Sully’s sigh pierced the tingling silence. He turned around, rubbing his forehead with his fingers. “I mean, there’s obviously a pattern. The killer is targeting women from the ages of sixteen to eighteen in the month of September.” He looked at Nick. “What do you think? We have a serial killer in Lakemore?”
Headshots of Daphne, Chloe, Erica, and Abby were spread on the desk.
Nick stared at the pictures, deep in thought. “There are four victims. Understandably, Daniel hasn’t given up all hope, but I think we have to assume that Chloe is dead. There is a regular pattern. But age being the only thing connecting the victims doesn’t seem strong enough. They’re all very different looking. Daphne is Asian. Erica is Hispanic. The other two are Caucasian. Their birthdays have no pattern. Daphne and Chloe were troubled. One was a foster kid with a history, and the other was a drifter. But then you have Erica—the Princess of Lakemore. Abby, too, had a relatively stable home life, if not as privileged as Erica’s. We don’t know if the sexual assault was consistent in all the victims. We can only confirm with Daphne because she was the only fresh body. That’s the problem. Daphne’s body was found floating in a river. Erica was buried in the forest. Chloe and Abby are still missing persons. I don’t think this is a serial killer.”
“Because there’s not enough consistency?” Mackenzie asked.
“Serial killers are either organized, disorganized, or mixed. This person is taking them in September. He branded Daphne with 916, which screams a ritual, a process. So let’s assume that he is organized. And organized serial killers will be more consistent with their techniques—for example, the type of victims or cause of death. One was strangled, and one was buried alive. It doesn’t add up. What about the cocktail napkin? 916 with a logo printed above it. That isn’t a serial killer.”
One of Nick’s first major cases had led to him putting a notorious serial killer behind bars. There was no one in Lakemore PD who understood serial killers better.
“Then what do you think this is?” Sully asked.
“A cult. The logo. The printed napkin. The ritualistic branding of skin. Someone sick blowing off steam in September. I think 916 stands for September 16. But I have no idea what it means.”
Mackenzie turned to Sully. “Sully, were these cases buried?” she blurted.
Sully’s head whipped to pin her with a glare. It was hard to offend Sully. Beneath the man who snored away at meetings and spent his afternoons scrapbooking was a police officer who didn’t tolerate dishonesty. “Are you accusing me of something?”
“No, but you know how these things work, Sully. Unofficially, cases are prioritized. Cases with victims like Daphne and Chloe aren’t given enough attention or seriousness.”
He crossed his arms. “Mack, nothing happened intentionally. Aaron headed Daphne’s case before he transferred to Tennessee. When her body was found in Tacoma, the guys over there took over the case. Troy took the lead on Chloe’s case. He did everything right, but she was a drifter, and then he found a bus ticket receipt. Peck made a call.”
“Tacoma PD wasn’t provided with full information. Witness statements from the party where Daphne was last spotted were missing.”
“The first burglary struck around that time. Robberies fall under Special Investigations, and they were swamped. Peck made a careless mistake. You remember how it was!”
She snorted. “I can’t believe we missed this. Erica could still be alive. Abby could still be here.”
“There’s nothing we could have done, Mack. We followed the rules. Unfortunately, sometimes, things slip. This is Lakemore. Detectives are usually dealing with five cases at a time. When Troy was investigating Chloe, you were handling more than six cases, remember? Nick was in Seattle consulting on those copycat murders, so you took over his workload.”
It had been a very busy time in her life. She was rarely home, sleeping for three hours a night on average and not eating well. She emerged as crabby, forgetful, and at least twenty pounds lighter. Sterling had exhibited abundant patience. Not once did he demand her time or attention. He would bring her food and make sure she came home to a clean house every night. But she still wasn’t convinced that workload was the only reason the cases had got away.
“There are way too many coincidences here. So convenient that things just slipped. It’s ridiculous that Erica Perez was targeted, and we got lucky. Otherwise, how long would it have taken for us to notice this?”
Sully grimaced. “To establish a pattern, such as that of a serial killer, we need three bodies, or in this case three disappearances. Look, what’s done is done. We can’t turn back the clock, but we can make damn sure that Abby is the last girl he takes.”
“They,” Mackenzie muttered.
“What?”
“It’s not one person. The logo stands for stages of man and brotherhood. It’s more than one person. Like Nick said. A sick cult.”
“Well, shit,” Sully raised his hands in surrender. “Why do you think they targeted Erica? The first two girls have no roots. The third girl is the most famous girl in town.”
“For attention,” Nick replied. “They’re upping their game.”
“So, they’re getting more out of control. Great. I have no idea how I’m going to explain this to Peck. Find out what this 916 is exactly. We have that paper napkin. Tell Anthony to analyze every fiber of it if he has to.”
“What will happen to Agent St. Clair?” Mackenzie crossed her arms.
“I’ve had to alert his supervisor at the Bureau,” Sully sighed. “He’s going to fly to Chicago tonight to convince his bosses to let him stay on.”
“Isn’t Murphy in charge?”
“Murphy has the final say, Mack. But I think he’ll want Daniel. Ever since the FBI got involved, the mayor has stopped pressuring our office, which means Samuel Perez is content. For now.”
