An Eye for an Eye

by Caroline Fardig

  First, I swabbed a few smudged prints I could see, hoping to get some touch DNA from them. After I was finished with the DNA collection, I dusted the phone’s screen, then studied it again through the magnifier. I saw a few prints I thought were viable to lift, but most of them were unfortunately partials. I got out some fingerprint lifts and collected the first print, which I passed to Amanda. She disappeared into the next room to begin examining it.

  I continued lifting prints, stopping for a moment to run a few over to Amanda, who was concentrating on a blown-up version of the first print on an enormous computer screen. The first print I’d given her hadn’t been terribly clear, so it was taking a while for her to plot the individual characteristics, which was the information she needed to run it through AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. I returned to my station and turned the phone over, brushing powder over the decorative case. Its colorful pattern made prints difficult to see, but the smooth surface made it easy to get good lifts. I pulled several prints from this side, some of them full. Once I’d finished, I relieved Amanda at the computer and let her do an independent second examination of the phone.

  The first three fingerprints she’d entered had come back with a list of possible matches in AFIS, with Jenna’s name at the top of every list. I called to Amanda, “Do we know why Jenna is in AFIS? She’s a goody two-shoes.”

  Amanda yelled back, “The Sheriff said she’d been fingerprinted as a kid for safety reasons.”

  I nodded, thinking I probably should have known that. Jayne insisted Rachel and I be fingerprinted when we were minors as well for the same reason. Nate, too. She’d seen too much not to be cautious about the people she loved. I tried to put that out of my mind as I took the next print and scanned it into the computer.

  After several minutes, Amanda came into the office. “I finished my examination of the phone and didn’t find anything further. I’d help you with the prints, but we only have the one machine to work with.”

  “No problem, and thanks,” I said, not taking my eyes off the screen. Seven out of the thirteen prints we’d run had been Jenna’s. I was beginning to lose hope.

  Amanda said hesitantly, “You should probably know that…we think Amy Donovan’s death and Jenna Walsh’s disappearance may be connected.”

  I stopped what I was doing to stare at her. “Connected? How? Why?”

  She walked over to another table and picked up a file. Flipping through it, she found a photo and handed it to me. “Because of this.”

  It was a large photo of a crumpled up note. My stomach plummeted when I read what was scrawled on it in black ink:

  My life was ruined by your mistakes,

  And now you understand how my heart aches.

  For your incompetence I will show no pity

  As I strike terror across the city.

  Your only child is now dearly departed.

  An eye for an eye? I’m just getting started.

  “Where was this found?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

  “In Amy Donovan’s mouth.”

  My jaw dropped. “That’s straight up serial killer stuff.”

  Her expression was grim. “It is, especially considering one of her eyes had been removed.”

  “What?” I breathed. They hadn’t divulged that on the news.

  “I know. It’s beyond disturbing, and they don’t have any leads on who did it. What they do know is that someone killed Amy to get back at Frank. The department secured the rest of Frank’s family thinking that the ‘I’m just getting started’ line meant the killer intends to go after them.” She blew out a breath. “But now that Jenna Walsh is missing…it puts a different spin on things. They’re worried now that the retaliation is also against the Sheriff since she and Frank were partners. Her niece ended up being the target since Sheriff Walsh has no children of her own.”

  As the gravity of this hit me, I felt like I was going to be sick. I choked out, “So whoever killed Amy may now have Jenna.”

  “Yes.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “You go get some air. I’ll take over while you wrap your mind around this.”

  I did as she suggested, slinking out the back door of the station and collapsing on the concrete steps. As I sat there with my head in my hands, trying not to cry or vomit, my phone rang. It was Baxter.

  “Yes,” I said around the lump in my throat.

  “It’s Nick. Do you have anything for us on those fingerprints yet?”

  “So far they’ve all come back as Jenna’s.” I frowned. “When exactly were you going to tell me that Jenna’s disappearance is connected to Amy Donovan’s murder?”

