seemed from a lifetime ago, when I was still a different person. I compared it to the reports in the original books, the crime scene processing, the lists of evidence, the personal effects. Only this time I had the photographs, too. Lots of photographs of victims, both on the scene and on the autopsy table, including the shots taken at the abandoned car site.
If the case was an open one, if Lynch hadn’t made his deal so quickly, and if Morrison hadn’t been so hot to get the credit for what seemed to be an eight-time serial killer, there would have been more than just three binders; there would have been boxes.
Still, so much here, I grabbed at the second binder and flipped through the pages, reading summaries of Lynch’s testimony. Not much on the woman Lynch had mummified other than his statement that she was a Mexican illegal. Like Manriquez had said, he had so many of those unidentified in a refrigerated truck in back of the medical examiner’s office, the numbers were overwhelming.
Now the Route 66 victims: there were pages and pages on them, and Lynch had gotten all the details right, give or take a few memory lapses. Except for the one he called the lot lizard. The transcripts of his interviews didn’t reveal much about her or the night he killed her. I looked at the picture of what was left of her, photographed inside the car in a fetal position before they pulled her out and her head and leg fell off. I remembered Morrison at the courthouse had announced that all the American victims had been identified. But in the glow of his success, perhaps in the success of finally finding Jessica Robertson, he had forgotten about this one.
“Who are you?” I asked her. “And why hasn’t anyone cared about you?”
Maybe that was the right question, that this one victim maybe could help me, the only victim who had not been identified. Maybe the lot lizard was in the database Sig told me about, and I was asking the right question when I asked her who she was.
I looked at my watch. Three hours later on the East Coast at this time of year because Arizona doesn’t do daylight saving time. Two thirty A.M. in DC. I called Sig. He picked up on the second ring and didn’t sound sleepy. It felt like old times.
“Brigid. I got a question,” I said.
“Hello, Stinger. How are you feeling?”
He really wanted to know, but I was still smarting from his insinuation that I was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and refused to answer. “What’s that site you told me about for searching missing persons?”
“I was going to call you tomorrow. I had Lynch’s interrogation video checked against the tapes from Jessica’s wire, to do a voice comparison, especially the part where both Lynch and the abductor raised the pitch of their voices to sound like women.”
“And?”
“Inconclusive, I’m afraid.”
“Thanks. The site?”
“NamUs. It was started about two years ago after you left the Bureau. One database compiles all known information about missing persons and matches it up to another database on unidentifieds. People can find out if a person found dead or alive matches a person they’re looking for. And they can provide information as well.”
“What’s the URL?”
“www.findthemissing.org. Is it Agent Coleman you’re still looking for? Because I don’t—”
“No. You say it catalogs unidentified remains, too?”
“Yes. I don’t know if the person you need is there, but it’s been growing exponentially, and anyone can access it. No special clearance needed. Stinger.”
“What?”
“You’re angry.”
“You think?” I hung up. I wasn’t sure if NamUs could help me. I wasn’t even sure what “growing exponentially” means precisely, other than a shitload of information.
Conscious that this could be just another dead end in less and less time, I keyed in the address.
Once there, I entered what I knew about the lot lizard, which was precious little. Female. Caucasian (I guessed she wasn’t one of the illegals). Under twenty, change to under thirty to be on the safe side. Date range, the twelve months of the year prior to the first murder we knew about. Missing from … let’s try all of Arizona.
A dozen different names came up, most with photographs. There was no time to follow up on all these women. I clicked back to the beginning to see what other options there were. Distinguishing marks. Could those still be seen on the mummified flesh? Had the ME even bothered to autopsy her body,