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Photos of a young girl in several poses were pinned up on marker boards that lined the storage unit. Among them were pictures of five men. Beneath them were their addresses, alibis, and motives. All but one man had a name.
“Lieutenant Catherwood mentioned a case about a murdered girl that Katherine had been obsessed with,” she said, recalling that conversation. “He thought she’d let it go.”
“Guess it’s safe to say he was wrong.”
“And he certainly didn’t mention it was Julie Gilbert.” Amanda moved through the space, shocked and impressed. In one way, relieved. If all Katherine’s cloak-and-dagger of having a burner phone and mystery key tied back to this, it provided an innocent explanation for both. The cash may have factored in somehow too or just been a safety net. But at least Katherine wasn’t involved in something criminal, rather trying to bring one down.
Ten years ago, six-year-old Julie Gilbert’s brutal murder had made country-wide news. She’d been tagged America’s little angel. The case had more impact on Amanda because of the girl’s name being her own. Sadly, this Julie had been raped and found beaten and strangled in an outbuilding on the property of her family home in Brooklyn. Her parents, close relatives, and family friends had been looked at but released of suspicion. The case had gone cold, and while Katherine had been told to stop obsessing over it, she obviously hadn’t. What if she had provoked the wrong person? Amanda might have been too quick to dismiss the murdered girl case as irrelevant. Then in all fairness, she hadn’t known about this storage unit before now.
“I had no idea Katherine worked this investigation,” Trent said.
“Me either.” If the lieutenant hadn’t let it slip that Katherine had been obsessed with a case involving a murdered girl, they’d be left with assumptions. The name of the investigating detectives had been kept out of the media. Amanda fixed on the girl’s face and was stabbed by grief at the loss of someone so young, in such a tragic way. What sort of monster could rape a child? Murder a child?
In most of the photos, Julie’s cherubic face was plastered with makeup, and her neck adorned with chunky pieces of jewelry. Her light blond hair gave her an ethereal glow. Her blue eyes looked into the camera with a certain defiance and utmost confidence. She had seen a lot for her short time on earth, being carted around the country to beauty contests from the time she was a baby. How would her life have turned out? Would she have developed substance-abuse problems as many people do when the spotlight finds them at a young age?
“It must have been horrible for Katherine, being on scene and seeing Julie’s lifeless little body,” she said.
“Sometimes I ask myself how I do this job. Sometimes. But it’s the wins that keep me going. Someone needs to get these violent offenders off the street.”
“That keeps me going too. Well, that and coffee.” She winked at him, in an effort to loosen the tension.
Trent walked over to the board of suspects’ faces, but she paused in front of a desk, where another laptop sat ready.
No wonder there was nothing of interest on her home one…
She joined Trent at the board. Her primary interest was in the unnamed man. His photograph was a candid shot. It appeared to have been taken at some event, possibly one of those beauty contests. He was in the background, lingering at the edge of the frame. The focus, front and center, was Julie captured mid-twirl with a hula hoop. Katherine must have come into this picture somewhere along the investigation.
“What in the world is all this?” Malone’s voice pulled her from her thoughts. He had just stepped into the storage locker and was taking it all in. Sheer horror marked his expression, his jaw slack and eyes wide.
She had called Malone the moment they cracked the unit door. “Exactly our first reaction.”
“Why the heck did Katherine have all this? And don’t answer with some smart-alecky response. She was obviously looking into the murder of the Gilbert girl, but why?” Malone kept looking around the space, but it was a lot to absorb.
“We figured she must have been there from the start,” Trent said.
“We’ll need to verify that.” Malone barely glanced at Trent. He pointed at the suspect board. “By the looks of it, these people had her interest. How does any of this tie in with Lowell Mooney?”
“If it does, it’s far too soon to say.” Amanda hated not having answers. She held herself to some high standard of needing to have one at the ready for every possible question, despite that being unreasonable.
“Well, if this isn’t connected to Katherine’s abduction, you need to let it go.”
“You must admit all this looks, well, intense. What if Katherine got close to the killer and they reacted?” Trent painted one scenario.
“They’d have killed her and destroyed all of this,” Amanda said, playing devil’s advocate, even though she wasn’t willing to simply release this find either.
“Assuming they knew about all of this,” Trent countered.
Amanda took a few deep breaths, the burden of overwhelm landing squarely on her shoulders. “We can’t just ignore this, Sarge.”
Malone was rubbing at his beard, tugging on the shortly groomed hairs. “We’ll need to reevaluate distribution of manpower. And where would we even begin?”
Amanda gestured toward the marker board of suspects. Five faces, names or no names, they were all strangers to her, but one of them could belong to Katherine’s abductor.
FORTY-NINE
7:30 AM, WEDNESDAY
Missing for 2 days, 2 hours, 40 minutes
