Find Her Alive

by Regan, Lisa

  Frances stormed upstairs. Hanna gave Alex a weak smile before running after him.

  An hour later they were all in the car, headed to the gallery. The moment they walked into the building, people converged on Hanna, praising her work and asking her questions about individual pieces. Frances disappeared in the crowd.

  It took nearly an hour for Hanna and Alex to work their way through the throngs of Hanna’s admirers to the painting they’d created together. Hanna clamped a hand over her mouth. A woman beside her said, “This is an interesting piece, Hanna. It has an unfinished look about it, doesn’t it?”

  Alex looked up at his mother. Tears spilled from her eyes, over the hand covering her mouth. Without a word, she ran off, leaving him standing in front of the naked canvas.

  All of the feathers were gone.

  Sixteen

  Josie pointed to Dr. Feist’s laptop. “Do you mind if I use this?”

  Dr. Feist closed out her tabs and waved Josie over. “Be my guest.”

  With Gretchen peering over her shoulder, Josie pulled up the website for NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, and logged in. She selected Pennsylvania and searched, turning up a total of 438 missing persons in the entire state listed in the NamUs database.

  Gretchen said, “She might not be listed in NamUs. She might not even be from Pennsylvania.”

  “True,” Josie conceded. “But it’s a good place to start.”

  Dr. Feist looked over Josie’s other shoulder and gave a low whistle. “That’s a lot of missing people to sort through. This could take a while.”

  “No, it won’t,” Josie said. “We’ll sort by sex, age, and race. Thanks to you, we’ve got some parameters to work with. Here we go.”

  Together they studied the list. There were nine Caucasian females between the ages of forty-five and fifty-five currently listed in the NamUs database as missing. One by one, Josie clicked on them and she and Gretchen read the details. Four of them had been missing for decades.

  “We have no idea how long this woman has been dead,” Gretchen pointed out. “We’d have to check out every single one of these.”

  “First things first,” Josie said. “Let’s cross-check to see if any of these women’s dental records have been submitted to the National Dental Image/Information Repository. If we can get dental records for comparison, we can start narrowing down our list.” She glanced back at Dr. Feist. “Do you mind?”

  “Not at all. The sooner this woman is identified, the sooner her family can begin to have closure.”

  Only four of the nine women were listed in the NDIR database, their dental records having been uploaded so that Josie, Gretchen, and Dr. Feist could review them. When Josie pulled up the dental x-rays for the third woman on their list and placed them side by side with the images that Dr. Feist had taken of their victim, Dr. Feist slapped the counter excitedly. “That’s her!”

  “Are you sure?” Josie said, peering at one set of images, then the other, and back again. But as she looked more closely, she could clearly see the similarities for herself.

  Gretchen reached across Josie and clicked back to the details of the missing woman’s case. “This can’t be right,” she said.

  Dr. Feist said, “That’s a match. What’s her name?”

  “Nicci,” Josie read off. “Nicci Webb. Age forty-five.”

  Gretchen said, “But she only went missing a couple of weeks ago. Seventeen days ago to be precise.”

  “Only a few days after Trinity went missing,” Josie pointed out.

  “True,” Gretchen said. “We’ll have to see if there’s a connection. But seventeen days? This can’t be Nicci Webb.”

  The three of them turned and stared at the remains on the autopsy table.

  Dr. Feist said, “It’s not impossible for a body to decompose that quickly, but as I told Josie, the conditions would have to be right. Extreme heat, insects, scavengers… like I told Josie at the scene, the body didn’t decompose behind the cabin where it was found. We have no idea of the location or conditions in which her body decomposed.” Turning back to the laptop, she reviewed the x-ray images once more. “This is a match,” she added. “I’m sure of it.”

  Josie glanced at Gretchen. “We could contact the detective in charge of the case and tell him or her we have a possible match, and go from there.”

  Gretchen said, “That report says she was from Keller Hollow. That’s almost an hour from here, on the other side of Bellewood. They don’t have their own police department. Too rural. They rely on the state police.”

