Find Her Alive

by Regan, Lisa

  Josie leaned over, studying the document. It was a lab report of the soil composition from the sample that Jenny Chan had taken. Denton’s ERT had collected the evidence but it had been turned over to the FBI labs for processing. The DNA testing from the combs and the rib found in front of the Price family’s trailer would still take weeks, if not months, but Josie knew soil samples could be processed in as few as seven days. She ran her finger down the list of the test results until she found the reason that Drake was smiling.

  “Eastonite,” she said.

  “It’s a mineral,” Drake said. Josie looked over to see him bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet.

  “I know,” she said. “It’s only found in two places in the world—a small locality in Norway and Easton, Pennsylvania.”

  He stopped bouncing, staring down at her with a disappointed expression. “How the hell do you know that?”

  Josie smiled. “Noah’s sister runs a number of quarries in Pennsylvania. I picked some things up. But it doesn’t matter how I know that. What matters is that we’ve got a search area! Let me get the rest of the team.”

  * * *

  Four hours later, they all sat at the conference room table with laptops open in front of them. A half-eaten box of pizza lay in the center of the table. Empty coffee cups and soda bottles littered the rest of the table. The energy they’d started with was now a distant memory. No one spoke. Occasionally, someone would grunt or issue a heavy sigh. An acute ache bloomed behind Josie’s eyes as she studied property records within Easton, Pennsylvania and the areas surrounding it that she’d already been over a half dozen times. She rubbed her eyes and stretched her arms over her head. “I’ve got nothing,” she said.

  “Same here,” Gretchen grumbled.

  Drake said, “There are people in Easton named Max, property owners named Max—first and last names—but no one is matching up either age-wise or by driver’s license.”

  “It can’t be this hard,” Noah said.

  “We’re missing something,” Mettner agreed. “I even struck out with the colleges again. There are two in Easton—Lafayette and Aubertine—and neither of their biology departments believed anyone on their faculties in the late nineties or early two thousands had a son named Max or a son with a scar on his face or a faculty member with a particular interest in raptors.”

  Noah said, “Maybe we need to stop looking for Max and look at actual properties. Some place with a lot of land, enough land where a group of twenty to thirty black vultures gathering wouldn’t be all that noticeable.”

  “Maybe somewhere near a railroad,” Gretchen said. “Has anyone looked at the satellite images? Maybe we can spot a large property with one or more shipping containers on it.”

  “I did,” Mettner said. “Nothing stood out, but the shipping container could be obscured by tree cover. Or the satellite photos could be out of date. Bobbi Ingram was held in one six years ago.”

  “Noah has a point, though,” Josie said. “We’re focusing too hard on the name. We’re focusing too hard on trying to assemble all the pieces. Maybe we only need one to point us in a direction.”

  Drake huffed. “Which one?”

  Josie clicked out of the property records and pulled up her internet browser, using it to pull up Google satellite images of Easton and its surrounding areas. “I don’t know,” she said. “We’ll know it when we see it. Let’s keep looking.”

  Noah said, “You’ve got the aerials?”

  She nodded. He rolled his chair over, around Mettner’s, and next to hers. Together they studied the overhead view, zooming in and out and moving from area to area. Josie kept coming back to a small, almost circular area of what looked like boulders that stood out among the trees surrounding it. She zoomed in on them. It was impossible to say how big an area they covered but they were grouped closely together with no room for vegetation.

  “What is it?” Noah asked.

  “Boulders,” Josie said. She zoomed back out, noting that the several acres around them were green. There were lots of trees and then an area that looked almost like a farm or the grounds of a large estate. She pointed to it. “What is this?”

  “Let me see.” He used the mousepad to manipulate the images on the screen and then pointed to a large group of buildings. “Well, this right here is Aubertine College. Maybe it’s part of the campus.”

  Josie looked again. “But there’s nothing there but land.”

  Noah backed up so Mettner could get a look at the screen. She pointed to the area they were studying. Mettner said, “It could be an arboretum. Gretchen, look it up and see if Aubertine College has an arboretum.”

