“Susan and Scott were married for fourteen years. That was one of the saddest parts of the investigation. Looking at who might have wanted to cause them problems, going through their personal lives, talking with friends and family, seeing what a strong marriage they had, knowing they could have been one of those rare ‘married for fifty happy years’ newspaper profiles one day. Instead, they became a case number.”
“What do you think happened to them?” Evie asked, propping her elbows on the table.
He shook his head rather than try to answer. “I’ve stopped trying to guess.”
“My experience Saturday with the deer,” she said, “makes me wonder if they had a similar experience. Did they hit a deer? Need to stop for repairs because the vehicle or camper got banged up? It takes them off the route they’re traveling to deal with repairs, it’s the middle of the night, maybe they pull into the wrong place at the wrong time and encounter trouble.”
“I don’t remember a theory of them hitting a deer ever being addressed. It’s a place to start,” Gabriel agreed, interested in the idea if only because it was a new avenue. She’d been thinking about that possibility, while the idea hadn’t even crossed his mind, despite his having been there to help after her accident. He mentally chalked up a point for Evie. She was doing the job better than he at the moment. He planned to catch up.
“Fresh ideas, Gabriel. New ways to look at what’s here. I’ll do what I can to find things we should consider.” She nodded toward the boxes. “You’ve been through these files many times. Give me the highlights.”
She likes working cases, Gabriel thought, seeing how she’d relaxed. She was engaged, working on something that mattered, and comfortable with the job. “Let’s start at the core of it,” he began. “Since the day the Florist family disappeared, there’s been no activity on their credit cards, bank accounts, savings or checking. No one at the time it happened tried to get money out of their accounts before we realized there was a problem. The credit cards didn’t expire for four years, and the accounts were deliberately left open. No one came across a wallet or purse and tried to use the cards later.
“Since the day they disappeared, there has been no contact with family members or friends. The Florist family had strong ties to the larger community. Things were stable financially, marriage solid, no hidden vices surfaced such as alcohol, drugs, or gambling. They left behind all they owned, along with two pets-a dog and a cat, which they had arranged for a neighbor to look after. These aren’t the type of people to try to skip out on unpaid debts, for example, or to get clear of a family dispute.” He hesitated. “Combined, those facts suggest they were murdered,” he concluded. “Questions so far?”
Evie shook her head. “Go on.”
“The bodies of three people are hard to hide well enough they don’t eventually get found. If you leave all three in a vehicle, park it somewhere, the bodies are going to be found. Maybe they end up in a landfill in the first couple days, but that doesn’t happen as often as the TV shows imply, and three of them disposed of that way unnoticed is tough to fathom. Maybe in a body of water, but it would need to be one not churned up frequently, not often fished, otherwise something gets brought to the surface.
“A burial is likely in the countryside, but not crop land-they would have been discovered as the ground was tilled and replanted, the soil turned over. We’re looking for wooded land that doesn’t have terrain torn up that often by floodwaters. And the graves would have taken some time to dig in order to be deep enough so that wildlife wouldn’t dig up the remains. Hunters would have found bones had the graves been disturbed. We’ve had some extremely wet and dry years over the last decade and that breaks up the ground surface.”
He shook his head. “Other possibilities: access to a funeral home, a crematorium. But the more likely answer is land you control, land in which you buried the bodies, hiding the evidence of your crimes on your own property. But should ownership change, the bodies are there, ready to point right at you.
“It’s equally time-consuming and difficult to make vehicles disappear. No one’s tried to get insurance on their truck’s VIN number, so the truck probably wasn’t found by a third party or sold to anyone. An abandoned camper of the make and model of theirs hasn’t turned up either. Someone could have stripped the vehicles down to parts and done so out of sight. Or they found a way to dispose of them-a junkyard crusher, a body of water, an abandoned gravel pit. Or they’re still sitting undiscovered in a barn somewhere under a tarp, most likely on land owned and controlled by the one who did the crime.
“So,” Gabriel said, taking a deep breath, “that means we have no crime scene. We don’t know where whatever happened occurred. At the start of their journey, at their home, during their travels on one of the roads or at a stop along the way, or if it happened near or at their destination.
“The reason for the crime is also unknown. We don’t know if this was personal-if the deputy and his family were targeted and the camping excursion was an opportunity to act. We don’t know if the focus was the vehicles more than the people or if one of them was the target. We don’t know of related crimes in progress, where grabbing this family might have been a part of an ongoing escape.” Just saying all this out loud left a hollow feeling inside him. Gabriel forced himself to finish. “We know some things that did not occur, rather than much, if anything, about what did happen. It’s a painful position to be in.”
Evie shook her head, her expression showing strong disagreement with his last statement. “You’ve spent twelve years eliminating things, Gabriel, and that’s progress. What’s left, however improbable, is going to be the answer.”
All he saw was a case that had gone cold-it needed a new discovery like bones to move it forward again. But maybe she could see something he didn’t. “I don’t know where a person even begins on something like this, Evie.”
“The map you brought me.” She pointed to the wall where she’d taped it. “I’ll fly over the area with Ann this week so it’s better fixed in my mind. They were driving from their home at the south end of Carin Lake to the state park thirty miles north. The lake inlets fork there, where the eagles have nested. That campground is still in Carin County?”
“It is.”
“Then let’s assume for now that the person who did whatever this is also lives in Carin County.”
“Okay.”
“You concluded in the summary you just recounted that the family was murdered.”
“Yes.”
“Murder is a violent act, the killing of a child even more horrendous than an adult murder. Let’s start by looking for the person who could do such a thing.”
He was startled by that definitive statement. “How?”
“You know who lives here. I want a list of the people you would consider violent. Then I want you to cross off those who are unlikely to be the one to kill a child. How many people in Carin County could murder three people, one of them a child? A hundred? Fifty? Less? I bet you know this person.