Page 55 of The Sleeping Girls

Heath wanted to talk.

Maybe it was time they did.

FIFTY-NINE

CROOKED CREEK POLICE STATION

Ellie wanted to scream. She was pissed as hell. Not at the Tillers, who she watched her boss escort out.

At herself for not finding this sick monster before another girl was hurt.

Nerves on edge, she sank into her desk chair, contemplating the details they knew about the case.

Derrick rapped on her door, then stepped inside, his expression solemn. “I heard about the interview. Tiller shouldn’t have gone off on you like that, Ellie.”

Ellie made a wry sound. “I don’t blame him. If it was my daughter missing and presumed dead, I’d be shouting to the rafters, too.”

“I know, but we—you—are doing everything you can. We have to follow the leads and at the moment, we don’t have any.”

She drummed her knuckles on the desk, wracking her brain for avenues to pursue. “Did ERT find anything at Ruby’s?”

“They collected samples of the blood on the rocks and made casts of the shoe prints outside. Ruby’s mother confirmed that the friendship bracelet and headband were her daughter’s.”

Ellie flipped open her laptop. “If this is a serial predator, he may have killed before.”

Focused now, they both set to work, the silence thick with the urgency to stop this madman. She ran a nationwide search for murders of teenage girls in the last year bearing the same MO but found nothing so she went back two years.

One teen had been smothered by her father and was found the next morning by her mother. But there was no mention of a white teddy bear. The girl’s father confessed via a suicide note.

She searched back another five years and found one case of a five-year-old girl dead, found wrapped in a white sheet with a blue teddy bear. Police had eventually arrested a pedophile who lived four doors down from her.

The next hour, she continued searching, tension knotting her shoulders and neck as she extended the search to ten years, then fifteen.

Her pulse clamored when she got a hit for a murder, fifteen years ago, of a teen who attended Red Clay Mountain High. She studied the photo of the victim, her heart racing. The girl had an uncanny resemblance to Kelsey Tiller.

Ellie skimmed the police report. Sixteen-year-old Darnell Woodruff arrested for killing his half sister, Anna Marie.

Ellie’s breath quickened as she read the news report for details. The fifteen-year-old sophomore was smothered by a pillow in her bedroom while she was sleeping. Her father stated that he found his stepson standing over the girl holding the pillow he used to kill her.

Ellie’s mind raced. Anna Marie not only looked like Kelsey, but she attended the original Red Clay Mountain High.

In the crime scene photos, the girl looked posed as if she was sleeping, just as Kelsey and Ruby had been. The sheets and bedding were white as was the teddy bear tucked in her arms.

Ellie skimmed the obituary next.

A memorial service for fifteen-year-old Anna Marie Landrum will be held Sunday, at two p.m. at Red Clay Mountain Chapel. Anna Marie is survived by her father, Gilbert Landrum, and brother Heath Landrum.

Ellie froze, her head reeling. The murdered girl was Deputy Landrum’s sister.

SIXTY

Ellie tapped her fingers on her temple. If Heath’s sister was found in a similar manner to Kelsey and Ruby, why hadn’t he spoken up?

Questions pummeling her, she searched deeper andfound another story offering more details.

Sixteen-year-old Darnell Woodruff confessed to the murder of his half sister and was sentenced to twenty years in the federal state prison. His stepfather testified that he heard a noise around midnight and raced into the bedroom where he found Darnell standing over Anna Marie’s bed. The girl was unconscious, clutching a white teddy bear in her arms. Mr. Landrum performed CPR but was unable to save his daughter while his eleven-year-old son Heath called 9-1-1.

No wonder Landrum had looked pale when he’d seen the photograph of Kelsey and Ruby. But he should have told her instead of letting her waste time.

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