  “On it,” Gretchen said, tapping away at the laptop before her. A moment later she said, “They do. The Agnes Hill Arboretum. It’s owned by a private foundation which was founded by a former alum back in the 1800s but it’s operated by the college. It’s fifty-five acres and it has been home to many raptors native to Pennsylvania which Aubertine students majoring in biology or zoology have access to for their research.”

  Josie zoomed out once more, staring at the stones again. Noah said, “What is it?”

  “Give me a minute,” she told him. The stones. What was it about the stones?

  Drake and Gretchen stood and came over to study the screen. Drake said, “There’s no railroad nearby. Bobbi Ingram told you—”

  It clicked into place. Josie jumped out of her seat, nearly knocking Drake and Gretchen into the wall behind them. “That’s it!” she said. “That’s where he is!”

  They all stared at her. “Boss,” said Mettner.

  Josie said, “The sounds that Bobbi Ingram heard were not people hammering in rail ties. They were ringing rocks.”

  Gretchen said, “The ringing rocks are in Bucks County. They’re in a state park—a huge tourist attraction.”

  Drake said, “What the hell are ringing rocks?”

  “They’re lithophonic rocks,” Josie explained. “They resonate like bells when you strike them. In Bucks County, they call it ‘the field of boulders’, I think. You take hammers, and you can go out among the boulders, strike them and make music. Well, it sounds like bells. Or like the sound of rail ties being struck. There are some in the UK and in Australia, too.”

  “But boss,” Mettner said, “isn’t Bucks County the only site in Pennsylvania?”

  “No,” Josie said. “It’s not. There are some smaller sites and some of them are on privately owned property. These are ringing rocks. That’s what Bobbi heard when she was captive.”

  “I don’t see any shipping containers on this land,” Drake pointed out, reaching across and zooming in on the property.

  “Like Mettner said, it could be under tree cover or it might not be there now,” Josie said. “Hear me out. In the diary, Trinity said that Max’s dad worked for the college. Not that he was a professor there. No, he ‘worked’ there. Maybe he was the caretaker. It would make sense. He’d be familiar with the raptors there. He may have even had an interest in ornithology. Maybe Max took over his duties or maybe Max works with him there.”

  Gretchen said, “And the reason we can’t find the truck is because it’s not registered to anyone named Max, it’s registered to either the college or the foundation.”

  Noah had moved over and was now clicking away on his own laptop. “And they’ve got an animal sanctuary there with a staff veterinarian.”

  “Which means they have medical supplies and a place to operate,” Gretchen said.

  Mettner grimaced. “With fifty-five acres, he could probably find a spot to leave his victims out for the black vultures without drawing too much attention.”

  Josie nodded. “This area to the north is adjacent to some large tracts of land. Doesn’t look like there’s anyone or anything there. It looks like maybe a tributary of the Lehigh River, maybe a waterfall here.”

  Noah said, “The caretaker would have his own quarters on the land.”

  Gretchen added, “Which would also tech
nically be owned by either the university or the foundation, so searching property records for someone named Max would be useless.”

  Josie said, “Let’s make some phone calls, do some recon, and firm this up.”

  Drake met her eyes. “Then we’ll go get Trinity.”

  Fifty-Seven

  The air in the building seemed suddenly energized. Everyone was jittery. An hour later, they had the information they needed. Chief Chitwood stood in the center of the great room while they briefed him. Mettner began, “The caretaker of the arboretum from 1980 until 1996 was a man named Frances Thornberg. He lived in the private quarters with a woman named Hanna Cahill.”

  “Cahill,” Chitwood said. “That sounds familiar.”

  Josie said, “It was Nicci Webb’s maiden name.”

  “The Bone Artist knew Nicci Webb?” Chitwood asked incredulously.

  Gretchen said, “In 1975, Hanna Cahill gave birth to Nicolette Cahill in Philadelphia. There is no father listed on the birth certificate.”