  He sighed into the phone. “After you did the job we needed you for.”

  A hot tear ran down my cheek. “I see.”

  I hung up on him. Damn Baxter. We’d worked side by side for a good thirty minutes, and he hadn’t said a word about the cases being connected. Again he decided that he knew what was best for me and did whatever the hell he wanted to get the outcome he needed. I stood, clenching my jaw until I gained control of myself, then stomped back to the lab. I wanted to get my task over and done. My sister needed me, and I needed to get out of this soul-sucking place.

  Beck was back in the lab processing some evidence. He ignored me as I passed him on my way to the adjacent office. Amanda was still hard at work at the computer station when I went in and pulled up a chair next to her.

  She gave me a sympathetic smile. “More of the same on the AFIS hits, I’m afraid. But the 3D model of Jenna’s fingerprint is ready if you want to try to unlock her phone. I waited for you before I tried it. I didn’t know if you’d ever used one before.”

  I nodded. “Thanks. I’ve used one in a classroom setting, but never in an actual case.”

  She hopped up. “Let’s do it, then.”

  She had laid out everything we’d need on a workstation, but stepped aside for me to do the task. Amanda loved tech. Since I’d met her, she was always emailing me articles she’d read on advances in forensics and attending scientific conferences when she could. It was too bad she was stuck in this lab with its outdated equipment.

  Hoping that Jenna had set up the Touch ID for her phone, I picked up the 3D image of her fingerprint and placed it against the home button of her iPhone. It popped up the message, “try again.” Amanda and I grimaced at each other, and I repositioned the print and tried again. This time, the phone came to life. We heaved a sigh of relief and gave each other a high five.

  She said, “I’ll leave you to have a look through that, and I’ll get back to work on the rest of the prints.”

  I sat down on a nearby stool and began scrolling through her text messages. Her last outgoing text message was sent about an hour after she’d left my house on Saturday. That was forty-eight hours ago, but I tried not to let that fact cloud my focus. The text was to a girlfriend of hers, declining an invite to meet for dinner Saturday night because she had a date. There were dozens of unanswered incoming texts from her friends, most of them similar messages asking where she was, with newer ones becoming more frantic and begging for her to reply. I recognized many of the names on the list, and there didn’t seem to be any conversations between Jenna and any males that would indicate that they were dating. The texts I read were all platonically friendly. No mention of planning for a weekend getaway or any sweet talk of any kind. All young people texted each other, so why was there no messaging between Jenna and her mystery man? Were we dealing with a much older man like Miranda had wondered?

  Her Snapchat and Instagram private messages were much the same as her text messages—all platonic. I opened her email folder, not that I thought college kids used email as a primary communication tool these days. Her emails were mainly spam, Internet order confirmations, and a few to and from her professors, mostly to turn in electronic assignments and discuss class topics. There were no personal conversations in any of her email folders, either.

  I checked the phone call log and found one numb
er that showed up over and over in the last week. The contact’s name was “Derek” with no last name and no photo. I hit the message button, but it brought up a blank text message screen. “Derek” was someone she’d spent a lot of time talking to on the phone but had never texted. I hurried into the office and ran the phone number, but it came back as a prepaid cell.

  I let out a groan.

  “What’s up?” Amanda asked.

  “The one contact I can find on this phone that could be Jenna’s new mystery man is someone she only calls and never texts, has no last name or photo in his contact info, and whose number is to a burner phone.”

  Amanda’s face grew concerned. “That’s not good.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  I pulled up Jenna’s photos and scrolled through them. Her photos were mostly either selfies or photos with her girlfriends. Any photos with guys in them were shots of larger groups. There were no photos she’d taken in the last month that would indicate she was in a relationship. Rachel had said Jenna had only known this guy for a week.

