The Only Girl Left Alive: The McClintock-Carter Crime Thriller Series: Book Three

by Susan Lund

  "Did you think he would? I mean, did you think he'd confess?"

  Michael shook his head. "Not for a moment. No, he's guilty as hell, knows it, and probably is going to lay low, not volunteer anything, and hope the police don't find the tape and he'll be free in two years."

  Tess sat on the stool beside Michael. "He's crazy if he thinks that. He must be really nervous now that the police have found the porn room."

  "He must, but he seemed cool as a cucumber. Maybe he thought the tapes had all been destroyed or put in storage or something."

  "Maybe. Maybe he thinks it was destroyed and that's why he's so cool about it."

  Tess remembered hearing Michael describe the videotape after he saw it at Chief Joe's office. The video was of Daryl abusing Patrice. It was a straight-up porn video, with Patrice restrained on a table and Daryl raping her on camera. Then the voice of a young girl could be heard calling out for her grandfather. Patrice must have heard the girl's voice and called out when she realized she might be rescued. She started kicking her feet and banging her head against the table she was tied to. The girl, Serena, came in the room and screamed when she saw what was happening. Patrice screamed in response, her scream soon muffled by Daryl's hand but still audible. Then John Hammond was heard off-screen shouting and yelling. Serena kept screaming. All the while, Daryl was holding his hand over Patrice's mouth and nose.

  "Shut up, stupid bitch!"

  The video tape showed her struggling, a naked Daryl looming over her, his hand over her mouth and nose until she stopped fighting entirely, her body going limp. Meanwhile, Daryl was watching the door, where John grabbed Serena and shouted at her to stop screaming or she'd be next. Garth Hammond arrived, saw what was happening, started yelling at his father, and the two threw punches—all while Serena screamed. Finally, Garth grabbed Serena and covered her mouth, telling her to be quiet.

  The video stopped at that point.

  The one sold for porn had the sounds of the screams blocked out, replaced by typical boom-chicka-wow porn music.

  If charged and convicted, Daryl would get life. He should get life. In fact, Tess thought he should get the life squeezed out of him the way he had smothered it out of Patrice.

  Who knew how many other girls met the same fate before and after?

  While Daryl went to jail a few years after that video was made, John Hammond and Garth both had access to the space. Someone had continued making videos and using the room for pornography.

  It had to be John. Maybe Garth as well.

  And of course, there was the porn found in her father's attic…

  "Where were you just now?" Michael asked, reaching out to touch Tess's cheek.

  She glanced up and realized she'd been staring at the countertop and hadn't heard what Michael was saying to her.

  "I'm sorry. I was just thinking about the video of Patrice being murdered." She visibly shivered at the thought. "Have police found any other videos they made of girls being abused? Murdered?"

  Michael shook his head. "If they have, they haven't told me. I think there's video of abuse, but no other snuff films. There's lots of print porn. At least two different men involved. However, they're still going through the material in Seattle, so it may be a while before we have a full picture."

  Tess nodded. Though the cases were being prioritized, it usually took quite a while to process evidence and get DNA results.

  "I need a vacation," Tess said, her voice a bit shaky.

  "I know," he replied, his voice soft. "Me, too." He smiled at Tess and opened his arms. "It's hard, but when you do get someone, stop them from hurting more kids, it makes up for it."

  "Does it?" she asked, slipping off her stool and onto his lap for a hug. "Does it make up for it? It didn't for you."

  "No, that was a hard case. I was too close on Lawson's heels. I almost saved Colin, but I failed."

  "You didn't fail. You did everything you could."

  "It wasn't enough." Michael shrugged, his voice sounding resigned, but Tess could tell the hurt and pain was still there.

  She kissed him, softly, wrapping her arms around him, sympathy for him flooding through her.

  He was such a good man…

  Mrs. Carter came into the kitchen and saw them embracing. Tess pulled away, smiling back. Michael's mom loved to see them being affectionate with each other.

  "You two lovebirds hungry yet?" Mrs. Carter asked, slipping her apron around her waist and tying the straps. "I was going to cook some lasagna."

  "Lasagna sounds perfect," Tess said and slipped off Michael's lap, taking the stool beside him instead. She picked up her beer bottle, and she and Michael tapped bottle necks together in a toast.

  "Can I help you?" Tess asked, watching as Mrs. Carter took items out of the refrigerator. "Want me to chop onions or anything? I'm good with a knife."

  "I'll keep that in mind," Michael said with a laugh.

  She pushed his good shoulder playfully. "You better."

  After supper, when the dishes were cleared, and Mrs. Carter was in the living room watching news, Tess and Michael went to the dining room table and stood in front of the dry erase board. Michael had bought it the previous week and had sketched out the four states they were focused on in black marker. Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana. The trucking route was drawn in blue marker, and the cities were in red. Each missing girl was named from each location, with a line extending out of the city or town.

  "There's likely more," Michael said, his voice sounding tired. "I expect some of the girls were never reported missing—like the bones found in the attic. They just disappeared. Family must have assumed they moved out of state. Maybe didn't care at all, especially if they were in the sex trade or doing drugs."

