Page 33 of Girl, Undone
'Going through their lives.Bank records, social media, phone logs.There's a connection somewhere.I just need to find it.'
‘Leave the arrangements to me.’Ripley said and took her leave.Ella remained in the office, briefly lingering on the haunting images in the sketchbook.Then she shifted her gaze to the whiteboard where she'd outlined her new theory.The connection between Julia Dawson and Thomas Barker was the key, and once she’d found the link, her unsub was as good as caught.
The clock was ticking, and Ella knew that time was their most precious resource.Their unsub was waiting somewhere out there, and she was fully convinced he already had his next victim selected.Hell, he’d probably selected them months ago.
Two victims in two nights.
She wasn’t going to let it reach three.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Ella had reduced Julia Dawson and Thomas Barker to paper.Stacks of it covered her desk.Credit card statements, tax records, DVLA check-ins, everything.She'd gone through each page twice already, but the answer wasn't revealing itself.
Julia Dawson worked admin at a construction company.Her social media was as close to nonexistent while being existent: a Facebook account she'd abandoned in 2019, an Instagram with fourteen followers and nine posts, all of which were filtered sunset photos with generic captions.The last update was from March two years ago.
On the opposite side of the coin, Thomas Barker's existence was even more enigmatic.Ella couldn’t find any mention of him anywhere online.No social media accounts, no connected accounts.The absence of a digital presence created a void that seemed to resist Ella's attempts to color it with understanding.Likewise, he was also a man of routine, and she could find no payments to anywhere suspicious on the nights his wife had said he disappeared.
Both Julia and Thomas's cars, still parked in their driveways, offered no further clues.Neither had driven them on the nights of their murders, so tracking their locations via freeway cameras would be pointless.
Ella pulled up their work contacts next.Julia's coworkers at Hancocks Construction numbered about thirty people.Thomas managed production at Great Lakes Pipeline Systems with forty-two employees under him and another dozen supervisors above.She cross-referenced every name and found no overlap.The companies had nothing in common.Different industries, different clients, different worlds.
She looked over at the clock.Afternoon was already on the horizon, and every minute that passed was another minute closer to another body falling in her lap.
Ella pushed back from the desk and pressed her palms against her eyes until she saw stars.The frustration became a tightness in her chest that made breathing difficult.Julia and Thomas might as well have lived on different planets.Their lives didn't intersect.Not professionally, not socially, not anywhere she could find.
She pulled the credit card statements toward her.Three months of transactions for each victim.She'd already been through them once, but she went slower this time, line by line.
Thomas's purchases were exactly what she expected.Gas at the Kwik Trip on Highway 57.Groceries at Pick 'n Save.Occasional dinners at Applebee's.It was the mundane architecture of an ordinary life.
Julia's statement looked similar.Same gas station, different grocery store.Netflix subscription, Amazon purchases, and routine payments to electric and energy companies interspersed with the occasional coffee shop jaunt.
Then Ella saw something she’d overlooked.
Among the usual array of expenses, one stood out.
At the bottom of the last page showed Julia’s pending transactions yet to be taken from her bank account.
New Heights Coffee Stall.$2.00.Sunday, 10:03 PM.
But it wasn’t the amount nor the purchase that caught Ella’s attention – it was the date and time.
According to the log, Julia had made the purchase around 10 PM on Sunday evening, which, by Ella's calculations, was only hours before she'd been murdered.
She stood without meaning to.The chair rolled backward and hit the wall.Ten o'clock on a Sunday.Who bought coffee at ten at night?Unless they were meeting someone.Unless they were somewhere they needed to stay awake for.If Julia was drinking coffee hours before her murder, it could mean she was in the vicinity of someone she knew, someone she trusted, and perhaps that meeting with someone had led to her death.
She went back to the computer, opened up her browser, and typed in the name New Heights Coffee Stall.She'd never heard of it before, and it certainly wasn't one of the franchise places.
Her heart thumped in her chest as the results came up, and she didn’t have to look past the first result to get her answer – an answer she didn’t expect.
New Heights Coffee Stall – A charity cafe operating from St Augustine’s Episcopal Church.
‘St.Augustine's,’ Ella said out loud.
The same church where Thomas Barker carried a membership card.The card tucked in his wallet next to his business cards, found at the bottom of that grave.
This wasn't coincidence.
Ella dug into the link at the top of the list, and it immediately redirected her to the official website for St Augustine's Church.She scrolled past familiar religious imagery and announcements of community events, then moved past the Sunday service schedules and volunteer appeals, searching for something, anything, that could connect the dots.