“He lied to us. We can’t trust him.”
“He’s just a consultant.”
She released a long-drawn breath in irritation, when Sully pressed further. “Mack, you heard the guy. He’s trying to find out what happened to his sister.”
“He derailed an investigation. That’s the bottom line.”
“It’s out of my hands.”
As Mackenzie followed Nick outside, she turned back to catch a glimpse of Sully brooding. She had left a lot of things unsaid. A string of high-profile burglaries conveniently drew away attention from first Daphne’s disappearance and then Chloe’s disappearance, and stopped anyone linking them. Then there was Lieutenant Peck: the man who’d provided the Tacoma PD with an abridged version of Daphne’s case file, and the man who’d ordered Chloe’s case to be closed.
Sometimes things slip.
But sometimes things were buried and distorted. A good lie was easier to believe than the truth. She couldn’t shake off the feeling that something sinister was bubbling under. A whisper she couldn’t shush.
Who could she trust?
Forty-Six
September 22
The glare from the computer screen made Mackenzie’s eyes ache. Three anchors sat around a coffee table, looking glamorous and chatting about the latest gossip in an animated fashion. Mackenzie rarely indulged in Hollywood news. The next video recommended to her was something along the lines of how the Perez Industries stock was falling. Mackenzie clicked the video playing to expand it to full screen instead. She needed a break—just a moment to empty her mind before she threw herself back in.
But soon she registered a word being used often: divorce. The salacious rumors of a famous Hollywood couple calling it quits was doing the rounds and giving the anchors something to beam about.
Mackenzie fell into a trance.
Divorce.
There was nothing more real-life than divorce. Marriage was naive. Loving and living with one person for the rest of your life was a fantasy. It was a gamble. It was like jumping off a cliff hoping that there was the slightest chance that you’d make it without broken bones. Becaus
e people change, as do circumstances. If no one is changing, then no one is growing. If no one is growing, then what is the point of life? What are the chances that people can grow and still be compatible years later?
Divorce made sense. It felt like an inevitable consequence.
Mackenzie stared at her phone. Sterling hadn’t messaged her. She clutched it tightly in her fist. She knew she had overreacted; she didn’t even remember why they had fought the night before. But she believed that he should feel guilty for betraying her. She had hoped his guilt would allow her some liberties.
“Ready?” Nick asked.
“Huh?”
“Anthony just texted. He’s got something for us.”
“Yes.” She frowned. “I had to check something.”
She glanced at her phone one last time. Was Sterling sick of her? Was he giving up on their marriage too?
She noticed Nick was watching her closely. She knew her face betrayed what she was thinking. He looked at her with soft eyes and lips pressed in a hard line. She knew what he was asking her silently.
Why don’t you leave him, Mack?
A wail came from the other side of the door.
“It’s just me,” Mackenzie whispered, entering the washroom.
Melody sat on the floor, her back plastered to the tiled wall. Dressed in a green nightgown, she looked wraithlike. Snot slobbered its way down to her lips. She stared blankly past Mackenzie with puffy eyes. There was a cut on her lower lip. Her arms were red with handprints.
Melody blinked in surprise. “Where’s your father?”
“Sleeping.”
She sighed in relief. “Good. You go and play.”
But Mackenzie didn’t move. Her eyes flitted to the purple bruises on her mother’s leg. Melody deftly covered them with her robe.
Melody looked like fragile glass. Caked in her makeup, smiling with the neighbors, there was always a hesitance in her eyes. Like she was waiting for someone to jump and whack her.
“Why don’t you leave him?” Mackenzie asked.
Melody closed her eyes and banged her head against the wall. “It’s complicated, sweetheart.”
“No, it’s not. If he hits you, then you should leave him.”
“I know I should. But I can’t.”
“Why not? I don’t like seeing you like this. He’s not a good person. Is it because you made a vow in front of God?”
Melody’s sad smile waned. “No, baby. If I leave him, he will kill us both.”
Forty-Seven
“Why can’t we talk in your office?” Mackenzie sat across from Anthony in the crime lab’s lounge.
Anthony tilted his head back and squeezed an eyedropper. “My corneas feel plastered to my eyeballs.”
Nick glowered at the vending machine for a long time before punching it. Heads turned at the sharp noise. Skittles dropped from the rack. He retrieved them and shrugged. “What?”
“Have you actually ever paid to use our vending machine?” Anthony asked.
“Of course not,” he snorted and fell onto a chair. “What’s up with your office?”
“I’m getting pest control today—I didn’t know when I arranged it that our caseload was about to jump. I saw a cockroach. You know what that does to my blood pressure,” Anthony said.
“Well, what do you have?”
He sighed and pulled out a thick file. “Not much. But something.” He showed a blown-up picture of the cocktail napkin. “The initial analysis revealed that the blue ink along the border and the blue ink of the logo and the number are different. Took a few sophisticated imaging techniques, but the border is an ultramarine and the logo is Persian blue. We determined the age of the ink—the logo ink is only four years old. The border ink is definitely older.”
