Beneath the Ashes

by Dea Poirier

  “This is the place,” I say, looking around for anything significant, but the ground is covered in at least six inches of snow. Even if there had been evidence here of what occurred, it would be buried beneath snow now. I rack my brain, trying to determine what this place could have been used for. It wasn’t the scene of the crime. We know the women weren’t killed elsewhere and brought back to the motel, since they checked in themselves, and there was no debris or dirt on the bodies—outside of the cigarettes and ashes, that is.

  An engine buzzes nearby, and I look toward the sound. Curving toward us from the expanse cut into the trees on our right, an ATV shoots from the gap, snow kicking up behind it. The rider skids to a stop twenty feet in front of Austin and me before two other ATVs fly in. They all stop in a row, surveying us.

  I take out my badge and flash it to the group. Two women drop down first, pulling off helmets to reveal long brown hair. Another follows those two, though she’s got short red hair sticking out beneath a ski cap.

  “Officers,” the redhead says as she approaches.

  I pull up the pictures of Melanie and Asha on my phone.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asks when I don’t speak.

  “You might be able to,” I say, showing the pictures on my phone to the women. “Have you seen either of these women before?” I ask.

  They glance at the images, brows coming together, before they look back up at me.

  “Yeah, we’ve seen them out here a few times,” the redhead says, shifting back and forth on her feet, like she’s uncomfortable.

  “When’s the last time you saw them?” I ask.

  “Asha, probably three months. But Melanie, every week before she hurt her wrist.”

  Asha came out here on an ATV? No one mentioned to me that it was one of her hobbies. That’s another connection between these two girls. I take the folded paper from my jacket with the coordinates printed on them. “Do these mean anything to you?”

  She takes the paper from me, surveying it. As she scrutinizes the page, she scratches the back of her neck, then wipes her nose on her wrist.

  “Nah, no idea,” she says, thrusting the paper back at me without making eye contact. It makes me feel like she’s hiding something from me.

  “How about you?” I ask as I show the other women. Their reactions are similar, but they say nothing about it.

  “No, sorry,” one of them mumbles.

  “If you think of anything,” I say before passing them each one of my cards.

  Austin and I hike back through the forest, and by the time we reach my car again, my feet and hands prickle from the cold, like I’m half-frozen. We drive across Camden, defrosting until we pull up at the next preserve. The trek through the woods leads us to a setup that looks similar, the coordinates indicating a large clearing with no evidence. The third location, about thirty miles away, is the same. But as we walk back to my car, a man in the woods catches my attention.

  “You all doing okay?” the man calls to us. He’s tall, likely over six feet, in a thick black jacket with a patch over the heart. As he approaches, I make out the logo for a park ranger.

  “Yes,” I say before introducing myself and Austin.

  “What can I help you with, Detective?” he asks.

  I explain the situation and why we’re out here. Along with the other locations that we’ve visited.

  “A few times in the past couple years, out near that clearing, I’ve seen ATV tracks in the morning and evidence of a bonfire. I was thinking that teenagers were meeting out in the woods, partying.”

  That would make sense; maybe the texts are how they communicate around here that they’re meeting up. Though it seems a bit high tech for planning a bonfire.

  “When would you say is the last time you saw this?”

  His brows furrow, and he crosses his arms. “I’d say at least four months ago, if not a little longer.”

  “Have you ever had any reports of anyone getting hurt at one of these parties?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “No, not that I’m aware of.”

  “If you come across any more evidence of parties out here, could you give me a call?” I ask as I pass him my information.

  “Of course, Detective.”

  Austin and I walk back to my car as I try to piece it all together. Did Asha and Melanie see their killer at one of these parties? Did Asha really ride on an ATV as well, or was she just there for the parties? Is it an unrelated coincidence? It has to mean something that both women went to the same parties, visited the same hospital, received texts from the same numbers, then ended up dead at that motel. Too much of this lines up for me to exclude any of it.

