“Wait a minute…” I was thinking my hypothesis through as I spoke. “We know those visitors came from Michigan, then a man who often goes to the plantation has an accent from a northern state. What if they are the same person and he moved here from Michigan, but his mother still lives there.”
Paige was smiling. “Look at you.”
I wasn’t celebrating just yet. “Yeah, it’s great in theory, but it doesn’t get us closer to ID’ing him.”
No one offered words of reassurance.
Jack’s mouth set in a firm line, and he addressed his team. “Let’s keep brainstorming.”
“It’s possible our killer is placing the remains so they can be found,” Zach suggested. “They could be drawing attention to their work, trying to call us out.”
“If that is the case,” I began, “wouldn’t the remains be placed somewhere they’d be more easily found?”
“Easier than a riverbank or sticking out of mud?” Paige countered skeptically.
“Fine.” I held up my hands. “Why did our unsub cut off the hands and foot? Was it for a trophy or for making identification impossible?”
Jack’s expression was sour when he faced me. “Hands and feet make rather large trophies, but we can’t rule it out. Same with the skin.”
A shadow filled the doorway, and a man was standing there.
Pike lifted his head. “This is Detective Roger Rowlands.”
“Hey.” He flashed a perfunctory smile. “I’ve got the list of red Prius owners and the results on the phone pulled from the river.” He paused as he looked at Pike. “There’s one name in common. I’ve got the phone company working on the records.”
“What’s the name?” Jack asked impatiently.
“Stanley Gilbert.”
And just like that, any suspicion directed at the man in the suit with the Prius lessened. If Stanley was our killer, I doubt he’d drop his phone in the same river where he dumped his victims. Then again, maybe the phone hadn’t been intentionally left behind.
Pike’s face fell, his shoulders sagging.
“You know him,” I said. Given the lieutenant’s body language, it wasn’t a question.
Pike lengthened his neck. “Stanley Gilbert is my personal banker.”
“And…?”
“Can you excuse us, Roger?”
“Sure.” Roger tapped the doorframe on his way out.
“Stanley’s wife called last night and said that he hadn’t come home from work.”
Jack’s neck snapped in Pike’s direction. “You said that no one in the area had been reported missing recently.”
“Yes, I did, and he wasn’t…not officially. Heck, I’d forgotten all about it. And the remains were from twentysomething males.”
“The arm and leg from last week were. We don’t know about the arm from yesterday,” Jack spat. His focus was steely and directed at Pike.
“He hadn’t been gone twenty-four hours when she’d called. And Stanley’s not exactly the type to make enemies.”
For a missing person report to be filed before twenty-four hours had passed, there had to be suspected evidence of foul play.
A pulse tapped in Jack’s cheek, and I was happy I wasn’t in Pike’s shoes right now. “And what type is that?”
“A nice way of putting it? The man doesn’t have a backbone or at least not that I’ve seen. To make enemies you normally need to take a stand on something.” Pike paused but Jack’s glare was still on him. “His wife is a miserable coot with a burr up her butt about anything and everything. She wears the pants in the relationship, let me tell you.”
“But you failed to mention her call.” Jack was seething.
“As I said, I didn’t see him factoring in at all.”
“Based on what? The age of the victims from last week? The arm found yesterday could be Stanley’s.” Derision licked Jack’s eyes.
“How do you know it is?” Pike asked. “Maybe the guy just finally grew a backbone and ran away. And I, for one, wouldn’t blame him if he had.”
“We need full disclosure, Lieutenant, to do our jobs properly. Do you understand?”
Pike looked away from Jack.
“We’re going to need his wife’s information.” Jack’s tone had cooled slightly.
“Her name’s Darla Gilbert. I’ll get you everything you’ll need.” Pike went to stand up.
“Get a nationwide BOLO out on his car ASAP,” Jack directed.
“Nationwide?”
“It’s been over twenty-four hours,” Jack said. “Whoever has Stanley’s car could easily be out of the state by now. We need to tie this up.” He looked at Paige and Zach. “You two pay a visit to Jesse Holt. Brandon and I are going to talk with Stanley’s wife.”
-
Chapter 8
IF IT WAS STANLEY GILBERT’S arm being examined by an anthropologist while Jack and I headed to talk to his wife, it was possible that the killer had simply acted on an opportunity. Stanley was often at Blue Heron Plantation, and if our unsub had the affinity to the property we expected, it could make sense. Stanley would present a low-level risk. He was there during daylight hours, but it was early in the morning, meaning there were likely very few people around. Based on Pike’s summation of the guy, he didn’t sound like the type who could physically defend himself.
Then there was the matter of what finding his phone represented. If the unsub had dumped Stanley’s arm, why his phone as well? They hadn’t left personal belongings with the other remains—at least not that had been found.
Jack tapped his cigarette on the frame of the opened SUV window as he drove. Most of the smoke was directed outside, but the odor wasn’t discriminatory. I might as well have been puffing away myself.
