The Hunted Girls

by Jenna Kernan

  Her stomach twisted, but she managed to hold her tight smile.

  “Always.”

  “See you soon?”

  “Count on it.”

  They said their good-byes and she tucked away her phone.

  At the hotel she learned that Skogen had a place rented for her team. Somewhere the killer didn’t know about. Tina told her that they could move in immediately.

  They checked out together, moving to a turnkey town house in a gated community. Skogen’s team escorted them to ensure they were not followed.

  It did not take Tina or Juliette long to recognize the tension vibrating between her and Demko.

  Juliette pulled her aside as they were retrieving their luggage from their vehicles.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “It’s nothing. We just had a tiny disagreement.”

  Juliette gave her a skeptical look. “Doesn’t seem tiny.”

  Nadine lowered her largest suitcase to the ground and extended the handle. Then she grabbed the carry-on. It thumped to the pavement. She really needed to get that brick out of her luggage.

  Beside her, Juliette shouldered a large duffel and grabbed her fishing pole.

  “Okay. I won’t pry. But I’m here if you want to talk.”

  “We’re all here. Aren’t we?”

  April Rupp, the owner of the adjoining town house and their new landlady, stepped out on her landing for the fifth time since handing over the keys to Demko.

  It annoyed Nadine that Mrs. Rupp had decided that Demko was the leader of this group. The woman was chatty, and Nadine suspected she used her front gardens as a means to gossip with neighbors.

  The woman wore oversized sunglasses and her broad-brimmed hat made it impossible to see anything of her hair. She had an athletic figure and Nadine judged her to be in her mid-sixties. From the snatches of conversation she overheard, Rupp was from South Carolina’s Lowcountry, was recently widowed and lived with two elderly dogs and one new kitten. She had brought her dogs out to meet Molly, and all three seemed to be getting along in a blur of sniffing and tail wags.

  Nadine had left it to Demko, the presumed leader, to furnish the information he wished without revealing anything that could not be blathered about the neighborhood. The agreed-upon story was that they had a short-term contract with the state, surveying infrastructure.

  Nadine thought Juliette extremely brave to put Jack-Jack’s cage on the landing so that the dogs could get acquainted with the cockatoo. But when Radar, Mrs. Rupp’s dachshund, got too close, Jack-Jack nipped his nose, and Nadine recognized she’d underestimated the bird, who did not need defending. Radar yipped and retreated.

  Tina wisely carried her gray-and-white tabby cat, Muffin, into the room that she and Juliette decided to share so that the study with the sleeper sofa could be used as a work area for all of them.

  Nadine left the unpacking for later and hooked her laptop to the Ethernet in the study, diving back into her work, interrupted around suppertime by the enticing aroma of fried food.

  In the kitchen, she discovered Clint setting out paper plates and Tina and Juliette unpacking containers as Molly watched the proceedings with interest.

  Nadine thought that communal living might not be so bad after all.

  “Mrs. Rupp stopped by again. Brought brownies,” said Tina.

  “She said, ‘The normal kind’!” Juliette laughed. “Gave her a chance to snoop around. Took me almost twenty minutes to get her out the door. She’s harder to get rid of than bedbugs.”

  Despite everything, despite the fact they were only all here because a killer was directly trying to access Nadine, she felt oddly safe and happy with her friends about her. The fact that the town house had a security system didn’t hurt.

  Although things were smooth on her living situation, the strain continued with Demko. Tina and Juliette did their best to ignore the tension.

  They were all keenly aware that another day had passed with no sign of Linda Tolan.

  The badly decomposed body, found in the water outside Fort McCoy, remained unidentified, but no women had gone missing.

  Juliette had told her that a backlog at the ME’s office had pushed the autopsy until next week.

  Her team members were not the only ones frustrated. Skogen and his team seemed to think she could magically identify their unsub from the information they’d collected.

  “It’s like having a family,” said Tina, passing the brownies and bringing Nadine out of her thoughts.