  My phone rings, and Sergeant Pelletier’s name lights up on the screen. I grimace. I was hoping that Noah was going to call.

  “Calderwood,” I say.

  “It’s Pelletier. Are you still out checking those coordinates? We need you on scene.” His voice is strained, on edge.

  My stomach clenches as I unlock my car. Austin glances at me, her eyes scrutinizing me as if she can sense the tension that’s filled the air. I open my door with my phone clamped between my shoulder and cheek. “What happened?” I ask.

  “We got a call about another body. It’s just like the others,” he explains.

  “Where?” I ask as adrenaline kicks up my heart rate.

  “The Carle Motel off Route 105. I got the call a few minutes ago from the owner. She’s real shaken up.”

  “I bet,” I say as I shove my key in the ignition.

  “How soon can you be here?” he asks, ignoring the edge in my voice.

  “Less than ten. I’ll see you when I get there.”

  “I’ll get CSI and the ME’s office over here in the meantime.”

  After I hang up with Pelletier, Austin helps me navigate to the Carle. The motel looks similar to the first scene, a one-story building in the shape of an L, painted a peeling canary yellow, letting some of the maroon beneath speckle the walls. Several patrol cars sit in the lot, yellow tape set up around them, blocking off the scene. I pull up behind the team, and Sergeant Pelletier nods at me as soon as he sees me.

  I walk toward him, yanking my coat on, Austin’s feet scuffing on the pavement beside me. Circles hang beneath his brown eyes, making them seem darker than usual. Stubble sprouts on his chin. It looks to me to be three, maybe four days of growth. The case is wearing on him. It’s clear on his face.

  “What do we have?” I ask as we approach.

  “Jessica Riley, eighteen, suffocated with a plastic bag over her head, bound naked to the bed. It’s the same as the other scenes, cigarette butts and all. She’s got a cast on her left ankle that looks pretty new.”

  To my left, at the mouth of the parking lot, three news vans pull in one after another like a funeral procession. “Fucking figures. They can’t stay away,” I say.

  Sergeant Pelletier stares over my shoulder, eyeing the vans with an intensity I wouldn’t expect. He edges closer to the motel room. “We found something in the parking lot, in some of the leaves over there.” He points to a bunch of leaves about twenty feet from the door of the motel room. In his hands, he’s got a plastic bag. I take a step closer, appraising the contents. Inside, there’s a key card for the hospital, some kind of identification tag for an employee.

  “Dr. Munroe?” I say as I read the name off the badge.

  I’ve had a bad feeling about Dr. Munroe since we started this investigation. Though we’ve now got his DNA, it’ll likely be days before the forensics team is able to process it. And it could still take them weeks to get through all the DNA found in the first two scenes. Unfortunately, because of all the ashes at the scenes, there’s lots of DNA on the bodies. Finding this key card, though, that changes things. Now we’ve got the break that we need to really look at him for this. Though this evidence is circumstantial, it’s still a step in the right direction. Now what we need is to find his DNA or fingerprints on one of the bodies, the only way to link him
to these horrendous murders. Or find an eyewitness who can put him with one of the victims after they were released from the hospital.

  Sergeant Pelletier strides toward the motel room, glancing back at me to be sure I’m following. The scene is hauntingly familiar. Several beat cops stand outside the door, looming like bouncers around a club entrance. We muscle our way inside. Markers stand on the floor, highlighting evidence for the photographer and the crime scene techs who will arrive from Augusta. They’ll need to process the scene and take all the evidence back to the lab. But those of us here can at least get some things prepped for them.

  After I have looked at the bound, naked victim on the bed and studied the similarities to the other two murders, Sergeant Pelletier and I step outside. Everything is identical to the others. It’s official: we have a serial killer on our hands. Though it was clear to me before, now it fits the technical definition, since there have been three deaths. I glance at Sergeant Pelletier once we’ve got some space between us and the other officers. Austin hovers behind us like she’s unsure if she should be jumping in.

