by Regan, Lisa
She had some kind of theory, Drake had said.
Which was what? And what did it have to do with some old diary she’d written in high school? What did it have to do with her past? Was the killer someone she went to high school with? Josie opened her eyes, reached for her phone, and fired off a text to Mettner, asking him to look into that angle. Without the actual diary, Josie had no idea what path Trinity had been trying to lead her down. As she drifted back into a near-sleep, various elements swept across the movie screen of her mind. The Post-it notes. OCD? Symmetry? Mirror killings? The combs—first in Codie Lash’s hair and then in Trinity’s. The search history on her laptop: Alphabet murders. Codie’s mouth forming the words: Bobby? What do you mean, Bobby? The symbols. Male and female.
Mirror killings. Symmetry. Male. Female. Bobby.
No, not Bobby. Bobbi.
Josie’s upper body levered up, startling Trout, who gave a little yelp and then shot her a dirty look. “Sorry, buddy,” she told him. She threw her feet over the side of the bed but when she tried to stand, her body swayed. Quickly, she sat back down. Trout jumped down and stretched before her in front of her feet. He went to the bedroom door and nudged it open, waiting for her to stand. A few minutes later, a soft knock sounded from the other side of the half-open door. Trout’s butt wiggled. Patrick stuck his head inside. “You okay?”
Josie smiled. “Fine. Just a little unsteady.”
“Can I get you anything? Coffee? Juice?”
“My laptop,” Josie said.
He rolled his eyes but laughed good-naturedly. “Oh right. I forgot. You’re a Payne. Of course you’d want your laptop before sustenance.”
“It’s just that I think I—” Josie started.
He put up a hand. “I’m messing with you, Josie. It was a joke. I can actually get you your laptop and a coffee.”
She grinned at him. “That would be perfect.”
Five minutes later, Josie was leaning against her headboard with her laptop across her legs and a steaming cup of coffee on her nightstand. Patrick had taken Trout for a walk. Noah was at the station and Lisette, Shannon, and Christian were downstairs, “worrying,” Patrick told her.
It took Josie four databases and a Google search to come up with what she was looking for. She downloaded an article from the Pocono Record dated two weeks after the Bone Artist had staged Robert Ingram’s remains. The headline read:
Police Have No Leads in Case of Missing Woman Found Alive Wandering Route 209.
Then she checked NamUs, spending another hour tracking down the reports needed to confirm her theory. She sent all of it to the printer in their home office. Then she called Noah. “Someone needs to come get me,” she told him. “Is everyone there?”
“Just me,” he said. “Mett and Gretchen went home to sleep. Drake is at his hotel, probably also sleeping.”
“Wake them up,” Josie said. “This is important.”
* * *
A half hour later, the team and Drake were gathered in the station house conference room. Drake shot Josie daggers while Mettner continued to rub sleep from his eyes. Gretchen sipped calmly on a coffee, waiting to hear what Josie had to say. Noah sat next to Josie, holding the stack of report copies she had asked him to make. Josie nodded and he started handing them out to the rest of the team.
Josie began, “I think I know the theory that Trinity was working with. We know this guy likes symmetry. He has patterns, even if we haven’t figured out what all of them are. We now know that his displays are based on a combination of the symbols for male and female. Trinity’s notes—the few I managed to see before she packed up her stuff—mentioned something about mirror killings which made no sense to me at first. But then I thought about Codie Lash and what she had said to the Bone Artist the night she was murdered. She said, ‘Bobby, what are you talking about? Bobby?’ She already knew about Robert Ingram’s murder. So why did she seem surprised? Unless she wasn’t talking about Bobby as in Robert Ingram. Bobbi can also be a woman’s name.”
Gretchen said, “You think she was saying Bobbi with an ‘i’?”
“Yes,” Josie said. She picked up one of the reports she had printed. “Roberta Ingram, a twenty-seven-year-old dental hygienist from Bloomsburg went missing the day before Robert Ingram disappeared from East Stroudsburg.”
