Page 69 of Girl, Unknown

During her phone call with him a few days before, she’d used software on her phone to track the caller’s location. The results had come back, but he hadn’t been on long enough to pinpoint an exact location. His signal had bounced between three cell towers in D.C. across a seven-mile stretch. Logan Nash called her from somewhere inside the triangle, but that didn’t necessarily mean he’d still be there now.

His modus operandi varied from kill to kill, but according to the victim sheet, he mostly opted for strangulation – usually when his victims were asleep. He was a home invader, unafraid to strike in places people felt the safest. The victims hedidkill in public areas were then transported away from the scene and dumped elsewhere. There didn’t seem to be many patterns to his killing and disposal methods, as victims of his had cropped up in woods, rivers, dumpsters, roadsides, and abandoned buildings around the country. The main consistent was the diamond that Logan carved into their skins. Sometimes it was a deep scar on their forearms, sometimes it was hidden on the soles of their feet.

Another thing these hits had in common was that Logan Nash used the elements to his advantage. A majority of his victims had been discovered either in the blistering heat or the pouring rain, something that Robert Reed had emphasized in his notes.

It may not be a coincidence that the remains of the suspect’s potential victims appear in batches. On July 17, 2006, the five bodies mentioned above were discovered in wooded areas within one mile of each other. The body of Hannah Morgan, 39, had been unearthed by a dog walker that same morning, which led police to the mass grave in Virginia’s Warrington backwoods. Such a day was unusually hot – 107.5 Fahrenheit, leading me to believe that the suspect was trying to take advantage of the heat to expedite decomposition. Forensic analysis determined that each of the victims had passed away within four hours of being discovered, and found excessive water retention in every victim.

Ella couldn’t imagine a scenario where one killer – even someone as capable as Logan Nash – could murder and dispose of five separate victims within a four-hour period. Such a feat was close to impossible given the logistics, which prompted one of three possible conclusions.

Number one, Logan Nash did not work alone.

Number two, his victims were pre-prepared for him.

Given what she knew about the man behind the mask, she didn’t believe either of these were possible. Nash was a lone ranger, and he slayed his victims either in their homes or on the streets.

Which left only one, improbable-but-not-impossible conclusion.

Nash did not kill these five victims within four hours, but was simply able to give the illusion that he had.

Logan disguises himself as an everyman. He works a job, has a family, hides in plain sight. He has somewhere private, somewhere large that he can operate in. Could be a house, basement, rented facility.

Clarissa’s words coming back to her.

If Logan Nash was indeed the proficient killing machine he claimed to be, then he’d have significant murder tools at his disposal, a lot more than the standard rope, mask, and black gloves that America’s customary serial killers favored so much. Not only would he have the instruments to dispatch victims and cover his tracks, but he’d have a place to use as his own in case he needed to store bodies.

And since Nash was an apparent family man, it wouldn’t be his house. He kept his personal and murderous lives separate.

It was no secret that the Red Diamonds operated various businesses around D.C and Virginia, usually ones with a criminal, exploitable bent - like liquor stores or gambling dens. Would it be a stretch to think they might have a business that Logan could use for his own benefit while masquerading as a legitimate operation?

Ella racked her brain, crafting theories, finding the discrepancies, discarding the impossibilities. The five-bodies-at-once wasn’t unique, either. According to Robert’s reports, bodies regularly showed up in clusters of two or three.

On the phone, she remembered he’d said:I might even stretch this one out, lock you away where I locked all the others.

Logan Nash didn’t kill and dispose of his victims immediately. He had the means of storing them until he could dispose of them at an opportune time.

But where?

The clues had to be somewhere in these documents. She had every detail she needed, everything but his identity. On the phone to her, Logan had said,this is my home, but I’ve got bodies in every state,so she concluded that he must live and work in D.C. Therefore, his little torture chamber or whatever it was would be here too. He wouldn’t risk transporting bodies far and wide, especially not across state lines.

So he kept them here, but where?

Ella pressed her palms to her eyes, embraced the darkness, and let herself fall into the unconscious space between dream and reality. She lined up all the information in a linear format, playing through visualized scenes like a movie reel. What patterns did she see? What elements cropped up that didn’t need to be there? As with every case, the anomalies were as revealing as the facts.

She unglued her hands from her face, reached for her drink beside her. Ripley’s mention of her being dehydrated had stuck with her, so she’d gone for water over coffee. Less chance of a headache, less chance of getting the caffeine jitters.

Ella held the glass tightly, swirling it around like a mini tsunami. She saw something in there, something that fired up every nerve ending in her body.

Then her heart began to beat a little bit faster.

She lay the glass back down, scanned the victims section one more time. She speed-read it through, keeping a mental scorecard every time a particular term or reference cropped up.

Forensic analysis determined that each of the victims had passed away within four hours of being discovered, and found excessive water retention in each of the victims.

Debra Muldoon’s cause of death could not be determined, but autopsy results showed extensive water retention in her lungs and stomach. Possible drowning.

There were no visible bruises or ligature marks on Harry Redmond’s body other than scrapes on his palm and unusual water marks beneath his fingernails.

“Water,” she said aloud.

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