by L A Dobbs
She nibbled her bottom lip. “Well, I want to help, if I can. If you could be more specific about what you’re looking for here, maybe I’ve seen something on the occasions I’ve been here.”
“We’re looking for someone who might have been using the computers.”
Beryl glanced over at the computers and back at Sam. “For what?”
“I’m really not at liberty to say, but some sort of communication they might not want anyone to know about. You haven’t noticed anyone strange using them when you’ve been here?”
Beryl shook her head. “No, I never notice who is over there.” But the way she glanced at the computers again told Jo that she wasn’t as confident as her words sounded.
“Yeah, it was a long shot,” Sam said. “Well, have a nice day.”
Jo and Wyatt followed Sam to the door. As they spilled out onto the sidewalk, Jo glanced back in the shop to see Beryl Thorne staring after them, a look of worry on her face.
Jo slid her sunglasses down over her eyes and settled into the back of the Tahoe, letting Wyatt and Sam ride in the front. She glanced at the empty seat beside her, where Lucy would normally sit. They’d left the dog back at the station, figuring they couldn’t bring her into the café anyway, and she’d be more comfortable in her own dog bed than sitting in the hot car. Lucy hadn’t seemed to agree at the time, but Jo was willing to bet Reese had made the offer more appealing by feeding her treats.
“We need to find something to tie Thorne to those emails,” Jo said, as she watched the shops give way to wooded areas and fields. In the distance, the blue waters of the lake sparkled in a basin ringed by a wall of hazy blue mountains. If Thorne had his way, most of the scenery would be replaced with condos, hotels, and strip malls in the not-so-distant future.
“If he actually is the one who sent them,” Sam said.
Jo shifted her gaze from the window to meet Sam’s eyes in the rear-view mirror. “You’re having doubts that was him?”
“I just wanted to make sure we don’t overlook someone else because we’re so hot to pin it on Thorne.”
“I think you’ve been talking to Holden Joyce too much,” Jo said.
Sam snorted. “No, but he is right about not focusing too much on one person so that you don’t even look at other suspects.”
“It would be convenient if it was Thorne, though,” Wyatt added.
“True, but we want to make sure we get the right guy. We don’t want to let a serial killer go free,” Sam said.
“Or a meth manufacturer.” Jo glanced at her phone. Still no text from Bridget. “We need to show his photo around to the other people who work there,” Jo said.
“I’ve got the manager’s card. I’ll get Reese right on it,” Sam said.
“Good luck with that. I get the impression that people there all look the same to those kids,” Jo replied.
“I think the wife is a little nervous.” Wyatt’s gaze was fixed out the side window. Jo wondered if he was watching the scenery and wondering what the future might hold, as she was.
“Maybe we got her thinking,” Sam said.
“I wonder if Thorne told her we searched the construction site,” Jo said.
“It might be good if he did. That would give her some more to think about. I’m hoping that over time she’ll realize it’s not going to benefit her to cover up for him.” Sam glanced in the rearview mirror at Jo. “What do you think, Jo? Human behavior is more your department than mine.”
Jo had been watching Beryl Thorne. The telltale signs of nervousness were there, no doubt, but she couldn’t tell whether it was because Beryl knew something about Thorne or simply because their paths kept crossing in relation to the case.
Even if Thorne wasn’t the killer, he sure as hell was one of the biggest drug distributors in the area, and his wife had to have some inkling about that. “I think Beryl knows something. She had a nervous twitch, and her eyes were darting around the café, but I’m not sure she knows anything concrete. It could be something subconscious. You know, like she knows something is off but doesn’t want to admit to herself that her husband could be involved in something shady.”
“She definitely seemed worried,” Wyatt said. “I only wish we had something more than just a hope that she might rat out her husband.”
“If we just had a better way of knowing who was at the computer at the time the email was sent,” Sam glanced at Wyatt. “You don’t have any computer tricks for that, I suppose.”