  I got my phone out and took a photo of the database showing that the number I’d found for “Derek” was to a burner phone, then sent a quick text to Jayne outlining the lack of information I’d found on Jenna’s phone about where she might have gone.

  Amanda said, “If you’d input the last fingerprint, I’ll take the phone over to our cyber guys and see if they can delve any deeper.”

  “Sure,” I said flatly, handing the phone over to her. I was fast beginning to lose hope that we were going to find Jenna happily holed up in a love nest somewhere.

  I scanned the last fingerprint I’d collected and plotted the individual characteristics of it, having to stop a couple of times to rub my tired eyes as they clouded over. The AFIS results were again the same—Jenna Walsh was at the top of the list of several potential matches. Whoever had thrown her phone in the bushes hadn’t touched it with bare hands, so this was all for nothing. I shot Jayne another text to let her know that we’d struck out with the fingerprints. Her response was that I was to come back to Ashmore to participate in a campus-wide search for Jenna.

  I sighed to myself. As much as I wanted to find Jenna, I thought it was a waste to do a physical search. Jenna would never deliberately hide on campus, and if someone had abducted her, it would be stupid to try to hold her somewhere against her will on a busy campus full of people. But, like Rachel, I couldn’t just sit and do nothing.

  I said my goodbyes to Amanda and had a deputy drive me home to get some warm clothes and more sensible shoes. On the way back to Ashmore, I contacted Rachel to ask if she had ever heard Jenna speak of anyone named Derek. She hadn’t, which was the answer I’d expected. For all I knew, Derek wasn’t even the guy’s real name. I had the deputy drop me at the science building. Once inside, I headed for the sanctuary of my office. After all that had happened in the past few hours, I could think of only one thing that could help me get through this night. I took two shots of vodka from the bottle I kept locked in my desk, then rinsed with minty mouthwash and popped a cough drop into my mouth to mask any telltale odor.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jayne had set up a makeshift command center in the main dining hall of the Ashmore Student Center, a building which also housed the student life offices, bookstore, campus radio station, and the Ashmore Voice office. Baxter and several deputies were busy passing out flyers with Jenna’s picture on them to groups of students eager to help with the search.

  When I approached her, Jayne looked up from the campus map she’d been studying. “Thanks for coming back over, Ellie.”

  “No problem. Sorry I couldn’t get much off the phone.”

  She shook her head wearily. “It’s fine. Without you, I wouldn’t have even known…” Shaking off that thought, she continued, “Anyway, I want you and Detective Baxter to go through Jenna’s dorm room. Her roommate said that to her knowledge, the boy she planned to go away with had never been to the room. But maybe you can find some clue as to where they were headed.”

  I didn’t want to spend a minute more with Baxter than was absolutely necessary, but it wasn’t like I had a choice in the matter. You didn’t say no to Jayne when she was in a mood like this—but more importantly, I would do anything to help her find Jenna.

  “Okay.”

  She pointed to a silver case at the end of the table. “There’s the kit. Report to me when you know something. Detective Baxter has the search warrant.”

  I nodded and picked up the case. Baxter saw me and held up one finger to signal me to wait for him. He finished up his conversation and came over to me.

  “I hear we have a dorm room to process,” he said, his expression wary.

  “Yep.”

  We walked over to Harris Hall in an uncomfortable silence. Baxter showed the dorm director our warrant, and she escorted us upstairs and unlocked Jenna and Miranda’s room for us.

  Baxter said, “There’s no need for jumpsuits and all that. There have been students in and out of here all evening, so the scene is contaminated. We’re only looking for some clue as to where Jenna went. Or at least where she thought she was going.”

  Nodding, I set the field kit on the floor. I then peeled off my coat and set it outside in the hallway. We both put on gloves, then I started looking through Jenna’s closet as Baxter went for her desk.

  Nothing seemed amiss. There were no clothes strewn around or hangers askew like she’d packed in a hurry. Her toiletries were nowhere to be found, but that made sense given the fact that she planned to be away overnight. I took a step back and glanced around the room. Both beds were made, and the entire room was neat, clean, and organized. Nothing was out of place.