  “Can you have one of the other officers handle notifying the family, and we’ll start on interviewing the staff here?” I ask.

  “We’ll take care of it,” he says, looking to the team of officers. I imagine he’s deciding who he’ll give the task to.

  “I need someone to call the hospital as well to find out if Jessica has been a patient recently. I’m guessing she was, because of the cast, but we need to be sure. It is possible she got it at one of the urgent care clinics.”

  “It’ll be done by the time you get finished with your interview.”

  I say my thanks and turn toward the motel office. Austin walks beside me, her eyes darting between me and the scene. Unease is clear in the hunch of her shoulders and the furrow of her brows. Her mouth is a grim line. Clearly, she’s as troubled by this as the rest of us.

  “How are we even going to stop this guy? How many more girls are going to die before we catch him?” she asks.

  “I wish I knew. At least we’re getting somewhere now. We have the key card. That points us in a pretty clear direction. If this victim was at the hospital, that will give us a good reason to bring the doctor in for questioning. If he gives us some information that would allow us to get a search warrant, it’s possible we could find the burner phone that was texting Melanie. It’s too circumstantial for an arrest yet. There has to be something in that room if he was in there.” There’s just so much DNA in those rooms, thanks to the cigarettes and the nature of hotel rooms.

  She nods, though it clearly doesn’t look like she has much confidence in our ability to find the murderer.

  A woman strides across the parking lot toward us. I recognize her sleek bob and pantsuit immediately. She doesn’t come with a camera crew like many of the other journalists currently clotting along the back end of the parking lot. Instead, she seems to be alone. As she approaches, she shoves a strand of hair behind her ear and clears her throat.

  “Detective Calderwood, I was hoping that I could speak with you for a moment.” Lillian’s voice is high, and it cuts through the dull roar of noise in the parking lot.

  “I can’t comment—” I start.

  She raises a hand. “Yes, I know. You can’t comment on the investigation.”

  My eyes narrow automatically, and my hackles rise. If she’s not here to ask me about the investigation, that means she’s here to talk to me about Rachel. That’s the last thing I need on my mind right now. I arm myself with several choice words for this woman if she pushes me to talk about my sister.

  “I wanted to ask you how you felt about the passing of Theo Washington,” she says.

  The name isn’t one I recognize. With the last name, I suspect Theo is related to Noah. Though I’m caught off guard, I manage to say, “I have no comment.”

  “You have no comment on the passing of Noah’s father?” she asks.

  I swallow hard. “No.”

  I’m taken aback. My mind reels. When did his father die? I know that he’s not close to his father. Is that why he didn’t call me about it yet? Is he so absorbed in his case that he doesn’t even know? Or did he not tell me because he didn’t want to burden me with this? There are too many possibilities; I can’t pinpoint one that I think is the most likely. I stride forward, forcing myself to continue to the office and not dwell on what this woman just told me.

  “Are you all right?” Austin asks as we approach the door.

  I reach for it, my hand resting on the handle, but I turn to her before I pull it open. “I’ll be fine. I need to focus on the case. My personal life has no involvement with this.” I’ll talk to Noah later, but for now, this has to take priority.

  She offers me a weak nod, her gaze still scrutinizing me. Even if I did want to dig into my feelings now, I’m not about to take that leap with a coworker, with my partner. This relationship has to stay strictly professional. She doesn’t need to know anything about what might be going on in my life.

  The office of this motel isn’t much different than the last one. The walls are covered in a faded floral wallpaper that’s white and blue. The design reminds me of old china. Worn dark-blue carpet covers the floors. It’s got trails etched in it from the thousands of feet that walked this path before me. A woman who appears to be in her late fifties sits behind the counter. Her hair is dyed a shade of red that should be an exotic spice, not a hair color. It falls straight to her shoulders. She’s got her lips painted the same vibrant shade, which makes the rest of her pale face disappear in contrast to the bright features. When the door shuts behind Austin, the woman looks up at us, recognition flickering behind her eyes.

