laptop, bringing the screen to life.
He had a single photograph pulled up. As I studied it, I felt as if I were lifting out of my own body.
Roy was talking, but my brain seemed delayed by a few seconds.
Everything I meant to say to him went straight out of my head.
“Inconclusive,” he said. “Lab guys pulled a single hair, but didn’t get a DNA match to anyone in the database.
Whoever messed with Corrine Egan, it wasn’t Daniel Palicki.
I’ve already talked to her. She was weirdly relieved by that.
I think she’s been holding on to a lot of guilt.
Like if her bad guy had been Palicki, she’s been beating herself up about not being able to identify him five years ago.
She thought maybe she could have helped prevent what happened to the rest of these women. ”
I found myself nodding stupidly, my eyes still glued to the photograph on the screen. I’d never seen what Corrine brought in. I had only seen the opaque evidence bag after Corrine dropped these off.
“I think it makes her feel better that maybe she was just dealing with a garden variety creep, not a serial killer,” Roy added. “She took the news well considering I just told her her case is likely gonna remain unsolved.”
I tilted my head sideways. My lungs filled with ash.
“Mina?” Roy said. “You okay?”
Was I okay? No, I was not okay.
“Is that the only photo you have of those?” I asked.
Roy touched his arrow key and flipped to another view of a pair of sapphire-blue panties edged with lace. There was a large tear in one band of lace along the right hip. I closed my eyes, still hearing the fabric rip.
There was a matching bra. He bought them in a little boutique.
Roy’s phone rang. He answered it while I stared at that screen.
“Mina, I’ve got to hit the road. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Then he left me alone in his office. My teeth chattered. I felt frozen to the spot. No. How could it be? Except it was. The panties Corrine Egan brought in to be logged into evidence didn’t belong to her.
They were mine.