“Nolan!” Talia’s mother walked up to him. “So glad you could come. She’s in back.” She wiped her hands on a dish towel and shooed him toward the kitchen. “Go right through.”
“Thank you.”
Nolan made his way through the kitchen, nodding and greeting Talia’s sisters as he went. Every bit of stove space and counter space was occupied with food, and a big white sheet cake sat in the center of the kitchen table.
Nolan stepped onto the enclosed back porch as Talia came inside.
“Hey! Finally.” She held up a beer bottle. “Want one?”
“I’m good.”
“Crowley caught you.” She held the back door open as a dark-haired man stepped inside holding a tray of barbecued ribs. “Nolan, you remember my dad?”
“Diego, good to see you. Is it your birthday?”
“My pop’s. You staying for dinner this time?”
“ ’Fraid I can’t.”
Diego shook his head, and Talia gestured for Nolan to follow her out.
Nolan stepped into the yard, where another relative stood beside a giant barbecue pit. Talia led Nolan away from the smoke to a wooden picnic table. She hopped on top of it and smiled at him.
“You found the Tahoe?” Nolan asked.
“Almost.”
He crossed his arms. “What does that mean?”
“I almost found the Tahoe that ran Sara off the road, and I almost found the driver.” She took a swig of her beer and set the bottle down. “Sure you don’t want one?”
“Yes. Talk.”
“Okay, so I read Sara’s statement. She first spotted the Tahoe when she pulled in for gas at that place on Highway 194.”
“Arnie’s, I know. I interviewed the clerk already,” he said. “Nothing. And they don’t have surveillance cams.”
“You interviewed a clerk.”
Nolan frowned.
“The clerk on duty that day was in the back when you stopped in for an interview.”
Nolan’s phone buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it. “You talked to him?”
“Took some doing, but yeah.” She rolled her eyes. “I had to sweet-talk Arnie—gag—but I knew he was full of shit because he hires people off the books, and I knew he probably had someone else working who didn’t want to get mixed up with police.”
Nolan tamped down his annoyance. He hated being lied to, but it came with the job. “Okay, what’d you get?”
“The clerk—Manuel Gomez, forty-eight, no rap sheet, by the way—remembers the vehicle. Says the guy comes in from time to time.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Every few weeks or so. Always buys twenty dollars cash of the cheapest unleaded.”
“He have a description?”
“Yes.”
Nolan watched her, rubbing his jaw. Talia’s eyes danced with enthusiasm over this supposedly great lead.
“Why aren’t you excited?” she asked. “Haven’t you been saying the fact that this particular Tahoe ran Sara off the road means this particular Tahoe is our unsub? I mean, he’s clearly from around here. He stops at this place on a regular basis.”
“It’s circumstantial.”
“God! Nolan, come on! Don’t you even want a description?”
“Let’s hear it.”
“White guy, thirties. Medium height, medium build, brown hair.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“And he has a scar on his forehead above his right eye.”
“That’s better, but not by much.”
She tipped her head to the side. “You’re really pissing me off here.”
“Sorry. I’m frustrated.” He blew out a sigh. “I’ve spent the last three days running down crap that hasn’t gotten us anywhere.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Okay. We need to get this guy with a sketch artist.”
She nodded. “I agree. But we have to get one who speaks Spanish, or else I need to sit in and translate. And besides a sketch, there’s also the possibility we could stake out the gas station and wait for him to come in.”
“Yeah, with all our unlimited manpower and resources.”
Nolan’s phone buzzed, and this time he looked. It was Springville PD, and he’d also missed a call from the Delphi Center.
“One sec.” Nolan stepped away from Talia and called the Delphi Center back. Maybe it was Sara.
“Detective Hess, I just left you a message.”
He recognized the voice as Mia Voss from the DNA lab.
“Sorry I missed your call.”
“Good news,” she told him.
“I could use some.”
“I finished my work on that T-shirt you submitted and corroborated my findings. In addition to the victim’s DNA, we found a second sample.”
“Okay. And?”
“We’ve got a forensic hit.”
• • •
The darkness seemed endless, but Grace refused to let it take over her mind. She was going by the bat clock now, tracking her days and nights with the animals’ nocturnal movements. All but a few of them had left for the nighttime feeding, and Grace had a break from the squeaks, which meant she could focus.
Her bindings were some kind of synthetic twine. The bindings around her wrists were attached to the wall with something metal that clinked when she moved her arms. Was it a chain? Several carabiners linked together? Grace didn’t know. But it was short, giving her just enough room to have one place to sleep and one place to pee. She was like a dog on a very short leash. A pit bull someone kept chained in the front yard to growl and look menacing.
Why hadn’t he replaced the twine with something stronger by now, like handcuffs? Maybe he thought she was weak. Dehydrated. Depleted. And she was.
Maybe he thought that even if she did manage to free herself, she would have no idea how to get out of this pitch-black cavern. Maybe he thought she was too injured to go anywhere. Maybe he was just fucking with her.
Grace lay on the cold floor of the cave, sawing away at her bindings. It was her only option. She’d tried over and over to pull the chain from the wall. But it was in there good, and all she’d managed to do was rub her skin raw until her wrists were on fire. The pain was excruciating. And she’d once thought her blisters from Bella’s sandals were bad.
