Page 35 of Water's Edge

Patterns are a magnet for killers.

I think of what I haven’t done and what I still have to do when Sheriff Gray calls.

“I’ve got Leann Truitt’s driver’s license information if you’re ready to copy.”

I don’t need a pen and paper.

“Go.”

He reads off the information. The physical description matches perfectly. The address on the license isn’t where I am at present, but she moved here a year ago according to the Bobbsey twin. Gray tells me she owns a ’93 Subaru. Forest-green. He gives me the plate number.

“The vehicle isn’t here,” I say, adding, “How does she go to the grocery store like clockwork every Sunday?”

Before I let him answer, I say, “Either she has a regular ride, or her car has been ditched somewhere.”

“That’s what I was going to say,” Sheriff Gray says.

“Sorry. Just thinking out loud.”

I wish I’d stop saying sorry. I’m almost never sorry.

Next I get on the phone and call Susie at Dispatch directly. I don’t want Truitt’s name released just yet. I still have to find Jim Truitt. I have Susie run the Subaru VIN and plate number to see if it has been tagged and towed. If it was reported as abandoned, officers might have towed it. She finds nothing. I tell her to keep me advised if that license plate or VIN is run by anyone.

“Put out feelers to law enforcement asking them to notify me directly if the vehicle is found. I don’t want to make a big deal of it yet.”

“Got it,” Susie says.

I have sworn to do whatever it takes to find and stop serial killers. This guy isn’t one—not yet, as far as I know—but I’ve got a gnawing in my gut that’s about to change. I also don’t think Mindy is going to find any evidence of foul play inside the cabin. Call it a hunch.

Leann went to meet someone. And she didn’t make it back home.

Eighteen

Ronnie emerges from the cabin, strips off her white cocoon of protective coveralls, and gets into the Taurus. She wears a perplexed look on her face.

“What is it?” I ask as she fastens her seat belt.

“I don’t understand. There was nothing in the cabin,” she says. “Mindy looked everywhere. Not a sign of blood or a fight or anything broken.”

“It’s not our scene,” I say. “Leann was held captive and killed somewhere else.”

“Right, but I hoped we’d find something.”

Hope is a nice idea, I think, but it doesn’t get a detective anywhere.

I watch the road now as we drive, still thinking about what Ronnie found in Boyd’s social media. “Killing Box,” he’d called it. The pictures she pulled from his pages were of dangerous obstructions on a river or stream where tree roots or limbs are down in the water. I think of a fish trap in the river: water passes through, but animals and people are caught up in the current and get sucked in. It’s nearly impossible for them to fight their way out and get free. Boyd had pictures of small animals and even deer that had drowned there.

A “killing box.”

Sick.

I need to concentrate on talking to Jim Truitt, Leann’s father. DMV records put him in Port Ludlow. I have to know more about her.

“What did you think you’d find in there?” I ask as my thoughts turn back to Ronnie.

“I wanted to findsomething.Anythingthat would give us a lead.”

I smile inwardly. Ronnie is already talking like a detective on television. She isn’t wrong, though. I, too, hoped she and Mindy would find a note or something to indicate this woman had a life. A picture of a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. Ronnie said there were no photos. Not on the walls, the dressers, anywhere.

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