Mettner stared at the NamUs report in his hands. “Holy shit,” he said.
Josie waved the news article from the Pocono Record in the air. “Thirty days later Roberta, or Bobbi, Ingram was found wandering the woods in East Stroudsburg along Route 209, naked, badly dehydrated and completely disoriented, with what the news would only report were ‘serious injuries’. She says she was abducted by a man with ‘marks on his face.’”
Drake said, “Jesus.”
Noah said, “We called East Stroudsburg PD. They confirmed all of this. They said that they worked hard on this one, but that they never developed any leads in the case.”
Gretchen asked, “Did she recover from her injuries?”
Josie said, “The physical injuries, yes.”
Noah said, “East Stroudsburg PD gave us her address. They said they thought she would be fine talking with us and offered to call her to give her a heads-up.”
Mettner stood up. “Let’s go then. Where does she live now?”
“She’s in Danville now,” Noah said. “About ten miles from Bloomsburg.”
“There’s one more thing,” Josie said. “All the killings have mirrors.” She spread out the reports from NamUs. “In 2008, a few days before the first victim, Anthony Yanetti, was kidnapped from outside of Newtown, Pennsylvania, a woman named Antonia ‘Toni’ Yanetti was abducted from King of Prussia.”
“King of Prussia is where the Bone Artist left Anthony Yanetti’s remains,” Drake said.
“Let me guess,” Mettner said. “Around the same time that Terri Abbott went missing in Pittsburgh, a man named Terrence Abbott went missing just outside of Pittsburgh.”
“Correct,” Josie said.
Gretchen supplied, “One or two days before or after Kenneth Darden went missing from Paoli, a woman named…” She studied the NamUs report. “Kendra Darden was abducted from Philadelphia.”
“Yes,” Josie said. “None of the mirrors—Antonia Yanetti, Terrence Abbott, or Kendra Darden have ever been found. The only mirror the Bone Artist ever set free was Roberta ‘Bobbi’ Ingram.”
Noah said, “He let her go because Codie Lash was playing his game. She wore the comb on the air which is what he wanted.”
“But he still killed her,” Drake said.
“The husband attacked him,” Josie said. “He lost control. Once he killed the husband in front of her, and she had seen his face, he couldn’t exactly let her go.”
“What does this mean for Nicci Webb?” Mettner asked. “Is there a Nicholas Webb out there who is also missing? One we don’t know about?”
Josie shook her head. “I thought of that. I checked every database and news outlet I could think of and found nothing. There are three Nicolas Webbs in Pennsylvania.”
Noah added, “They’re all accounted for. Before you guys got here, I called the police departments in the towns they live in and had them do welfare checks.”
Drake said, “So Nicci is the only one without a mirror? Why would he do that?”
“To throw us off?” Noah offered.
Mettner said, “We’ve talked about how off-pattern the Webb murder seems before. We’re dealing with a serial offender. What would cause someone like this to change the way they do things?”
Noah said, “A stressor of some kind, maybe?”
Drake nodded. “A stressor could do it. Hey, what about Trinity? She didn’t have a mirror. There’s no male equivalent to Trinity, is there?”
Josie’s skin felt cold. “No, but she actually does have a mirror. A literal mirror.”
Drake’s cheeks colored. “Right. Of course.”
“That’s why he tried to take you,” Noah said lookin
g at Josie. “It was off-pattern in terms of the timing since he waited so long after taking Trinity to try abducting you, but he did still try.”
“Which makes Nicci Webb even more off-pattern,” Gretchen said. “She’s the only one without a mirror.”
Mettner said, “Maybe she saw something she wasn’t supposed to see. We should look more closely at her.”
“I’ve been over the state police file,” Noah said. “They did look closely at her and all of her activities in the days leading up to her abduction. They turned up nothing.”
Drake met Josie’s eyes. “Sometimes a fresh set of eyes makes all the difference. I’ll get someone on my team to take another look at Nicci Webb.”
