by Blake Pierce
“Probably more,” Kate said.
“I heard through the grapevine that you had retired.”
“Yeah, that didn’t work out.”
“Yeah, I was surprised,” Yates said. “The mere idea of retirement doesn’t seem to even make sense when I think of you.”
“Dr. Yates, I know you’re a busy woman and your receptionist told me you had to push some things back to arrange this call. I appreciate that and we will make this as quick as possible.”
“No worries,” Yates said, though it was clear that there were at least some worries. It was apparent she was preoccupied with her own work. “What can I do for you, Agent Wise?”
“I sent you a picture a few minutes ago,” Kate said. “It’s a torn piece of a blanket. That fragment as well as two others have recently been found at murder scenes. To this point, it’s the only evidence that connects the victims. And it’s purposefully being left behind by the killer. I was thinking it might have something to do with his childhood…maybe a keepsake or something.”
“That’s a safe assumption,” Yates said. “How are you finding them? Are they carefully set aside or placed on the bodies?”
“They’re being shoved down the throats of the victims. Forensics seems to think it’s done after the murder.”
“Well that does paint a better picture. You know as well as I do that anything so tangible that is left behind is being left behind for a reason—if not to draw you closer to finding him, then to appease some nostalgic or self-obsessed part of himself. If this blanket is from his childhood, then I’d assume the victims are also somehow tied to his childhood. Or at least the killer would think so. Another thing to consider is the throat the fabric was put into.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“I mean, were the victims male or female?”
“That’s another interesting thing,” Kate said. “The first murders were couples. Two of them. The third scene was a single woman. At the two scenes with the couples, the fabric was—”
“—in the throat of the women, right?” Yates asked.
“Yes, that’s right,” Kate said, unable to bite back a smile at Yates’s intuition.
“Agent Wise, I’d bet just about everything I have on the fact that these murders are based on some sort of perceived wrongdoing from the killer. He likely wasn’t nurtured much as a child or maybe he was and he just grew up to have a skewed sense of what nurturing and security meant to him. And going back to the blanket…killers will often leave something behind that is connected to a specific incident or time in their life that deeply affected them.”
“So the tendency towards couples and placing the fabric in the throats of the mothers…you think it’s a yearning for a family?”
“Perhaps,” Yates said. “But this would be a killer already cemented in a deep state of psychosis. If anything, singling the women out in such a way makes me think he’s got some sort of trauma in his past with a mother figure. Blankets in a child’s hands are meant to be comforting. And if you look at the mother and father interplay, it’s typically the mothers that are viewed as the more comforting.”
The Langleys and Monica Knight were foster parents, Kate thought. I bet if we start looking at lists of kids they fostered, we’ll see the killer’s name on those lists.
As if Yates had also already picked up on a similar train of thought, she went on. “Now, I can’t be sure, but this looks like it might be fabric from some sort of a child’s blanket. Can you confirm that?”
“Basically. I’ve even spoken the company that likely manufactured it.”
As she said this, someone knocked on the conference room door. DeMarco answered it as Yates responded. Kate watched as an officer handed DeMarco a small stack of papers.
“The fact that blankets are often seen as security objects even up into the teen years speaks volumes,” Yates said. This killer is bringing something usually seen as something used for comfort into murder scenes. What about the murders themselves? Quick and precise or violent?”
“Violent.”
DeMarco was looking over the papers that had just been delivered to her. Slowly, a dawning excitement started to bloom over her face.
On the laptop screen, Yates was nodding her head. “Yes, I’d go so far as to say that this is starting to look like a textbook case of a killer that is blaming something traumatic from his childhood on parents. Maybe parents he did not have.”
“Yes, we think there might be a parent element to it,” Kate said. “And with that, Doctor Yates, I’m happy to say you can get back to your job. You’ve given what was a rather lame lead some very strong legs to stand on for right now.”
“Good to hear,” Dr. Yates said. “Glad to help. And, might I add, it’s good to see you working again. Just couldn’t stay away, could you?”
“Something like that,” Kate said with a smile. “Thanks again, Doctor.”
With that, Kate ended the call. She instantly looked over to DeMarco as she still looked through the papers the officer had given her.
“What have you got?” Kate asked.
“Just a bit more information on the Nashes,” she said. She slid a Xeroxed sheet over to Kate and added, “It appears that the Nashes also set up an appointment to get fingerprinted at some point in the past. And it appears that it had to do with this.”
She slid another sheet over to Kate. Kate looked them over and knew instantly where this was headed. She saw a copy of the Nashes’ fingerprints, taken in 2007. With the prints were the typical form requests for a background check. Within the background check information, there was also a request for the information from the Department of Social Services.
