Ninth Grave (A Writer's Retreat Mystery Book 9)

by Kathi Daley

  “Do you think that the reason he is having us jump through all these hoops is so that at some point along the way we will actually begin to feel affection and sympathy for him?”

  Jack shrugged. “Perhaps. I assume he has some sort of a reason for doing things the way he has.” Jack stopped walking. “From his hand-drawn map, I think we need to head over to that little knoll just around the bend.”

  When we’d hiked around the bend, we found that the river widened, creating a pool. Ducks floated on the surface, which added an element of serenity to the scene. The terrain began to climb just a bit, creating a grassy overlook well above the flood line. According to the map, it was on this little hill overlooking the river that we were to dig.

  I held on to Kizzy’s leash while Jack tried to identify the best place to begin. There was a lot of exposed ground, and if he dug even a few feet one way or another he would miss the remains. I thought about the letters RIP that had been carved on the tree at Jessica’s burial site and the rock at Kim’s, and suggested we take a minute to look for a similar marker. Eventually, we found one carved into an old tree stump that had been dragged into the meadow and left on its side. Jack dug and I waited. As soon as the remains were exposed, we took several photos, reburied the remains, and went back to the car. We had to drive for a good thirty minutes before we had cell service. Once we did, Jack emailed the photo to Sam and called Rick to let him know what we had found, where we had found it, and how he could find it as well.

  “What now?” I asked Jack after he hung up.

  “Sam has always gotten back to us within an hour, so let’s head back to the main highway. If we haven’t heard from him, we’ll pull over and wait for instructions.”

  Chapter 12

  As it turned out, Sam returned Jack’s email before we even reached the highway. He confirmed that the remains we found were Patricia’s and sent us the name and location of the next victim.

  “It looks like we are to find out what we can about Lisa Stockwell, who lived in Justin’s Cove, Maryland. She went missing in June of 2015,” Jack informed me.

  “Where exactly is Justin’s Cove? Is it also on Chesapeake Bay?”

  Jack pulled it up on his phone. “It is on the bay, although it looks as if it is on the other side. It’s actually pretty close to here, and it’s only about two hours from Justin’s Cove to Atlantic City, which will make it convenient to stop there to see my mother.”

  “Should we check out Justin’s Cove first, or see your mom first?” I asked.

  “Let’s go to Justin’s Cove first. We can drive there now, have dinner, and figure out a plan for tomorrow. We can meet my mom for dinner on Sunday.”

  “Sounds good to me. I’ll call Rick while you drive and give him the name and the town. Maybe he can get the police report this afternoon so we can use it for our research this evening.”

  The drive to Justin’s Cove was pleasant and mostly silent. I suppose Jack and I both had a lot on our minds. I was satisfied with our progress, but the whole journey continued to seem very odd to me. On some level, I was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  The motel we found was nice and allowed dogs but didn’t have room service. Jack ordered a pizza, which we were assured could be delivered to us at the motel, and I took Kizzy for a walk, and then stopped by the vending machine for sodas. Jack had called his mother to let her know we were planning to meet her for dinner on Sunday, and then I knew he planned to call Rick to find out what he’d learned about Lisa.

  When Kizzy and I returned to the room, I handed Jack a cola. “Did you get hold of Rick?”

  Jack nodded.

  “So what did you find out?”

  Jack popped the top on his soda can and took a long drink before he answered. “Lisa Stockwell was eighteen when she went missing. She’d been to a concert with friends on the night she disappeared. She had an early shift at the café where she worked the next morning, so she left before the concert was over. One of her friends told the police that she had last seem Lisa heading toward the parking lot. No one knows what happened to her after that, but Lisa’s car was found abandoned at a gas station about halfway between the concert venue and the apartment building where she lived.”

  “The car was found at a gas station? Was it left at the pump?”

