“Any IDs on the victims yet?” I asked.
Pike shook his head. “Not yet, but they’re working on it. I’m not sure when we’ll know.”
I looked at Jack. I didn’t know all the steps involved with processing DNA, but it could take weeks, if not months, to go through the system. Things could be sped up if the government was willing to foot the bill for a private laboratory, which was costly and would still take days. Oftentimes this was approved for cases involving serial murder, but primarily when we had seemingly solid evidence that we believed would lead us to the killer.
Jack gave a small shake of his head, as if he’d read my mind and dismissed the private laboratory.
“Anyone reported missing from the area recently?” Zach asked.
“No.” Pike’s single word was heavy with discouragement.
“It could be that the victims aren’t being missed by anyone.” Zach’s realistic yet sad summation was also a possibility.
“The ones from last week were all Caucasian males in their mid- to late twenties,” Pike offered next.
“What about the arm from yesterday?” Jack asked.
“It was male. I called in a friend and colleague to get us more information. She’s an anthropologist, and she’ll take a look at it as she had the other remains, but she won’t get to it until much later today.”
“She?” Paige queried.
“Shirley Moody. She’s one of the best in the field but from out of town.”
Jack nodded his acknowledgment. “What can you tell us about the guy who found the arm yesterday?”
“Name’s Jonathan Tucker. He works at the plantation, and we took his statement, of course,” Pike began. “His record is clean, and he seems like a down-to-earth guy. He’s got two young girls and his wife died a couple years back. He seemed really shaken up by all this.”
“What about Wesley Graham?” Jack asked.
“The man who found the remains last week? Nice guy. He’s single and proud of it. Never been married. No record, either. But he didn’t seem too upset by the whole situation.”
So far we weren’t getting much more out of Pike than we had his detective’s reports. Graham didn’t work for the plantation, and the file noted that his reason for coming to the plantation was to de-stress.
“This site attracts tourists and locals,” Pike said. “People like to surround themselves in nature. Personally, I could live without mosquitoes.” He swatted near his face as if to emphasize his point. “I know you’ll probably want to pay Tucker and Graham visits yourselves, but—” Pike made a show of extending his arm and bending it to consult his watch “—right now, I’ve got you an appointment with the owner of the plantation. We should probably get moving toward the main house.”
“Lieutenant!” A female investigator shouted as she waded through the water toward the riverbank in a hurry. She was holding a clear plastic evidence bag.
“We found a cell phone,” she called out as she reached us.
Pike looked at the investigator skeptically. “Where?”
Her eyes dipped to the ground, but she regrouped herself quickly. “It was near where the arm was found.”
“And it took a day to find it?” Pike raised his eyebrows.
She squared her shoulders but shrank somewhat under the lieutenant’s gaze. “It was in a tangle of weeds, but it could have just come to rest there in recent currents.”
It seemed Pike was a hard one to please, and he reminded me of the way I used to view Jack—an unforgiving perfectionist. And while Pike might not be impressed, I was pleased. That phone could lead us to a killer.
-
Chapter 2
ACCORDING TO THE PLAQUE ON the lawn, the two-story main house had been built in the late eighteen hundreds. It was white with a beautiful facade that had columns the height of the building. A second-floor balcony was positioned over the entrance.
Pike knocked on the front door, and a woman answered.
“We’re here to speak with Shane Park,” he said.
She nodded and let us inside.
Just ahead and to the left of the entry stood a grand staircase, all oak banisters and spindles. A narrow carpet ran down the middle of the steps in a dark, Victorian pattern. To the immediate left and right of the entrance were sitting rooms decorated with floral wallpaper and antique furniture.
“This isn’t the original main house, which would have been constructed pre-Civil War,” Pike said as if he were catering to tourists. “Some people say it’s haunted, though, if you believe in such things.”
I wished he hadn’t pointed that out, not that this was the first time I’d heard of plantations having their fair share of ghost stories. The hairs on my arms rose, and I swear a shadow moved along the wall.
Paige put her hand on my shoulder, and I jumped.
Pike and Zach both laughed while Jack just shook his head.
I glared at Paige. Why had she touched me in the first place? Had she been trying to scare me?
“I’ve been here before and haven’t ever seen anything out of the ordinary,” Pike assured me. “But, now, we do have the remains in the river.” Pike and Jack shared a smile.
As long as they were amused…
The stairs creaked for no apparent reason, and I glanced at the others. Had they heard it?
Pike pointed toward the upstairs landing where a man dressed in a suit was coming down.
Old house, old floorboards. Not a ghost.
I took a deep breath.
“Good day, officers,” the man said as he stepped off the last stair.
“Shane, these people are with the FBI.” Pike went on to introduce us all by name.
“I’m Shane Park, the owner of this fine plantation. Please, come this way.” He turned toward the door on his left and gestured inside the room. “Sit wherever you would like.”