“I wish. I can only trace the email to a specific computer using the IP layer and decoding the MAC address, but that won’t help us because anyone could have sat at that computer during the time. And who’s going to remember who was there a couple of weeks ago?”
“Maybe they have surveillance cameras,” Jo asked, hopefully.
Sam shook his head. “I didn’t see any in there.”
If Sam said there weren’t any surveillance cameras, you could bet money on it. Sam had a knack for noticing those kinds of details.
“If this was the city, we could pull up traffic camera footage and we might be able to catch him going into the café, or if we’re lucky, one of the cameras might actually show the café window,” Wyatt said. “But of course, we don’t have traffic cameras here.”
“Yeah. One of the disadvantages of working in a small town, I suppose,” Jo said.
“Yep, but I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.” Sam glanced out the window, and Jo followed his gaze. The uncluttered scenery had given way to the beginnings of Main Street. What once had been a large farm where sheep and cattle had grazed, a new strip mall had been built. Jo’s chest constricted. How soon before their idyllic small-town life became just like city life?
Judging by the pace they were putting up that strip mall—one of Thorne’s—it would seem pretty soon. The grazing field had been replaced with blacktop. Where stands of pines and oaks once stood now was a concrete block building, its plate glass windows reflecting glare from the sun. The only saving grace was that Thorne had put a large landscaped area at the end of the parking lot beside the road, and several spots in the parking lot had been landscaped with shrubs and flowers.
Jo had to admit the landscaping was kind of nice. They’d planted hostas, colorful flowers, and trees. Grass was starting to sprout in the ten-foot-wide area separating the parking lot and the road. Thorne was even putting in an irrigation system. One of the kids who worked for him was going over the hard-packed ground with an aeration machine to prep for it. The landscaped area was one of the concessions Thorne had had to make to get the zoning board to agree to rezone this parcel for commercial use.
As they pulled down the street, a familiar black Toyota 4Runner was parked in front of the police station. “Looks like the FBI is here,” Jo announced. “Maybe there’s been a break in the case.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Sam followed Jo and Wyatt into the police station. Reese looked up from her desk, rolled her eyes, and tilted her head toward the squad room where Holden Joyce sat in a chair feeding treats to Lucy and getting the stink eye from Major, perched in his usual place on top of the filing cabinet.
Sam handed Reese the card he’d gotten from the café. “Can you call this guy? He’s the owner of the café, and I want to get the names of all his employees and the times they work so we can go down and show them Thorne’s photo.”
Lucy met him as they came around the post office boxes. She was clearly relieved that Sam and Jo were back, and that Holden wasn’t going to be her new contact at the station.
“Have you guys found something?” Holden brushed treat crumbs from his shirt. Sam noticed he was wearing a regular T-shirt and jeans today, not his usual dark blue FBI suit. Did that mean he was feeling more comfortable around them, and if so, was that a good thing or a bad thing?
Sam filled him in on their visit to the café. Major hopped down and sniffed at the crumbs on the floor, then gave Holden a dirty look and trotted off into Sam’s office, presumably t
o hide in the closet, which had become his new favorite napping spot.
“Unfortunately we didn’t get very much either,” Holden said.
The rest of them took their seats, Jo sitting on top of her desk, her feet swinging in front, Sam with his hip leaning against the back of Kevin’s desk, and Wyatt pulling his chair around to the front of his desk and turning it to face them.
Holden continued. “We’ve done the research into serial killings going back five years, but we haven’t found anyone who hasn’t already been arrested. There are a few unsolved cases, but none involving shallow graves.” Holden glanced at Jo, and Sam wondered what that was about.
“So our guy is still out there,” Sam said.
“Yes, but we might have a lead on the meth lab front.”
“Really? Thorne?” Sam’s voice was hopeful.
Holden took a deep breath. “I don’t know if it is Thorne, but we have an informant in upstate New York who’s worked with a meth lab out of northern New Hampshire. That lab is still in operation, and we’re trying to find out where it is. They move around a lot to minimize getting caught. If it’s linked to the cabin, we don’t know, but he says the leader is someone who has a big business in northern New Hampshire.”
