D.D. WAS JUST PACKING UP to go home when her phone rang. She’d already missed dinner with Alex and Jack. If she hustled, she could still make bedtime. So of course, her phone, ringing. On her still terribly crowded, paper-strewn desk. She’d tried—she swore to God she’d done her best—to plow through the piles of reports. But if anything, they seemed to grow before her eyes. Whatever magical nugget of information might be awaiting discovery continued to elude her there.
Phone. Still ringing. According to caller ID, the ME’s office.
D.D. sighed. Set down her messenger bag. Picked up the receiver.
“Don’t you ever go home?” Ben Whitely asked in his gravelly voice.
“Apparently not. Besides, you’re the one calling from the morgue. Who are you to talk?”
“Not the morgue. The lab above the morgue.”
“For most people, that’s close enough.”
“I have information,” Ben announced.
D.D. waited. She’d assumed as much. Ben was hardly the type to call to chat.
“I got a prelim on your body.”
“Kristy Kilker. Mom identified the tattoo.”
“Official results will take a few more days, but I got the sense you were in a hurry on this one.”
“Yes.”
“So, unofficially speaking—”
“Bring it on.”
“COD is a heart attack.”
“What?” D.D. sat down.
“Victim had a congenital heart defect. Most likely, she never even knew she had it. Furthermore, her body showed classic signs of starvation: shriveled stomach, atrophied muscles, and enlargement of the liver and spleen. Odds are, the physical stress brought on by her prolonged malnourishment triggered a significant myocardial event.”
“A heart attack. She died of a heart attack.”
“Unofficially, yes.”
“She wasn’t murdered.”
“There are marks around both wrists consistent with physical restraints. Also signs of antemortem scars down her arms, back of her legs, most likely made with a fine blade, maybe even a scalpel—”
“She was cut.”
“Yes. Not deeply. But . . .”
D.D. didn’t need the ME to say more. Both she and Ben knew some perpetrators liked to play with their food.
“Between that and her level of malnourishment,” Ben continued, “you can make the legal argument the perpetrator’s activities led directly to her death.”
“But he didn’t mean it.” D.D. stopped. That statement sounded stupid even to her. Judging by Ben’s silence, he agreed. “I mean . . .” D.D. had to regroup, gather her thoughts. “Her death wasn’t intended. If she hadn’t had the heart attack . . .”
“Then she might very well still be tied up, starving somewhere,” Ben agreed dryly.
“You don’t understand. We have three more missing girls whose bodies we haven’t found. Meaning if Kristy was never meant to die, maybe they aren’t either. Maybe they are still tied up, starving somewhere. What can you tell me about time of death?”
D.D. sifted quickly through the stacks of files on her deck, looking for Kristy Kilker, college student, who’d worked nights at Hashtag, just up the street from Tonic, before supposedly leaving to study abroad in Italy, except she’d never signed up for the program. When had her mother last heard from her? Five months ago, Phil had said. And yet at the burial site, Ben had already thought the remains were fresher than that.
“I’m going with a six-to-eight-week window.”
“That recent?”
“Am I on record?”
“No.”
“Then I’m still comfortable with the six-to-eight-week window.”
“Okay.” D.D.’s mind was whirling. Kristy had disappeared in June, but most likely had still been alive in September. Which meant . . .
She’d been held somewhere. Clearly. And not at Devon Goulding’s house because they’d torn that place apart.
Meaning there must be a second destination. Someplace large enough to hold multiple victims, given that Natalie, Stacey, and Flora remained missing.
D.D. had been focused on identifying a second person, someone who knew both Goulding and the victims and would’ve been driven to abduct Flora even after Goulding’s death. But given how well that was going, perhaps she should focus instead on finding this second site. After all, how many places could there be in Boston, frequented by Devon Goulding, that were large enough and discreet enough to hide at least four missing girls?
“I’m done,” Ben Whitely said in her ear. “That’s it. All I know for the moment. Now I’m going home, getting some sleep.”
D.D. nodded against the receiver. She hung it up without ever saying good-bye.
She was not going home. She was not getting some sleep.
Instead, she picked the phone back up and summoned the task force.
*
“WE HAVE A SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENT.” D.D. stood once more at the whiteboard, dry-erase marker in hand. She had yawning detectives crammed around the conference room table, large pizzas sitting in the middle of it; if you were going to make your people work all hours of the day and night, you had to at least keep them fed.
“COD on Kristy Kilker is a heart attack. Most likely triggered by the physical stress of her captivity. Postmortem revealed signs of prolonged starvation as well as torture with a fine blade. Time of death roughly six to eight weeks ago.”
“But she disappeared in June,” Phil said.
“Exactly. Meaning she was held somewhere for at least several months. Which means our other missing persons”—D.D. tapped each name on the board with her marker: Natalie, Stacey, Flora—“could still be alive there as well. We need to revisit our theory of the crime. Not to mention our number of perpetrators.
“Let’s assume, for a moment, Devon Goulding was involved. He has direct ties to three out of four victims, and based on what Stacey Summers’s friends have said, it’s probable he encountered her at Tonic a time or two as well.”
“He’s big enough to be the guy from the abduction tape,” Neil spoke up.
“And he wasn’t working at Tonic the night Stacey Summers disappeared from Birches. Meaning he could very well have been scoping out the scene there,” Carol Manley offered.
“All right.” D.D. tapped the board again. “We have Goulding. Physically large enough to be our attacker-slash-kidnapper. With at least one known assault, given his attack on Flora. And most likely tied to Kristy’s death, given it was the GPS data on his vehicle that led us to her body. Not to mention he has trophies from the first two victims. Put it all together, and I feel it’s safe to say he was involved in the first three abductions.”
Around the table her detectives nodded.
“Which brings us to”—she moved down the timeline she’d already written out on the whiteboard—“Flora Dane. Who disappeared from her highly secure apartment after Goulding was murdered. How? What are we missing?”
“A second kidnapper,” Carol spoke up. “A friend of Goulding’s?” She sounded thoughtful. “Or a follower?”
D.D. nodded. “Killing teams are rare, but they do happen. Husband and wife. Two males. Relatives, nonrelatives, combinations are endless. What is consistent is there’s always one alpha operating with a submissive partner. So, first question, which one is Goulding?”
Phil arched a brow. “Twentysomething male all pumped up on steroids? Goulding’s gotta be the alpha.”
“I don’t think so.” Carol again. They all looked at her in surprise. She merely shrugged. “If Goulding was the alpha, then his death would’ve ended it. Partner would’ve run away, or simply broken down, right? Ambushing Flora in her own apartment, kidnapping her . . . That speaks of confidence. Not to mention foresight, planning, and organization. That’s not submissive behavior. That’s evil mastermind, all the way.”