In the case file we’d received, there was a full background on Shane Park and the locals had cleared him of suspicion.
I stepped into the room, and a chill crept down my spine. It felt like I was being watched.
Pike remained in the doorway, leaning against the frame.
“Lieutenant Pike said that you close the gates to the public at night,” Jack began, “but is there any way a person could come through on the river?”
I couldn’t help but take some pride in the fact that Jack had started off with my point.
“I suppose it would be possible.”
“Your guests ever spend the night?” Paige ventured next.
Staying overnight in a haunted house wasn’t exactly on my bucket list, but I knew some people were fascinated by things going bump in the night.
“Yes, of course. And ever since the word’s been getting out about the remains, we’ve been booked solid. Usually February is a little slower and it doesn’t pick up again until March, but we’re already booked through August.”
So much for murder hurting tourism…
“And what about your guests? Do they have access to the grounds all night?” Paige asked.
Shane crossed his legs and nodded. “Absolutely.”
“We’ll need full access to your reservation book.” Jack’s tone left no room for negotiation.
“I’d be happy to cooperate.”
We didn’t have a timeline on the remains yet, or so much as a window for when they came to be in the river, so it was impossible to know how far back we’d need to go in Shane’s records, but given the condition of the remains and the fact that there had been muscle tissue present, I couldn’t imagine that they had been in the river long. And that made the men who’d found the remains highly suspect.
“How long has Jonathan Tucker worked for you?” I asked.
Shane eyed me with curiosity. “He’s been here for ten years. Wonderful man. Honest worker.”
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This man’s word wasn’t going to release my suspicion yet, though. “Did he have access to the grounds and the river after hours?”
“No, he—” Shane’s face paled. “Wait, you don’t think he— No, he wouldn’t do this.”
I held eye contact with him for a few seconds, and he seemed genuinely convinced that Tucker wasn’t involved.
As if reading my mind, Pike added, “Backgrounds were pulled on all plantation employees.”
“I am aware of that.” I let my words sit out there, with no need to explain myself. What was on paper didn’t always tell the whole truth.
“Do you get returning customers?” Paige cut through the mild tension in the air with her soft-spoken question.
“We do,” Shane replied.
She kept the questions rolling. “What about in the last few months?”
“Not that I recall, but you can check the reservation book.”
“Let’s take our focus off guests of the main house for a minute,” Jack chimed in. “Did you notice anyone else around in the last couple months who seemed strange or suspicious to you?”
“Besides tourists?” He laughed. “You’ve seen them, right? Always with their cameras and their phones, taking selfies every minute. But if you are asking if I can recall anyone who really struck me as a killer? No.”
“Killers can look like your average Joe,” Jack stated drily. “They can fit right in, be chatty, overly friendly. Do you remember anyone like that?”
“The first people who come to mind are a mother and her grown son who were here a couple weeks ago.”
“Tell us about them,” Zach said.
“I don’t know their names, but they told me they were from Michigan.”
“Did they come more than once?” Paige asked.
Shane nodded. “The guy, anyhow. He looked familiar to me, and I might have seen him since then.”
Her eyes widened. “When?”
“I think he was here a few days ago.”
“What were they like?” I asked.
“Pleasant.” He shrugged. “The mother loved having her picture taken.”
“Her son didn’t?” I guessed based on his wording.
“Not at all. Actually…” Shane rang a bell that was on a side table next to him. Shortly afterward, the woman who had answered the door came into the room.
“Yes, Mr. Park?” she said.
“Jayna, I need the photograph from the board. Remember the woman from about two weeks ago who came with her son?”
“Certainly, Mr. Park.” With that, Jayna was off.
“What else did you observe about the man?” I asked.
Shane’s mouth fell in a straight line as he seemed to give the question some thought. “He was quiet, but attentive to his mother.”
Jayna returned then, photo in hand, which she extended toward Shane. “Here you go, Mr. Park.”
“Please give it to him.” Shane tilted his head toward Jack.
Jack glanced at the image and passed it around the room. It came to me last. A gray-haired woman of about sixty was smiling at the camera with the river to her back. And while she didn’t look like a killer or as if she was caught up in a conspiracy to cover her son’s crimes, it was far too early to rule anyone out.
In all likelihood, the victims weren’t from Savannah, and these two had come from Michigan. They could easily have transported the remains from there.
“A few more questions before we leave,” Jack said. “Before last week, have you had any crimes committed on your property that you didn’t report to police? Anything you can think of at all—small offenses, even?”
“Uh, let me—”
“Sir?” Jayna was standing in the doorway.
Shane’s gaze went to her, then skimmed over me and landed on Jack. “We had a problem with a previous employee.”
“What sort of problem?” Jack’s gaze homed in on Shane.
