Zach pulled back from the last one. “Haven’t seen anything that stands out, Jack.”
We all looked at Jack for our next step.
“Spread out and look along the river,” he said.
I looked at the soft ground. Was he serious? We were all in dress shoes and nice clothes. Not to mention the closer we got to the water, the greater the chance of encountering an alligator. Back in Virginia, the biggest threat in my backyard was a rabid squirrel.
I pulled up my pant legs and treaded carefully, but my shoes still sank into the mud.
From what I could see, no areas screamed of recently dug graves or disturbed ones. The edge of the river was lined with bulrushes, but between the waving stalks, I saw the remains of what had been a boat dock. Time had settled it at a sharp angle, and the bare wood had been bleached by the sun. It didn’t stop an alligator from lounging on it, though.
That was it. I was out of there. I turned around to head back toward the cabin.
Paige laughed. “It’s just an alligator, Brandon.”
Nope, we’d come, we’d looked around, and there was no sign of human remains poking out of the mud. There was no Stanley, and from what we could see, there was no indication that any murders had taken place inside.
“I’m glad I’m here to provide some comic relief,” I said to her.
Jack’s phone rang then, and when he hung up, he said, “We’re going in.”
“Jack?” Paige asked.
“That was Nadia. She got a hit in Missing Persons that could be one of our victims.”
Jack didn’t normally act on could-be’s. He acted on warrants and legal cause.
I locked eyes with Paige, then Zach, but they both followed him so I did the same. Jack stepped aside for me to pick the lock.
“You sure you don’t want to wait on a warrant?” I asked.
“Brandon, get us in there or get out of the way.”
I held up a hand briefly, then got to work. Less than a minute later, we were inside.
Instead of getting the chills that usually shot up my spine when narrowing in on a killer, I felt like I was trespassing and invading someone’s personal living space.
Just as I had concluded from the outside looking in, the place was dark and the furnishings sparse. In the kitchen, there were dishes on a drying rack. There was a TV in the living room, and it had cable. It seemed like an ordinary cabin, but the air was fresh, indicating that the place had been aired out recently. Maybe first impressions here hadn’t painted an entirely accurate picture. He could have just cleaned things up for his mother.
I headed for the bathroom, not certain I really wanted to see it. There’d been a past case where we’d found a severed head in a toilet bowl, and I’d barely made it through seeing that. If someone was going to rip out a beating heart, there would be a lot of blood, and that would make a bathtub the easiest place to clean up. I stepped inside the room and resumed breathing.
“No tub, just a shower stall,” I called out to the team. I didn’t want to look in the toilet, but I inched my way toward it and lifted the lid with my shoe. Nothing but water.
Jack came to the doorway first.
“I just don’t see how Stanley would have the room to work here,” I said. “Where would he have stretched out his victims? Cut off their hands and feet? Buried them? There don’t seem to be any bodies in the muck we waded through. No blue paint, either.”
Jack remained silent for a few seconds. “I agree,” he said, already heading to the door.
So now we’d entered the man’s cabin, left our muddy shoeprints everywhere, and were walking away with nothing.
“It’s time to fill us in, Jack,” I said. “What makes you so sure that Stanley was involved with the missing person case Nadia told you about?”
“We’ll discuss it back at the precinct.”
“And we’re just leaving his place like this? Unlocked?”
“I’ll get someone to take care of it.” Jack and I locked eyes. Peering into his, I couldn’t help but question if he’d been telling me the truth when he’d said he was fine.
-
Chapter 24
BACK AT THE PRECINCT, Jack tossed a printed copy of the missing person report on the table. “His name is Eric Morgan. He was reported missing by his wife, Kelly, in Atlanta last Friday.”
“Atlanta’s less than four hours from here. Close enough for a Friday road trip,” I said.
Jack gave me an I-told-you-so look—raised brows, tight lips—telling me that’s why he’d justified entering the cabin.
“The man is married?” Paige stated rhetorically as she passed the report to Zach to read.
“I’ll want you and Zach to go speak to the wife,” Jack told Paige, “show her Stanley’s picture, see if he looks familiar.”
Zach looked up from the report. “Locals investigated but didn’t turn up anything.”
“Let’s hope we can do better,” Jack replied.
“Eric is also a father to a seven-year-old girl,” Zach continued. “The family was at Perimeter Mall and it was around noon when he went missing. His wife said he disappeared when the family split up to go to the restroom. Under distinguishing markers, it shows a tattoo on his chest—a heart with the initials E and K inside.”
“At this point, if we’ve found pieces of him, we wouldn’t know,” Jack stated somberly. “I’ve already requested that Stanley’s picture be distributed among the media immediately. While I was doing that I got a message from GBI. The results on the blue paint…” Jack handed Zach a printout.
Zach exchanged one report for the other. His eyes barely hit the page. “Oh…”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “It’s a match to what they believe is in Mayan Blue?”
“Yep. Copal resin, leaves from an indigo plant, and a type of white clay called palygorskite.”
Pike had mentioned that the Mayans may have made their blue paint from ingredients found in Georgia. “Let me guess, all of that is found here?”