Sam wasn’t sure how he felt about that. On the one hand he desperately wanted to catch Thorne and put him in jail. On the other, it was a little annoying that the FBI had an informant all this time who might have been able to help his case against Thorne. Why hadn’t they done this before? If they had, Thorne might be in jail right now. Then again, that wouldn’t help the girls in the shallow graves.
“That sounds like Thorn,” Wyatt said.
Holden made a face. “It sounds like him, but a lot of people have big businesses up here. We don’t want to get fixated on Thorne and miss out on any clues that lead to someone else.”
“Agreed,” Sam said. “No sense in getting too excited. The informant’s meth lab owner might not be Thorne. Could be some other business owner, maybe even one of Thorne’s minions. The important thing is catching whoever killed those girls and whoever was running the meth lab, whether it’s Thorne or someone else.”
“If it’s the same person, that would make it all a little easier,” Jo said.
“Even if the informant does identify Thorne, we’re going to need physical evidence linking him with that cabin,” Holden said.
“Did your lab find any DNA evidence linking the cabin to the shallow graves?” Sam asked. “I mean, scraps of fabric common to the two locations or something like that? You have a pretty sophisticated operation up there.”
“We do, and that’s why it’s a little disconcerting that there was no evidence found linking them. It could be that the two are not related.”
“Yeah, but was there any evidence at either spot that links to Thorne? A hair follicle, a drop of blood, anything?” Jo asked.
“Well, that’s the problem. We don’t actually have Thorne’s DNA in the database,” Holden said. “So the problem is we have to arrest him first with physical evidence that links him and then get his DNA so we can match it up.”
“You mean Thorne’s never been arrested?” Damn it! Thorne had been a juvenile when the case Mick had told him about had taken place. Those records were sealed, but they likely wouldn’t have taken a DNA sample back then. Thorne had killed an animal, not a person, and back then they didn’t have the technology for DNA sampling and preservation procedures that they did now.
“So what are you going to do next?” Sam asked.
Holden held up his hands. “Don’t know. We’re reaching somewhat of a dead end. The parents of the two victims who were identified couldn’t help at all. The third one still hasn’t been identified. We pulled out all the open missing persons cases. She doesn’t match any of them.”
Jo frowned. “How can that be?”
Holden’s jaw tightened. “Unfortunately, there’re a lot of people who just go missing and no one cares. Could be her parents were drug addicts. Could be her parents were dead and she was in the foster care system. Could be a lot of reasons.”
Sam thought again about his daughters. He couldn’t imagine not caring about what happened to them. Were there really parents so cold and unfeeling? He noticed Jo glance at her phone again, probably wondering if her sister might suffer a similar fate.
“One thing we could do is put surveillance on the café,” Sam suggested. “It’s a long shot, but if the killer is starting up again as the last email indicates, maybe he’ll return to the café to email Menda again. If not a person, then maybe we could set up a camera outside the café. Those internet computers are right in the window. Then we could see who was at the computer at the time the email was sent.”
Holden thought for a few seconds. “I’ll see what I can do. I don’t think we can allocate any manpower for it. We’re stretched thin as it is, but maybe some kind of camera set up on the other side of the street might work. I’d need a warrant. I have to go back to headquarters anyway. I’ll let you know if anything new comes up.”
“Thanks. I’ll do the same,” Sam said.
Wyatt spun his chair back behind his desk. “I’m going to dig into these emails a bit more. Maybe I can find something else.”
“I’ll search the newspapers to see if I can piece together an itinerary of Thorne’s activities five years ago when the girls were murdered.” Jo opened her laptop and started typing. “There might be articles about what he was building, which could give us some kind of a timeline. Maybe something will come up and we’ll get lucky.”
