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“The victim’s prints yielded the jackpot this afternoon. Her name is Emily Gannon. She was twenty-seven years old. A graduate of Colorado University who majored in journalism. No job history to speak of. Her social media presence was hit-and-miss before she stopped indulging a couple of years back. Someone named Linda Gannon has left an entire slew of messages begging for Emily to speak with her. And judging by all of the pictures of Emily on Linda’s social media, Linda is the mother.”
“Good work,” Jack says, his fingers tapping away at his keyboard. “I’ll track down an address.”
“I’ll probably beat you to it,” Nikki says, tapping away at her own laptop at twice the speed.
I head to my emails to send Rob a message about those cold cases, and there’s already a message from him waiting for me. I open it up, and the information I want is just within reach.
“I just got a link to the case files of those cold cases Rob is working on,” I say. “I’ll forward it to both of you.” I do just that, and soon the three of us are knee-deep in corpses and a hotbed of hopelessness.
I click on the first case file and begin to read. “Bill Atwood.”
“White male, twenty-six,” Jack takes over. “No employment history to speak of. Throat slashed, most likely from behind.”
“The other three are all women,” Nikki says while slipping a pair of reading glasses on. “Melissa Kilpatrick, twenty-nine, strangled and found in the brush out on the Devil’s Peak Trail. Janelle Medina, thirty-two, died from a nasty gash on her head, found naked in the woods out in Evergreen Pass. And then there’s Brandy Richardson, twenty-eight. Throat slashed, body discovered on a trail in Shadow Valley.”
Jack tips his head a notch. “That’s a lot of trails. Were they hikers?”
“Let’s dig into the notes,” Nikki says and we do just that.
We comb through pages of interviews, ranging from family and friends, but there’s nothing remarkable in them. Bill Atwood would rather play his guitar than hold down a job. He drifted from one nightclub to the next. Melissa Kilpatrick was a free spirit who loved art and animals. Janelle Medina used to work as a ranch hand. And Brandy Richardson waited tables for a short time at the wildlife park downtown.
“None of them were married,” Jack points out.
“None of them had any children according to the notes either,” I say. “They have that in common, I guess.”
“They have something else in common,” Nikki says. “None of them were buried.”
Jack and I exchange a glance.
“She’s good,” I say.
“I’m good,” he counters as he frowns at his laptop. “I just got the address to Emily Gannon’s mother’s house. We can hit that tomorrow.”
“You two hit it,” Nikki says. “I’m going to pull the coroner reports for our new dead friends.”
“Thank you,” I tell her. “And I know Rob would thank you, too.”
“He can thank me with dinner,” she says, collecting her things. “He’s a cutie.”
She takes off and Jack closes his laptop as well. “Welcome to the neighborhood, Baxter,” he says, making his way to the door and I walk him out. “There’s one thing to remember in our line of work”—he says, turning back—“the monsters don’t always lurk in the shadows. Some of them walk in broad daylight.”
I know it all too well.
7
Special Agent Fallon Baxter
It wasn’t hard to track down Linda Gannon’s whereabouts, now that we knew her name.
Property records show that she and her husband purchased a cabin out in Juniper, a forty-five-minute drive from Pine Ridge Falls. The following afternoon Jack drove while I sat shotgun rattling off as much information as I could dig up about Linda Gannon on the ride over.
Sixty-two. Divorced. A freelance writer who writes articles that reflect her connection with nature. Her husband worked for a Fortune 500 before taking off with his secretary. Linda received a nice lump sum settlement in the divorce and can spend her time writing about whatever the heck she wants. Four children. Daughter, Sarah, is in nursing school. Lindsay is still an undergrad. The son, Nate, is a deckhand on a yacht outside of Maine, and the other child is in pieces at the Denver coroner’s office. According to her social media presence, she has a beau, but it’s still new. And yet every one of her feeds is littered with cryptic messages regarding the whereabouts of her daughter.
It reminds me a lot of my own mother whose social media accounts are littered with the same cryptic messages. But I keep that to myself. Before I left the house this morning, Riley texted and asked if we could get together at the diner later. She said she thinks we need to get serious about Erin.
I’ll admit, I took a little umbrage with that. I’ve been dead serious about tracking down my missing sister. So serious that I’ve utilized FBI data, time, and resources without permission to do so. The only reason I’m so quick to risk my career is because I’m convinced Erin is risking her life.
“ETA, five minutes,” Jack says, breaking up the silence as we traverse country back roads that weave through the heart of the Colorado wilderness. The windows are down an inch on either side and the dense canopy of pines and the crisp, earthy scent of the forest envelops us.
