Page 31 of The Grave Between Us
There was a pause, too long, too heavy. “What?” Cole asked. “What haven’t you told me?”
“We had a tail on you for nine months after he escaped. In case he came for you or tried to contact you. Or…” Michael’s voice trailed off. “We never saw him. I don’t think he was following you then.”
“Then,” Cole snapped. Maybe once, he would have been angry about being tailed by the FBI. But what had they seen, those nine months? Him and his shame, alone in his apartment every night? Some nights he would have been glad for Ian to pay him a visit, if only to put an end to his self-flagellation. But not anymore. Now he had a life he loved, a man and a daughter he cherished more than the oxygen he breathed. “What about now?”
“That’s something we’ll have to figure out.” Michael waited. “Cole, you know we need you on this. No one else understands Ingram like you do.”
“I don’t understand him. I proved that, years ago. I don’t know him at all.”
“I think you’re the only person in the world whodoesknow him. And I think that’s why he did what he did.”
“What, left me alive?”
“Yes,” Michael said simply. “We need you if we’re going to find him. And Downing needs you. Ingram targeted him. He usually finishes what he starts.”
“Fuck you, Michael,” Cole hissed. “Don’t fucking try to use Noah to manipulate me.”
“I’m trying to stop Ingram.”
A paper crane in his palm. His fingers moving through black earth and damp fog. Noah sagging against him, giving all his worries over, taking shelter in the circle of Cole’s arms. Trusting Cole’s words. It was Noah’s job to rest. It was the FBI’s job to find Ingram. It was Cole’s job to take care of Noah. To keep him safe.
To keep him alive.
“Send me the case files. Send me everything. I’ll find his trail.”
Chapter Ten
EIGHT YEARS EARLIER
The FBI wasnothing if not a machine. What Cole had said to Ingram was true: fifty cops could outwork one serial killer any day of the week. With Ingram’s taped confession to Nelson Miller’s murder, Michael, Hillary, McHugh, and the rest of the agents hurriedly assembled into the Ingram Task Force started drafting mountains of subpoenas, shotgunning court orders to every employer, financial institution, apartment, car company, or airline Ian Ingram had ever interacted with. They pulled his military records, his Social Security records. Everything they could to build a profile of the man and his past.
After three days, they had a twenty-foot-long timeline written out on butcher paper, spanning an entire wall in the little Virginia FBI RA, and a six-by-ten-foot map of the United States dotted with hundreds of colored pushpins.
The black pushpins were clustered into small forests, running in an almost straight west-to-east line from the Sierra Nevada mountains in California down to Flagstaff, Arizona, and the Navajo Nation, then out to Amarillo, Texas, over to Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee, and up to West Virginia. There were orange pushpins stuck into Fort Sill and Fort Sam Houston, where Ingram had been stationed sixteen years earlier.
McHugh, who looked like he hadn’t slept in at least a day, stood in front of the giant map and briefed the team. His button-down was tucked into only the front of his dress slacks, his sleeves were rolled up to different lengths, and he’d long since lost his tie. “After Ingram was discharged, he moved from San Antonio and Fort Sam Houston, to Auburn, California, between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe.” McHugh pointed to the first cluster, ringed in red yarn. A forest of black pushpins dotted the spine of the Sierras, all the way from the Oregon state line to Central California. “Ingram worked for three years in the emergency room at Sutter General, in Sacramento. Black pins are locations we can verify him at through receipts, bank records, travel records, lease documents, what have you.”
He ran his hand through his disheveled hair and exhaled. “And the red pins… Red pins represent men who were reported missing in or around Northern and Central California, northern and west central Nevada, and southern Oregon, during the time Ingram was living there.”
In some places, Cole couldn’t see the map through the cluster of red pins. “How many men are we talking about?”
McHugh looked down. “Two hundred and thirty-four in the three years Ingram lived in Auburn, all within travel distance of Ingram’s verified locations.”
Soft exhales mixed with curses filled the conference room, along with the shifting of bodies against the leather conference chairs. “Jesus,” Hillary whispered.
Cole’s gaze wandered across the rest of the map, following Ingram’s movements, the places he’d lived and worked. Clusters of black pushpins, surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of red pins.
“Ingram is not responsible for all of these missing men,” Michael said. He stood at the head of the conference table and walked to McHugh, giving him a nod before pushing him to take a seat. “He’s a monster, but he’s not this prolific. We’d have seen him long ago if all this”—he waved at the map—“was his work. Some of those people are runaways, or suicides, or people who disappear on purpose, for their own reasons. Stranger-on-stranger crime remains the least probable explanation. But Ingram’s victimsarehidden within these missing persons.” Again, his hand waved toward the masses of pins. “Our job is to find out who he abducted and killed, and how, and where he took their bodies. There are families out there waiting, some of them for over a decade, for answers. We’re going to bring them the closure that they deserve.”
It was a gargantuan task. Cole heard more soft curses. Hillary scrubbed his hand over his mouth, left his palm covering his lips and chin.
“We come at him from multiple directions,” Michael said. “Cole has made inroads with him. He’s established rapport and has gotten Ingram to open up about Nelson Miller’s abduction and murder. Cole, you’re going to keep at it. Work Ingram over, day after day after day. He wants to show off for you. Let him.”
Cole nodded.
“The rest of you will be taking what Ingram gives up and dissecting the details, then comparing them to each and every case file represented here.” He turned to the map. Pointed to a single red pushpin, isolated in the Sierra Nevadas. “Tell me about this man.”
McHugh squinted at the town the pin was embedded in, then flipped through his stacks of papers. “Billy Dressler,” he read. “Fourteen years ago, he told his friends he was going day hiking. His car was found parked at a different trailhead than the one he said he was going to, with a broken driver’s side window. No sign of Dressler was reported after that day, and his bank and credit cards have never been used again. No remains found.”
