Page 72 of The Grave Between Us
Jacob took over working through Ian’s victimology and the hundreds of potential victims the FBI had been trying to ID as his eight years ago. Noah had never met a man who could power through so many fine details as Jacob could. Too many people mistook Jacob’s size for lack of intelligence, and he’d been pushed toward the testosterone-fueled tactical teams his entire career. Jacob hated that knuckle-dragging, hoorah machismo. He was happiest when he was burrowing through reams of paperwork, finding the narrow thread of criminality that tied a case together. Check deposits that traveled through three offshore accounts and proved fraud and money laundering, or victims’ records that revealed a single, missed commonality between five strangers. Jacob was a master at uncovering the hidden within the obscure.
“Okay,” Noah said after several hours, when they were rubbing at their sore eyes and shaking their heads. His mind spun, bleeding bits of interrogation and snippets of the case file like paint splotches against his skull. Ian’s depravity and brutality, his cruelty toward his victims, were incomprehensible. Noah’s mind kept shutting down, refusing to process the details of what he was reading. Cole going in day after day after day, trying to pull information out of him, seemed like trying to measure the distance of eternity. It seemed impossible, reading the reports. How had Cole faced Ingram or worked the few secrets out of him that he had? “Let’s run down the facts.”
He grabbed his dry-erase marker and moved to the wall—hisemptywall, where his whiteboard used to be. Kinghadtaken it. He drew a line down the center, writingBefore Escapeon one side andAfter Escapeon the other.
“The Bureau was looking into three thousand, nine hundred cases of missing adult men who vanished within Ian Ingram’s likely target range during the years he claimed to be active prior to his arrest,” Jacob said.
Sophie’s eyes closed as Noah scribbled on the wall:3,900 missing men.
“Not all thirty-nine hundred are attributable to Ingram, but it shows the massiveness of the investigation. The original team built a map of Ingram’s known locations, going through his financial, residential, and travel records.” Jacob flipped one of the pages he’d printed, a photo of the original task force’s operations center and a map of the US with a forest of pushpins stuck into it. “Eventually, the investigation whittled the files down to around five hundred potential victims.”
“Still too many for one man. They aren’t all Ingram victims. He would have fucked up, and the FBI or the locals would have spotted him,” Noah said.
“Agreed,” Jacob rumbled. “And the original task force agreed, too. But Ingram’s victims were in those five hundred, and their job—Cole’s job—was to identify which ones belonged to Ingram.”
“Did they ever find a commonality? A victim profile? Something that united a segment of those missing men?”
“No.” Jacob sighed. “The closest they ever got to establishing a victim profile was uncovering Ingram’s methodology. He came at the men he abducted through blitz attack or manipulation/ruse.”
“We saw that with Brett Kerrigan. He used both, manipulation/ruse and blitz attack. He got Kerrigan to stop his car and then came through the driver’s window.”
“Going through the driver’s window comes up a few times in the case file. Some of those missing men’s cars had broken driver’s windows when they were found, and those cars weren’t in the locations where people expected the men to be.”
“Ian moved the cars after attacking and subduing his victims.”
“That’s what it looks like,” Jacob said. “He worked in rural areas, abducting low-risk victims out of low-risk locations. He was careful, and he planned everything. He wasn’t going to get caught unless he fucked up or someone survived and escaped.”
“He did fuck up, and he was caught.” Noah kept scribbling, making notes on the wall. “And he’s going to fuck up again.” He moved to the next column and turned to Sophie. “What’s happened since his escape?”
Sophie took a deep breath. “Between the date Ian Ingram escaped custody and today, 3,511 adult men have been reported and remain missing in the United States. Unlike before, we have no geographic location data for where Ingram went or where he’s been. His bank account and Social Security number haven’t been touched. He’s lived completely under the radar, most likely cash only or bartering for what he needs. There’s been no sign of him in eight years, anywhere.”
“No one has been looking for him, either,” Noah said. “The FBI never even put out a BOLO.”
“To be honest, I’m feeling like those poor bastards did eight years ago.” Sophie spread her hands. “Where do we start? How do we determine which of these men are Ingram’s victims and which are victims of some other killer? Or victims of nature, or suicide, or circumstance? Three thousand men, Noah. I have no idea where to begin.”
“There will be commonalities between his victims. There always are. Like the Coed Killer. The victims seemed random until we understood the killer, and then they made sense.”
“It was Cole who figured that out,” Sophie said softly. “And even he wasn’t able to figure out Ian Ingram’s victim profile.”
“Patterns. Commonalities. Things Ingram can’t help doing and that tie his victims to him. We start with what we know. Let’s break down the missing men into groups. Forget geography right now. Let’s look instead at his methodologies.” Noah turned back to the wall and scribbled new subheadings beneath theAfter Escapecolumn. He spoke as he wrote. “Men whose cars were found with broken windows, away from where they were expected to be. Men who went missing in woodlands, in state or national parks. Men who went missing on waterways. Cole says Ingram has a thing for lakes and rivers, along with woods.” He tapped the marker on the wall, black dots swarming like a storm cloud. “Supposedly none of Ingram’s victims have been recovered, but how do we know that’s true? If we don’t know who his victims are, how would anyone know if any unidentified remains belonged to one of his victims? Jacob, I want you to look for any unidentified human remains found in the woods in shallow graves or near waterways. Buried naked.”
“The paper crane seems to be a signature, too.”
“Definitely. A paper crane in the mouth or inside the grave would be a strong indicator that those were his victims. Depending on the age of the grave and the circumstances of the burial, though, the paper could have disintegrated or decomposed along with the body, so we can’t treat the presence as a required sign.”
Jacob nodded.
“Ian thinks he’s better than us, better than everyone. He’s not. He’s terrifying, yes. But terrifying isn’t better.” Noah checked the time. It was already after midnight. “I’m going to stay and start digging through these missing persons reports. You guys should head home. It’s late.”
Sophie slapped the arms of her chair. “Nothing to go home to. Might as well stay and get some good work done. Not like I’m going to sleep anyway, with this in my mind.”
“I already told Holly I was working late. She told me to tell you to kick ass and take names.”
Noah smiled. “Well, if we’re going to be burning the midnight oil, we’re going to need more coffee. Who wants a fresh cup?”
Chapter Twenty
“All right,forensics on the Kerrigan case…” The FBI lab technician wheeled away from his microscope, pushing along the floor until he came to the counter where Cole and Michael were waiting.