  Jack nodded. “The gas nozzle was still in the tank. Initially, people nearby figured that the driver of the car had slipped into the restroom, but when no one completed the transaction and moved the car after fifteen minutes, the gas station attendant, who was working behind the counter at the attached minimart, went to look for the owner of the vehicle. When a search of the entire area turned up no one, he used the keys that had been left inside the vehicle to move it off to the side. When the driver still had not returned after an hour, he called the police. The officer who responded was able to identify the vehicle as having belonged to Lisa. There was no sign of blood or other indicators of foul play in the car or near the pump, and none of the other customers remembered seeing a struggle. Eventually, the police used credit card receipts to track down all the customers who were at the gas station at around the same time Lisa was there and found a woman who recalled seeing Lisa headed toward the bathrooms, which were located on the back side of the building.”

  “Okay, so Lisa was getting gas and while her tank was filling, she went to the ladies’ room. I assume the killer nabbed her while she was behind the building, out of sight of the other gas station patrons.”

  “That is the way it looks. The fact that she never returned to her vehicle to complete her transaction indicates to me that she was abducted either as she walked to or from the bathroom or while she was inside. Rick is going to do some legwork. He has the police report and is going to request a copy of the credit card receipts from that night, as well as the witness statements. He isn’t confident that he will find anything the original investigator didn’t, but he was willing to see what he could come up with.’

  “Did the investigator think Lisa was most likely abducted by a random person who happened to be at the gas station at the same time she was, or did they think that she was targeted for some reason?”

  “The investigator believed she was targeted,” Jack answered. “His conclusion was that she was followed when she left the concert. When she stopped for gas, that person took advantage of the fact that she was alone and grabbed her. We already know the killer was Sam, and that Lisa ended up dead. The question is, why did Sam target and kill her in particular?”

  I blew out a breath. “I guess that is what Sam has been trying to communicate to us in his own way. If he followed her from the concert, did he know her and follow her to the concert, or was he at the concert trolling for victims and chose her?”

  “Good question.”

  “Did Rick have the names of any of Lisa’s friends for us to follow up with?” I asked.

  “Dozens of individuals were interviewed at the time of Lisa’s disappearance. Rick is going to forward the witness statements to me when he gets them, but he already knew the investigator focused on a few specific people: Maxie Morningstar, Josie Baldwin, and Hillary Dover, the three girls with whom Lisa had attended the concert; Yvette Potter, one of her coworkers, who told the police that Lisa had been harassed by a customer the previous day; and Darby Denton, the guy she had been dating most recently. Each of them had a strong opinion about what might have happened and had a suspect in mind, but the investigator was never able to find any evidence to back up any of the theories.”

  “It sounds like this case is going to be a lot more time-consuming to investigate than the ones we have looked in to so far.”

  Jack frowned. “Yeah. It will take quite a while to interview everyone, but maybe we won’t have to. I’m hoping that one or two of the people mentioned in the report will stand out once we have a chance to look at the interviews. If we have to track all of them down, we will, but I agree that doing so would be time-consuming.”

  “Let’
s try to narrow things down as much as we can this evening. Interviewing two or three people will probably be all we have time for.”

  Jack agreed to my idea just as the pizza showed up. We took a break to eat the cheesy pie, which was one of the best I’d ever eaten. As soon as we had finished our meal, we settled down with the notes and witness statements Rick had forwarded to Jack. It appeared that each of the friends Lisa had gone to the concert with had a slightly different view about what might have happened to Lisa that night.

  “Maxie Morningstar told the police that Lisa had dressed skimpily that night and that was why she most likely attracted the attention of some random guy at the gas station,” Jack began. “According to Maxie, Lisa was a beautiful woman who often had men panting after her. It was her opinion that Lisa encouraged that attention.”

  “A concert seems like the sort of place that someone looking for beautiful blondes might go trolling, and so far, all of Sam’s victims were beautiful blondes.”

