Page 36 of Rain Washed

“Me too.” Lacey nodded thoughtfully. “It’s strange she never once mentioned that Tia was being bullied to us. And it’s not listed in the notes from four years ago either. Why would Sandra keep that a secret? It could be the reason Tia committed suicide. If she was being severely bullied by these girls. Perhaps they even coerced her into the suicide. You hear about these people on social media all the time now. Hounding and taunting a victim, telling them the world would be a better place without them. Pushing that person over the edge until they finally can’t stand it anymore.” Lacey gave a shudder. “And they get away with it because no one is held accountable.”

“Yes,” he agreed, placing a hand on her thigh, feeling the slight trembling as she clenched her fists in her lap. It made him incandescent with rage too. That these people hid behind the veil of social media anonymity. They even had a name for it. Cyberbullying.

“What about the unidentified girl in the photo? Could she be one of these bullies too?”

“Maybe,” he conceded. “I’ll get facial rec onto it as soon as we get into the office.” But there was one angle that Lacey didn’t seem to have considered with all this stuff she was throwing around about bullies and suicides. “Or else she could be another intended victim,” he added quietly. If they looked at the other side of the coin, instead of fixating on the fact that Tia had perhaps been bullied by these girls—and that was yet to be proven—this photo could also be seen as a list of targets. And now there was only one of them left alive.

Lacey’s eyes went wide at Nico’s words. “Oh, shit, I never thought of it that way. But of course. The other three girls are all dead. She could be next.”

“Exactly. If the killer is picking those girls off one by one, Tia four years ago, and then Sukey and Zoya now, although I’m not sure why there was such a big gap between the deaths.”

“We need to find this fourth girl,” Lacey said emphatically, flashing her amber gaze at him, determination in the set of her jaw.

“I intend to,” he replied. He was going to switch all his available people-power onto identifying this girl, hopefully tonight. She might be the key to this whole investigation. But was she an intended victim or perhaps the perpetrator? Erica Nellenbach might know who she was if he showed her the photo, but she wasn’t scheduled to come in for an interview until tomorrow morning, and he doubted she’d answer his calls tonight.

There were so many unrelated details in this investigation it was starting to give him hives. For example, he wished they could find Sukey’s missing car and other personal belongings. Perhaps they might offer some leads as to how Sukey was abducted. And why? But they remained stubbornly unaccounted for. Nico had immediately checked all the chop shops in town to see if it’d been sold to a wrecker for parts, but that was a dead end. He’d even had police divers search in the large pools along the river where the two girls had been found, to no avail. Should he widen that search to other surrounding bodies of water? Without any clear evidence pointing to the fact the car had been dumped in there, it’d probably be a waste of time. Where else could a little Toyota Corolla be hiding?

And yet they’d found Zoya’s handbag sitting in the middle of her kitchen countertop and her car sitting in its spot in the parking garage, untouched. No one had tried to hide that; it was almost as if it’d been discarded as of no consequence to the killer. The lack of consistency was infuriating. Nico almost laughed out loud at himself. Yeah, right. Why on earth was he expecting consistency from a murderer?

“It’s going to be a long night,” he said, and Lacey nodded her acknowledgement. “I’m going to order in Chinese takeaway from down the road once we get to the station,” he added. The least he could do was feed everyone if they were going to pull an all-nighter. Because he had a feeling this was going to be exactly that.

“That’d be nice.” She covered his hand on her thigh with hers and they drove the rest of the way into Burnie discussing the finer points of the case, their hands remaining connected as one.

He didn’t ever plan on letting Lacey Carmichael go.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

LACEY WOKE WITH a start and took a few seconds to orient herself. Lifting her head off her hands, she blinked a couple of times, letting her eyes adjust to the bright room. She must’ve fallen asleep at her desk she realized guiltily. A quick glance out the windows told her it was early morning, the weak sunlight playing off the window panes. Nico was still there at his makeshift desk at the front of the room, tapping away at his computer. Tyrell was at a desk to her left, and he looked at her as she raised her head and gave her a crooked smile, rubbing his neck and yawning like a hippo. Another pang of guilt lit up her insides. Everyone else was still hard at work, and she’d fallen asleep.