  "That's so sad," Tess said with a sigh. "Twenty-six girls missing in the past forty years who fit our victim profile. All of them along the trucking routes. That's a lot of cases to track."

  "They can't all be related," Michael said. "Probably the work of several killers. Some one-offs and a few serial killers who have gone under the radar so far. There's an estimated two thousand serial killers who have gone undetected over the past four decades."

  "We have several in Paradise Hill that we know of. John and Daryl, to start. Maybe Garth. And maybe my dad."

  Michael didn't deny it, so Tess knew he still had to keep her father in the list of potential suspects. She sighed. However, there was nothing they could do, since he was dead. Same with John and Garth Hammond. All they had left was Daryl Kincaid.

  All their efforts would be on prosecuting him and charging him with as much as they could that would stick.

  If Tess was right, it was Daryl who was the leader of the group. It was only right that he would be the one to pay. The police in Kootenai County would be only too happy to close their cold cases, return the bones to the families, and put Daryl Kincaid to death.

  "Feel like a walk? Some fresh air?" Michael asked, leaning back in his chair. "I've had enough of Daryl Kincaid for the day.”

  "Aren't you worried about whoever attacked you finishing the job?" Tess asked.

  He exhaled heavily. "I'm not letting whoever it is ruin my life."

  She made a face of doubt. "I don't know if it's a good idea."

  "What?" he said and stood, stretching out his good shoulder. "You're really willing to stay inside for the next couple of weeks until you wrap things up here? I'm not."

  "He said 'missed'. That means he was hoping to kill you. I'd think you'd be more careful, especially at night. Which reminds me,” she said and told him about the gun.

  “I would have taken you if you’d asked,” he said, sounding somewhat defensive.

  “I know, but you have so much on your mind. Eugene was there and I had nothing else to do. Once the paperwork goes through, I can pick it up and we can go to the firing range to practice.”

  “I still think we should go for a walk.”

  “Once I get my gun,” she said with a grin. “So I can
protect you.”

  Michael finally laughed. "Okay, I give. Let's go watch a movie. I need to get away from the cases for a while."

  They went into the living room, where Mrs. Carter was watching news.

  "You kids want to watch something?"

  Michael sat beside her and Tess sat beside him. "Anything escapist. Preferably having nothing to do with law and order, crime and punishment."

  For the rest of the night, they watched a comedy station with old episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus, laughing at the silliness of the comedy.

  It was a much-needed break from the horror of a serial child murderer and his victims.

  Very early the next morning, after Tess crept back to her own tiny bed, she lay staring at the ceiling. There was no way she was getting back to sleep, even though it was only five thirty in the morning, so she pulled out her laptop and started cruising the files she had collected on the cases, looking for commonalities. She went to the Murder Accountability Project website and searched for cases with bodies that fit the cases they'd already found. Melissa had been strangled manually, but there was no way of knowing how Zoe died, since she had been cremated after death. Patrice was suffocated accidentally.

  Tess suspected that the killer or killers in Paradise Hill strangled their victims and based on her search of the MAP database, there were literally a dozen unsolved cases in the four states with victims who had been strangled, their bodies left in forested areas, in shallow graves, in ravines in the middle of woods, or dumped on remote logging roads in the mountains. Girls, ranging in age from eight to fifteen, with evidence of sexual assault and manual and ligature strangulation. Some evidence of torture and post-mortem dissection.

  Tess shivered in her bed and pulled her blankets around herself more tightly.

  Had John Hammond, or his son Garth, been capable of that kind of depravity?

  She felt certain that Daryl Kincaid was, based on everything she'd read and heard about him, but John? He had been apologetic when he was talking to Chief Joe right before he killed himself.

  He'd apologized.

  That didn't square with what she'd read about men who abducted, tortured, and murdered young girls and young women. Most serial killers just didn't feel remorse.

  Not one iota.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next morning after Michael finished his shower and dressed, he went to the kitchen and saw that there was a fresh pot of coffee on the burner. Tess had already been up and was in the dining room, working away on the files.

  He grabbed a mug and poured himself some coffee and then went over to where she sat. He bent down and kissed her neck, then sat beside her, glancing over her shoulder at her laptop.

  "Working hard already?"

  Tess smiled and leaned over to kiss him. "It's a dirty job but it's the only job I want."

  He nodded and peered more closely at the website she was searching.

  "Murder Accountability Project," he said, remembering the group from his early days as a Special Agent working in the Violent Crimes Against Children Program. "They're good," he said, nodding approvingly. "They developed this algorithm that looks for patterns in the data, trying to find evidence of serial killers."

  "The Missing use their data a lot," Tess said. "If you include the unsolved murders together with the missing cases, there's a lot of young girls who went missing and could have been murdered over the years who were never found, their cases cold."

  Michael nodded and noted the number of cases where the victim died of strangulation, his finger running down the list on the screen. "Looks like a lot of strangulation murders. Melissa was strangled."

  "I've put these cases up on the board. You can see they fit."

  She went up to the board and pointed out the cases.

  "If even half of them are part of our cases, that's a lot of girls," he said, admiring her effort.