  “It makes sense that if Sam is targeting his victims based on looks and looks alone, he might have gone to the concert to do a little fishing. If, however, he has a different reason for choosing his victims—something more personal—I’m not sure that a loud, crowded concert would be where he would go to find his next victim.”

  “Were the investigators certain that Lisa didn’t know the person who abducted her?” I asked.

  “They didn’t know that for a fact, and there were conflicting opinions on who might have abducted Lisa, but Maxie made the point that because Lisa’s car was left at the gas station, that indicated she disappeared from there, and the only thing that made sense was a random kidnapping.”

  “I suppose a random kidnapping does make sense given what happened.”

  “I agree; however, Lisa’s friend Josie believed that she had been spotted at the concert and then followed to the gas station, which in my opinion is also feasible. As it turned out, Josie had ridden to the concert with Lisa, but when she decided to leave early, Josie arranged for a ride home with Maxie and Hillary. According to the interview conducted by the local police, Josie fingered a tall man with long blond hair she said had been sitting behind them during the concert as the most probable suspect. She had seen him noticing Lisa, and he got up and left at the same time Lisa did.”

  “Sounds suspicious.”

  Jack nodded. “If this man left the concert when Lisa did, he definitely would make a strong suspect. The third friend at the concert with Lisa was a woman a decade older than the others. Hillary was a friend of Maxie’s who was there as Maxie’s guest, and she told the police that she didn’t know Lisa all that well, though she did have an opinion about what might have occurred. According to her, Lisa spent quite a bit of time on the phone, texting back and forth with her boyfriend, who apparently was unhappy that Lisa had gone to the concert without him. During a break between bands, Lisa made a comment to Josie about Darby’s obsessive need to spend every minute with her. Hillary heard Lisa say that his clinginess was getting to her and she thought it might be time to break up. In Hillary’s mind, a clingy, possessive boyfriend made as good a suspect as any.”

  “I agree with that too. Three friends, three opinions, and all make sense.”

  “True,” Jack said. “Although we know something that neither the three friends nor the investigator knew: that Sam was Lisa’s killer, and not only did he kill Lisa, he also killed Patricia, Kim, and Jessica. In my mind, we can eliminate anyone with a personal vendetta against Lisa, like her boyfriend, as a suspect.

  “If Sam just targets beautiful young blonds, it fits that he might attend a concert in search of his next victim,” I pointed out. “Initially we thought Sam might be a young male who targeted women he found attractive who then rejected him. I know we have since altered our opinion, if we return to that idea for a moment, Sam could have been the man with long hair that Josie fingered.”

  “True. And while I feel that Sam is not, in fact, a twenty-something male on the prowl, there has been a twenty-something male at the scene of every abduction. There was the man at the counter trying to pick up Jessica who was observed by Fran, the customer who reached across the counter and pulled Kim’s hair to gain her attention according to Hannah, and Bob told us that a young man in his twenties made a sexually explicit suggestion to Patricia when she asked him if he needed any help.”

  I paused before responding. “I guess it would be premature of us to eliminate the theory that Sam could simply be a sexually frustrated young man who is targeting women who reject him, but I don’t think that is it. In Lisa’s case, Sam could simply have been some random gas station customer who just happened to spot Lisa and go after her, but my money is on the customer who harassed Lisa the day before she disappeared, as reported by the clerk who worked with her.”

  Jack looked down at his notes. “The clerk’s name is Yvette Potter. She identified the customer as a middle-aged woman with brown hair. It seems that a middle-aged woman with brown hair has shown up wherever a girl has disappeared. I definitely think we should speak to Yvette tomorrow. Maybe she can come up with a better description of the woman.”

  I grabbed photos of all four victims and laid them side by side. All were blond-haired and blue-eyed. All had similar facial features and all wore their hair long. All were about the same age and all had last been seen at around ten o’clock at night. It did seem that a pattern was beginning to emerge, and it seemed to me that a middle-aged woman with brown hair was at the center of things. Lisa had been harassed by a middle-aged woman with brown hair and Patricia had been stalked by a woman of the same description. And Jessica was harassed by a woman fitting that description too; Fran thought she might have been drunk on the night she went missing. I would need to go back to look at our notes to see if there was a middle-aged woman connected to Kim’s disappearance, but I’m pretty sure there was someone fitting that description.