  Noah said, “Then in 1985, she gave birth to a son, Alexander Thornberg. She gave him Frances’s last name, but Frances is not listed on the birth certificate.”

  Mettner added, “Hanna was a pretty famous and successful artist in the nineties. Then, for some reason, she faded into obscurity.”

  “Frances and Hanna weren’t married?” Chitwood asked.

  “No,” Gretchen said. “We couldn’t find any record of them having married.”

  “Were there any other children?”

  Mettner said, “We couldn’t find any evidence of other children. But we did find that Hanna dedicated one of her last art shows to—” he looked down at his notes. “My darling Alex and Zandra.”

  “Who is Zandra?” Chitwood asked.

  “We don’t know,” Mettner said.

  Josie said, “We thought it might be short for Alexandra.”

  Drake said, “As in Alexander and Alexandra—creepy twins, perhaps? But there is no evidence at all that Hanna Cahill had twins. There is no Alexandra Thornberg or Alexandra Cahill. There was only Nicolette and Alexander.”

  Josie said, “I asked Monica Webb about Nicci’s childhood. Nicci told her that her mother died when she was fifteen, and that she left home. That would have been in 1990.”

  “But Hanna Cahill didn’t die until 2005,” Mettner put in.

  “Which means Nicci lied to her daughter about why she left home,” Noah said. “At least, that’s our assumption.”

  Chitwood said, “Why would Nicci Webb lie about her mother? Why wouldn’t she tell her daughter about Alexander? That’s Monica Webb’s uncle.”

  Josie said, “There’s no way for us to know for certain, but I’d guess there was some kind of abuse going on in the household. Nicci fled, and her little brother Alex turned out to be a serial killer.”

  Gretchen said, “After Nicci left, Alex was home-schooled, evidently, and at some point in the late nineties, the entire family became recluses.”

  “Is the dad still alive?” Chitwood asked.

  “We don’t know,” Josie responded. “There’s no death certificate for him, and he still draws a salary from the college for caretaking. Alex Thornberg became an official employee of the Foundation in 1998 when he turned eighteen. He, too, is listed as a caretaker.”

  Chitwood patted down the hairs floating over his head. “What else?”

  Drake said, “My team is going to take point on this. It’s a lot of area to cover—fifty-five acres of land in the arboretum. There are five structures.”

  “And,” Josie said, “the land to the north, adjacent to the arboretum, was purchased by Hanna Cahill in 2001. One hundred acres. No structures on record but plenty of land.”

  Chitwood shook his head. “You’re telling me that this guy has had a hundred-acre playground for over twenty years?”

  “Well he would have been sixteen when Hanna bought the land,” Drake said. “But yeah, the land passed to him when the mother died. Well, it would have passed to Nicci Webb in part as well, but since she wasn’t around, it was a non-issue. The deed was never changed over anyway. Property taxes were always paid on time, so no one cared about the title to the land. Oh and a shipping container was removed from the property three years after Bobbi Ingram was released.”

  “No shipping containers now?”

  “No,” Drake answered. “Which means he has to be holding Trinity in his private residence.”

  “How about our guy, Alexander Thornberg?” Chitwood asked. “He have a driver’s license?”

  Noah took a sheet of paper from his desk and held it up for Chitwood to see. The sight of it still chilled Josie. There he was—the man she had seen in the truck, who had later tried to take her. In his driver’s license photo, the scar was barely visible. He must have used make-up to cover it before getting his photo taken. But still, she could see its faint mark.

  Chitwood studied it. “Does he have a criminal record?”

  Josie answered, “No. Not as an adult. It’s possible he had one as a juvenile, but we wouldn’t have access to that, or it would have been expunged by now.”

  “Okay,” Chitwood said. “You’ve got this guy, probably holding Trinity in the caretaker’s residence. Of the people living there after Nicolette Webb left, his mother is deceased, but the dad is unaccounted for, which means he could still be on the property.”

  “Right,” Drake said.

  Chitwood said, “You’ve still got a lot of ground to cover. A lot of places this guy could hide if you don’t get him. Your team have a plan in place to end this thing?”

