Page 3 of Chasing the Fall

“Not sure. Not going to lie, though…it’s not looking good. We have a twenty-something female, nude, with ligature marks.”

“What’s the cause of death?”

“Bullet to the brain.”

Ice crawls through my veins. “It’s him, Jack.”

“I don’t want to say that right away—” The words are half hearted.

“But you can’t rule it out.”

A long pause. Then a tired sounding, “No. No, I can’t rule it out. Especially since the fucker got away. It’s possible that Henry Thurston has returned.”

I sit down and wake my computer, the three screens before me lighting up with a blue glow that instantly soothes the anxiety I haven’t been able to quell since Jack received the call. I crack my knuckles, then flutter them as I position them over the keyboard.

“Then a-hunting I will go.”

Two

Twiggy

Bryce Savage pumps throughmy noise-canceling headphones, and I bob my head in time with his beat as my eyes scan line after line of messages. Most are either unrelated, unhelpful, or just obnoxious, but that’s the trade-off with these online chat rooms. If you know what to look for, gems of information exist.

They’re just hidden.

Probably the boyfriend. It’s always the boyfriend.

I heard she was eviscerated.

I bet it’s her boss. She worked at that club.

She had it coming.

Sighing, I exit the chat room and tab over to a national crime database I hacked into earlier. Earlier, I programmed it to run a search and find any similar crimes in other locations.

I kept the target field isolated to the state of Virginia, choosing to start narrow and gradually broaden if necessary. I input several parameters, using what I knew of Shiloh’s abduction, the previous area murders, and the new crime. A blinking cursor alerts me that the search is complete, and I click, revealing neat rows and columns of data.

“Bingo.” Over the last year, seven similar crimes were filed as open cases in the DC metro area, Baltimore, and Norfolk. Each of the crimes starts with a missing girl, usually someone working in the sex trade or another high-risk occupation. Weeks later, she turns up with evidence of torture and ligature marks around her neck. The cause of death is always a gunshot wound to the head.

The crimes have been scattered enough that no pattern sparked an alert. But I’m looking, now, and I see it. “I see you,” I murmur.

Taking several screenshots, I send the information to Jack using an anonymous and several-times re-routed IP address. Jack will know it’s me, but he’ll also have plausible deniability when he sends a request for more help up the ladder.

Henry Thurston is still active. The question is why, when he was flying under the radar in NOVA, did he decide to come back to Lucy Falls?

The whole thing reeks of unfinished business, which isnotgoing to make Gunner and Shiloh feel better.

Tabbing back over, I resume reading the chat room messages.

I heard the dead girl worked at that gentleman’s club.

Don’t you mean strip club

I pause in my endless rolling, Savage fading to a dull roar in my ears as I re-read the comment. That information hadn’t been released in the brief press conference Jack led a few hours earlier.

Shaking out my fingers again, I crack my neck and type.

Where did you hear that?

---