  Josie clicked on the report again to find the name of the officer who had submitted Nicci Webb’s dental records. “The investigating officer is Detective Heather Loughlin.”

  Gretchen smiled and took out her phone. “Perfect.”

  They’d worked with Heather on several cases. She was thorough, fair, and no-nonsense. Gretchen put the call on speakerphone. Heather picked up after three rings. “Detective Palmer,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

  Gretchen said, “We found some… remains here in Denton. The dental images Dr. Feist took match up with a missing woman in the National Dental Image Repository. Nicci Webb.”

  There was a beat of silence, then a long sigh filled with disappointment and sadness. “You sure?”

  From over Gretchen’s shoulder, Dr. Feist piped up. “I’ve been staring at them for the last half hour. It’s a match.”

  “Shit,” Heather muttered. Then, “Send me what you’ve got. I’ll call you back in fifteen minutes.”

  Dr. Feist emailed the x-rays to Heather and the three of them waited in silence. While Gretchen fired off a text to Mettner letting him know about the ID, Josie looked over the NamUs report for Nicci Webb. It didn’t contain many details—her age, height, weight, and town she lived in. Under ‘last seen’ it simply said: Keller Hollow. That could mean anything. Had she disappeared from her home or from somewhere else in the small town? Josie studied the photo, wondering how forty-five-year old Nicci Webb had come to be gruesomely displayed behind Trinity’s rental cabin. The photo showed Nicci from the waist up, wearing a red sweater with a multi-colored scarf wrapped round her neck. It looked as though someone had cropped other people out of the rest of the picture. Nicci sported shoulder-length brown hair shot through with gray and glasses over a narrow nose and thin lips. Her smile looked slightly strained.

  Josie used her phone to search various social media outlets for Webb. She found a Facebook account, but its privacy settings were so strict that Josie could only view her profile picture which showed her face up close. Her brown hair was pulled back with a black headband and her smile was slightly wider than in the NamUs photo, but it still didn’t quite reach her eyes.

  Gretchen said, “Does she look familiar? Do you think Trinity knew her?”

  “No,” Josie said. “I’ve never seen her before. Trinity never mentioned her, but it’s entirely possible they knew one another, and I didn’t know about it.”

  “Once we have the laptop dump and get her phone unlocked, we can see if Nicci Webb is one of Trinity’s contacts or if there’s any evidence there that they knew one another.”

  Josie said, “We should also ask Trinity’s assistant. Nicci might have been a source of some kind for one of Trinity’s stories.”

  Gretchen’s phone rang and she answered, putting it on speakerphone. Heather’s voice filled the room. “That’s my missing person,” she said, words filled with resignation. “You mind telling me where you found her?”

  Gretchen quickly gave her a rundown of the situation. The only thing she left out was the fact that the bones had been arranged in a strange and disturbing tableau. Josie knew that that was a detail better discussed in person. As if reading Josie’s mind, Gretchen told Heather, “There are a few other details, but we’d rather discuss those in person.”

  “Of course,” said Heather. “Can you ladies meet me in Bellewood in an hour? There’s a gas station at the edge of to
wn, right before the road that leads into Keller Hollow.”

  “I know it,” Josie said. “We’ll see you soon.”

  As soon as they hung up, Gretchen called Mettner to let him know what was going on. They thanked Dr. Feist and headed to their vehicle. Gretchen drove, stopping for takeout cheeseburgers before taking the twisty back roads to Bellewood, the Alcott County seat. Josie thought she had no appetite until the smell of the burgers filled the car. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it was after four in the afternoon. She thanked Gretchen before scarfing down the food. Once she finished, she turned toward the window, watching the gorgeous mountain scenery flash past, her mind working to make some kind of connection between Trinity and Nicci Webb.

  There was none. Josie hoped they would find one. Perhaps that connection would help them locate Trinity—before Trinity met the same gruesome fate as Webb.

