But if you add up the names on the list, we only have sixteen.”
Faith had accessed the spreadsheet on her own phone. She visibly worked to cover her shock as she asked, “What’s this column with three names? Alice Scott, reported missing October of last year. Theresa Singer, March, four years ago. Callie Zanger, March, two years ago. Who are they?”
“Singer had PTSD and something called dissociative amnesia. She can’t remember her own name most days. Scott suffered a TBI. Her parents are taking care of her on their horse farm. Zanger lives and works in downtown Atlanta, but she won’t return my calls. I DM’d her on Facebook, sent emails. I even mailed her an actual snail-mail letter. She sent me a cease and desist. She’s got a lot of money or something.”
“Back up,” Faith said. “What are you saying?”
“Those are the three missing victims from the last eight years,” Miranda said. “Singer. Scott. Zanger. They’re the women who got away.”
Grant County—Thursday
21
The tiny broken bones in Jeffrey’s nose clanged like cymbals with every word he spoke. He didn’t have the option of silence. He was at the tail end of the morning patrol briefing and already he could feel the bruises welling up under his eyes. In normal circumstances, he could walk across the street and have a doctor set the break, but he didn’t want to admit that one of those doctors had broken his nose by slamming the door in his face.
If the eight patrolmen who were watching Jeffrey thought it was strange that their boss had toilet paper shoved up his nostrils, no one had the balls to comment. Jeffrey had given them the highlights of the Caterino attack and the Truong murder, holding back the more troubling details. He believed in showing his work as much as possible. These men all lived in town. They had grown up here. They felt the same responsibility toward the community as Jeffrey. More importantly, he was about to give them a shitty assignment, and he needed them as on-side as was humanly possible.
He pointed to the numbers on the whiteboard, saying, “There are 11,680 vans registered in the tri-county area. The Grant County share is 3,498. Of those, 1,699 are dark in color. I want each of you to take a list from the stack on your way out. Do your normal patrols, but any time you catch a breather, I want you knocking on doors, eyeballing the owners, running down their details. If the name Daryl comes up in any way, shape or form, call me, Frank or Matt immediately. If anyone looks even remotely suspicious, then call me, Frank or Matt immediately. Don’t push them. Take a step back. Make the call. Keep yourself safe. Understood?”
Eight voices called, “Yes, Chief.”
Jeffrey stacked together his notes. Looking down sent a small explosion into his nose. He sniffed back blood. Stars filled his vision.
Frank came into the room as the patrolmen left. He told Jeffrey, “I talked to Chuck Gaines. He’s going to put out an alert on the student message board to see if we can locate the three women and the man in the black knit cap that Leslie Truong saw in the woods.”
“Good.” Jeffrey wasn’t holding out any hope. They had already put out an alert for witnesses the day that Caterino had been attacked. Twenty-two students had come forward, but none of them had seen anything. At least half of them probably weren’t even in the woods at the right time.
Jeffrey said, “Fucking Lena.”
Frank put his foot on one of the chairs. He rested his elbow on his knee.
Jeffrey gathered he wasn’t airing out his undercarriage. “Say it.”
“Lena’s a good cop. She could be the best cop on the force one day.”
“Not from where I’m sitting.”
“Then stand up so you can see better. The kid made the same mistake I would’ve made.” Frank’s shoulder went up in a shrug. “I was there, too, Chief. I saw Beckey Caterino. I figured she was dead.”
“Based on what Lena—”
“Based on, she looked dead. And I’m being honest here. I’m in her shoes, I got a dead student on my hands, I got the gal who found her, and the gal says she wants to walk back, I’m gonna let that gal walk back to campus if she wants to because why wouldn’t I?”
Jeffrey shook his head, because the more he asked himself the question, the more certain he was that he never would’ve let Truong go off on