The Only Girl Left Alive: The McClintock-Carter Crime Thriller Series: Book Three

by Susan Lund

  "That's the truth," Michael said, catching Tess's eyes. "Given that Lisa was there, I imagine we'll find her remains somewhere on one of the properties."

  "Sad to say that's most likely the case," Nash said. "I'll have to notify the family that she was used in child porn. We'll put out a request for any child porn that had a girl with a similar tattoo, see if any turns up somewhere else."

  Beside Michael, Tess shook her head, her eyes haunted. He reached over and squeezed her shoulder. He could see she was getting emotional at the realization that Lisa hadn't been abducted and taken to become part of someone else's family but was likely sold into the child porn black market.

  "I'd always hoped that one of her relatives from out of town took her, rescued her from her family,” Tess said. Her eyes were wet, and Michael could see she was very emotional. "But I guess she's just another victim."

  "Most likely," Michael said softly. Tess nodded and exhaled, then she took a deep breath and turned back to the sink while she thought about the missing cases on the database.

  "What else is happening today?" Michael asked Nash. "What about Daryl Kincaid? Is he being interviewed?"

  "Prosecutors are building their case, waiting on this latest evidence before they charge him. I expect one of us will go out and ask for an interview, get him to talk some more about his whereabouts, get him to talk about John Hammond, see what he says to confirm or deny any links with the man. We have him cold for Patrice. We want to see if we can get him to confess to any others in return for better terms of his sentence and incarceration. But if we have two girls from Idaho in the mix, that will mean extradition and the death penalty."

  "I hope they nail the bastard," Tess said. Her jaw was set; Michael could tell she'd moved on from sadness to anger, which was a better way to deal with it, he figured. He felt that same anger towards Kincaid and Hammond and whoever else was involved in their perverted enterprise of porn and murder.

  "They will," Nash said. "The Patrice tape is pretty solid evidence that Kincaid killed her, even if it was accidentally to keep her quiet. The fact that they used the film to make money in the black market will just make it even more satisfying when he gets the needle. It may take years, but it’ll happen."

  "I hope he doesn't die in prison first," Tess said, acid in her voice. "That wouldn't be fair at all. He should feel the same fear of dying that his victims felt."

  Michael nodded in agreement. That was one of the things he and Tess shared—a desire for justice. And, he had to admit, vengeance.

  Vengeance, in this case, was cold and it would be very satisfying, in his view. If he could, Michael would arrange to attend the execution, and if she could handle it, he'd bring Tess along as well.

  He ended the call with Nash and turned back to his cleaning. It was good to have something else to do while they waited for the evidence to come back.

  Later, they returned home and sat at the dining room table, which was covered in the case files he and Tess had compiled from everything that was available in the public realm. It wasn't much, but it was something. Across from them was the corkboard with pictures of the missing girls they'd IDed, and those who might be victims, complete with the dates of their disappearances and locations identified on a map of the area.

  He had gone to the local printer and had them print a large map of the western US. He and Tess were adding push pins for each missing girl in the right age range and date of disappearance for Idaho, Montana, and Oregon, as well as British Columbia, Canada.

  Usually, serial killers stayed local, in an area they were familiar with, and didn't cross state borders, let alone international ones. But some did. Those were the really organized killers, who went years, sometimes decades, without being caught. They could claim dozens of victims if they weren't caught.

  It seemed that John Hammond and Daryl Kincaid fit that bill.

  "How are you doing?" he asked Tess, as she typed away on her laptop, her brow furrowed. "I mean, about what Nash said earlier about Lisa."

  She sighed heavily. "I always figured she was likely murdered, but still. There's part of you that holds out a shred of hope that maybe she’d been taken by a couple who couldn't have their own kids. That's the best-case scenario, right? But given what we know, there's little hope.”

  "There’s always hope," Michael said softly. He shook his head, his own sense of guilt making his throat choke up.

  Tess turned and met his eyes. Hers were wet. "If only, right?"

  He nodded. "If only."

  She wiped her cheeks, and he pulled his chair out and held open his arms. "Come here. You need a hug."

  She slipped onto his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck. For a few moments, they commiserated, the warmth of each other's bodies comforting them.

  His mom walked into the dining room and saw them together. She turned around, leaving them alone to their private moment of mutual solace.

  Tess lifted her head off his shoulder.

  "Was that your mom?" she asked quietly.

  "Yes," he replied. "It gives her a thrill to see us together, so don't worry."

  "I know," she said and smiled, kissing him briefly. "Given all the horror of the cases, it's probably the only bright spot in her life besides little Louis."

  "It is," he said and kissed her back. "Don't want to deny her any happiness."

  Tess slid off his lap and they went back to their work, trying to connect dates and names and locations. All of the work was already being done by police, but since neither of them had access to the police files, they had to create their own.

  "I wish we had our own crime lab," Tess said with a sigh. "I hate waiting for results."

  "It's much better today than it used to be. We used to wait for weeks and sometimes months to get results back on cold cases. A few days is very quick by comparison."

