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She passed by a framed photograph three times in the last hour. He was well aware of how many times that she’d walked from her living room to her kitchen, because he’d counted each trip. And with each passing, she’d yet to notice the framed picture had been moved from its place on top of the bookcase to the shelf that was at eye-level.
Did she have so little regard for a family member?
What right did she have to ignore the man who had raised her?
He’d yet to be proven wrong in his assumptions of a woman’s character, and he didn’t see it happening in this case, either. She was oblivious to anyone outside of herself.
There had been one time, though…one time when he’d thought that he could make a difference.
He startled at the sound of a puppy barking in a neighbor’s yard.
While a privacy fence had been erected to separate the two yards, the young pup must have caught his scent. Not wanting to move from his position to monitor the movements of the woman inside the house, he had no choice but to abandon his plans for now. He would check back tomorrow evening to see if the framed photo had been moved back to its original spot.
She only had a couple more days to change his mind.
If not, she would be joining the other sinners for all eternity as they looked up at the world from a deep dark hole in the frozen earth.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Brooklyn Sloane
February 2023
Wednesday — 8:01am
“Idon’tbelievethatI’ve ever seen a suspect pool quite so large,” Sylvie muttered as she stared at the 4k monitor with the remote in her hand. She shuffled some of the folders around until she was able to find the list that she’d been working on for almost a week. “Okay. I’ve got what I need to start the debriefing, but I’m going to need a cup of tea first.”
“Hey, would you please bring me one of my protein shakes?” Theo asked from his usual seat at the conference room table. “The green one, not the orange one. Top shelf on the righthand side of the fridge.”
“As long as it isn’t the yellow one that smells like sweaty socks that have been put into the oven to bake on three-fifty for an hour.”
Brook happened to be looking at the document that Sylvie had positioned on the screen, so she’d caught Bit’s reaction through their video connection. His gag reflex was evident, but he’d quickly composed himself before Theo glanced toward the monitor.
“Boss, I finally cultivated a list of local shops that replaces damaged windshields. Two have closed down in the past three years, but the previous owners still had all their records and state-required paperwork. It shouldn’t take me more than twenty minutes to create a program to run the names of their customers against those involved in our investigation.”
“Let me know what you find,” Brook said as she turned her attention back to her tablet. She twirled her worry ring as she combed through the list of names that had been added to brand new files. “Theo, good work connecting Noah Clark with Dillon Buchert.”
“It didn’t get us anywhere, other than the fact that Noah Clark dated Dillon’s sister.”
“The more information we have, the closer we get to fitting all the pieces together.” Brook reached for her stylus to jot down a note in one of the files. “Bit, I read over your reports from last night. Cody Jennings stayed at the facility all day yesterday?”
“Again. Every day this week, Boss.” Bit adjusted his knit hat as his gaze veered to the left of the screen. Knowing the setup of the van’s interior, Brook had no doubt that he was monitoring the security camera that was focused on the front doors of the nursing home. “As a matter of fact, Cody Jennings just drove into the parking lot with his mother.”
Brook couldn’t put her finger on it, but something bothered her about Cody Jennings’ change in routine. Something had prompted the modification, but did it have anything to do with their investigation?
“Theo, I think I’m going to take a drive over to the nursing home today. You mentioned that Jim Risner doesn’t have a problem with my presence anymore, so I might play a couple games of chess with Abe and Norman.”
No one had to say aloud that they were running out of time. The unsub had undoubtedly chosen another victim, and it could be mere days before she went missing.
While they couldn’t be certain of the unsub’s routine that transpired in the two weeks from abducting the victim to forcing them to leave a bloody handprint at the site, Brook didn’t believe that the unsub inflicted physical pain upon his victims. Given what Brook believed to the motive behind the unsub’s kills, those two weeks might very well be used for something else entirely.
“While we’re waiting for Sylvie, let’s start back from the beginning,” Brook suggested, leaving Sylvie’s notes on the screen. “Over three years ago, the unsub abducted five women in the span of eighteen months. Within a week or two of their abductions, they returned to the sites to leave a bloody handprint. They were never seen again, which tells us that they were almost certainly murdered immediately afterward. No viable suspects, although there was a loose connection with two of the victims involving the nursing facility. Agent Parker follows up on the lead, but he comes away emptyhanded due to numerous reasons. The abductions suddenly stop.”
Brook glanced up as Sylvie entered the conference room with a cup of steaming hot tea in one hand and a green protein shake in the other. Once she’d handed off Theo’s preferred morning beverage, she set her tea down in front of her chair before taking a seat.
While she and the rest of the team probably thought Brook’s process was redundant, they understood the importance of doing so. She had always found it soothing to go over the details each day, though they would most likely disagree. She’d experienced firsthand, during several cases that she had profiled, when such a routine triggered a waterfall of leads.
As for Kate, she’d taken Thursday and Friday off in order to sublet her apartment for the ten-week program at the academy. She would soon learn that such a process during an investigation was necessary. It was one of the reasons that Brook constantly started back at the beginning when evaluating Jacob’s case. Some might say that she was a masochist, but that was far from the truth.
