Page 61 of Dead Drift

“We did.”

He was torn between which lead he wanted to start with.

“If you’d like, we can grab Joel’s records and go over them while we drive out to the edge of Holly Ridge where the barn is.”

“That would be great. Thanks.”

Joel Hood? He could still barely wrap his mind around the possibility. Had he shaken the hand of Jenna’s killer?

Fury flared like hot iron through his veins.

25

Dirk grabbed Joel’s employment record and handed it to Griffin as they climbed into Dirk’s patrol car, headed for Holly Ridge—about a twenty-minute drive from the station, according to Dirk.

Griffin scanned the document. “Joel transferred here from a Wilmington precinct?” That’s where Megan Atha had been killed.

“Yes. Like I said, he was eager to learn, and no one there was willing to take the time and let him shadow them, so he moved here. But he’s originally from Maryland, I believe.”

Griffin’s jaw slackened. “Maryland?”

“Yeah. Was a travel agent or something up there while he got his degree in criminal justice. Moved down here not long after he graduated, applied to the police academy in Wilmington, and then graduated from there.”

“How long after he joined the Wilmington force was Megan Atha killed?” Griffin asked Finley.

She calculated it. “Roughly three months.”

He turned to Dirk. “And how long had he been working with you when Julie Goss was murdered?”

Dirk swallowed, tapping the steering wheel. “About the same amount of time.”

Finley leaned forward from the back seat and placed her hand on Griffin’s shoulder as rage flared inside of him. He had shaken the hand of the man who’d tortured and killed his baby sister. It took all his restraint not to leap from the car and jump on a plane back to Houston, but that was not how they’d nail the scum. “Do you know anything about his life or his family back in Maryland?”

“Nah. He didn’t talk about it much.”

“I’ll call my partner, Jason, ask him to do some digging,” Griffin said as they pulled up to an old, rickety barn. “How’d you track the killer here?”

“It was a combination of factors, actually.” Dirk stepped from the car and shut the door.

Birds scattered from the sycamore trees overhead.

“First, Julie had splinters embedded in her skin. Since she was only in the water a few hours, we were able to remove and analyze them.”

“Only a few hours?” That was a far shorter timeline than with the other victims. Perhaps he was too early in his killing spree to really understand the currents and how they affected a dead body.

“The splinters came from aged wood over a hundred years old. There’s only so many buildings that old in the area. Two homes and this barn,” he said as they walked toward the entrance. “I figured an old barn near the game land made a lot more sense than one of the homes in town.”

“Game land?” Finley asked.

“It’s about seventy-five thousand acres of land used for hunting half the year, hiking the other half.”

“So if she was killed during hunting season, the sound of a gunshot wouldn’t be out of place?”

Dirk tapped his nose. “You got it.”

They stepped inside the barn, an oppressive sense of darkness swooping over them.

Finley shuddered as if she’d just gotten a chill.