  "I know," Tess said and went over to the map of the western USA Michael had put up on the wall beside the cork board. She pushed a red pin into Vancouver, Canada. "I should be happy that Nash and Chief Hammond are so willing to provide us with background and updates on the cases. I just wish I could be directly involved. Waiting is so hard."

  "You should consider applying to the FBI."

  She shook her head. "I thought about it before, but I'm a bit old, aren't I?"

  "You have to be under thirty-seven years old, so you have lots of time, if you want to be directly involved in cases. You have a degree in criminology, so you'd probably be a shoe-in."

  "I'd have to pass the fitness test, and I'm currently out of shape."

  "I'll get you in shape," Michael said and reached over, pulling Tess into his arms. "I'll be a stern fitness instructor, working you out every day."

  He kissed her, squeezing her playfully.

  "I bet you would," she said, a gleam in her eyes. "That's not the kind of work-out that counts."

  "It all counts," he replied and silenced her retort with a deep kiss. When the kiss broke, she smiled, and he could see she was in a much better mood.

  "You should really consider joining.”

  She bit her bottom lip. "It would mean going to Quantico."

  "Twenty of the most intense weeks you'll ever experience."

  “So I’ve read.” She stared off into the distance. "It would mean we'd be separated for five months.”

  "It would be worth it, if you think that’s what you want to do.”

  She smiled. "I'll think about it. We have to get things settled here, first."

  "We do."

  They kissed once more and then sat back down, side by side, returning to the case files in front of them. They had more than enough to do to keep them busy.

  Chapter Nine

  The next two days were hell for Tess as she worked to build case files for the potential victims. Every morning, she woke and wondered if that day would bring news of whose DNA they'd found at the cabin across the border in Idaho. Every night before she went to sleep, she thought about Lisa, and hoped it wasn't h
ers.

  In the meantime, she and Michael finished cleaning her father's house, and hired some local painters to come in and finish painting the entire main floor. She decided to do the place in plain off-white, to keep it clean and make the interior look brighter. The last thing she wanted was for it to appear dark and gloomy. No need to remind people of the darkness that might have taken place in the house.

  That morning, Mrs. Carter had taken Michael into Ellensburg to see his surgeon and have his shoulder worked on by a physiotherapist. He wanted to see how he was healing and whether he'd be able to regain full range of motion in his shoulder. If he wanted to go back to work as a field agent, he'd have to be able to pass the physical. Tess hoped he could; she knew it would be a huge blow to him if he had to retire due to his injury. Even if he could stay on and work as a profiler, it would mean he was out of the field—and despite the PTSD diagnosis, he loved his work.

  Tess was alone at the Carter house. She’d wanted to go to her father’s house and get some more work done, but Michael had said no.

  "You should stay here while I'm gone," he said.

  "You seriously think I'm in danger?"

  He nodded while he pulled on his jacket. "He tried to rape you. He wanted to kill me."

  "Okay," she said reluctantly. "I'll stay at home. But I feel a lot safer now that I can shoot."

  "Don't be too brave,” Michael chided her. "You don't want to give the guy a chance. Whoever did this to me is willing to kill. There's no reason to think he wouldn't kill you, too."

  She frowned. "Do you really think it's the same man?"

  "Definitely. You stay in the house with the alarm on and keep an eye on the security monitors. Don't go out at all."

  "Okay," she said and kissed him goodbye.

  So instead of going over to her father's house to do more work as she had planned, she stayed at the Carter house and went over her notes. While she worked, Tess thought about her discussion with Michael, about joining the FBI as a Special Agent. She itched to be directly involved in the cases, so she could keep track of evidence and interview suspects. Being on the outside was difficult. She had patched together her own version of case files, but it wasn't even close to what the police and FBI knew.

  Even Michael was only able to get as much info Nash or Chief Hammond decided they could give without breaking their code of professional conduct and protecting people's privacy. At that moment, given the circumstances, neither of them had the kind of access they needed to the cases and evidence to be happy.

  She went back to her timeline and continued to add in dates for the missing girls in the Vancouver area. So far there were a few big gaps in the timeline where there should be kills, if all the girls they thought should be included were.

  Melissa was out of sync with the others. Usually, the kills happened in October through December, and then again in April through June. Tess knew that serial killers often had a pattern, with gaps between kills, but it was common for that pattern to increase in tempo, the kills becoming more frequent as their perverted needs grew stronger. The Paradise Hill killers, as she was starting to think of John Hammond and Daryl Kincaid—and maybe Garth—did no more than a girl or two a year.

  It was confusing to try to match the missing cases and murders with three potential killers, but that was Tess’s goal. The problem was that John stopped driving long distances when he and his father had a falling out. That was when they’d had the accident, and Tess's father had stopped driving long-distance as well.

  Soon after, Kincaid had gone to prison.

  Ten years earlier… Tess checked it on the timeline she'd constructed, and that was the year that there was a potential girl tied to the case up in Vancouver. Her father used to drive to Seattle, which was close, but the dates didn't match. It made Tess feel a little better, hoping that no matter how much evidence was found in her father's attic, he had stopped driving long-haul that year, before the girl went missing.

