Page 27 of Aftermath
She handed it over hesitantly, and I clicked quickly through many of the documents, reading over all of the information she’d compiled.
Ages of the victims, the areas they lived in, their occupations, just about every detail of their life that could have made them a target. She’d started a diagram to link similarities, but there were none that connected all of them.
“Impressive,” I admitted.I knew recruits who wouldn’t have gone as far as she had.
“Thanks,” she breathed.
I found a stray folder with a single article inside. It filled the entire screen with a familiar news article. I’d seen it before: the final article published on the Coastal Killer’s last victim, the Jane Doe who had never been identified. She left the hospital before anyone had a chance to make a positive identification.
The article was short, discussing the curfew police implemented and the missing Jane Doe. I knew how the story ended. No one ever came forward with more information on her.
I didn’t blame whoever they were. Their luck was spent on surviving that attack, the one that ended the Coastal Killer’s rampage. For all we knew, the killing stopped because Jane Doe vanished. Their anonymity and disappearance could be the one thing holding the unsub back from surfacing again.
Their one failure.
It was also the one lead the FBI failed to follow. The woman left the hospital without a trace. It was the closest large hospital in the area, about thirty minutes away.As the article detailed, she’d been stabbed and taken there for critical care. When Jane Doe woke after being unconscious and being stitched up, she vanished before nurses could gather her information. Without prescriptions and proper wound care, I would be shocked to learn they’d survived, or with minimal health issues after all of that.
“You don’t have any more leads on Jane Doe,” I noted.
Beyond the article, there was nothing else in the folder, no information known about the Jane Doe or leads on where she may have gone.
“The police never identified her.” She shrugged. “There wasn’t much to go on.”
That was where she was wrong. There was plenty to start with, to build a profile of the woman.My mind raced with the endless possibilities. I could start at the hospital, but I doubted I’d get far, not without a warrant, and even then, it would be minimal. The hospital never figured out who the woman was, and the police already had all their information on what she looked like and her injuries.
Multiple stabs, including a substantial wound to the lower abdomen.
“I have folders on every other victim,” Lenore noted.
“Those are a great start,” I said.
I watched as she flinched at the comment. It’d been a compliment, not a way to downplay the work she’d done, but I could already tell my words had discouraged her.
She glanced to her clasped hands, watching her fingers fidget with a ring she wore, the anxious tick a way to soothe her growing discomfort.
“Is this news source still in business?” I asked.
“The Briarport Chronicle?”
I nodded, turning the article I had opened toward her.
“They are, but I don’t see the point?”
For someone as naturally brilliant as her, I was shocked she didn’t see the missing piece.
“She’s the key,” I answered.
“No one has information on her besides what is in the article. It’s a dead end. I’ve tried,” she answered. “No one wants to see this case closed more than I do, but you won’t find anything looking into her. The FBI already tried.”
She was deflecting. Why?
“Yes, but they weren’t me, and I know far more tricks than they do for finding the information I want,” I pushed.
She tensed and curled her fingers into fists.Maybe it was too hard.
“I think I have a printer at my rental,” I added, changing the subject. It wasn’t worth pushing her to close off when I’d just met her. “Would you mind bringing this laptop by this week for me to print the documents?”
She could email it to me, but I didn’t add that. I should’ve just asked her to do so, to cut her clean out of the case and continue alone.