  Her comment struck Nadine hard. None of them had normal families. All were complicated: Nadine and Demko adopted by aunts, Juliette adopted by the same DA who convicted her mother, and Tina spending her teen years in foster care.

  After the brownies had made their rounds, Juliette passed out what looked like a DNA bar graph to each of them.

  “What’s this?” asked Tina.

  But Nadine knew. It was the enzyme sequence testing that would show if they had the genes that might indicate a predisposition to violence and murder. Juliette already had their results.

  “How’d you get this so fast?” asked Demko.

  “Polytech is close by and I went to school with a guy that works there.”

  Polytech was at least ninety minutes away, but Juliette had obviously found the time. Nadine realized that with the initial victims’ bodies now released to their families for burial, Juliette might not have very much to do.

  “These are our tests?” squeaked Tina, studying the printout. “What does it say?”

  “Let me preface this by saying the relationship between violent offenses and this sequence is in dispute by experts,” said Juliette.

  Tina gave her a blank look.

  “Researchers don’t agree because the study’s subject pool was exceedingly small and from an all-male prison population. So please don’t place too much weight on the results.”

  “What are the results?” asked Nadine.

  Juliette read from a sheet of copy paper. “Juliette Hartfield, positive.” She glanced at them. “That means, yes, I have this sequence.” She returned her attention to the sheet. “Arlo Howler, positive.”

  Nadine sucked in a breath. Demko scowled at Nadine.

  “He gave permission,” she said.

  Juliette continued. “Clinton Demko, negative. Tina Ruz, negative.”

  Tina sagged, head down. Demko turned his worried expression on Nadine.

  “Nadine Finch, positive.” Juliette lowered the page.

  “Fifty-fifty,” murmured Demko. “Me, no. You, yes.”

  Nadine’s head sank. Both she and Arlo had the gene repeats. Both carried the genetic marker for violence.

  Juliette placed a hand on Nadine’s knee. “You’re a good person, Nadine. Don’t let this make you doubt that for a minute. These really don’t mean anything.”

  But it did matter. She never believed she could be completely good.

  Nadine’s phone vibrated with a text. She’d been sitting alone in her room, processing her thoughts around the gene sequencing. It confirmed all her worst fears. And what could it mean for her and Demko?

  She returned to her friends, still seated at the kitchen table, to read them the text.

  “Skogen wrote: ‘Orlando Star asked me to confirm that Dr. Nadine Finch is our lead profiler.’”

  The word was out. And there was no more hiding for Nadine.

  Seventeen

  SUNDAY

  Nadine was the lead headline the following day. Skogen had given no comment. But the paper had confirmation from an anonymous source. The article highlighted her role in the capture of the Copycat Killer, her mother’s horrific crimes and even gave a summary of the conviction of her murderous grandfather.

  Alone at the kitchen dinette, Nadine studied the newspaper article on her laptop in their new residence. Both Tina and Juliette were out jogging, so she had a few moments’ peace before heading up to Lawtey to visit Arlo.

  Nadine had not planned to visit h
im this weekend, but their recent phone conversation had changed her mind.

  She had nearly completed reading and her second cup of coffee when there was a hammering on the front door. Muffin, who, she had not realized, was in the room, shot off the adjacent chair and darted out, and she followed.

  Demko pounded down the hall in his gym shorts.

  “Don’t answer that!” He hurried past her to the foyer. At the entry, he pushed Molly away with his leg and held his pistol behind his back as he opened the door.

  She had expected reporters, but it was Mrs. Rupp, dressed in jean shorts and a floral top. Without her hat and sunglasses, Nadine noted, her face showed a deep tan that made her sun-damaged skin look weathered as old wood.

  She gripped the Saturday paper in her hand.

  “I had no idea you were FBI or what you all were tied up in. Had I known, I never would have sublet this place.”

  “Sorry you’re unhappy,” said Demko. He stepped out onto the stoop. “But I believe you signed the agreement.”