The man flushed. “I found out that he was coming onto the property after hours, and…” He glanced at Jayna as if he was looking for the strength to verbalize what he had to say. “He was using an outbuilding for…”
“He said he was cleaning and gutting fish in there,” Jayna picked up for Shane. “But there seemed to be a lot of blood for fish.”
“And you never reported this to the police?” Jack was not impressed, and I didn’t blame him.
Shane took a deep, staggered breath. “I gave him the benefit of the doubt.”
“His name?” Jack asked.
“Jesse Holt.”
Jack got to his feet. “We’ll need to take a look inside the building.”
“We did that last week,” Pike started, “but we didn’t find anything.”
“He hasn’t worked here for two years,” Shane added.
“Neither matters.” Jack was already on his way to the front door, the rest of us trailing behind.
-
Chapter 3
I’M NOT SURE WHAT I expected us to find in the shed. Concrete proof that a killer had murdered and mutilated his victims here? More remains yet to be dumped into the river? Lieutenant Pike had said that the place had been clean when his people had checked it last week, but it could have been a matter of timing.
Shane led us to the parking lot. “The building’s on the far end of the property. It’s best we drive there.”
The four of us and Pike loaded into one SUV, and Jack followed Shane as he weaved along a gravel road that cut through fields and ran parallel to the river. A walkway lined the edge of the river here, and my guess was that we were a couple of miles from the main house by now. How big was this place?
Shane pulled to the side of the gravel road, got out, and walked back to us.
Jack put his window down.
“We’ll have to walk from here,” Shane said.
We all got out and continued to follow Shane, this time down a wooden walkway that led us through tall grass.
This building’s isolation and proximity to the river, which was only about fifty yards to its right, would have been beneficial to the unsub, but one thing working against Jesse Holt, if he was our unsub, was that he had been caught here before and now risked being found out for something much worse than gutting fish—if that was really what he had been doing.
None of the windows in the building were broken, and there was a padlock on the door that was intact.
“That’s a good sign, isn’t it?” Shane asked, but he didn’t sound convinced.
And the truth was, it didn’t mean anything other than if the unsub was using the shed, he or she had a key.
No one replied to him, and Shane unlocked the door and stepped back.
Jack held up a hand to him. “You stay out here.”
“You don’t have to tell me that.” Shane crossed his arms, avoiding eye contact and looking anywhere but the shed.
I stepped inside. The space was rather empty save a long worktable against one of the walls with cabinets mounted above it. There was nothing on the table.
I gloved up and opened the first door, holding my breath as I gripped the handle. Nothing. I repeated the process for all four doors.
“If our unsub was ever here, he did a good job of covering up,” I concluded.
“We’ll still have a forensic team come out and take some swabs.” Jack pulled out a cigarette and his lighter, and stepped toward the door.
“We had that done the first time,” Pike said, “and nothing came back.”
“Is that why this building wasn’t so much as mentioned in the reports we got?” Jack stared at the lieutenant, who didn’t bother responding, and he went outside.
Paige, Zach, and I followed him. Pike was the last one out.
Shane looked up at us, hope filling his features. “So?”
“It
looks clean, but we’re going to have forensics come in anyway,” Jack stated matter-of-factly and lit up his cigarette. He took a deep inhale and exhaled a cloud of smoke.
Shane’s head pivoted to face Pike. “That was already done.”
“We’ll be doing it again.” Pike squared his shoulders.
Jack continued. “Is this the only outbuilding on the property?”
“Yes,” Shane responded.
“We’ll need the former employee’s information. Address, phone number,” Jack stipulated.
“Absolutely. I asked Jayna to pull it together before we left the main house.”
Jack took a step in the direction of the SUV when Pike spoke. “Since we’re already out here, let me show you where the arm and leg from last week were found.”
“If you don’t need me, I’m going to head back to the house,” Shane said.
“We’ll see you for that information before we leave.” Jack’s cigarette bobbed in his lips as he spoke.
Shane nodded and left.
“Come this way.” Pike led us alongside the river about a hundred yards.
A pinch on the back of my neck had me slapping myself, and Pike turned around with a smile. “Like I said, I could do without the mosquitoes.”
When we came to a section where the tall grass thinned out and revealed the water’s edge, Pike stopped and pointed toward the river. It would be accessible by foot—not that any of us were going out there in our dress shoes and slacks, as the ground looked spongy.
“The leg was lying there, and—” he gestured down the bank “—the arm was out there, partially in the water.”
My mind went back to the report. Shoe prints had been found in the mud but had tied back to Wesley Graham, the man who had found the arm and leg.
“Well.” Pike clapped his hands. “It’s probably time for our appointment with the chief medical examiner.”
I looked to Jack. He usually kept investigations closed to those outside of our team, but this time, he didn’t seem to object to Pike coming along.
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