Thinking of her family put a clench in her chest. She couldn’t think about her mom and dad right now. Or her aunts and uncles. Or the friends she was supposed to share an apartment with in the fall.
Focus, she told herself as she continued her effort. The bindings were tight. He was good at knots. But Grace had discovered a flake of stone, and if she held it just right, between her index and middle finger, she was able to saw at the twine.
Grace’s fingers cramped, and the rock slid from her grasp. Shit. Pressing her cheek to the hard ground, she felt around for it. Finally, she found it. Using her tongue, she managed to get the rock into her mouth. Pain zinged up her side as she scooted forward and carefully maneuvered it back into her hand.
Slowly, steadily, she worked. She had no fingernails left to peel now. It had been eleven days. The last time he’d come back, she’d been still and lifeless. A dying mouse.
He hadn’t liked that. It was her one flicker of triumph since she’d walked into this nightmare, and she’d paid for it with a smashed cheek and a bloody lip. It was worth it.
On his way out, he’d torn open a gel packet and tossed it at her. Only one, and no water.
When he was gone, she’d sucked down every ounce of sustenance and gone back to working like a dog. She was a pit bull, not a mouse.
She wasn’t dead but dangerous.
CHAPTER 21
Unlike the Crypt where Sara worked, the Delphi Center’s DNA lab had a prime location on the building’s top floor.
“Nice view,” Nolan said as he followed Mia down the hallway where windows overlooked acres of rolling hills.
“We like it.” She glanced at him over her shoulder. “You ever been here bef
ore?”
“Just downstairs.”
Nolan pictured Sara in the cramped office where he’d kissed her. He hadn’t talked to her in days, and her SUV hadn’t been in the parking lot when he arrived.
Mia opened a door and led him into a spacious laboratory where several white-coated scientists hunched over microscopes. He followed her past an industrial-size refrigerator, which he guessed contained rape kits and other biological evidence. She stopped at a long slate table and nodded at the evidence bags Nolan carried.
“Before we get to the test results, let’s see what you brought me,” she said.
“Sure.”
Mia tugged a wide strip of butcher paper from a roll and covered the table. She pulled her strawberry-blond hair into a ponytail, which made her look even younger than she already did. Nolan still couldn’t get over the fact that a woman who probably got carded trying to buy alcohol was one of the nation’s top DNA experts.
“Okay, big package first,” she said. “What’s in it?”
“A backpack belonging to a hiker who went missing in White Falls Park fourteen months ago,” Nolan said. “Kaylin Baird, age nineteen.”
Mia pulled on a pair of gloves, then handed him some. “White Falls Park, the same location where the four victims were recovered?”
“That’s right. So we obviously think there’s a connection between the cases, but we have nothing to prove it conclusively. I’m hoping you can do that.”
She nodded. “I assume you already ran all this evidence before?”
“The state crime lab checked for prints, blood, whatever. No blood, and the only prints they found belonged to Kaylin.”
“What about the smaller envelope?” she asked.
“That’s Kaylin’s phone.”
Mia smiled. “I was hoping you’d say that. We like phones.”
“It was checked for prints, too, but they found nothing.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nada. And that supports my case theory,” Nolan said.
She folded her arms over her chest. “Walk me through your case theory.”
“Kaylin doesn’t fit the killer’s pattern. He’s been known to abduct women, often from bars or other public places at night. After he kills them, he dumps them in remote parks. So far, we know of two victims in Tennessee and four here in Texas.”
“And Kaylin? What happened with her?”
“She was last seen hiking in White Falls Park early on a Saturday morning. She was supposed to meet a ride later in the morning, but she didn’t show. Her backpack was recovered at a different park twenty miles away, cell phone inside.”
Mia took a utility knife from her lab coat pocket and sliced through the seal on the smaller evidence envelope. She carefully removed a slender iPhone.
“I don’t think the unsub selected Kaylin like he did the others,” Nolan said. “I think he happened onto her at some point, probably when she witnessed him getting rid of one of the bodies. One of the victims disappeared the week before Kaylin, and her body was found buried near Kaylin’s favorite hiking spot. You follow?”
Mia nodded. “Was this phone on or off when it was recovered?”
“Off. Which doesn’t make sense if she was meeting up with friends. I think he turned the phone off before he put it in that backpack and dumped it in a different park.”
“Where he hoped it would throw off investigators?” Mia asked.
“Or at least distract us. Which it did. We spent a lot of time scouring that park and came up with nothing.”
“So, you believe your unsub handled this phone, and yet it’s clean of any fingerprints. That’s very good news.”
Nolan gave her a questioning look.
“Well, he probably wiped the phone down because he handled it without gloves,” Mia said. “That fits in with your scenario that he didn’t plan his interaction with this woman, that it was a spur-of-the-moment thing prompted when she witnessed something suspicious in the park.”
“Why is that good?”
