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“Sylvie, we talked about this,” Brook said immediately after catching sight of Sylvie sitting with Arden. Brook currently stood in front of the table with a cup of coffee in her right hand and a frown on her face. “What are you doing in the office?”
“Saving my sanity,” Sylvie quipped, garnering a smile from Bit. He’d switched out his grey knitted hat for a mustard-colored one. She grimaced, because she’d told him time and again that the bright hue washed out his already pale features. “In all seriousness, everything is okay. I’ll explain more later, but suffice it to say that I need something to keep me busy for a few days while the lawyers file some motions. It’s pointless for me to be at home and twiddling my thumbs.”
Brook appeared hesitant, but Bit stepped right up to the plate as any best friend would do in this situation.
“I’ll have you know that I spilled a bowl of chili on my grey beanie.” Bit then pointed to his head. “Hence the reason for the yellow one, because my blue beanie has ketchup on it.”
Arden would have definitely asked how Bit had managed to spill chili and condiments on two pieces of fabric that had been on his head, but Sylvie reached over and patted the older man’s arm. She shook her head to indicate it wasn’t worth his time. Bit had a way of staining his clothes, but never once had he ever gotten so much as a crumb in the numerous keyboards in front of him.
“Arden caught me up on Tricia Zetter.” Sylvie didn’t waste any time getting right down to business. “It looks as if she didn’t have a steady boyfriend throughout high school, but who took her to homecoming and prom? Also, the unsub could be someone who wanted to date her.”
“Good idea on the high school dances, but I’m not so sure the unsub has the demeanor to stalk someone.” Brook reached out and pulled a chair around the edge of the table so that she could sit facing the portable monitor. “We’re looking for someone who is seeking answers. He tortured those women for hours. It’s as if he’s using them as a substitute for Tricia Zetter, which can only mean that she is the one who has the answers that he seeks.”
“You’re saying that Tricia has a secret that no one else knows?” Sylvie asked for better clarification.
“In a manner of speaking.” Brook’s gaze had drifted to the right of the camera, which meant that she was reading over information displayed on the screen. “At least, the unsub believes that Tricia Zetter has answers to whatever it is that he’s searching for up in those mountains. There is a chance that she doesn’t know anything. He could have made it all up in his head.”
“Which puts us back at square one,” Sylvie said as she studied Tricia Zetter’s photograph. “Well, we’ll go through her life with a fine-tooth comb until you get the chance to speak with her. Bit, if you could send me a list of her classmates, I’ll start making calls.”
“I can help you with that if you’d like,” Arden said right before the main line indicated an incoming call. “S&E Investigations. How may I help you today?”
Arden had accepted the call via a specialized earpiece for the office’s phone system. He quietly stood and made his way out of the conference room so that he wouldn’t disrupt the rest of the morning briefing.
“I’ve already uploaded the list, including teachers and school staff.” Bit was looking at someone off screen, and Sylvie figured out it was Erika based on his next comment. “Thanks, Erika. Tricia Zetter also belonged to an afterschool church bible study, so I’ll send you a list of those members, as well.”
“Erika, it states that Tricia has two older brothers and a sister. Do you know the family? Did any of them have hiking or climbing experience?” Sylvie asked as she reached for the remote. She began to scroll through the detailed information that had already been gathered on the family. “Maybe we should look more into Tricia Zetter’s family dynamics.”
“The two brothers do fit the age bracket of the unsub,” Brook agreed with a nod.
“I don’t know the Zetter family,” Erika said as she moved into the camera’s frame. She must have been standing near the window, and she gave a slight wave before continuing her response. “I lived a few towns over growing up, and the Zetter family moved from Moonshine Valley before I became a park ranger. I never had any dealings with them, but Riggs went to school with one of Tricia’s brothers.”
Brook had set her coffee mug down on the table. She was twisting the outer band of her worry ring, but that wasn’t unusual. Sylvie was well aware that Brook had reservations about Riggs, and Sylvie couldn’t dismiss those concerns, either. There was an edge to the man who had been fostered by a shitty past, and he fit certain criteria in the profile. Still, Sylvie didn’t get the sense that he killed those women.
“Bit, is there any connection between those we singled out of the search parties and Tricia Zetter?” Sylvie figured that Brook and the team had already gone over these questions, but repetition had a way of discovering vital data that had otherwise been overlooked. Bit shook his head in response since he’d just taken a bite of a jelly donut. “By the way, where is Theo?”
“I asked Theo and Riggs to canvass the area around the cabin where you discovered the blood stains left behind from Helen Beckham. The unsub has disposed of at least two bodies up in those mountains, which means that he has a burial ground.” Brook had dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a black turtleneck. She appeared ready to go hiking herself. “Going off the information that we have available, Helen Beckham was the killer’s second victim. While the unsub would have learned from his mistakes during the first murder, there is still the chance that he made a mistake.”
“I was thinking about that on the flight home. Why not just burn the cabins? Why go to all the trouble of carrying cleaning supplies and spending hours attempting to remove every trace of a murder when setting fire to those old structures would have been the simplest solution? What if he actually attempted to do so with the location where he tortured Carissa Norman, but all the killer managed to do was call attention to the crime scene?”
“That’s it, Sylvie,” Brook praised as she stood from her chair upon hearing Sylvie’s theory. “Fantastic work. Bit, search the database for structures that burned down around the time of Carissa Norman’s abduction. Erika, once Bit has that information, I want you to speak to the park rangers and the firefighters. I know some fires are allowed to burn, so also check with the individuals who were stationed in the monitoring towers during that time span. Find out all you can on those sites. We can make this work for us.”
“What do you mean?” Sylvie asked cautiously as Brook’s tone had hardened upon her last statement. “How can locating the first crime scene benefit us when there is nothing left but solidified ash?”
“The unsub doesn’t know there is nothing left,” Brook amended with a small smile of satisfaction. “I was going to propose a way that we could lure the unsub to the site of Helen Beckham’s crime scene, but using the place where Carissa Norman was killed would be even better. We can spread the rumor that we’ve discovered the site, but we’re having trouble getting a forensics team up there. Paranoia will have the killer believing there is a chance we could uncover his DNA, regardless of the impracticality of it all.”
“And if all goes as planned, the unsub will expose himself during an attempt to reach the site before anyone else,” Sylvie said cautiously as she finished off Brook’s thought process. “Brook, what if we’re wrong? What if the unsub is smarter than that and such a plan drives him to go dormant for the next two to three years?”
“The unsub was going dormant anyway, Sylvie. We can’t lose the momentum this plan offers us. Not now,” Brook murmured in determination. “Not now when we’re so close.”
Chapter Nineteen
Brooklyn Sloane
October 2023
Tuesday — 1:17pm
DarleneHummel’sbodyrestedon a pile of leaves that had gathered against a fallen log. Her sightless eyes stared up at the sky as if searching for answers that lay just beyond the thin, wisps of clouds. The color had long since drained from her face, and her lips had faded into a light purple that Brook always signified with death.