The second sheet was fresher; Kate could still feel the slight warmth of it having just come out of a printer. There was a scrawled message at the top, blurred from a recent copy of it being made that read: Hope this is what you were looking for! – Ruby. Beneath that scripted message, there was a very simple application form for an organization called Family Friends and Services. It had been filled out by Toni Nash and signed by both Toni and Derrick Nash. The questions on the application were all family or child related—all questions that pointed back to their foster care connection. How many children have you raised? Why are you interested in caring for children in emergency situations? Do you have ample room within your home to care for a child?
There were more questions like this, all given appropriate and well-thought-out answers by Toni Nash.
“Have you ever heard of this Family Friends and Services?” DeMarco asked.
“Nope. It’s new to me. Sounds a lot like foster care. But the term foster care is never used on this application.”
“So maybe we pay our new friend Ruby a visit,” DeMarco said, pointing to the name at the top of the application.
They got up together, working like a well-oiled machine. It made Kate wonder, if only briefly, what it might have been like to work with DeMarco if she, Kate, were about twenty years younger. They had a connection established between them already that most paired agents could only hope to have after years of working together.
As they left the station, headed for the offices of Family Friends and Services, Kate was once again reminded why she loved this job. It was more than just the thrill of the hunt or putting puzzle pieces together as a case started to come into focus—it was the sense of partnership and camaraderie, too.
It made the discovery of a potential lead all the more exciting. And it also made Kate feel a bit more confident and secure as the endgame slowly came into view.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The central office at Family Friends and Services was a large, brightly lit space. Three of the walls were adorned with canvas prints of smiling children’s faces. The fourth wall was filled with a map of the Roanoke area and a large whiteboard adorned with names and dates. Kate and DeMarco sat on one side of a large conference table while the red-headed woman in her early fifties sat down across from them with a mug of co
ffee. This was Ruby Hendricks, the Director of Operations for Family Friends and Services. She looked bright-eyed and happy but Kate could see nervousness ticking along at the corners of her mouth as well.
“Ms. Hendricks, thank you for meeting with us on such short notice,” Kate said.
“Of course. With my position with FFS, I’m rarely out of the office. What is it, exactly, that I can help you with? Is it about the Nashes?”
“You’ve already heard about them?” DeMarco asked.
“Yes. Cami Nash let me know about it.”
“So you knew the Nashes well?” Kate asked.
“Not on a very personal level, but I knew them enough to consider them friends,” Ruby said. “I saw them here in the office a few times and they also attended most of our fundraising events.”
“Well, as it turns out, we are here to ask about the Nashes,” Kate said. “We learned today that they were part of Family Friends and Services. However, we really have no idea what you do here.”
“Oh,” Ruby said, seemingly delighted that she was fielding such an easy question. “Well, I don’t know if you are aware of this or not, but the area of Central Virginia has a fairly large foster parent problem. There simply aren’t enough people fostering to cover the need for children that are looking for safe homes. The ratio is something like one potential foster home per eighteen kids. What we here at FFS do is step in as a temporary alternate. We consider ourselves a prevention from foster care, actually.”
“Is that really a necessary step?” Kate asked.
“Oh yes. Don’t get me wrong…there is nothing at all wrong with foster care. I myself am foster approved. But many people abuse the system. And because it is state run, the wait times for paperwork and approvals can take forever. We try to sidestep all of that, and even DSS is starting to realize the need for a service like ours. I can give you an example, actually. Two days ago, we were contacted by DSS. A mother had given birth to her baby and it was discovered in the hospital that the baby was born substance exposed. The mother had done drugs up into the sixth month of pregnancy. Social services removed the baby from the mother but the mother did not want her child getting lost in the foster care system. Instead, she signed the baby over to us and the child is now in the care of one of our Family Friends and Services families. It saves the state the money and hustle of working up an emergency foster situation and gives the mother ample time to clean herself up and get back on her feet. When she is a fit mother, we will return her child to her but only after DSS has deemed her suitable.”
“And this is all legal?” DeMarco asked.
“Of course. There are actually organizations like this spread out over the country but we don’t get much press. Courts only consider cases a so-called victory in a lot of cases if endangered children are placed into foster care because foster care is a well-known term. But what we do is essentially the same, only we get no monthly stipend check.”
“It’s all volunteer?” DeMarco asked.
“Correct. Most of our families are heavily involved in churches or other child care organizations.”
“Do the families need to be foster approved?” Kate asked.
“No. And that’s another audience we appeal to. Many parents—or former parents, for that matter—don’t want to be foster parents but they do have a heart for children in need.”
“And I assume the Nashes were on your list of participating families?” Kate asked.
“Yes, they were. They had been with us for about ten years or so, I’d guess. Maybe longer. I can pull the records for you, if you like.”
“That would be great,” Kate said.
“One moment, then,” Ruby said as she got up and headed for the door.
When she closed the door behind her, Kate said: “So that explains why the Nashes didn’t come up on any foster parent databases.”
“And while it’s not foster care per se, I think involvement in Family Friends and Services would be close enough—close enough to establish a solid connection between all three families, anyway.”
