CHAPTER 8
Luke
It wasn’t hard to read the disbelief on Mina’s pretty face. She went from a curious and slightly exasperated frown to rounded eyes and a gaping mouth in a split second.
“What? That’s insane. We’re talking a sixty-year span. Even if the guy was, like, twenty, when he started killing, he’d be eighty now.”
“So maybe only some of them are attributable to a serial killer.” Claire shrugged.
Mina pressed her lips together and cocked an eyebrow. “Then the rest with no criminal record are just what? Coincidence?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
When Mina rolled her eyes, I held up a hand. “It’s plausible.”
“But not very likely.”
“It’s still worth thinking about.”
“Mina, give me another name,” Claire interrupted. “That new one has a drug conviction.”
“I still think you two are chasing ghosts, but whatever.” She read off another name.
One after the other, all but two of the new names revealed a criminal past.
“Now, that’s weird.” Mina turned suspicious eyes on me. “How did you know where to cut it off?”
It was my turn to give her the incredulous look. “Are you suggesting I’m the killer? You remember how old I am, right?”
“Maybe you’re a killer reincarnate.”
“Then that would mean the killings would have stopped when I was born, and they clearly didn’t.” I pointed to her list, which contained several names of women who’d gone missing after I was born.
Claire waved a quick hand. “We’re getting off track here. The serial killer angle is just one theory. For some of the older disappearances, we’ll need to check records. Stuff like that may not have been reported in the news way back then. It’s still worth turning the list over to Ozzie. He can get much more detail about these women and their lives than we can.”
“So, what did we really learn, then?” Mina uncrossed her arms long enough to gesture at the list.
A soft frown flitted over Claire’s face as she thought about that.
I had an answer, however. “We learned that if the missing woman is from this area, she’s on that list.” I jabbed a finger into the notepad.
“We also have a list we can cross-check against news articles and police records,” Claire argued. “We can take that to the library and look for information in old newspapers stored on microfiche.”
“I can look in Juneau as well,” I added. “The bigger papers might have more info.”
Mina let out a soft groan and sat forward, propping her elbows on the table and putting her face in her hands.
The urge to run a reassuring hand down her back blasted me out of nowhere. How had this woman gotten under my skin so quickly?
I dug my fingers into Betty’s fur, helping to control the urge to touch the dark-haired beauty beside me.
“I really hope some search we do turns up something useful. Or that Ozzie gets a lead from her body. The sooner the renovations get back on track, the better.”
Claire reached over and laid a hand on Mina’s arm. “Have some faith. It’ll all get figured out.”
Mina offered her a soft smile. “Yeah.”
While I admired Claire’s optimism and had tried to project my own to buoy Mina’s spirits, I had my doubts. There was very little left of the body. Just bones and the tattered scraps of her clothing. I hadn’t noticed anything else in the wall with her.