  “No luck?” Baxter asked.

  “No.”

  “I can’t find anything, either.”

  “Mmm.”

  “Ellie?”

  I groaned inwardly. I was not in the mood to talk about our earlier disagreement, but Baxter could never leave anything unsaid. “What?” I replied, pretending to be interested in a music box on Jenna’s dresser.

  He put his hand on my arm and turned me to face him. “I can’t work like this.”

  “Me either, Nick. It’s hard for me to do a job when I don’t have all the information I need.”

  He frowned. “I’m sorry about earlier. Look, it wasn’t my idea to keep you in the dark. The Sheriff asked me not to burden you with information about the other case.”

  “Oh.” It hurt equally that Jayne didn’t think I could handle myself, but then again, she’d always mothered me—especially since my own mother hadn’t. “Well, in that case I apologize for hanging up on you.”

  As I tried to end the conversation by getting back to our task, he said, “But you’re still pissed at me for looking into your mother’s case.”

  “Wow. It’s like you’re a detective or something,” I snipped.

  “Ellie, I was only trying to help. I told you that.”

  I turned around to face him again. “Right. Because of your hero complex. Well, guess what? I don’t need a hero. And I don’t need my mother’s murder case reopened.”

  His jaw had clenched at my hero comment. “Her killer could be running free right now. Wouldn’t you feel better with him behind bars?”

  “I’d feel better if you’d stay the hell out of my business like I asked you to.”

  Baxter held up his hands. “Fine. Consider me officially out of your business.”

  “Fine.”

  In a terse silence, we traded search areas and went over the room a second time. He got out his phone and called Jayne to let her know we’d struck out while I put on my coat and closed up the field kit.

  After he ended the call, he said, “I know neither of us is in the mood to talk, but I have to get an official statement from you since you were one of the last people to see Jenna before she disappeared.”

  I leaned up against Jenna’s closet, working to put my personal feelings aside so I could be helpful
. “Okay.”

  “I talked to your sister and her friends. They said Jenna Walsh was at a study group at your house for three hours on Saturday afternoon. What time did she leave?”

  “A little before five.”

  “How did she seem? Nervous, excited? Was she behaving normally?”

  I shrugged. “She seemed like normal Jenna to me. She told the girls she needed to leave early to go get ready to ‘spend the rest of the weekend downtown,’ as she put it. Chelsea asked her if it was a romantic getaway with her new man, and Jenna said yes. Rachel gave her some crap about it. She seemed bothered by the fact that Jenna had only known this guy for a week and was moving too fast. Jenna brushed it off and said she was going to live while she was young. Now she, um…” I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat. “She may not…” I trailed off, afraid to finish the sentence.

  Baxter’s face softened. “Hey, come on. We’re going to find her.”

  I shook my head, willing myself to hold it together. “Not on campus. She’s not here.”

  He sighed. “I agree with you there. Someone’s not just going to stumble over her during the search. However, I think the search is useful to get her picture in front of as many people as possible and find out who was the last one to see her on Saturday night. That way we can get an idea of a timeline. We know she left your house a little before five and then came here to pack. The girls across the hall saw her leave this room with a bag around six, which was roughly when she sent her last text message. If I were to guess, I would assume Jenna went missing shortly after that—probably right around the time she was supposed to meet this mystery guy. You’re sure she never mentioned his name, even in passing?”

  “No. Her friends had a fit over it after she left my house. She refused to tell any of them his name, even her roommate. They think he’s an old married professor or something like that. I can’t say I disagree too much, because from what I saw on her phone, she did zero texting with the guy. So he’s either too old to want to communicate via text, or he doesn’t want a paper trail, so to speak. Plenty of phone calls to a contact named Derek with a burner phone, though. And burner phones scream infidelity.”