Soon we reached the Gilberts’ driveway, which was pocketed between two rows of live oaks, their curvy branches draped in Spanish moss. Sadly, the newer construction of the house dispelled some of its southern charm. Two stories and beige siding stood out among the otherwise picturesque setting. The house was set in from the road and backed against the Little Ogeechee River. A luxury SUV was parked in front of the garage.
At the front door, I rang the bell and then knocked.
“Hold your arse,” a woman barked from inside.
If this was Darla, I understood Pike’s assessment of her being a “miserable coot.”
The door cracked open, and a tiny slip of a woman—all of five feet tall, if that—appeared. Her hair was black and swept into a loose bun. Her hooked nose and pointed chin gave her a somewhat comical appearance. I’d bet she’d make a pretty good witch for Halloween.
“Who are you?” An obtuse question on her part as Jack and I were holding up our FBI credentials. Her brown eyes slid from Jack to me, and I felt my skin tingle under her gaze. She might be crammed into a small package, but she wasn’t someone you’d want to mess with. Like a Chihuahua with fangs.
“Supervisory Special Agent Jack Harper, and this is Special Agent Brandon Fisher.”
“So?” She pressed her lips into a fine line.
“We’re here about your husband, Stanley. Can we come in?” Jack articulated it as a question, but his demeanor said refusing wasn’t an option. He took a step toward the door. Darla stood her ground for a moment, but looked up at Jack, whose more than six-foot frame towered over a woman of her size.
Inside, the home smelled of vanilla, and she gestured us toward a living room where Jack and I sat on a couch.
She remained standing, hands on her hips. “Did you find his body?”
Wow, this woman was something else…
“Is there a body to find?” Jack countered, leveling his gaze on her.
She crossed her arms. “I have no idea. It’s not like I killed him.”
“Who says anyone did?” I ventured.
I was cut down b
y a nasty glare.
“It’s the only reason he wouldn’t be here,” she said.
I was surprised she could speak with her jaw clenched so tightly.
“We understand that you called the lieutenant last night and reported your husband missing,” Jack said.
“Ah, yes. I assumed that’s why you’re here. I’m also guessing you found him,” she said impatiently.
“Why don’t you take a seat?” Again, Jack wasn’t really asking.
Darla consented and perched on the edge of a sofa cushion as if she was ready to jump up at a moment’s notice.
Jack let the silence ride for a few seconds. “We found your husband’s phone at Blue Heron Plantation. Do you have any idea why it would be there?”
Darla’s eyes narrowed. “None. He’d have no reason to be there.”
“Are you sure?” I asked, risking another cruel stare down.
Darla’s head snapped to face me. “Yes, I am sure. My husband has a job to go to.”
“Maybe he goes out there before work,” I suggested. It earned me a beady glare.
“Stanley starts work at seven. He always leaves here about six to get an early start on the day. He says it looks good to his boss. And he’s always home by six thirty.”
“Where does he work?” It took careful thought to think of Stanley in the present tense, seeing as he was either AWOL or dead.
“A bank in Savannah.” She raised an eyebrow. “But you’re the FBI. You should know all this.”
This woman seemed incapable of talking without sarcasm. I wouldn’t blame Stanley if he had run off. There might not be any more to his seeming disappearance than that he’d left Darla. He could have just tossed his phone into the river to sever the connection to his wife, and it wasn’t related to the investigation at all.
But we were a long way from jumping to any conclusions. And while we were currently leaning toward Stanley being a victim, we had to keep our minds open to all the possibilities. One thing seemed certain, though: Stanley had been living a double life. There was no way he worked at a bank from seven until six, and Tucker had said the Prius was at the plantation most weekdays, so where did he go the other mornings, and where did he spend his time after the day job actually ended? Something was keeping him busy, but was it a mistress or murder and mutilation?
“Did Stanley give you any reason to suspect that there might be another woman?” I asked.
Darla’s face scrunched up so tightly it had me thinking of something my mom would say to me as a child: Watch it or your face will stay that way.
Darla crossed her arms. “He would never cheat on me. I’d cut him off.”
“Cut him off?” I asked, my voice strained.
“Yeah, my family has money.”
That explained the nice house and the luxury SUV. Stanley must have chosen to drive a Prius for environmental reasons.
“If you have money, then why did Stanley work?” I realized I’d slipped into past tense but just let it go.
“He liked to.” She shrugged. “I let him because it gave him some independence.”
She let him. How nice of her.
If I were Stanley, I’d have run away a long time ago. Though I’d hope I was smart enough not to get involved in the first place.
“How was Stanley the last time you saw him?” Jack asked, taking over. “Did he seem like himself or was he upset in any way?”
Darla rolled her eyes. “He seemed normal.”
“Which for him was…?” I fished for an elaboration.
“He did whatever I asked of him, but yesterday he seemed to be mumbling more than usual when I asked him to come straight home after work. And I texted him twice not long after he left the house and never got a response.”
That potentially narrowed the window of Stanley’s supposed disappearance. “Was that unusual?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“What were the messages about?”
Darla slid her eyes to Jack, then back to me. “About him coming straight home.”
“The same conversation you had before he left for work. So a response wasn’t really necessary,” I pointed out.
