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Kimberly stared at the whiteboard beside her. For the first time, she realized she hadn’t written anything down. Because it was that kind of debriefing. So much information, so little that made any sense.
“Okay, let’s take this point by point. Jacob Ness does have ties to Niche.” Kimberly uncapped the dry-erase marker and wrote Jacob’s name across the top of a column. Then she added Ghost Guests as a column head. Then Mountain Laurel B&B, where she drew multiple lines down for Martha Counsel, Mayor Howard, Male UNSUB, and Cook.
Flora was staring at the table. She didn’t just look ragged, Kimberly realized. She appeared shell-shocked. The adrenaline of her momentous discovery had faded, and now the woman was crashing.
Keith did the honors. “Yes and no. Walt is Ness’s father, but he claims Jacob and his mother disappeared forty years ago. Walt didn’t even know if they were still alive. Then, one night, Jacob shows up in a local tavern and introduces himself to Walt. That was right after Flora’s abduction—so, around eight years ago.”
Kimberly nodded, and added a timeline to the board.
“According to Walt, if Jacob had been in town before then, Walt didn’t know about it.”
“Walt’s a recluse,” the sheriff said.
Kimberly got his point. “Meaning Jacob could’ve been in town before without Walt’s knowledge.”
“Jacob took Walt to where he was holding Flora,” Keith said. “An abandoned cabin in the woods. That’s why no one’s been able to find it before. It’s not a registered property at all.”
Kimberly added abandoned cabin beneath Jacob’s name. She’d never even considered such a thing. But given Keith’s point that Niche was perfectly situated as a distribution point, well, abandoned cabins in the woods would also make excellent meeting sites for handoffs.
“Did Walt know what Ness was driving?”
“An old truck. It had a dump sticker, so a local vehicle.”
Kimberly frowned. Jotted away. “Borrowed or owned?”
“Unknown. Walt claims he objected to what Jacob was doing. He even came back to rescue Flora. But Flora and Ness were already gone.”
Sheriff Smithers spoke up. “You believe him?”
Keith was slower to reply. “I think so. But Walt... he’s definitely a character.”
“Did he know anything else about Jacob? Where he’d been for the past forty years, what he’d done?” Kimberly asked.
“Walt claimed they didn’t get into the details. He was too taken aback at seeing his son after all these years to ask many questions.”
“But he was sure Jacob was his son?”
“A man knows his own blood,” Keith said solemnly.
Kimberly glanced at Flora. The woman’s face was completely expressionless, though at least Kimberly now understood why.
“Walt took you to the cabin where Flora had been held.”
Keith nodded.
Kimberly didn’t really need to ask the next question to know the answer. Flora’s face said it all. “And it really was the right place?”
“Shit brown carpet and all,” Flora murmured. She spun her water bottle in her hands.
“Okay.” Kimberly returned to the whiteboard. Though once again, she wasn’t sure what exactly to document. They had a serial predator who’d been in Niche at least eight years ago. Not the same timeline as the four remains they’d discovered, but who was to say Jacob hadn’t been coming and going for years before deciding to personally pay a call to dear old Dad? He’d been born here. He knew Niche, Georgia. They had their first definitive link. Except... where did that leave them?
“When we had Ness’s computer last year,” Keith spoke up, “it was clear he was chatting with others on the dark web. A loner in real life, but an online socializer.”
Kimberly waited.
“Maybe one of those contacts was here. Or, given Ness’s interest in porn, there is some kind of clandestine sex ring in this area. Jacob would pay a visit for that.”
“We’re not choosing between a criminal enterprise theory versus a lone predator theory, we’re saying maybe the lone predator was part of the criminal enterprise?”