  At the Gas ‘N Go station on the east side of Bellewood, Detective Heather Loughlin waited, leaning up against the side of her unmarked Chevrolet Tahoe with a cup of coffee in her hand. She wore black slacks and a polo shirt under a light jacket with the State Police logo emblazoned next to the left lapel. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she offered them a grim smile as they got out of their own vehicle.

  “I’m happy to see you, but not under these circumstances,” she told them. “Tell me what you couldn’t tell me over the phone.”

  Josie let Gretchen do the talking. She watched Heather’s face transform from cool professionalism to shock when Gretchen showed her the photos of Nicci’s remains as they’d been found behind the cabin. “Sweet lord,” Heather muttered.

  Josie stepped forward. “Nicci Webb wasn’t involved in anything… satanic or ritualistic, was she?”

  Heather shook her head. “No, not at all. She was a regular parishioner at the Episcopal church in Bellewood.”

  Josie said, “What can you tell us about her?”

  “She was a sixth grade schoolteacher in Bellewood. She lived in Keller Hollow for well over twenty years. Raised her daughter here. Daughter’s name is Monica. She’s twenty-one, lives with Webb. Monica has a two-year-old daughter. Nicci’s husband died of a heart attack six years ago. She drove out to the cemetery to tend to his grave almost three weeks ago, which is something she does regularly, and no one saw her again. When she didn’t come home, the daughter tried calling her. No answer. The daughter drove to the cemetery. Found Webb’s vehicle there with everything left inside: purse, phone, keys in the ignition. It was like Webb just got out and walked away.”

  Josie felt a shiver along her spine. Just like Trinity—Nicci Webb had left everything behind and vanished into thin air. “There was nothing left behind at the cemetery, right?” Josie asked Heather. “Nothing unusual or… alarming?”

  Heather gave a dry laugh. “If you mean some kind of sickening display like what you guys found, no. Nothing. Believe me, I would have led with that. Part of the problem with the investigation was that it looked like she just walked off. That’s what everyone thought. Her daughter searched the area, found nothing, and so she called us in. We did some searches, didn’t turn anything up. Monica said that Nicci sometimes got depressed, especially after her husband passed, although she never sought professional help. For a while I thought maybe she had gone off and killed herself, but we never did find any evidence. Brought in the K-9 unit, they found her scent, but it didn’t go anywhere.”

  Josie said, “Which usually indicates that the person got into a vehicle.”

  “Exactly,” Heather agreed. “We checked into every person Nicci knew. She doesn’t have a very wide social circle. Everyone checked out.”

  “What about the cemetery?” Gretchen asked.

  “It’s small and rural. No cameras. It’s maintained by a couple in their eighties who live in Bellewood. They take care of the grass-cutting and other needs using their own equipment.”

  “So unless someone else was inside the cemetery that day with Nicci, no one would have seen anything,” Josie said.

  Gretchen said, “Someone was inside the cemetery with her, obviously. No one saw them.”

  Heather nodded. “We talked with everyone in Keller Hollow. As you probably know, there are only about four hundred people who live there, but between Monica and my people, we got to everyone. No one remembers seeing Nicci that day. No one remembers seeing any other vehicles arriving at or leaving the cemetery. We asked Bellewood PD to talk to people in their community. They put some stuff up on social media. We got no leads.”

  Josie asked, “There was no one she was feuding with? No troublesome boyfriends or ex-boyfriends?”

  “No,” Heather replied.

  “How about Monica?” Gretchen asked. “You said she’s got a two-year-old daughter. What about the father?”

  “He’s in the air force,” Heather replied. “Deployed. They’re not married but they have a good relationship. I did check out all of Monica’s known associates though just to be thorough. No one sent up any red flags.”

  Josie motioned toward Heather’s Tahoe. “You asked us here.”

  Heather nodded. “I’ve got to give Monica the death notification. She’s going to have a lot of questions. Since her mother’s homicide was in your jurisdiction, you should meet her.”

  “Of course,” Josie said.