  It was possible Lisa wasn't connected to the Paradise Hill Killers, but it was also possible that she was. John was still driving at that time and so was Kincaid.

  In fact, Kincaid had been on his route to Seattle during that week.

  Kincaid was seriously looking like their man.

  He didn't really fit the tentative profile Michael constructed, but serial killers didn't always. He was a white male in his forties at the time, and was employed, as Michael had suggested, but he wasn't clean in terms of police record. Michael felt that the Paradise Hill killer was pretty clean, with no real record, because he'd been getting away with his kills for two decades—or longer. Someone who was always getting into trouble with the law didn't fit the bill. Daryl Kincaid had been arrested several times for petty crimes, drunk and disorderly, bar fights, but now they knew he was involved in pornography, and had been picking up prostitutes for years on his routes. Drug offenses as well.

  Maybe it was John all along. He was much cleaner, much lower profile. He’d had the opportunity to take Melissa and the others who had gone missing during the ten years Kincaid had been in Coyote Ridge—but of course he was no longer involved in long-distance trucking.

  His deliveries for the past five years had all been local.

  But he knew the route; he could have kept using his knowledge of the roads and towns along it to find his victims. Vancouver was pretty far out of John Hammond's way, though.

  Tess wished she had access to the files on Hammond's business, to see where he was on the dates that the girls had been reported missing. He would have had to disappear for at least two days to travel to Vancouver, take the girl, and then do whatever it was he did with them, before driving back. That absence would be conspicuous.

  It would all be so much easier if she were able to just go and get the file on the Hammond and Son Services jobs, to see if there were any deliveries on those dates and who did them. If both John and Garth were in town on those days, it would have to be Kincaid. He was the only man who had the clear opportunity.

  Tess had thought about joining the FBI back when she learned Michael had joined. She'd considered law enforcement in high school, when the recruiters had come by to speak to the juniors, get them thinking about their eventual careers, but she wasn't sure that being a beat cop was her thing. She wanted to be a detective and solve murders, not drive the streets looking for people violating bylaws, or breaking up domestic assaults. Instead of joining, she focused on what she did best—writing.

  She wrote about murder instead. She studied murderers, serial murderers in particular.

  After Lisa, she was obsessed.

  Michael called her on the road back from Ellensburg.

  "We got the DNA results back," he said, sounding excited.

  "Tell me," she said, her heart picking up speed. "Was it Lisa?"

  "Nope," he said. "Not Lisa and not any of the girls from Canada. Two girls from Idaho – separate towns, separate dates they went missing. Not any we had on our radar—a bit older, fourteen and fifteen. Runaways who had been involved in the sex trade."

  "Sounds like Daryl's type. When did they go missing?"

  "Two years before he went to Coyote Ridge, six months apart. It looks like they can nail him for them, too. The more we dig, the more we find."

  "So that means the cabin was used as a kill site?"

  "For those girls, anyway. They haven't found any other blood there, or DNA. Looks like it was used for those girls alone."

  Tess turned to the cork board on the wall. "How many is that now? How many girls so far can we link to them? Fourteen?"

  "Yes. We have the DNA of fourteen girls."

  "My God," she said, shaking her head as she ran her eyes over the timeline. "But nothing on Lisa yet? Or the bones in the wall?"

  "Nothing on the bones. As for Lisa, all we have is the photographs of her they found in the porn room. Nothing else yet. You know what this means, right?"

  "They can extradite him to Idaho to get the death penalty."

&nb
sp; "Yes," Michael replied. "They can. There's no way Kincaid will be getting out of jail alive."

  "I hope not," Tess said, her sense of vengeance getting the better of her.

  "I'll be home in an hour and a half," Michael said. "Mom's going to drop me at the station to talk with Chief Joe. Maybe we can go for lunch after."

  After she ended the call, she put her cell down and turned to her laptop, adding the name of the girl to her timeline in her document. She itched to tell someone on the Missing forum about the confirmed DNA results, but she couldn't. It had to stay confidential.

  About fifteen minutes later Mrs. Carter drove up, parking the car in the driveway beside Tess's. Tess watched out the window as she got out of the car and retrieved two bags of groceries.

  Tess went to the door and ushered her inside, taking the bags from her hands.

  "So, what do you think?" Mrs. Carter said, her expression expectant. "Michael told you about the DNA?"

  Tess nodded and carried the bags into the kitchen. "Yep. Looks like Daryl killed two girls from Idaho at the cabin. If so, he can be extradited there for trial."

  "He'll get the death penalty," Mrs. Carter said as she hung up her coat and removed her boots. "I wonder how poor Eugene will feel about that? Not easy having a father who's a serial killer."

  "He's a cousin of yours, right?" Tess asked, trying to remember the exact connection between her and the Kincaids.

  "Don't remind me," Mrs. Carter said and came over to help Tess put the groceries away. "You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family."

  "Isn't that the truth?"

  While they put the groceries away, Tess thought about Eugene and how lucky he was to have been adopted by Chief Hammond. If the chief hadn't adopted the boy, he would have been sent to live with one of the other relatives, and the whole lot of the Kincaids seemed to be no good.