“Thank you,” Mettner and Josie said in unison.
Gretchen took a sip of her coffee and asked, “What does he do with the mirrors that he doesn’t put on display? You don’t think they’re still alive, do you?”
Josie shook her head. “No, I don’t. Perhaps the DNA from the combs will match DNA of one or two of the mirrors.”
A visible shudder worked its way through Gretchen’s body. She set her coffee cup back on the table.
Mettner looked like he might be sick, but he drew himself up and took a deep breath. “All right. We can’t all go talk to Bobbi Ingram. Nothing like scaring the shit out of the poor woman with five of us showing up on her doorstep. I’ll take the boss with me to talk to her. Now that we know about the mirrors, we have to go back and look closely at the circumstances surrounding their disappearances to see if the Bone Artist left any clues or evidence behind that we can use to track him down. Palmer—you and Fraley can work on those.”
Drake said, “I’ll stay here and help with that as well as the Webb thing. It won’t hurt to have the weight of the FBI behind your inquiries to the police jurisdictions in which these mirror victims went missing.”
“Let’s get to work,” said Mettner.
Forty-Six
Mettner fielded a call from the East Stroudsburg Police on their way to Danville informing him that Bobbi Ingram would be home that afternoon, and she was willing to speak with them. They arrived in Danville an hour and a half later. It was a small town on the Susquehanna and the home of the sprawling Geisinger Medical Center. Bobbi lived in a condominium in a development near the town’s high school. Children played and rode their bikes up and down the street, which was lined on one side by condos and on the other by single homes. It was a beautiful, idyllic location. Bobbi greeted them at the door, wearing scrubs and toweling her hands dry with a dish towel. She was about Josie’s height but curvier than Josie with wide hips and an ample bosom. Her brown hair was pulled away from her face and tied in a braid down her back.
“Come on in,” she said, leading them down a small hallway and into a kitchen with a breakfast nook. Her home was neatly kept, and decorated in wood tones. A tabby cat stared at them from the top of the refrigerator as Josie and Mettner sat down at her kitchen table. Bobbi offered them drinks but they declined.
“You’re here about what happened to me, they said.”
“That’s right,” Mettner said.
Bobbi walked over to her fridge and whispered until the cat moved to the edge. She reached up and took it into her arms before taking a seat across from them. On her lap, the cat purred loudly as she stroked its head and back.
“Them police in East Stroudsburg were nice,” she told them. “But they never found anything.”
“That’s what they said,” Mettner replied. “We’re sorry to hear that.”
Josie said, “We have another case of a missing woman. We believe it might be related to your case. Anything you could tell us about what happened to you might be helpful.”
Bobbi’s face crumpled and she hid it in her cat’s furry neck. The cat, unaffected, flicked its tail back and forth. A moment later, Bobbi looked up. Tears streaked her face, but she didn’t wipe them away. Looking off into space , she sucked in a stuttering breath and began to speak. “I used to walk the fairgrounds in Bloomsburg before work every day. When there’s no events going on, it’s pretty dead there. A few people will drive over with their dogs and let them run. It was early March. It was freezing that day. Like, below freezing. I almost didn’t go out, but I was trying to lose weight. I wasn’t going to go out for long. I bundled myself up and set off.”
Mettner asked, “Was anyone else out there?”
Bobbi gave a bitter laugh. “No. I was the only idiot. I only lived a few blocks away but by the time I got down there, I knew I had made a mistake. I turned around, started walking up Route 11 there before it turns into Main Street, near where the ramp to Route 42 going up to the mall is, and this truck was stopped there.”
“What kind of truck?” Josie asked.
“I think it was a Chevy. I mean, I didn’t notice at first. It was a white pickup. The police showed me about two dozen pictures of trucks afterward and the Chevy seemed the closest, but I couldn’t say for certain. And no, I didn’t get the tag. I didn’t even look at the damn thing. It never occurred to me for a second I’d need to remember anything about that stupid truck or the driver.”