“Copal resin can be found in sweet gum trees, and both it and indigo plants are indigenous to Georgia. And attapulgite, a composite of smectite and palygorskite is mined in Attapulgus, Georgia, a five-hour drive from Savannah.” Zach continued as if this were all routine to him. “And the blue paint is quite resilient.”
“As we saw with the torso,” Jack said.
“I hadn’t mentioned this before now but some sacrifices were painted blue and tossed into wells to appeal to rain gods,” Zach went on. “A sacred cenote in Mexico had a blue residue on the bottom that was fourteen-feet thick.”
“From the sacrifices?” I asked. Wait, why was I encouraging this history trivia session?
Zach nodded.
Paige turned to Zach. “If our unsub is applying the blue with his hands—”
“He’d have blue hands,” Zach finished for her. “Unless he used gloves.”
“Where would he get the clay?” Jack asked. “And can we tie these components to Stanley Gilbert?”
Zach let out a deep breath. “Attapulgite is used in several over-the-counter medications to treat diarrhea, and it’s added to lime mortar.”
“Which is?” I asked.
“It’s used for period-home restorations.” Zach really was a walking encyclopedia.
We were in Savannah, Georgia, established in the early seventeen hundreds, with its share of old homes and buildings. If Stanley wasn’t our unsub, we’d really have fun narrowing things down.
Zach touched Paige’s arm. “Palygorskite is also a component of cement.”
“Jesse Holt works at Savannah Cement,” she said.
Jack shook his head. “For now, we’re going to focus on Eric Morgan’s wife. I want you and Zach to go speak with her in Atlanta, show her Stanley’s picture—Jesse’s, too, if you want—see what you can find out. Brandon
and I are going to talk to Duane Oakley, one of Stanley’s friends, and see if we can connect Stanley to another person or location where he might be carrying out the ritual.”
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Chapter 25
THE OAKLEYS’ PROPERTY DEFINITELY SHOWED that they had money, just as Benny had told us. There was a gated entrance, and the house was set back from the road with a long, gray-brick driveway leading up to it. The house matched the stone of the driveway and was a single story, although I’d guess the ceilings weren’t a standard height of eight feet but rather ten to fifteen. The landscaping was done by a professional, possibly a crew, even, and there was a paved path into the gardens with a bench that overlooked them.
I pressed the doorbell, and a piece of classical music played inside the home. Before the song finished, the door opened and a fiftysomething woman was standing there in an apron.
Jack held up his credentials, as did I. He made the introduction. “We’re special agents with the FBI. I’m Jack Harper, and this—” he gestured to me “—is Brandon Fisher. We’d like to speak with Duane Oakley.”
Her face fell and her mouth made an O. She held up a finger and excused herself. She left the door wide open. The interior of the home was certainly posh. High ceilings, as I’d imagined, crown moldings, chandeliers—
Another woman came to the door. She had a thin frame and an oval face. Her hair was pulled back into a loose bun, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it reached past her shoulder blades when it was down. “Why do you want to speak with my son?”
“We have some questions for him about Stanley Gilbert,” Jack replied.
“I just saw Stanley’s picture on the news,” Mrs. Oakley said. “What’s this about?”
Jack held his ground. “We’d like to speak with Duane directly, ma’am.”
“Fine.” She teetered off in a huff, and a man in his thirties came to the door.
“Hello?” The word was arched, as if he wasn’t sure who we were or why we were there.
Jack made the introductions again. “We need to talk to you about Stanley Gilbert.”
“Yeah, sure. Come in.” Duane led us to a sitting room with twelve-foot coffered ceilings and wainscoting. The trim was white, and the walls the color of butter. The afternoon sun was streaming in three large windows and somehow brightened the yellow.
Jack and I took a seat on a couch, and Duane sat in a chair.
“Mom said he was on the news,” Duane said.
“How well do you know Stanley?” Jack asked right away. He wasn’t getting sucked into a meaningless sidebar.
“Pretty good. We’d get together and have beers usually at least once, if not twice, a month.”
It was time to get more into Stanley’s character. “Did you ever see him lose his temper?” I asked.
Duane laughed. “Not in the two years I’ve known him. He probably catches flies and releases them somewhere they can’t bother him.”
“How did you meet?”
“I had some investment needs, and it so happened Stanley worked where I banked. He helped me.”
“What do you have in common?”
“Not much.” A small chuckle. “But he’s a calm and relaxed person, and I have a hard time around high-strung people.”
“Did you ever go to his cabin?” I asked, wondering if he’d lie to me.
“Sometimes.”
“And you’d just hang out there, have a couple beers?” I relaxed into the conversation to set Duane at ease.
He smiled. “Yeah, exactly.”
“You said you sometimes went to his cabin, but did you go anywhere else together?”
Duane shrugged. “We have drinks downtown at Patty’s Pub on occasion.”
Why would Stanley risk going out in public and getting busted by Darla? Was there something special about Patty’s Pub?
“What about anywhere else?” I asked.
“Nope.”
It was time to press a little harder. “We understand that Stanley sometimes takes day trips on Fridays. Do you know where he goes? Any place he enjoys going regularly?”