Lacey remembered she’d been scanning through hundreds of images on Facebook, trying to find a match to the fourth girl in the photo. Looking at the other girls’ profiles and then trolling through all their friends and relatives, following links and hunches to see if she could track down the mysterious woman.

“I found her.” Sally-Ann was standing in the middle of the operations room, waving a sheet of paper above her head and almost jumping for joy. It must’ve been Sally-Ann’s entry that had woken Lacey.

“I hacked into the Somerset Gymnastics Club website,” she admitted. Something that probably technically required a warrant, but Sally-Ann clearly didn’t have the time or patience to wait for a judge to issue that. Her hacking skills were world-renowned. Nico often commented that she should’ve joined the IT department instead of becoming a constable. “It has a parent’s and gymnast’s portal, where they can go in and look at training schedules, awards, upcoming competitions, and, best of all, a whole album of photos of the kids going back for the past eight years. I found the exact same photo on the website that Sukey’s parents gave us. And the best part is, it lists the girls’ names as winners of the under fourteen group floor routine for the western highlands district.” Sally-Ann couldn’t keep the jubilation off her face.

“Great.” Nico stood up and beckoned Sally-Ann to the front.

Hickey appeared in the doorway, rubbing his eyes and yawning, his face curious and Lacey suddenly knew she hadn’t been the only one to succumb to heavy eyelids. He must’ve been woken by Sally-Ann’s gleeful shouting as well.

“Karl, go and round up everyone you can find. We need to get onto this right away.”

“Yes, sir.” Hickey shook himself and stood a little straighter.

Nico huddled in close when Sally-Ann approached and showed him the information she’d uncovered. Lacey stood and stretched her arms above her head. She was still wearing her cargo shorts and T-shirt from yesterday, with a cardigan draped over her shoulders to combat the colder-than-necessary air conditioning. She reached up to pat down her hair and decided she must look a sight. But then, as she looked around the room, she noticed others had fared no better. Lawson, who was still in her uniform, now crumpled and creased down the back, had huge dark circles under her pretty brown eyes, her long, dark hair also escaping her ponytail in whips. Pederson was hunkered by a desk in the corner, his normally clean-shaven countenance showing signs of a lot more than a five o’clock shadow. He also had dark rings under his eyes.

Tasmin Saito strode into the room, holding two mugs of coffee, placing one in front of Pederson and then taking the seat next to him. The Asian woman looked annoyingly well-groomed, her clothes spotless and unwrinkled as she quietly surveyed the room. That woman never seemed to have a hair out of place or let anything ruffle her. Lacey would kill for one of those cups of coffee.

More people began to spill into the room and the noise level rose higher as Lacey retook her seat.

Nico held up his hand, and the room immediately became quiet. “Her name is Teresa Thompson,” he announced without preamble.

Lacey took in the name, even as she retied her hair into a ponytail and ran her hands over her face.

“We have a home address but very few other details,” Nico went on, writing her name and details up on the murder board as he spoke. “I want everyone to throw everything they have at finding out more about this girl,” he commanded. “She could be the key to this whole investigation.” Nico tapped the pen loudly on the whiteboard, emphasizing the line he’d drawn under Teresa’s name. “Sally-Ann and I are going to check out the home address right now.”

There were a few crestfallen faces as Nico announced this. Everyone was itching to accompany him. Lacey looked down at herself, still in her civilian clothes and cursed silently. She had a spare uniform in her locker, of course, but it’d take a while for her to go and change and make herself look presentable. Of course, it should be Sally-Ann who went with him, she’d found the girl, after all. She hid her disappointment behind a tired smile as his gaze found hers.

“Saito and Pederson, I want you to go back and talk to both Zoya’s and Sukey’s parents.” He’d swapped his intense gaze to the two detectives seated in the corner. “See if they remember any more about this girl. And what they got up to together. Were they just friends at the club? We’ve already ascertained they didn’t all go to the same school.”

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