“The good part for us is that criminals often make bad decisions when they’re in a hurry or amped up. You know the most common item used to wipe prints off something? A shirttail.” She smiled, and Nolan felt a ray of hope. “And a shirttail is loaded with DNA. So, if your scenario is accurate—”
“He wiped his prints and left his DNA behind.”
“Let’s hope.” She replaced the phone in the envelope. “Now, are you ready to hear about the other item you sent in?”
“You said you got a forensic hit. That means a hit on evidence, not a person, right? Which means he’s not a convicted felon with a DNA sample in the system.”
“Let’s back up,” she said. “You submitted a T-shirt recovered from Little Rattler Gorge. We tested it and found DNA from the victim all over it—sweat, blood, tears.”
“Tears? You can tell that?”
“The saline-like substance was found on her shirtsleeve, probably when she wiped her eyes.”
Nolan bit back a curse.
“Along with the victim’s biological fluids, we also recovered a tiny spatter of blood belonging to someone else, probably resulting from a physical struggle. Maybe she hit him or scratched him. We ran that profile through the system and got a hit on the crime-scene index. In other words, the profile matches an unidentified DNA profile recovered at a separate crime scene.”
“What do we know about this crime scene?”
“It’s in Texas, for one,” Mia said. “I’ll put you in touch with the submitting agency. You ever been to Maverick?”
“No.”
“There’s not much there. A motel and a few gas stations. It’s mainly a stop-off for tourists on their way to visit Big Bend Park.”
Nolan’s pulse picked up. “Parks again.”
“That’s right.”
“And where did this DNA come from?”
“The police there can tell you more, but when I spoke to them earlier, they said it’s an abduction case. A woman went missing from the motel there. Her car was found, driver’s-side door open, purse and keys inside. A small droplet of blood on the armrest of the door is what yielded this profile, and it isn’t the victim’s blood. So police believe it belongs to her abductor.”
Nolan stared at her, unable to believe how strong this lead was. It fit the pattern in so many ways.
“I understand there’s a task force,” Mia said. “Has anyone been checking out this parks connection?”
“The feds,” Nolan told her. “It’s easier for them to access databases across state lines, so we’ve been having them do it. They’ve been running down criminal records on former park employees in both states. We need to double down on the effort.”
“Starting with Big Bend.”
“Damn. This is a good lead.”
She nodded. “Happy to help. I hear it’s been a tough case.” Her expression darkened. “Any word on the Austin woman who went missing from Sixth Street?”
“Grace Murray. Nothing new as of this morning, and it’s been twelve days.”
“I’m guessing the task force is frustrated.”
“Extremely. Every new lead feels like one step forward, two steps back.”
“That’s how it always is.” Mia peeled off her gloves. “You can’t lose heart.”
• • •
Sara turned to the sheriff’s deputy squeezed into her guest chair and tapped her pencil on the computer screen. The X-ray showed the fractured humerus of six-year-old Bradley Benson, who had been reported missing eight months ago.
“The X-rays are very clear,” she said. “See that line there?”
“You’re talking about the arm bone?” The deputy leaned closer, and Sara got a whiff of the onions he must have had for lunch.
“It’s a spiral fracture. I’m sure you’ve seen this type of injury before.”
He nodded. “But you’re saying this was earlier? Before the head injury?”
“That’s correct. The spiral fracture, th
e wrist fracture, and the two rib fractures occurred months before death.”
The man stared at her screen, his brow furrowed with concentration. He seemed reluctant to accept these autopsy results. It was a lot to absorb, and this deputy was a bit on the green side.
“Have you interviewed any suspects yet?” Sara asked him.
He seemed to snap out of it. “Suspects?”
“That’s right.”
He cleared his throat. “I’m not at liberty to discuss that at this point.”
Was he for real?
“Well, do you know who filed the missing-persons report?” she asked.
“I can’t discuss that, either.”
“Do you know if it was a parent?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss specifics.”
Sara rolled her eyes. “I’m not a reporter, you know. We’re on the same team here.”
He had the decency to look embarrassed. “Irregardless . . .”
Sara waited for him to finish the thought. He didn’t, and she was done tiptoeing around his ego.
“Well, I’m at liberty to discuss specifics, so let me tell you what I know after ten years of dealing with these sorts of cases. I know this child was abused. Severely, and over a period of years. I know this child’s mother and father, along with any stepfather or boyfriend at this kid’s house, should all top your list of suspects in his murder. And I know that if the mom didn’t do it, then at the very least, she’s complicit in this crime.”
The deputy gave a skeptical frown.
Sara turned to her computer and clicked open a photo of a tattered Winnie-the-Pooh blanket. It had come zipped inside the pouch with the boy’s remains, which had been found in a culvert less than two miles from his home.
Sara tapped the screen. “This child came to us wrapped in a blanket, Deputy. You know who does that? A mother feeling remorse.”
The deputy looked at her but didn’t say anything.
“This mom knows what happened to her son,” Sara told him. “Get her to talk to you.”
“Easier said than done.”
“She’s the key to your case.”
He nodded and stood up, collecting his hat, along with the autopsy report Sara had completed early this morning. “Appreciate the input.” He tucked the report under his arm. “Thank you for the quick turnaround.”
Stone Cold Heart Page 21