by LENA DIAZ,
Her face flamed red but she continued the story. “But those were very short bouts of freedom. It was rare that I ever really saw sunlight. Mostly, he took me out late at night. Sometimes I’d be out for hours, with my wrists and legs shackled. My daily chore was to wipe down the box with wet cloths. He always seemed to have whatever supplies he needed—soap, shampoo, water, even freshly washed clothes every few days. He preferred me...clean. Said he wanted me...presentable, pretty.”
She swallowed hard and looked away. But the memories haunting her were revealed in the flicker of emotions that flashed across her face—disgust, fear, embarrassment.
“Except for those times, I was always in the box. Well, except for when we moved to another camp. That was always during the day. He’d grab me up, blindfold and gag me then chain me and throw me in the back of a truck or car. A few hours later the vehicle would stop, he’d untie me and shove me into another box.”
Zack stared at her. “Another box? He didn’t take the box with him when he moved you?”
Her brows crinkled. “No. Is that significant?”
“Maybe. Did you ever move to the same camps? Or were they always new camps?”
She thought about it a moment then shrugged. “I suppose they could have been the same ones. We moved about once a week. The terrain was always the same—swamps, mud, dirt, cypress and oak trees. Like I said, it was usually dark. The things I saw were by moonlight or firelight.”
“Fire? He had a campfire at night?”
She nodded. “Sometimes. That and the occasional flashlight. The trees were always thick—lots of canopy cover overhead.”
“You’ve said he either kept you locked in the box, or chained, right?”
“Yes.”
“But you escaped. How?” He held his breath, worried that he might have pushed too far. She’d never told anyone this part in the other interviews.
“The first time...it was stupid, desperation, I guess,” she began haltingly. “He took me into the woods to chain me. I think he must have forgotten something, so he went back toward the camp. He must have assumed that I wouldn’t move, that I’d wait for him. But I didn’t. I ran. Just...ran.” She shivered. “He caught me, of course. I was only free for a few minutes. And I paid dearly for my defiance.”
The tortured look in her eyes made him want to pull her into his arms. But he needed this information. And he couldn’t afford to do anything that might make her stop. Not yet.
“But you tried again. And that time you got away.”
She slowly nodded. “It was after he brought Mary to the camp. He opened the box and pulled her out. He was so...consumed with her, that he didn’t look at me as he closed the lid. I pressed my hands against the Plexiglas and tapped my nails, once, trying to make him think the clicking noise was the latch, locking it in place.” A look of wonder crossed her face. “It worked. I couldn’t believe it. He pulled Mary into the trees and I pushed the lid up and crawled out. I closed it behind me, and took off. And left her.”
A sob bubbled up in her throat but she waved him away when he would have tried to comfort her. “No. I have to be strong. If I start crying again, I’ll be no good to you or the others. Is any of this helping?”
It was helping far more than she realized. But she’d just reminded him of his promise to let Drew know when she was ready to talk. He’d already kept her too long, and he needed to turn her over to the detectives. He rose, but motioned for her to stay seated.
“If you’re up for it, I’m going to have Drew and the others return. They want to interview you.”
“But I want to help you find Sue Ellen. Aren’t you going to take me to the swamp?”
Not a chance. He wasn’t going to victimize her by taking her to the scene of the crime. But he could avoid that conversation by telling her a different truth.
“The best way that you can help right now is to answer the detectives’ questions. Besides, by the time I could get a new search team organized to take you out there, it’d be getting dark. And it’s far too dangerous to be out there at night. None of our searchers stay out past nightfall.”
She slumped in her chair, looking dejected. “All right. I’ll answer their questions.”
“Thanks. I’ll let them know.”
“Zack?”
He turned at the door.
“Are you being honest when you say the searchers don’t stay out after dark?”
“Yes, absolutely.”
She studied him, as if weighing his words for truthfulness. “Okay. Then I won’t badger you to take me out there today. But I promise you. Nothing’s going to stop me from going out there tomorrow. I’d like you to go with me. I’ll feel safer that way. But if you refuse, then I’ll go with someone else. I’m not bluffing.”
Unfortunately, he could tell that she wasn’t. He didn’t doubt for a second that she’d do exactly what she’d said, head out there by herself if she had to. At first blush, that sounded crazy, reckless. But he understood exactly why she was being so stubborn—survivor’s guilt. And he couldn’t help but admire and respect that she was willing to risk everything to save a woman she’d never even met. That kind of selflessness and courage were rare in this world. And he had a feeling that was only the tip of the iceberg with Kaylee Brighton.
She was an intriguing woman, full of surprises. He certainly never would have suspected the backbone she had when he’d seen her fragile and scared in the hospital. But just because he respected her reasons for wanting to go out to the swamp and help with the search didn’t mean that he’d actually let her go. If he had to, he’d put her in protective custody. No way was she going out there.
He gave her a curt nod. She probably thought he was agreeing to take her searching tomorrow. And he felt a twinge of guilt for allowing her to think that. But it still didn’t change his mind.