  “If Sam is a middle-aged woman, as I am beginning to suspect, why would she kill all these young girls?” I asked.

  “Only Sam would know the answer to that; if we are even on the right track. We should keep in mind that at this point we don’t actually know anything for certain. I think it might be premature to put all our eggs in one basket. That might cause us to miss an important clue.”

  “I agree. But I think a middle-aged woman makes a better Sam than a twenty-something male on the prowl.”

  Jack steepled his fingers. “Again, you could be right. But even if we decide to settle on a middle-aged woman as the suspect, what do we do about it? Do we confront Sam with our suspicion or do we continue to play the game?”

  “I think we have to continue to play the game until we have found the remains of all the victims as well as the ninth victim who supposedly is still alive. Besides, other than suspecting that Sam is a middle-aged woman, we have no idea who this middle-aged woman is or how to find her. I don’t think those answers will be revealed until we see things through to the end.”

  Jack nodded. “I guess we’ll just conduct our interviews tomorrow and see where we end up. Sam told me that there were eight victims to date. When we find Lisa’s remains, we will have found four victims. That is only half. I think we need to find them all, and of course, our ultimate goal is to save the ninth victim before that person is killed. I feel like Sam might stop working with us if we jump to conclusions too quickly.”

  “Okay. Let’s just take this one day at a time,” I said. “Who knows; maybe another suspect will emerge as we continue to dig into the lives of Sam’s victims.”

  Chapter 13

  Saturday, May 11

  Jack and I decided to start off by interviewing the friend Lisa had driven to the concert. We didn’t expect to get any more information out of her than the police had in 2015, but we figured it was best to do our due diligence in the event Sam was somehow watching us. After we had talked to Josie, we could decide what to do next. We hoped to have time to do the interview and find the remains today, be
cause Jack had made plans with his mother for dinner tomorrow night. He’d even called ahead and found a hotel in Atlantic City that allowed dogs.

  Josie worked at a local preschool that was closed on the weekend, so she was free to meet us at our convenience. Jack arranged to meet her for coffee at ten a.m.

  “Thank you for taking time out of your day off to see us,” Jack began.

  “Are you kidding? I’m thrilled to have a chance to meet my favorite author. I’ve read everything you’ve ever written. The last novel was really different but so thought-provoking. It wasn’t at all what I expected, but I think it may turn out to be one of my favorites.”

  Jack smiled. “I’m glad you enjoyed it. I’d be happy to send you a signed copy if you’d like to give me an address to send it to.”

  Josie pulled a book out of her large purse. “I have a copy. You can just sign this one, if you don’t mind.”

  “Happy to.” Jack picked up the book and signed it in the elegant style I’d come to realize had been developed and perfected over the years. When he was done, he handed the book back to his adoring fan.

  “Thank you so much,” Josie gasped.

  “Not a problem at all. Now about Lisa… I understand that you rode with her to the concert?”

  Josie nodded. “Lisa and I did go to the concert together, but I didn’t know until we got there that she planned to leave early. Luckily, Maxie offered to give me a ride home so that I could stay until the end.”

  “What time would you say that Lisa left?”

  Josie narrowed her gaze. “I guess around ten. She said she had an early shift the next morning and wanted to get to bed at a decent hour.”

  “And she left alone?” Jack asked.

  Josie nodded. “She said goodbye and walked away and that was the last I saw of her. There was a guy sitting behind us. He was around twenty-five if I had to guess, with long blond hair. He’d been eyeing Lisa since we showed up and he got up and left just a couple of minutes after she did. I can’t say for certain that he followed her out, but the timing is suspect to me.”