  Seventeen

  Heather drove them down the long, wooded, two-lane road that led to Keller Hollow. They passed the cemetery on the way there, and just as Heather had said, there wasn’t much to it. It wasn’t gated. It was merely a plot of land that had been carved out of a forested hill, its headstones lined up neatly in rows. A single asphalt road split the middle of it, leading up and over the crest in the hill. As they drove past, Heather said, “Mr. Webb is buried up on the other side of the hill. You couldn’t see Nicci’s vehicle from this road which means that anyone who drove in after her and approached her wouldn’t have been seen from the road.”

  Keller Hollow appeared, a small collection of houses nestled along the rural route. Heather pulled into the driveway of a small, two-story house with blue siding and black shutters. Beside them were two other vehicles—both sedans, one red and one silver. As they got out, Heather pointed to the silver car. “That’s Nicci’s car. We did process it but didn’t find anything. The other car is Monica’s. She’s usually home. She’s taking online college courses. Plus, with a toddler and the cost of childcare, it’s tough for her to get out of the house much.”

  They stepped onto a porch that was littered with brightly colored toddler toys: a play lawn mower, a cozy coupe car, and a plastic ice-cream stand complete with plastic ice-cream cones in all flavors imaginable. Before Josie could take it all in, the creak of the screen door drew her attention. A young woman stepped out, holding a little girl on her hip. Both had dark hair, pale skin, and narrow noses like Nicci Webb.

  “Monica,” Heather greeted her.

  Monica’s blue eyes traveled from Heather to Josie and Gretchen and back. She drew in a deep, stuttering breath, and said, “She’s gone, isn’t she?”

  Heather’s face was drawn with sympathy. “Can we go inside?”

  Wordlessly, Monica led them inside the house. More toys were scattered across the living room. The furniture was well worn, as was the tan carpet. Family photos hung from the walls. Most were of a family of three—Monica stood circled protectively by her parents at various ages, bracketed by a much younger Nicci and her husband. He was taller than his wife, barrel-chested and bearded with kind eyes and a wide smile. His own expression held none of the strain that his wife’s did. Then he disappeared from the photos, eventually replaced by Nicci’s infant granddaughter.

  Josie tore her eyes from the photos to take in the rest of the room. Houseplants sat in each corner and on the end tables. Everything in the room except the toys looked very old, and yet the place felt homey and warm. A blanket had been spread on the floor, with various dolls on it. Monica set her daughter down on it and handed her a
sippy cup. “Annabelle,” she said, a tremble in her voice. “Mommy has to talk to these ladies, okay? Why don’t you sit here and play and watch TV for a while, okay? I’ll put on your favorite show?”

  Annabelle pointed to the television and cried out, “Paw Patrol!”

  Monica kissed her cheek and smiled back, even as a tear sneaked down her face. “You got it, baby.”

  Once Annabelle was fully engrossed in Paw Patrol, they all sat down—Gretchen and Josie on the couch and Heather and Monica on the love seat. Heather made introductions while Monica twisted her hands together in her lap. “Just tell me,” she said. “Just tell me where you found her.”

  Heather said, “Your mother’s remains were found near a rental cabin in Denton.”

  Monica closed her eyes for a moment, sucking in several deep breaths. “Remains?”

  Gretchen cleared her throat and when Monica opened her eyes again, she said, “She was badly decomposed, I’m afraid. We weren’t able to determine her cause of death or even how long she’s been dead, but we estimate that she probably passed away shortly after she went missing.”

  “She didn’t go missing,” Monica said.

  Josie said, “You’re right. Someone took her, Monica.” She glanced at Gretchen. She knew they couldn’t disclose the bone display. Not at this stage in the investigation. Not that she wanted to tell Monica about the ghastly way her mother’s bones had been displayed. “But we’re not sure where she was killed. It was clear from how clean the scene was that her remains had been brought from another location and placed there.”

  Monica’s brow furrowed. “You said Denton? I don’t think my mom’s ever been to Denton.”

  Gretchen said, “Well, that’s kind of why we’re here. We need to know if she had any connection there.”

  Monica shook her head. “No. None. Wait, you said it was a rental cabin. She wasn’t renting it, was she?”