After closing the door behind him, he hurried past the glass window down the hall to the squad room. He’d let the investigators know that they could interview Kaylee now. But Cole’s boss, Drew, would have to wait until Zack had a chance to talk to him before he could join them. Because everything that Kaylee had told him had just clicked together in his mind. And the picture that formed was about to send the investigation in a new direction.
He just hoped that Drew saw the picture the way he did, and agreed with the decision he’d made.
* * *
ZACK STOOD IN front of Drew’s desk, waiting for his reaction. He didn’t have to wait long.
“What do you mean, we’re searching in the wrong place?” Drew motioned to the group of detectives in the squad room through the glass door of his office, letting them know to go ahead to the conference room to interview Kaylee without him.
Zack brought Drew up to speed on everything that Kaylee had just told him. Then he hooked his foot on the leg of one of the guest chairs and scooted it over to the front of the desk before plopping down on it.
“We searched the area where we found Kaylee,” Zack said. “And came up empty. The rains destroyed any footprints or trail, and there wasn’t much to go on. But we did the best we could. We went back for several hours in every direction, going much farther than we thought she could have possibly run with her captor chasing her and still, nothing. We also assumed that the killer wouldn’t return to that area since Kaylee had escaped. He’d be a fool to do so, right? So when we didn’t find anything, we turned our focus on other areas, close to where the other women were abducted.”
“Which yielded Mary Watkins’s body, a mile from where she’d last been seen. So what’s your point about searching in the wrong spot?”
“My point is that Mary was killed close to the time that I found Kaylee. Which means she had to have been killed in the same area where Kaylee had last been held—not where we found Mary’s body. The killer—”
�
��Moved the body to throw us off.”
“Right. He didn’t want her found anywhere near where he’d kept Kaylee. Because that’s one of his camps, one of his favorite places to take his victims. He doesn’t want to do anything that would make us search harder in that area. And we’ve been focusing on public paths, recreation areas, parts of the Glades where he’d have access to new victims. All of that makes sense, given the parameters we had at the time. But based on Mary’s time of death, and the fact that she was with Kaylee shortly before she died, I think we need to narrow our grid, go back to where we found Kaylee and start over.”
“Because of these so-called camps that she told you about?”
“Partly, yes. We’ve gone along with the FBI’s belief that the killer was moving on with every victim, taking what amounted to Plexiglas coffins with him. But Kaylee said he didn’t take the boxes. They remained in the ground. That means he has permanent camps, places he’s probably worked on for months, or longer, to set up where he never expected they’d be found, because no one would ever think to go that deep, that far, into the swamp to find them. She said he always had plenty of supplies. I bet he keeps those at the camps as well, hidden somewhere. If he doesn’t want to haul a box around, he’s not going to haul his supplies around every time he moves either. He’s not going to just give all that up. He’s got a good thing going.”
“If these camps are so good, why move at all?”
Zack shrugged. “Maybe he has to head into populated areas on occasion to replenish his supplies, and he worries about the same people seeing him and maybe wondering where he’s going. So he switches it up. I don’t know. It could just be his signature, the way he plays his game. Or something else. But one thing I know for sure is that he’s a creature of habit. He always goes back to the same places eventually.”
Drew rocked back in his chair. “Assuming you’re right, then what you’re telling me is that this guy is counting on us giving up on our searches, not going far enough, deep enough. And he therefore thinks his camp locations are safe from discovery. Meaning, he might still be out there in the same camp where he was the day you found Kaylee?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“So, if we’d just searched another hour or two where you found her, you think we’d, what, stumble onto one of the camps?”
Zack shook his head. “Not just a couple more hours. It would have to be deep enough in for him to light a campfire that others wouldn’t see. And when Kaylee escaped from the camp, the killer had already taken Mary out of the box. As soon as they were out of sight, Kaylee took off. But I discovered her an hour after sunrise. To her, it probably only seemed like a few hours. There’s no way she’d have a good grasp of time as dehydrated and messed up as she was. But in reality, if she escaped right after dark and I found her when the sun was up—”
“She could have been on the run in those woods a lot longer than she realized.”
“Exactly. We need to go back and go deeper than we’ve ever gone out there. We need to start over. We need to—”
Drew raised his hand, stopping him. “Hold it. Your timeline is off. If you assume that Kaylee was several hours from the camp when you found her, then how did her captor kill Mary within an hour or two of when you found Kaylee? The M.E. is confident about time of death, based on insect activity, among other things. That timeline implies the camp was only two hours in.”
“We went two hours in. And never found it,” Zack reminded him.
“No, we never found it.” Drew tapped his fingers on the desk, deep in thought.
“The timeline makes sense if Kaylee’s captor took Mary with him after discovering that Kaylee had fled. That would have slowed him down, allowing Kaylee to get as far ahead as she did. But of course he did eventually catch up to her.”
“And tied or chained Mary somewhere on the trail, probably gagged her so she couldn’t scream, while he went to finish Kaylee off? That’s what you’re thinking, right?”