  “Ah, the cops,” she says.

  “Yes, and you are?” I ask. I clench my fists at my sides, trying to build a wall around the roaring emotions inside me, though so far, it’s doing no good.

  “Tilda Hollingsworth,” she says. Her voice is low and crackles like an old radio.

  “Were you the one who called?” I ask as I approach.

  “Yeah, that was me. I was here when the cleaning lady, Ingrid, found her.” Her lips press together, and she grimaces. The unpleasant memory is etched into her features.

  “Did you work here last night as well?” Austin chimes in.

  “I did for a little while. Not the whole night. My granddaughter wasn’t feeling well, so I cut out of here for a few hours,” she explains as she glances between the two of us, as if she’s not sure who she should be talking to.

  “Austin, could you bring up a picture of Jessica, please?” I ask. It takes Austin a few seconds; then she shows me a photo of the vic from Facebook. It’s a selfie showing her reclining in an office chair, her face lit by a blue glow.

  I take Austin’s phone and show it to Tilda. “Do you remember seeing this girl?”

  She scrutinizes the image, her brows coming together to form a deep gash between them. “Yes, she checked in around eight,” she says.

  “Was she alone?” I ask.

  “Yes, she came in here by herself to book the room. It stood out to me, because it’s not often that we get a girl that age wanting to book a room, especially not by herself. There was a man standing outside; she looked back at him and smiled a few times as I was checking her in.”

  Excitement makes my mind buzz. Could we finally get a description of this man? “Could you describe him?”

  “He was tall with dark hair.” She concentrates, as if trying to sketch the picture of the man in her mind. “He, well. He looked normal. Average. Nothing about him really stood out.”

  I want to deflate. “Did she say anything about him?”

  She shakes her head. “Just that she wanted a quiet room because tonight was going to be special.” The woman offers a shrug, as if it’s something she’s heard a thousand times.

  “Are there any cameras outside?” I ask.

  “Yes, but it hasn’t been working for a while.”

  “Did you see if
she drove a car here or if she walked?”

  “I did see a car pull into the parking lot before the girl walked in. It was a newer sedan. Dark blue or black. I think. I don’t think she was driving it. She mentioned being glad she didn’t have to drive in the snow.”

  “Did anything about her appearance stand out to you?”

  “She seemed really happy. Excited, actually. Oh, I think she did mention his name.”

  My heart skips at that. “A name?”

  “As she was leaving, she opened the door and said a name. Trystan, I think.”

  I jot that down. How many Trystans could there be in a town this size? I think back to our first trip to the hospital. Dr. Munroe mentioned his first name was Ian. Could she have mistaken Trystan for Ian? Or if Dr. Munroe wasn’t here, why was his key card in the parking lot?

  I finish up my questioning with the motel manager and slip her my card. Austin and I walk outside, and I turn to her.

  “Do you know of any Trystans that live in town?”

  She shakes her head. “No, not around here.”

  “Have Clint check in at the hospital to see if there are any Trystans on staff,” I say. Because the medical center supports so many small communities, it’s very likely that employees there work out of town and commute in. There are likely plenty of staff members that most of the Camden residents have never met.

  She pulls her phone out of her pocket and taps on the screen as we walk. “He’ll have something for us by the time we get back to the station.”

  We walk back toward the room. Sergeant Pelletier approaches me before we even get close.

  “Her family has been notified, and David from the hospital verified that Jessica was a patient there,” he informs me. “She got a cast two days ago. Dr. Munroe was her physician.”

  “So I need to head back to the hospital and figure out what Dr. Munroe was up to while these girls were dying and how his key card got here.”

  He nods. “Let’s bag him,” he says. “At the very least having his card will be enough for us to hold him for the weekend.”