  "If we go back to Janine, in 1978, that's nearly thirty who fit the profile," Tess said, her voice excited. "If you add them all up, it's one or two every year for the past twenty years at least. There hasn't been a new case since Melissa. Hopefully, it was John and not an unknown suspect."

  Michael nodded slowly, still sickened that so many were still missing or were murdered, their cases unsolved. It was far too many.

  "We've got our work cut out for us, I guess."

  Tess printed off a photo of one girl, a pretty dark-haired young woman, whose body was found on a remote logging road that hadn't been used for years.

  "That's Alyssa Pratt. She went missing when she was fourteen. Her body was found on a road that’s accessed along the I-90 route to Seattle from Paradise Hill, not too far from here. Her remains were badly decomposed, but there was evidence her bra was used to strangle her."

  "It's November," Michael said. "If it was John or Garth—or Daryl—the murders will stop. If we're wrong, and it's whoever was following those girls in Roslyn, he did one or two kills a year. If Melissa was his last kill, he might be working up to another soon."

  Tess bit her bottom lip. "I'd hate to be wrong on this. I hope it's Daryl and John who are responsible. If not, we're completely without any other suspects. Other than our mystery man wearing all black, stalking young girls with night vision goggles."

  "Yeah," Michael said and leaned back. "It sounds like the guy who shot me. All in black, night vision goggles." He shook his head. "I don't like it. I mean, I hate Daryl Kincaid with a passion but honestly, he's not exactly the kind of man who would be a serial killer."

  "He's too criminal," Tess said, nodding in agreement. "Most serial killers go under the radar."

  "That's right. Even if he was an accomplice, he's been in prison for a decade. The missing cases continued to stack up. That leaves John and/or Garth."

  Tess nodded and flipped through a few files on the online database.

  "Here's another girl who fits our victim profile," she said and pointed to a picture of a young girl with a pretty smile and dark hair. "Victoria Carr, from Rimrock. Twelve when she went missing fifteen years ago. Body found in a dry creek bed by hunters, badly decomposed. Strangled with a piece of her own clothing."

  "On the route from Olympia to Yakima and down to Kennewick. It fits."

  Tess printed off that photo as well and tacked it up on the board while Michael read about the case.

  Then she turned and faced him, leaning against the sideboard.

  "Michael, have you ever suspected Eugene?"

  Michael made a face of surprise. "What do you mean, suspected? As in he's a creepy, good-for-nothing son of a bitch who took advantage of my little sister?"

  She shook her head. "No, I mean as a suspect. I had a chat with Kirsten the other day, and it made me uncomfortable."

  Michael leaned back and ran his fingers through his hair, curious about her thinking. "Go on."

  "She said she didn't even know him, even after all the years they were married."

  Michael nodded. "I can relate. You think you know your spouse, but you only know the part of them they reveal—and sometimes, you see glimpses of another person they don't let out very often. I felt the same way about Julia. She became a different person to me once our relationship soured. She shut me out."

  "It must have been hard to stay with her at that point."

  He shook his head. "I just put my head down and tried to wait it out, thinking things would get better. They didn't, obviously."

  Tess came back over to the table and sat down beside him. "She said he went out a lot at night. Sometimes he stayed out all night. She said he was with the boys, but what does that mean? With who? She also said he did a lot of late-night bike-riding and went away for weekends hunting and fishing a lot."

  Michael frowned. As much as he disliked Eugene, he'd never thought of him as a suspect. He didn't know why. He just seemed like someone who blended into the background. You wouldn't notice him in a crowd.

  Which was exactly the kind of man who turned out to be a serial kil
ler…

  "She also said he always had the right thing to say, but she never felt like he really meant anything. Like it was all just a performance."

  "Hmm," Michael said and rubbed his chin. That made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. "That sounds suspiciously like a sociopath. Always saying the right thing, but never meaning any of it. The staying out late, not coming home at night, lots of hunting… I didn't know that about him. Kirsten never complained. Never once. I thought she was happy, and I was just a jerk for not liking her husband. But the more I think about it, when you add that in, he sounds like a potential suspect.”

  "My thoughts exactly. It sounds like the kind of guy you never suspect. He's married. Has kids and a job. He always says the right thing in every situation. Blends in. But he's away a lot. Out late at night. Cold and distant to his wife, whom he doesn't touch and hasn't touched for years…"

  He shook his head. "I really have to fight my dislike of him in order to see him objectively. I guess because he's Chief Joe's adopted son, he seems like just another law-abiding citizen."

  "He's a steady worker, driving a delivery truck for Hammond Cartage," Tess said. "He also has the security business. That means he has access to a lot of locations in town where he installed security systems."

  Michael folded his arms. "He also does deliveries to Yakima and further south. Not long-haul trucking, but he does go out of town for his job. I know Mom used to say she was taking the boys for supper a lot because Eugene had a late delivery in Yakima or Ellensburg." He shook his head, surprised at the irony of the fact he'd been so blinded by his dislike of Eugene that he failed to consider him a suspect. "Jesus…"

  He went to the dry erase board and considered the missing girls and unsolved cases. There were a lot of them over the past twenty years in particular.

  "No one would ever suspect Eugene. In fact, no one would even consider him if I brought him up."