  “I want you out. The lot of you.” She aimed the paper at Nadine, who now stood in the doorway.

  Across the cul-de-sac, beyond the parked cars, a man paused to watch the scene as his Jack Russell terrier sniffed at a mailbox. Nadine glanced back to Demko.

  “Unfortunately, we have a legally binding contract,” said Demko.

  “We’ll see about that. I’m calling my lawyer.”

  “You do that. Have a nice day.”

  Rupp was not finished, but Demko motioned Nadine inside and then closed and locked the door.

  Demko turned to her. “She’s going to call the newspapers. Guaranteed.”

  “They’ll come here. Camp out front. And if they know where I am, so will he.” Her words sounded frantic, disjointed. Nadine clutched her empty coffee mug feeling the tears welling up. “The case has stalled and we haven’t found Linda Tolan. By now, she’s probably dead.”

  “Come here,” he ordered.

  She did and he folded her into his strong arms. Molly jumped up, trying to lick Nadine’s face.

  Nadine was still crying when her phone began ringing.

  “They got my number,” she said, drawing back, certain it was a reporter. But a check showed it was Skogen. She took the call. “What’s up?”

  “I wanted to alert you that the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office has informed me that your brother, Arlo Howler, helped his officers identify the possible search location of two missing persons in a cold case. He pinpointed a search area within the National Forest.”

  “What? When?”

  “Yesterday afternoon sometime. A search is under way. I’m just learning about this.”

  Nadine flipped the call to speaker so Demko could hear.

  “So my brother was out of prison yesterday?”

  “Yes.”

  Nadine pressed her free hand flat against her chest, feeling the drumbeat of her heart. “I spoke to him at noon on Saturday. He didn’t mention anything.”

  “Because they wouldn’t have given a prisoner advanced notice.”

  That did make sense.

  “But why wasn’t I told?”

  “No alert to family, either. I only found out because Special Agent Coleman spotted them setting up a search and rescue operation. She called me and they just got back to us.”

  Nadine groaned and Demko stepped up beside her, cupping the phone, and her hand, in his.

  “They found something. Sheriff’s office is calling in anthropologists from the museum up in Tampa. He is requesting that your ME come out. But they can’t reach her by phone.”

  “She’s running.”

  “Okay. Have her call me.”

  “Are you going?” she asked.

  “Me? Why? It’s unrelated. Graves are over two decades old.”

  Skogen ended their conversation. Then Nadine thumped to her seat at the dinette. Her stomach twisted tight as a boa constrictor.

  “I think they just found my father.”

  Juliette told Nadine that the grave site was near the St. Johns River outside DeLand. Closest access road was County Road 42. Arlo had identified a primitive camping area in the Ocala Forest called River Forest. She knew the place instantly and the connection between this location and a double murder sent every hair follicle of her body lifting.

  Her mother used to take them there to fish and one of her victims had been found in the river here.

  Arleen sometimes drove them along a remote access road paralleling the river’s course. Nadine recalled the hiss of the sand spraying the wheel wells as her mother took the rutted road at high speed and in high spirits. The reason for her gaiety now made Nadine’s skin prickle.

  The site just off the road was close to their trailer in DeLand, remote enough to be quiet, but public enough to draw the sort of folks that liked to avoid paying for camping and enjoyed illegally hunting alligators at night. Nadine knew that anything dropped in that murky water rotted or was eaten in short order.

  “Truck was red-tagged on Route 42, here,” said Demko, pointing at the map on satellite view.

  Nadine zoomed in on the donuts. The evidence was still there, a brilliant white sand oxbow cut into the emerald green foliage. “Is this where you’re heading?” she asked Juliette.

  “They just said they’d meet me where River Forest Boulevard crosses the electric lines.”

  Nadine pointed. “The turnoff is back here. If you get to the power lines, you missed it. Look on the left. The whole thing is unpaved.”

  “If you know the route, maybe I’ll follow you,” said Juliette.

