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“Laurel is yours,” I say to Lindy.
“Paperwork. I want it in writing.”
He coached her on this. Told her to make sure she got custody by leveraging information.
Unreal.
We had him all wrong.
There won’t be animal cruelty in his past. He’ll have been someone gentle, possibly naïve and trusting—too trusting. Trusting enough to have been someone’s victim.
Instead of it shattering him; he came back for cold vengeance. But why target so many? What did they fucking do?
Donny walks out again, going to get something in writing. Duke taps his pen impatiently, his knee bouncing under the table. Across from him, Laurel whispers something into Lindy’s ear. Lindy presses a kiss to the child’s forehead.
I watch, fascinated by the fact Laurel doesn’t seem appalled by the affection. An instant maternal bond has been brought forth by two victims bonding with a killer. A killer they feel slays the monsters of their nightmares.
A killer who won’t stop.
They don’t realize how dangerous this guy will become. Revenge killers have no limitations on who dies. The smallest of infractions is a death sentence. They take justice into their hands, become judge, jury, and executioner, becoming too immortal in their own minds.
Donny returns, a paper in his hand. He hands it to Lindy, and she reads it carefully, searching for any sort of a trick.
I take the paper and sign it. “This is me calling this the truth,” I explain, watching her gauge me.
She must trust whatever she sees in my eyes, because she pulls a piece of paper from her purse and hands it to me. Duke stands and comes to read it over my shoulder.
It’s a map to the burial ground, written in blood with a calligraphy penmanship, with most likely a calligraphy pen to disguise the unsub’s handwriting. He knows calligraphy?
So organized it’s eerie.
How long has he been preparing for every possible outcome?
Signed in blood is one name—Kenneth Ferguson. Only it’s not in calligraphy. It’s still signed in blood, written with most likely his finger. The strokes are shaky, as though he was trembling when the unsub made him sign this with his own blood.
That’s a level of cold that had us profiling him as a sadist.
There’s an x marking so many graves, the names of each child written in calligraphy. The only structure on the map appears to be a shed of some sort. The graves are all around it. The map goes from his home, the road names marking each turn to take. He went and visited them. The sick fuck knew exactly where he’d buried each and every child.
Sixty-nine photos. Seventy nails.
Those words come back to me, reminding me they were spoken.
I dart out of the room, leaving Duke behind to deal with the murders that have him sagging to a chair in disbelief.
I grab the page Duke left in the office, one listing all the children’s names. Our people must have run facial recognition against all the kids in the system. After being runaways, their names and photos are reported.
There’s a list of names for each photo. Sixty-nine names.
The same names and ages are written on the photos themselves.
Only one is not listed.
Hadley’s.
He spared her the indignity of our team seeing her photos next to these. He sent Lindy here instead of to the police. He knew we’d take it more personally, knew there was a stronger chance of Lindy getting custody of Laurel.
He definitely feels a kinship with Hadley, and could possibly want to see her reaction. Hadley doesn’t answer, so I tell all that to her voicemail, hoping she hears it soon.