“So now the trick is to see if there are any children that these three families had in common,” Kate said. “Was there one single child that all three families kept at some point? And that could lead us straight to the killer.”
Both women mulled over this for a moment. It was an exciting thought, but part of Kate thought that it felt just a tad too easy.
Ruby returned two minutes later with a thin binder. The name NASH was typed down the spine. She opened the binder up and turned it so that it was facing Kate and DeMarco.
“Derrick and Toni Nash became part of the Family Friends and Services family in 2007,” Ruby said. “They hosted their first child later that year, through Christmas, I believe. Over the last twelve years or so, they’ve hosted fourteen children, ages six months to fourteen.”
“And to become a member of your organization, I assume they had to pass background checks?” DeMarco asked.
“Absolutely. Honestly, anyone applying for FFS has to pretty much undergo the same things as someone working towards becoming a foster parent. The only difference is that I believe with foster care, there are classes you have to take and pass.”
“Do you keep a list of the names of the children each family hosts?” Kate asked.
“We do,” Ruby said, looking rather uncomfortable. “But…well, as FBI agents, I’m sure you understand that I can’t very well just hand that kind of information over to you. I’d love to…really, I would. I’m sick over what happened to the Nashes. But we can’t give that information out. What I can do is direct you to one of the case workers over at Social Services that should be able to get you the entire list.”
Kate didn’t bother pushing the issue. She knew Ruby was right and while it would slow them down a bit, she understood the safety measures of such a process. “We’d greatly appreciate the number of whichever case worker you feel would act the most urgently on this.”
“Of course,” Ruby said, scrolling through her phone in search of the contact information.
“Also,” Kate said, “with an organization like this, I would assume you see a lot of kids that come through here dealing with varied forms of trauma. Would that be accurate?”
“Yes, unfortunately.”
“Is there a local therapist you work with to help with those sorts of cases?”
“Yes, actually. As a matter of fact, she’s located just right down the street.”
“In that case, thank you for your time,” Kate said.
Ruby nodded and grabbed a pen from the table. She jotted down the information of the DSS worker and handed it to DeMarco.
“I mean this when I say it,” Ruby said. “Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to help. The Nashes were among the best people I ever met—nice, charitable, and kind. They didn’t deserve this.”
Kate nodded, keeping in the comment that sprang up in her mind. That might be so, she thought. But someone thought they did deserve it. And someone with that kind of skewed mentality might be much more dangerous than we could have ever thought.
***
Knowing the rigid process that state judiciary systems put in place to protect the private information of citizens, Kate knew that a direct call to the Department of Social Services would do her no good. They’d ask to speak to her supervisor and they’d work the details out with them. So instead of calling DSS directly, Kate placed a call to Duran. She gave him the information of Ruby’s DSS contact and let him know what they were looking for. He ended the call with the promise that he’d get back to her in fifteen minutes with the names of all of the children who had ever been cared for by the Nashes, the Langleys, and Monica Knight.
That little errand allowed Kate and DeMarco enough time to visit the office of the Family Friends and Services’ therapist at the other end of the street. Ruby had handed Kate a business card as they had left FFS with the name of Danielle Ethridge and the office address. The same name was on the
glass door of the office in white vinyl letters.
Inside, a receptionist sat at a desk, typing something into a laptop. It was a small space, probably a private practice of some sort. The place was well decorated and very homey, reminding Kate of the offices at Family Friends and Services. The receptionist looked up and smiled as they entered.
“Hello, ladies,” she said a little too cheerfully. “Can I help you?”
As they approached the desk, Kate showed her ID, as did DeMarco. As they went through their introductions, the woman’s good cheer seemed to evaporate. And when they explained that they were there to speak with Dr. Ethridge concerning a rather time-sensitive case, she looked downright scared.
“Of course, of course,” the receptionist said. “Unfortunately, Dr. Ethridge is with a patient right now. But I can let her know you are here just as soon as the session is over. It shouldn’t be long. Maybe another fifteen minutes.”
“Thank you,” Kate said. They walked over to a small seating area and when she sat down, the very feel of inactivity made Kate feel like the case was indeed coming together. She’d garnered something of an instinct based on her emotions; when she was at a standstill in a case but it wasn’t leading anywhere, she tended to get anxious. On the other hand, as she and DeMarco sat in the waiting area, she felt at peace—as if they were close enough to the end of this thing that they did not have to rush.
Seven minutes into their wait, they each got a text from Duran through a group text. Emailing a list of names from DSS within 5 mins.
“That should wrap it up, right?” DeMarco asked. “If we can find one name on these lists that stayed with the Nashes, the Langleys, and Monica Knight, that will be the smoking gun, right?”
“It feels that way,” Kate said. “On the other hand, it could also do nothing more than shoot down a lead.” Honestly, she did not feel this way but she didn’t want to show DeMarco, a younger and still moldable agent, that it was okay to rest on your laurels and simply assume that things were going well.