AllFreeNovel
Share Us
One Hundred Thirty-Three
Crooked Creek Police Station
Ellie and Derrick had sandwiches delivered from the Corner Café, then carried them to the conference room. Tonight, Vera had wanted Ellie to join her and Randall for a festive dinner, but Ellie couldn’t celebrate when Ava and Kaylee were still not home with their families.
She jotted the latest information they’d gathered regarding the abductions and where the girls lived, then her theory about the woman meeting Renee at the AA meeting.
“The security footage at the hospital showed that a man dressed as a janitor dropped Becky at the chapel,” Derrick said.
Ellie stewed over that fact as she ate her roasted turkey sandwich. “Then we may be dealing with more than one person.” She snapped her fingers. “A couple maybe.”
Derrick’s laptop pinged with an email alert, and he scooped up some mashed potatoes and gravy as he opened it. The fork paused halfway to his mouth.
“What is it?” Ellie asked.
“I got the footage from the prison. According to the warden, Renee only had two visitors. Her sister and another woman. She signed in asJordan Jones.”
Ellie almost gasped. That name again.
Derrick pulled up the recording of Jordan Jones’s visit.
“She wears her hair in a short brown bob,” Ellie said as she peered at the footage. “Hard to see her face, though, with the way she keeps looking down at her hands.”
But it was clear Renee wasn’t meeting a stranger. Their theory that the supposed beach witness and Renee’s AA sponsor were one and the same person might be firming up. They watched as the woman handed Renee a soda that she must have purchased from the prison store. Renee uncapped it and took a long slow drink. Her dirty blond hair was disheveled, her blue eyes flat, her movements void of energy, her complexion made even paler by the stark orange jumpsuit. Her hand shook as she drank from the bottle again.
Renee said something, her lip trembling, then dropped her head into her hands and began to sob. The woman reached across and stroked her arm, before a passing guard seemed to admonish her for touching a prisoner.
Renee sat up and wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. Before nodding and mouthing a “thank you” to her visitor.
Ellie had to push her food away. She couldn’t swallow for the tears clogging her throat. How tragic that this mother died accused of a crime she hadn’t committed and without reuniting with her daughter.I’m here for you, Renee, Ellie promised silently.
“I’ll send this footage to the lab,” Derrick said. He polished off his roast beef while he forwarded the video. “Maybe they can enhance her face, then run it through facial rec.”
Ellie checked the time stamp, then the prison report on Renee’s death. “The soda,” she said. “Renee died a few hours after that visit. The woman must have put something in it.”
Giving a nod, Derrick forwarded the video to his Bureau partner. Ellie texted Deputy Landrum:We think the kidnapper used the alias Jordan Jones. Anyone of that name in Jan Hornsby’s Facebook group?
Ellie imagined poor Renee staring at the dank dirty prison walls each night, wondering where Kaylee was, if she was even still alive, facing life in prison and knowing that people thought she’d caused her own daughter’s death. And then knowing she’d be abused by the other prisoners.
She stood, running her hands up and down her arms as she crossed to the whiteboard. “Since Kaylee was the first abduction, she might be significant.” Ellie wrote the dates of the abductions. “Kaylee was kidnapped December twentieth last year, Ava December twentieth this year, exactly a year apart.” Her mind raced to connect the dots. “But Becky was taken on June 6, a few months after Kaylee went missing.”
Ellie wrote the dates and circled them in red. “December twentieth has to be mean something to the kidnapper.” She studied it for a minute. “The girls are all around the same age. The other commonality between the three victims is the transplant surgeries.”
“Maybe it was someone who worked at the hospital,” Derrick said. “Could be someone who blamed the parents for their child’s illness and thought they could take better care of the kids.”
Ellie contemplated that theory. “That makes sense, but two underwent surgeries in Atlanta hospitals while one was in Chattanooga, so unless the employee worked multiple hospitals in two states, it doesn’t fit.”
“No,” replied Derrick. “But we now know a kidnapping team is working together here, a woman and a man. Becky was also given the medication she needed. Perhaps whoever took her has knowledge of hospital procedures, access to the medications and the children’s medical needs.”
Ellie’s pulse raced.
“It could be someone who hacked into hospital files,” Derrick suggested.
Ellie tapped her finger on the board, and suddenly the dots seemed to connect themselves. “Derrick, it’s not thewhereof the surgeries—it’s thewhen. Lara said Ava’s was two years ago, Jan said Becky’s was a couple of years back, and didn’t Forrester say Kaylee had surgery about a year before she vanished?”
Derrick opened his laptop and scrutinized his notes. “You’re right.”
Which could mean Ava and Kaylee are still alive.“Transplant organs don’t last long outside the body—maybe twenty-four hours—and all the girls had surgery about the same time two years ago. Is it possible to find out who donated the organs to each of the girls?”
