Suddenly Lucy blurted, “Greg, just got a call I think you should take.”
Greg nodded. The telephone on Greg’s desk rang. He picked up the receiver and said, “Dankworth Police… If you have a cat stuck in a tree you shouldn’t call the Police. Call the Fire Department… ”
Quilla turned to me and between gritted teeth whispered, “Why are you giving Greg such a hard time?”
I glanced at Greg. He had turned away from us and was still on the phone. “You can’t tick Perry off. He’s a control freak. Perry can help you. Greg can’t. Look, based on what we figured out in the car, I have a stake in this. I don’t want to jeopardize it because you think Hoxey’s your buddy.”
“He is.”
I said nothing. I wanted to tell her then and there that Greg was Perry’s plant, but it wasn’t the right time. I wanted to meet with Perry, give him the information we came up with and hope that it would motivate him find out who the killer is, if it wasn’t too late.
The door to the police station opened and Perry sauntered in. He didn’t apologize for being late, saying only, “Let’s go into my office.”
Feeling protective of Quilla, I put my hand on her right shoulder and guided her behind Perry. As we walked, Greg, who was still on the phone and had cupped the receiver, said, “Perry, you want me in on this?”
There was enormous hope in his question. It was as if he wanted Perry to say a firm “Absolutely,” but Perry just shook his head and brusquely said, “No.”
“You sure, Perry?”
Perry looked at his watch, then said, “Lucy’s almost due for her break. You’ll have to man the phones.” He gestured to Quilla and me. “C’mon.”
Quilla looked at Greg, clearly feeling embarrassed for him because of Perry’s comment. She smiled sympathetically at him. He gave her a wink. Because I was growing fond of Quilla, it killed me that she seemed to be so taken with Greg. Sooner or later she would find out that he was spying on her and her friends on Perry’s behalf and she would resent him and she would have another male authority figure in her life to despise.
As I stepped into Perry’s office he said, “Close the door, Del.”
I did, then I sat down in one of the two wooden chairs across from Perry’s plain, metal desk. Quilla walked over to the only window in the small, cluttered office and leaned against the sill. Perry plopped his large hulk into a worn, but comfortable-looking leather chair.
Perry looked at Quilla. “Aren’t you gonna sit?”
“I think better on my feet,” she snapped.
“You’re not here to think,” said Perry. “You’re here to tell me everything you know about Brandy Parker.”
“Before I tell you about her, we have something else to say, something better, something so important that it’ll give you tons of information to go on.”
“What’s she talking about, Del?”
“Brandy Parker may not be the only murder victim.”
Perry didn’t move. “You don’t say.”
“Quilla and I were talking and a piece of information came up about the wife of Kyle Thistle. Evidently the body was never found.”
“So?”
“How can you be sure she was murdered?”
Perry leaned forward. “Because my father was convinced of it. It’s the only case he ever liked to talk about. There were two popular theories as to why the body was never found. Kyle Thistle either cut it into little pieces and scattered them in public trash cans all over the county, or he weighted down the corpse and sunk it to the bottom of Dankworth Lake.”
“Was the bottom of the lake ever checked?” asked Quilla.
“They dragged it three different times. Nothing.”
“So it’s not proven that it’s there,” she added.
“Back then the lake had lots of fish. Hungry fish.”
“And how did they know that the body was cut up?”
“They didn’t. That was a theory that came about because of a witness who saw Kyle Thistle dropping a black plastic bag into a public can.”
“What’s so bad about that?” said Quilla.
“People who live in their own homes don’t drive into town and dump garbage in public cans.”
“But there’s no concrete proof that what Kyle Thistle was dropping into the garbage were parts of his wife’s body.”
“Right,” said Perry.
“And was it proven a hundred percent that the guy the witness saw was Kyle Thistle?” said Quilla.
He adjusted himself in his chair. “What the hell is this leading to?”
“Okay,” I said. “Kyle Thistle’s wife disappeared twenty-four years ago. Brandy Parker disappeared nine years ago. And you may not even be aware of the person I’m about to mention, Perry, but… ” I caught myself. For an instant I couldn’t believe that I was about to speak of Alyssa as if she were dead. “Uh…another girl disappeared fifteen years ago. Alyssa Kirkland.”
Perry wrinkled up his face. “Doesn’t ring a bell. But I wasn’t on the force fifteen years ago. I was in college. Was there a missing person report filed?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who was she?”
“His girlfriend,” blurted Quilla. “We suspect she might be another victim of the guy who killed my Aunt and Virginia Thistle. We think there might be a pattern.”
“You think?” Perry smirked. “Where’s the pattern?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” said Quilla. Every eight or nine years a woman disappears and is never heard from again.”
I considered telling Perry about the letter and postcard I received from Alyssa, but decided not to mention it just yet for fear of him latching onto it and trying to use it to diffuse the theory.
“This opens up all kinds of possibilities,” said Quilla. We think it’s possible that Del’s girlfriend and Gretchen’s mother might be like my Aunt — hidden in old mausoleums at the cemetery. Who’s to say that whoever the killer is didn’t hide all his victims there? In fact, if we’re right about the pattern, there might even be another woman in the last year or two whose family thinks she ran away from home when she’s really dead. For all we know there could even be a bigger pattern. Maybe the killer murdered a woman every five years or three or every year. There’s no telling how many women could be lying in mausoleums at Elm Cross cemetery.”
Her enthusiasm was bordering on overkill. I was afraid she would turn Perry off. “Quilla, maybe we should concentrate on the three victims for now,” I said.
“Maybe we should concentrate on one victim,” said Perry. “Brandy Parker. I’m not interested in a case that was over a quarter of a century ago or a case I never even heard of.”
“Perry, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job…”
“Then don’t.”
“I have a gut feeling about this. Please hear me out.”
“If this gut feeling starts to get boring, I stop listening. Go ahead.”
“Alright. I guess it would help to know if you have records of missing person or runaways.”
“This year alone we’ve had forty-one,” Perry said.
“That many in a town the size of Dankworth?” I said, incredulously. There were roughly twenty-five thousand people who lived here.
“You’d be surprised,” Perry said. He leaned forward and pushed a couple keys on the computer on his desk. A list of names appeared on the screen. “We have husbands who go on a weekend drunk. Wives who have affairs and run off. Lonely women who live with their bossy parents and get tired of it, so they run away with a trucker. Of course, it’s mainly teenagers. Kids from thirteen to nineteen are always disappearing for a weekend, a week, some for six months.” He looked at Quilla. “Any of your crowd ever take off?’