Four years old—four years ago, Daphne Cho went missing.
Mackenzie frowned at the picture. “Okay… so someone laser printed the logo and the number on top of an existing napkin. The entire thing isn’t new.”
“That’s right.”
“What about the liquid on it?” Nick asked.
“It was beer, but based on the composition I was able to narrow that down to a very specific brand. Tequiza.”
“Tequiza?”
He snickered. “Yeah, sounds terrible, doesn’t it? It’s beer that tastes like tequila and lime. It was discontinued years ago, in 2009.”
“So, where did this come from?” Mackenzie asked.
“From a place buying alcohol from the black market.” Nick fiddled with the candy in his lap. “There are some places that illegally buy discontinued products at lower prices and mix them to sell them off as other drinks.”
“To avoid paying the actual price and save money,” Mackenzie nodded.
“Exactly. I’ll ask Jenna to look into which places are buying illegal booze.”
Mackenzie stood up to leave. “Also tell her to find out how many places use this cocktail napkin—without the logo. Maybe there’s some overlap?”
“Sure thing. Where are you going?”
“Nowhere.”
Back at the station, Mackenzie tapped her pen incessantly on the table. Against the chaotic sounds of phones trilling, a news anchor droning, and papers shuffling, the rhythmic tapping of the pen helped her focus.
She stared at her computer screen. She was planning to log into the database and access the old case files again. But something stopped her. What if not all the information was included in the database? What if something was kept off the record? A part of her knew she was being paranoid. Another part of her decided it was safer to be paranoid than careless. She had already missed the pattern before. She couldn’t make another mistake.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Lieutenant Peck walk by her office.
Her spine stiffened.
She picked up her jacket and went to the basement. There was a room where written records were still stored in case the servers were hacked. Within the next few months, the Lakemore PD would be shredding some old documents, which made sense considering the time and money it took to maintain them. The IT department had assured them that the firewalls and backup systems were in place.
Maybe that was the reason why, when Mackenzie opened the steel door, she was greeted by a damp smell and moist air. The room had no ventilation and was tucked in a corner no one visited. She shrugged off her jacket and used it to keep the door wedged open.
She sunk inside the pitch darkness of the long room. Her hand fumbled blindly for the switch. The lights weren’t working. Since this room would be empty a few months later, no one had bothered to maintain it.
Pulling out her phone, she turned on the flashlight and began skimming through the rows. Steel racks ran along the length of the room, containing stuffed files almost spilling over.
She had almost reached the far end of the room when she found the files from four years ago.
“September, September, September,” her whispers echoed in the unlit room. She spotted the files with the dates and cases she needed scribbled on them. She pulled out Daphne’s file and wiped away the dust collected during its exile in this forgotten room.
There were several records of a search party being led to look for Daphne in the woods close to Riverwood Rocks. Washington State Patrol had submitted their reports. There were key witness statements collected. But none of this information had been conveyed to the Tacoma PD.
Mackenzie hunted for Chloe’s disappearance the following year. The standard protocol was followed but stopped abruptly. They found a receipt of a bus ticket in her bedroom. Six days after starting the search, they concluded that Chloe had left Lakemore willingly. They never confirmed if Chloe was at the bus station, if she boarded the bus at all, or if she even contacted anyone after reaching Seattle. They hadn’t done enough. Not nearly enough.
Mackenzie remembered Troy being eerily quiet and scratching his neck. He admitted that Peck told him to close this one and focus on other cases. Troy hadn’t been happy, but he was new
and unseasoned. He didn’t fight it and did what he was told.
An idea sparked in her mind. She spent the next few minutes gathering the files on the burglaries in Lakemore. The group’s first target was none other than Nathaniel Jones, on October 5, 2015, just five weeks after Daphne Cho went missing. The second robbery came six months later. The target was Arthur Bishop. The third time, they went after Mayor Rathbone, on September 16, 2016—just three days before Chloe was reported missing.
That was their last robbery in Lakemore. As expected, resources and time were spent on tracking them. The burglaries were neat, following the same MO. Not a speck of valid forensic evidence was obtained. It was almost like they knew their targets too well.
They had vanished into thin air. There were no suspects, no leads that hadn’t been exhausted. And although Lakemore PD assumed the gang had moved on, they’d never been contacted by another force working a case with the same MO.
Mackenzie sat on the tiled floor. She gazed at the pages spilled in front of her. There was too much information to absorb. She had been there for all of it. Special Investigations had been flooded with work. All free hands were requested to assist them in any way.
But viewed as a whole, the picture looked completely different.
Was it only a coincidence that two of the burglaries happened at a time that the police could justify prioritizing them over other cases? Why did Peck forward partial information? Why did he discourage Troy from following up on Chloe?
Mackenzie felt tingles run along her skin. Like snakes crawling and leaving bite marks. She stared at Daphne and Chloe’s pictures, pinned to their respective files. Everyone had failed them.
Had it just been a case of bad calls made in the wake of unusual circumstances, or had there been a conspiracy to divert attention from them?
Our Daughter's Bones: An absolutely gripping crime fiction novel (Detective Mackenzie Price Book 1) Page 20