“I’m going to take another look through those crime scene photos.” Sam headed to his office, Lucy trotting along beside him. He leaned his butt against the edge of the desk while he stared at the photos. Lucy sat beside him, her head tilted to stare up at the photos also, as if contemplating the evidence. He reached down to rub the fur on the top of her head. “There’s got to be something in this physical evidence. It always comes down to a clue at the crime scene that we’ve overlooked.”
He focused on the photos from the shallow graves, letting each one sift through his brain, tarps, holes, leaves, bones, scraps of clothing. The last body hadn’t been identified. Should they focus on that? The thought haunted him that there was a family out there somewhere with a loving member who had never returned home.
Movement beside him stole his attention from the photos. Major had jumped up on his desk and sat beside him, staring solemnly at the cork board.
“Hi, there.” Sam reached out tentatively to pet the cat. His fur was much softer than Lucy’s. He glanced from the cork board to Sam, the contrast of his sleek jet black fur highlighting his luminescent golden eyes.
Lucy snorted, her eyes narrowing on the cat. She didn’t make a move. She just watched him carefully. Maybe she was getting used to Major. Better not pay too much attention to him, though. Lucy was still his favorite, and he wanted her to know that.
Sam turned back to the photos. The tarp. Thorne should have had some of those on the job site. Sam had never seen a construction site without tarps, but why didn’t he have them? He must have known they were coming to inspect the site. Someone had tipped him off. Jamison? Freeman? Beryl?
The fact that the tarps were missing made Sam suspicious. He stared at the tattered blue scraps in the photos of the shallow graves. Those holes were so unusual. Tarps often had grommets, though not quite as many as these holes would indicate. Hadn’t he read about a case in which a particular style of grommet had helped link physical evidence that solved the case?
But where were the grommets? It looked as though they’d either been ripped out or had fallen out. Perhaps the tarps had rotted around them and the grommets were still in the dirt. Maybe he should consider having someone take a metal detector up there and recover them. But there were too many holes. There wouldn’t be that many grommets in the tarp. What were the other holes for?
Something clicked into place in Sam’s mind. Thorne had been doing landscaping
at the strip mall they passed on the way back from the café. Thorne had fought the improvement, but Mayor Dupont had stood firm on that one, at least.
The people of the town absolutely refused to have that mall built unless it had a certain amount of greenery. Sam wasn’t surprised that Thorne had taken the cheap route and planted grass seed instead of springing for new sod. That old ground was hard with years of use and wouldn’t grow nice lush grass without some work to get the water deep down to the roots.
That was where the aeration machine came in, and the aeration machine made dozens of tiny holes in the ground. Sam’s gaze swiveled to the photos of the shallow graves again. The holes in the tarp, the mismatched pattern where there was one missing hole. Thorne’s cheapness might be his downfall if his aeration machine had the same pattern and the distance between spikes matched the distance of the holes. This could be the break he’d been hoping for.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The landscape work was still in full swing when Sam and Jo got to the strip mall. They had taken Lucy, but not Wyatt. A call had come in that Bullwinkle was holding up traffic at the intersection of Hill and Maple, and Wyatt had volunteered to take care of the wayward moose while Sam and Jo headed out to look at the aerator.
Sam wasn’t surprised that Thorne wasn’t there. He liked to lord over his empire from his climate-controlled trailer. All the better, as Sam would get more cooperation from the workers who had stopped working and were now frowning at the Tahoe with its police insignia as it pulled in beside their trucks.
One guy, the largest of the three, had been running the aerator. He watched Sam and Jo approach. The other two went back to wrangling a four-foot-tall rhododendron into a hole, casting looks back at them every few seconds. Lucy busied herself sniffing each plant one by one.
The smell of bark mulch permeated the air, and the sun warmed Sam’s back as he picked his way toward the guy, careful not to disturb the mulch or squash a plant. Sam’s eye was drawn to the machine. This one was a rolling aerator and looked like a walk-behind lawn mower, except instead of cutting grass it propelled spikes down into the earth. It was the type that could make the holes Sam had seen in the tarps. He couldn’t see the spikes from where he stood, but he hoped they’d match the diameter and spacing of those holes.