Josie said, “We shouldn’t have to remember such things. People shouldn’t do bad things. What happened then?”
“Well, I was freezing my behind off walking past that thing. I saw the exhaust coming out and I thought, Geez, I’d love to be in there. Then the window rolled down and this guy leaned across the passenger seat and he said something like, ‘I don’t mean to scare you, miss.’”
“Why would he scare you?” Mettner asked.
“He had on a ski mask although I didn’t think it was all that unusual. A lot of hunters wear those in the cold weather. They weren’t uncommon in the winter around my area. I could see his eyes, they were brown, and there was a red mark going from his forehead down his nose. I didn’t realize at first, not till I got closer. It was like a burn or a scar or something. He pointed to it and said it was on account of being burned with hot oil when he was a kid. He said it was embarrassing and that’s why he wore a ski mask in winter sometimes. I wanted to tell him he could cover that with some make-up, but it didn’t seem like the time.”
Mettner was typing furiously into the note-taking app on his phone. “Did he tell you his name or where he was from or anything?”
Bobbi shook her head. “No. He just said he was from out of town and he was looking for the hospital. Said he was going to visit a friend. He had flowers on the seat there. I gave him directions and he thanked me. Then I walked on. He pulled up a few seconds later and said he was sorry for not offering me a ride after I helped him with directions. If it hadn’t been so cold, I would have told him no.”
Her fingers dug into the cat’s thick mane as her eyes took on a far-off look. “But I said yes,” she said, as if she were no longer talking to them but narrating some movie inside her own head. “I got in. Gave him directions. He drove right past my house. When I started to panic, he said, ‘Calm down, Bobbi,’ and I knew I was in real trouble cause I never told him my name. Next thing I know I’m screaming and he’s plunging a needle into the meaty part of my thigh. I tried to stay awake after that, but I couldn’t.”
“Some kind of intramuscular injection,” Josie said.
“Yeah,” Bobbi agreed. “I was in and out of sleep after that. He drove and drove. Pulled into some long, gravel drive. It seemed like forever. I asked him a whole bunch of questions, but he never answered one of them. He pulled up to this old container.”
“A shipping container?” Mettner said. “Like a metal one you see on docks?”
She nodded. “Or the kind they put on trains. It was big and metal.”
“Windows?” Josie asked.
“No. But it wasn’t bad in there. It was heated, at least. There was a mattress, a blanket, some water, a flashlight and a little camping toilet to relieve myself. He just left me in there. I screamed my head off in there for what felt like days, but he never came. No one did. He left me i
n there till all the water was gone and I was so hungry.”
“What happened when he came back?” Mettner asked.
“I thought he was going to hurt me or something, but he wasn’t interested in that. He brought me some food—snack food, packaged stuff like he’d got it from a mini-market or something—and more water. I asked him questions, but he never said anything. The flashlight battery ran out. That was the worst time.”
Josie fought a feeling of claustrophobia imagining the utter darkness and sensory deprivation Bobbi must have experienced, all while stuck in an enclosed space. “I’m so sorry, Bobbi,” she murmured.
“Thank you,” Bobbi said.
“Did he ever harm you?” Mettner asked. “Hit you or anything?”
“No,” Bobbi answered. “Other than to push me away when I tried to attack him. I was so weak, it was easy for him. He flicked me away like I was a bug.”
“Did he drug you again?” Josie asked.
“Not the way he did in the truck. One day, toward the end, he came in and said he needed to take me somewhere. I said I wanted to go home. He said he was going to let me go. I didn’t believe him, not really, because why else would he take me except to kill me? He said he needed something from me first. He blindfolded me, tied my hands behind my back, and marched me out into the cold. We walked and walked and walked. I was so weak, a couple of times he had to carry me. He slung me over his shoulder like I was nothing. Then we were in someplace warm. From under the blindfold, I could see it was light in there. I think it was a house. I heard doors opening and closing. Then he laid me down on something—a bed or something—and tied my arms and legs down.”