“With the‘see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil’, and the latest victim having‘liar’burned into her tongue, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Clearly, the person doing this doesn’t think that the pervert should have gotten arrested.”
It was looking that way.
“What else do you have?” Gene asked.
Greyson shared.
“I ran a general search on the man, and there’s one marriage listed for Franklin Elston. Apparently, after he was accused of raping underage girls, she divorced him, likely to escape.”
Thank God for Ethan, who thought to check similar homicides, and Greyson for working his magic. Gene knew who the MPVs were.
Dannie was curious.
“Why the whole peel off their skin thing?” he asked. “Is that to punish them?”
Greyson paused, hearing a new voice he didn’t recognize.
And Gene explained.
“We have the other detective with us. You’re good,” he said. “Just tell us what you have. If we can get to Summer Crito, we can close this.”
Greyson did.
“In jail, he was killed by inmates. I did some calls regarding the prison in Nevada, and Franklin worked in the kitchen. He was jumped by some inmates that didn’t like his propensity to touch kids.”
Well, that made sense.
Inmates didn’t like men who preyed on children. They tended to get punchy or shank-y when they knew you were a pedo.
Greyson continued.
“They abused his body, if you know what I mean, and then they put him in a giant soup kettle that was used to make massive quantities of soup and burned him so bad, that his skin came off of his body except for his face. That was theONLYpart that was above the water. If that wasn’t punishment enough, he died of a shank to the heart.”
And there it was.
Now, it all made sense.
They had the why.
The who.
And the how.
Now, they just needed to know who was avenging his death, because someone was punishing the once-girl victims who testified what he’d done to them.
“It makes sense,” Ethan stated. “Mitch Kline said that Megan didn’t like men, and it took him a while to get her to be okay around him. She’d likely want that protection of a father figure. Ivey Slee also had some questionable relationship skills. I bet she couldn’t get comfortable in any relationship where she wasn’t in control.”
Everything was coming together.
What they did know was it wouldn’t be the female detective. Her father died working a case and wasn’t a pedo.
“What else did you find about him?” Gene asked. “Where is his wife? Any kids?”
Greyson shared.
“At the time, he did have a kid with his wife. I found the legal papers where she changed her son’s name, likely to protect him. At one point, they too, lived in this town with the sicko,” he stated. “Does the name Tolbent, the wife’s maiden name, sound familiar?”
DING.