Darla glared. “Stanley knows I hate my messages to be ignored.”
“Could we look at the messages you sent?” I asked.
Darla got up and returned to us less than a minute later. She unlocked her phone and handed it to me. I opened the messaging application and found the conversation she had with Stanley. I had to scroll up to get to the texts she would have sent in the morning, as more recent ones—riddled with swear words—filled up the feed. I glanced at Darla. “It seems you sent him a lot of messages.”
“He’s my husband, and I have a right to know where he is. I left him voice mails, too.”
I didn’t say anything and counted the messages backward from the most recent. Seventeen messages since the first one sent at 6:42 AM yesterday.
Messages prior to yesterday supported what Darla had said about Stanley always replying. He usually responded within a couple of minutes, keeping to simple, mostly one-word replies.
I passed the phone to Jack for him to take a look. If Stanley left the house at six and didn’t reply to messages sent just past six thirty, he’d either been abducted within that timeframe or made a run for it. But then again, all we could really speculate was that his phone likely ended up in the river between yesterday morning and yesterday afternoon when Tucker found the arm. There’d be no way for him to access the property and toss his phone with a police presence there.
It was possible that he hadn’t left the house with his phone, though. He could have tossed it before yesterday, and Darla might not have known.
“Do you know if he had his phone on him when he left the house yesterday morning?” I asked.
“I make him show it to me before he leaves. A phone doesn’t do much good if it’s not on a person.”
I glanced at Jack, who was reading the messages I’d just gone through.
“If you’re thinking Stanley left me, there’s no way. He doesn’t have enough guts.” Darla’s words were big but came out tiny. Her conviction in her husband’s loyalty was slipping, as shown by both her tone and her inclination to fill the silence. “I can’t believe the FBI is here. The lieutenant told me to give it time, that I had to wait twenty-four hours.”
There was a glimmer of desperation in her voice, as if she were giving real consideration to Stanley having left her. But the possibility that Stanley hadn’t left of his own choice was something we needed to make her aware of. There were at least a couple of ways to look at the situation: tell her and have it not be her husband, or don’t tell her and have it be him. There was no winning.
I opted for a variation of the former since reports of the remains were already hitting the news. “You may have heard that human remains were found in the Little Ogeechee River at the Blue Heron Plantation…”
She swallowed loudly. “Yes…”
I had to proceed delicately. “Your husband’s phone was recovered in the river in that same area.”
Darla’s eyes widened, and then she seemed to go catatonic.
“Mrs. Gilbert?” I prodded.
“Don’t you ‘Mrs. Gilbert’ me. He left me.” Darla was seething.
“We don’t know that,” Jack said. “All we know right now is that his phone was found.” Somehow he was always the epitome of calm.
I had more to add, though. “The remains that were found haven’t been identified. It’s also possible that—”
“So he might be dead?” She sounded hopeful.
My job was to understand people, but sometimes… Well, sometimes, they were too much of an enigma to figure out. “It’s a possibility.”
“Who would want to kill Stanley, though?” Darla’s eyes went reflective, although I didn’t detect an
y grief.
I wasn’t going to point out that serial killers didn’t need to have a personal vendetta against their victims. Usually they didn’t. “Could you provide us with his toothbrush or his comb?”
“You’re looking for his DNA?” she asked.
“Yes.” The anthropologist could rule Stanley out as a victim long before the DNA was processed, but it would be good to have on file if it became necessary for official identification.
“Sure.” Darla left the room again and returned with a comb and a handful of hair. “Stanley shed like a dog. I got this from the wastebasket in the bathroom.”
Did she really expect me to just take his hair like this? “Do you have a plastic bag or something you could put this in?”
“Oh, sure.” Apparently, the thought hadn’t occurred to her.
While she was out of the room, I turned to Jack. He met my gaze, and I sensed he wasn’t feeling much love for Darla, either. Then it hit me. Stanley shed like a dog. It was uncommon—although not unheard of—for people to refer to their lost loved ones in the past tense so quickly. For some it took days, weeks, or even months before being able to do so. In Stanley’s case, death hadn’t been concluded and Darla was at it.
She returned with Stanley’s hair and comb, now in a plastic sandwich bag. She handed it to me. “Here you go.”
“One more thing,” I started, proceeding slowly as I watched her facial expression and read her body language. “We’d like to look around your house, if that would be all right.”
“Ah, sure. If you have a warrant.” Darla laced her arms. “I do know my rights.”
Jack was apparently a lot more skilled at phrasing a demand as a request.
“If that’s how you want to handle this, that can be arranged,” Jack said coolly and stood.
I kept my attention on Darla. She was biting her bottom lip—a sign of nervousness. The question was, what did Darla have to be nervous about?
-
Chapter 9
PAIGE DIDN’T WANT TO GIVE too much weight to the thought, but Jesse Holt could very well be their unsub. Shane Parks had given Holt the benefit of the doubt all those years ago, but what if Holt had been perfecting his MO on animals or murdering people in the plantation’s outbuilding? There’d be no way of knowing at this point.
Remnants Page 5