“Right. But when Cole and I came along and he decided not to risk a confrontation, he turned back, killed Mary and got away while we were riding along in the ambulance and before we realized there was a reason to get the police searching those woods. And remember, again, about the campfires and flashlights Kaylee mentioned. Light from something like a campfire is visible a long way off in the dark. For him to be that bold, he’d have to have his camps far, far away from anywhere that he’d expect someone to ever be. Which reinforces the idea, again, of the camps being even farther into the Glades than we’d thought.”
Drew nodded. “That would explain our lack of success with the searches. But I didn’t exactly send a bunch of greenhorns out there. They spent hours combing that area and didn’t find anything.”
“They went in after a rainstorm, which obliterated any trail that Kaylee or the others might have left. And we all believed that the killer wouldn’t have stuck around, or returned, assuming instead that he traveled to new places every time. The idea of established camps didn’t cross our minds. So when we found no evidence of anyone passing through, we moved on, getting farther and farther away and searching other areas. I’m thinking now that decision was a mistake. I believe the killer will come back, if he hasn’t already, which should give us new clues, a new trail to follow.”
Drew held his hands up as if in surrender. “All right, all right. You’ve raised enough questions to make me agree that searching that initial area again where you found Kaylee makes more sense than searching the outlying areas we’ve been targeting. Especially if all of this adds up to the killer wanting to keep his established bases.”
Zack nodded, relieved that Drew was seeing this the way that he was. It helped reassure him that he wasn’t grasping, that it made sense to pull the teams off the other grids. He didn’t want to kick himself later for doing that if the killer ended up being in one of the areas they stopped searching.
“There’s something else to consider.” Zack rested his forearms on the desk. “This isn’t related to the search strategy. But it is related to the case. Kaylee said the killer usually only came there very early in the morning, or at night. If we assume that he switches back and forth between his camps more as a killer’s signature, or routine, than because he’s worried that someone has seen him in town getting supplies, then there’s another plausible explanation for why he’s never at the camps during the day.”
Drew’s mouth tightened into a hard line. “Our perp probably has a job, a day job. And he works and lives close enough to the camps that he can make it to work on time every day. Our killer is Mr. Upstanding Citizen during the day and psycho killer at night. But we’d already figured that as a possibility.”
“True, but we also thought he was moving around more than we now think he is. We figured he might be a truck driver, or a salesman, something that would allow for a larger territory. Now I don’t think that’s the case. We need to tell Special Agent Willow about the camps, that the killer has a more condensed, established area where he keeps his victims, that he probably has a steady day job. Willow should see if he can get us a new profile.”
“He’s busy on another case now, but I imagine I can at least talk to him over the phone and see if he can get someone to revisit the profile.”
“He sounds like an organized killer to me. He’s intelligent, able to blend in as a normal guy at work. We’re dealing with someone who either called in sick or took vacation on the day of each of the abductions, and was either late or absent the morning that I found Kaylee.”
“All good points. I’ll ask Willow whether he thinks we should release the profile to the media once he works it up. If people hear the dates of the three abductions that we know about, and that the guy is probably a hunter or avid outdoorsman to be that familiar with the Glades, with little to no nightlife because he’s always too busy with his prey to go out for drinks after work, th
at might give us some hits.”
“It also might give you a huge headache with hundreds of tips that lead nowhere, people ratting out the coworkers they can’t stand, just to cause them trouble.”
Drew shrugged. “I can’t let the fear of false tips guide my decisions. If Willow thinks it’s a good idea to publish our theories and an updated profile, we will. I’ll hire some temps to man the phones if I have to. I don’t want another Mary Watkins happening on my watch. So I’ll take any help that I can at this point, even if it means dealing with the crazies over a tip line.”
Drew shoved away from his desk and stood. “I hope that Miss Brighton can give us more details to add to the ones you gleaned. A description of the vehicle she was hauled around in would be a great start. Maybe her blindfold wasn’t always tight and she caught a glimpse of something, anything, that we can use to figure out the vehicle type.”
Zack strode to the office door ahead of Drew. “While you and your guys interview Kaylee, I’ll get a fresh map and work up new plans for tomorrow’s round of searches. I’ll brief the teams when they get back today so we’ll be ready to go bright and early. God willing, we’ll find Sue Ellen and have our killer in custody by tomorrow afternoon.”
Chapter Nine
Several hours later Zack stood in another conference room directing the searchers on the plan of attack for tomorrow morning. He leaned over the table and drew a red square on the large map of the Everglades spread out on top. Inside the square were smaller squares with GPS coordinates and the initials of the team who would search each area, all of the grids much closer to Mystic Glades this time.
Because they were starting over.
“Now that you’ve each selected your search grid, make sure you stick to that grid so that we cover as much ground as possible. No overlaps.”
He studied the mix of law-enforcement personnel and civilians, twenty-two men and women standing around the table, eleven two-person teams, as they wrote down information about their assigned search areas and looked at the map. Most of them he knew from working together over the past few weeks doing these laborious searches, like police veterans Robert Spear and Dennis Howard. Some he’d only met at this meeting, fresh teams that were just now joining the other volunteers to help out, including two Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation officers, Jasper Carraway and Gene Theroux.