  Nadine and Demko rode together and Juliette shadowed in her Subaru wagon. The ease with which Nadine found the utility trail was disquieting. At 10:40 a.m., they pulled up behind a sheriff’s vehicle and two from the Florida Museum of Natural History.

  Juliette found a sheriff’s deputy, who agreed to escort them. Deadman’s Circle looked much as it always had, a large near-perfect ring of sparkling white sand, the center of which was all scrub grass.

  Leaving the climate-controlled air-conditioning and stepping out into the blazing sun gave Nadine an instant headache. They were met by a forest ranger and second sheriff’s deputy. They followed the deputy along a narrow gash, recently cut through the undergrowth in the palmetto fronds. Nadine knew that the stem of each leaf held a saw blade of jagged barbs capable of slicing skin and snagging clothing. No one would travel far in this dense foliage without both a machete and a very good reason.

  Had Arlo walked this way just recently? Had her mother? She looked in the sand for Arlo’s footprints but saw just a jumble of many.

  She noted the new cuts on the palmettos and also the old ones, higher up, the branches that were missing from a long-ago traveler. Arlo had taught her how to find the animal trails, to make passing through simpler. She paused to finger a gash in the trunk of a palm at eye level. No animal made this, at least, not a four-legged one. Air currents rippled across her neck and she could sense her mother.

  Nadine continued after Demko and Juliette.

  They did not have far to travel. She came up short, nearly bumping into Demko’s back.

  Three men stood in an excavated pit some three feet deep.

  Was this her father’s grave?

  “Why dig here?” she asked Demko.

  He had his hands on his hips. “Dunno.”

  Juliette left them, speaking to a woman who was kneeling on a blue tarp and placing a long bone with others.

  Nadine gravitated toward the tarp upon which two skeletons were taking shape. One was completely bone. The other had some sort of desiccated flesh and tendon still connected on several joints. One of the hands seemed to be wearing a shriveled skin glove and there were patches of hair on the skull.

  Her nose wrinkled at the grisly sight. She wondered what her mother would think, seeing her work. But she knew. This aberration would delight her. She’d be thrilled to see even a photo of this carnage.

  Juliette returne
d to them.

  “They’ve got most of the pieces already.”

  “How did they know where to dig?” Nadine asked.

  The woman on the tarp peeked up from beneath a large canvas hat.

  “A tip from a convicted felon gave us this animal trail. From there we searched for changes in vegetation. The foliage over this spot was obviously different. Then we found the depression.”

  “You use probes to detect gases?” asked Juliette.

  “Didn’t need to. We have ground-penetrating radar. Got it from a grant to study Native American shell mounds,” said the scientist.

  Juliette gave a low whistle. “Nice.”

  “The soil is clearly discolored, so after we got down a foot or so, we knew we had something.” She beamed up at them, like a dog presenting a dead possum to its owner.

  Nadine’s instinct was to back away. Instead she looked beyond the woman to the bodies.

  “Dr. Burton,” said Juliette. “These are members of my team. Detective Clint Demko, and this is our team leader, Dr. Nadine Finch.” She turned to them. “Dr. Burton is an anthropologist from the Florida Museum of Natural History.”

  The scientist scrambled to her feet and wiped her hands on her thighs, removing much of the soil and sand before extending her hand to Nadine.

  “Oh, gosh. Dr. Finch, it’s an honor. Call me Claire. Do these two have some connection with the missing women?”

  Nadine clasped her hand, which was damp with sweat, before releasing it to find her palm coated with sand.

  “Not at all. This one is personal. The convict that gave you that tip was my brother. One of these remains could be among my mother’s victims. The male, if you find one, might also be my father.”

  The woman’s brows lifted in shock. She opened her mouth as if to ask a follow-up, glanced at Juliette’s face and then reconsidered. Juliette would answer the inevitable questions. Nadine was grateful.

  Right now the heat and the heavy air made breathing difficult.

  Dr. Burton left them for the pit and Nadine tried not to notice her relaying the arrival of a celebrity.