“If I didn’t know how true those words were, I’d probably have punched you.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t. You’re going soft, sweetheart.”
I hit him with a look that’s anything but soft. “You’re going off topic again. And here I thought I was the squirrel in this relationship.”
Drake holds his hands up and leans back in his chair. “All right. What are we missing?”
Oh, sweet Jesus. He’s all about the smart questions today, isn’t he?
“If I knew, it wouldn’t be missing.”
“Fair point.”
I give him a look that says No, you think? then then away. My lips purse as I cast my eyes out the window to the park just across from the building. The trees are lush and green, and I can even make out the flowerbeds that seriously need some TLC. Maybe an anonymous complaint to the mayor—or ten—will finally get him to get those fixed. After all, everyone loves the park. Moms, kids, dogs, cats. Even raccoons and squirrels.
Speaking of squirrels, I’m squirreling again. I’m pretty sure a room full of toddlers would have a longer span of concentration.
I grab my whiteboard marker from the holder and walk to the board. It’s covered in red smears from my last attempts at this, but the more people who die, the more evidence we get.
If I can’t put my squirreling down and get something from it, I should really not be in this job anymore.
Everyone who’s gone missing has gone missing since the fair came to town. So we have probably one hundred and fifty travelers from newborns to the elderly, and a good chunk of those are between the ages of eighteen and fifty. A lot of them are also male, which doesn’t exactly narrow our suspect pool down, and a size-ten foot isn’t exactly uncommon.
I tap the marker against the board. The clinking noise fills the quiet of my office.
Discounting Dina, all of our victims except Tracey are young adults—students of some sort. But even then, Tracey was a professor, so they’re all somehow in education. Even Robyn, our still missing girl, is a student in Austin.
I write this down.
Everyone has been alone when they’ve gone missing. Toni after leaving Melanie’s store. Melissa at the airport before Brook was supposed to meet her. Annabelle after seeing her boyfriend at the fair. Tracey on her way home from a late night grading at work. Robyn on her way home from the fair.
I still.
Every one of them has gone missing when it’s been light. Every one of them has disappeared from a public place, and while the only kind of evidence we have for Toni and Melissa are sketchy security cameras that don’t show us a face, for the most part, someone has to have seen something.
Especially if they went missing from the fair.
We’ve focused so hard on when and where they went missing that we never thought to focus on everyone who may have seen them. And if they were alone or with anyone before they disappeared.
If they were alone and the profiles match the ones we’ve gotten from the cameras, we have the potential to find a killer. Or at least someone who can lead us to the killer.
“Holy shit,” I breathe, turning to Drake. “I need transcripts of every interview and notes from every questioning conducted outside of the station. They’re all going missing in broad daylight, Drake. Right in front of people’s noses, and no one has realized it. Someone somewhere has seen something. That information could be right there in our faces. We all got caught up in the panic of the murders and the hype and didn’t consider when they actually disappeared.”
He inhales sharply. “We wouldn’t have missed that. We’ve been over it all a hundred times, Noelle. There’s no way we’d overlook something so vital.”
“Then we’ve been asking the right questions to the wrong people.” I sit down and run my fingers through my hair. “We need to step up our game. There are too many people and not enough of us working on this. You need to call Sheriff Bates and Mayor McDougall. The murders and disappearances aren’t stopping.”
“What do you suggest we do? Offer a reward for anyone who has any information that could help us solve this case?”
“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. It doesn’t have to be much, but it’s about time that twisted ass of a mayor stepped up and helped us. Reroute some of the council’s budget and tell him to drive himself to work for a freakin’ month. If anything, public plea for information will make the killers think we have nothing to go on. There’s every chance they’ll get cocky.”
Drake’s eyes shine with hope. “And, when killers get cocky, they screw up.”
I clap my hands together. “Exactly.”
His phone rings, and he picks it off my desk. “Detective Nash,” he answers. “Uh-huh… Really? ... That’s great. Thanks, Leonard… Yeah, send it over. Thanks.” He hits the screen and looks up at me. “They got a partial print from the label clear enough to run against the ones found in Dina’s apartment.”
I take a deep breath. My stomach flips with nauseous anticipation. “And?”
He gets up and pockets his phone. “And I’m going to get me an arrest warrant for Alistair Carpenter.”
I never thought I’d say this, but I wish it were Friday. I’m dying for a giant plate of Nonna’s homemade pasta and meatballs and garlic bread. A bottle of wine would also go down rather nicely.
Today has gone from zero to light speed and it’s happened that quickly. We’ve questioned a brokenhearted teenager, had a dalliance with a crazy, old Italian lady and her super-European, love-struck parrot, wasted time questioning a lying shitfuck, eaten cupcakes, had great ideas on how to propel this case forward, and arrested the same lying shitfuck we spoke with earlier on account of wasting police time.
Said lying shitfuck is sitting in an interview room, waiting for a lawyer, and stewing over his screw-up.
Lying shitfuck could be cruel, but I’m mad. I don’t understand why people lie. Don’t they know they’ll be found out? Lies are nothing more than a ball of wool waiting to be unraveled. Sometimes, they unravel accidentally and the trail leads you to the truth, or sometimes, they’re deliberately torn apart.
In this case, they were torn apart deliberately. I knew he was lying. I don’t know what it was, but I just knew it. I’m glad I tricked him into the water bottle and even gladder that prints had been lifted and matched. Getting him to hand them over for us to verify his story would have been hard.
Sometimes, being a human lie detector, as Drake calls me, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
It’s not even dinnertime and I’m exhausted. I want to curl up into my bed and wake up in twelve hours to start another day. That’s the biggest problem with cases that involve a serial killers—nothing happens for ages. Then, just when you feel like giving up hope, boom. Everything comes at you in one day.
I can honestly say that I think Dina’s murder is the key to the others. It’s far too much of a coincidence for it to be unrelated. I think, if we find her murderer, we’ll find one half of the serial Satanists.
Drake and Trent are currently at the town hall with Sheriff Bates, pleading the case for reward money for information. Oddly enough, I think Mayor McDougall might just agree. He already expressed his displeasure about these murders and the way it makes Holly Woods look, and if we say this is the best effort we have to get information and redeem the town’s image…
I think we’ll get our own way on that.
I’ve also decided that I want to talk to Eddie Roy again. He’s Jackson’s adoptive father, meaning he also would have had a relationship of some sort with Dina. I wonder if he has any idea about Alistair and Dina.
The door opens to the interview viewing room, and I jerk around. The black hair of Jason as Alex is the first thing I notice, and I smile.
“Hey. I wondered if you’d get here.”