“Besides his cabin, he likes to go to Blue Heron Plantation. Beyond that, I don’t know.”
“Does he have access to any properties besides his house and cabin that you’re aware of?” Jack asked.
Duane shook his head.
“Not to any that you or your parents might own?” Jack was the one pressing now.
“No. My parents own this house and a place in Florida, but Stanley’s never been.”
We might have left Duane more confused than we found him, but it went both ways. We still couldn’t connect Stanley to a property where he could make the sacrifices and dispose of the bodies.
-
Chapter 26
THE MORGANS LIVED IN THE middle of a high-class suburban paradise. All the houses were nestled close together with similar architecture on dime-sized lots. Every detail of the homes was thought-out. Even the garages didn’t have the typical roll-down steel doors. Instead, they were gable-style with some square windows at the top.
The Morgans’ house was a powder blue with crisp white trim. Zach pulled the rental SUV up to the curb in front. In the driveway, a woman was helping a young girl out of a minivan. She stopped when she turned and saw Paige and Zach.
The woman was wearing dark sunglasses, despite it being early evening, and Paige could see her trying to make sense of who they were. She carried on, though, unloading some grocery bags from the backseat and helping her daughter to the house.
Paige’s heart was breaking for Kelly Morgan. “I can’t imagine what she is going through.”
“Me either. And it’s only been a week.” Zach cut the engine and got out of the vehicle.
Paige followed his lead. It was best to get this over with as fast as possible. But she had to focus on the reason they were there: they had a potential lead in her husband’s disappearance.
Zach lifted his hand to knock, but Kelly had the door opened before he could.
Her shoulders sagged, and up close, with her glasses off, grief was etched into her facial expression. Bags lined her eyes and told of little sleep. “You cops?”
Paige held up her credentials. “FBI.”
“Are you here to tell me my husband left me, too? Because if you are, you can leave.” Kelly crossed her arms.
“No, we’re not.” Paige held eye contact with her, hoping that Kelly would get the message that they were there to listen and to help.
Kelly stepped back inside her house and gestured for them to enter. Zach closed the door behind them.
“I’m Paige, and this is Zach.” She wanted to do whatever she could to set the woman at ease; she’d been through so much already.
“Kelly… But I guess you know that.” She shook her head. “Let’s go into the living room.”
She led the way and took a seat on one end of a sectional couch. Paige sat beside Kelly, Zach next to Paige. Framed pictures on the wall showed a happy family of three in different poses and settings.
“Where’s your daughter?” Paige asked, not seeing the little girl.
“She’s in her room. I could tell you were cops…or something. I gave her a cookie and told her to go play.” Kelly’s face paled as she met Paige’s eyes. “Have you…” Her chin quivered, and tears seeped from the corners of her eyes.
“No,” Paige said softly.
Kelly wiped her cheeks and then twisted the wedding band on her finger. “I know he’s dead. I can just feel it.” She put a hand to her chest, and the sadness emanating from the woman was enough to labor Paige’s breathing, but she had to detach from the emotions. That was probably the most difficult aspect of the job for her.
Paige summoned some strength and asked, “Can you walk us through the day your husband went missing?”
�
��You mean the day he was taken?” Her tone was sharp, bitter. Not at Paige or Zach, but at the situation she found herself in. She was living a nightmare that no one wanted to have.
Paige nodded. “Yes.”
“We were just at the mall, walking around. It was actually Eric’s idea to go that day.” Kelly paused and made eye contact with Paige. “How is that even right?” She let the rhetorical question sit out there for a few seconds. “Brianna—that’s our daughter—wanted ice cream for lunch.” She stopped talking, and an odd smile touched her lips.
“Mrs. Morgan?” Paige prompted.
Kelly looked at her. “Eric spoiled her rotten. She loved her father.”
Past tense. It was probably a way of preparing herself for the news of his death that she figured was coming.
“Brianna wanted ice cream… Then what happened?” Zach asked.
Kelly glanced at him. “We all went to wash our hands.” Her eyes glazed over.
“In the public restrooms?” Paige clarified.
“Yes. If only I hadn’t insisted that we all—” Kelly choked up.
Paige continued. “Local police investigated your husband’s disappearance—”
Kelly scoffed. “If you say so. Seems to me they gave up awful quickly. Said there was no ransom demand, and without any real cause to suspect foul play, they had nothing to go on. They told me that missing persons aren’t actively investigated. As if they had done me a favor by looking into it the bit they had. And then they turn around and tell me that Eric probably left me. Probably? And that’s insane because Eric would never do that to me or to Brianna.” Kelly was trembling now.
“Did you see anyone suspicious hanging around your family that day? Someone you kept seeing maybe?” Paige asked.
“Not that I can remember.” Kelly ran a hand across her forehead. “God, I wish I could.”
Paige pulled out her phone, brought up a photo of Stanley Gilbert, and held the screen out for Kelly to see. “Do you recognize this man?”
Kelly took the phone in her hands. “He doesn’t look fam—” She enlarged the image and dropped the phone to the floor. “Oh my God, yes! Yes, that’s him. The janitor. He was the one. It’s his eyes. I recognize his eyes.”
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