  Drake said, “We’re working on it now.”

  Fifty-Eight

  The reporter was a curious creature. Alex had never seen anyone so beautiful in person. She was also insufferable, with her incessant demands and nonstop talking. He’d never met anyone who talked as much as she did. For a long time, he wished he had kept the storage container. Then he wouldn’t have to hear her whine about going home, about her sister, the cop. Trinity didn’t know it, but he’d watched her twin on television. He’d seen the clues she had planted, the tableau she had prepared especially for him. He had felt a stirring he hadn’t felt in a long time. He should have taken her when he had the chance. He’d been too cautious.

  From the upstairs bathroom came pounding on the pipes. Trinity again. Alex trudged upstairs and listened at the door. He felt her throw herself against it. “I know you’re out there!” she shouted.

  “How many pages do you have today?” he asked.

  “I ran out of… tape or ribbon… or whatever the hell this is. Please, I need a laptop. I can’t do this on a typewriter.”

  “You think I’m stupid,” he answered. “I know you’ll be able to use a laptop to access the internet somehow.”

  “No, I promise,” she cried. “I wouldn’t do that.”

  Her sister wouldn’t have lied to him. She would not treat him as if he was stupid. She knew how smart he was. She was, possibly, the first person who had ever understood the depth of his intelligence. She hadn’t made a move since his last communication. He was beginning to worry that she had figured out more than she let on. Of course she had. She wouldn’t show him her hand. She wasn’t going to make it easy for him. He didn’t want to, but he liked her.

  “I’ll get you more ribbon,” he promised Trinity.

  “I don’t need more ribbon. I need a laptop.”

  “No,” he said. “I can get you ribbon, but you must finish.”

  “I can’t finish this without talking to Zandra. I want her side of the story.”

  He sighed. “You can’t meet her. I told you, she went away a long time ago.”

  There was silence. He waited for more demands, more questions, more complaining, but there was nothing.

  Alex said, “I’m going to get you more ribbon now so you can finish. We don’t have much time left.”

  Her voice came again, more high-pitched this time. “Much time? What are you talking about? Wh
at’s going to happen? What are you going to do with me?”

  “The raptors are coming,” he said. “I need to be ready.”

  Fifty-Nine

  It seemed like days later, but in reality it was only hours by the time they arrived on the outskirts of Easton. Josie, Noah, Gretchen, and Mettner suited up in tactical gear but sat out of the raid on the caretaker’s residence at the back of the arboretum property. They waited outside the FBI’s perimeter, near the college. Drake had decided to go in just before dawn, when the rest of the staff and students who normally used the arboretum would be absent and they could creep in under the cover of night, approaching the house just as daylight crept in. As much as it killed her to sit out, Josie knew she had no choice. She and her team stood outside their vehicle, listening to the comms as the FBI carried out the raid.

  When Josie heard the words, “Suspect is in custody,” her knees went weak. She waited for some chatter about Trinity, but there was none. Instead, came a report of an “unknown male in one of the upstairs bedrooms, elderly, disabled and in need of medical care.” Over the comms she heard a horrific sound, like a rabbit caught in a bear trap. “Aaahhmaaxx!”

  She looked around to see Noah, Gretchen, and Mettner all wince at the same time she did. “What the hell is that?” Noah asked.

  It came again over the comms, this time abbreviated. “Mmmaaxx.”

  Max.

  One of the ambulances on standby in the nearest college parking lot sped past them and off onto the narrow drive through the arboretum. Then came calls of “all clear” from various agents.

  “No!” Josie said.

  “Boss,” said Gretchen, reaching for Josie’s arm, but she swatted her away and started marching into the arboretum. They’d studied maps of the place extensively prior to the raid so Josie knew exactly where she was headed although even if she hadn’t, she need only follow all the FBI vehicles. A light sweat broke out all over her body by the time she reached the back of the property. A large, stately old house with pillars at the entrance, it stood beneath a copse of tall trees.