Found With Murder Read online

  “I think Lori’s still here,” she stated. “I’ll see if she recognizes the mystery man. If he was actually following them around, she would have noticed him.”

  After quickly finishing her lunch, Rilynne walked back downstairs to find Lori. She found her sitting out on the steps in front of the building.

  “I sent Harper and Joe back home, but I haven’t been able to follow them yet,” Lori said when Rilynne sat down beside her. “I’m afraid that as soon as I leave here, something will turn up.”

  When Rilynne reached up and slid her arm around Lori, she dropped her head down on Rilynne’s shoulder. She thought that Lori might break down right there, but she seemed to be all out of tears.

  “I keep thinking that I should have done more,” Lori continued a few moments later. “I should have prepared her better.”

  “You did everything you could,” Rilynne said confidently. “Kim’s a very smart little girl. You know as well as I do that she’ll do everything she can to stay safe. You’ve taught her to comply with an abductor and not give him a reason to be upset if she can avoid it. Have faith. I know she’s all right; I can feel it.”

  Lori nodded and sat back up. “I should probably get back home,” she said. “I want to be there in case another call comes in. I should also help Joe get Harper to sleep.”

  “Okay,” Rilynne nodded. “Can you look at something for me first, though? It’s a picture of a man that Maloy said was following you and Kim around town.”

  Lori pushed the fallen hair out of her face before taking the picture Rilynne offered her. “I’ve never seen him,” Lori said after a few moments. “Maloy said he was following us?”

  Rilynne shrugged and took the picture back. “He has one picture of this man walking behind you down the sidewalk,” she said. “It doesn’t look like he was paying any attention to you, though. Maloy gave us a list of places where he saw the man watching you, so Matthews is going to look through the footage.”

  “I would love to say that no one could have been following us without me knowing, but I can’t honestly say it,” Lori stated. “Maloy was apparently watching us and I had no idea.”

  Rilynne placed her hand gently down on Lori’s knee. “This isn’t your fault,” she said. Lori hadn’t said it, but she knew it was on her mind. “If this man really wanted to take Kim, there wasn’t anything you could have done to stop it. But I am going to find her. I promise you that.”

  She knew as the words left her lips that she shouldn’t have said them. If anything happened and they weren’t able to bring Kim home, Lori would never forgive her. She couldn’t stop herself, though. Lori was one of her best friends and it killed her to see her hurting so.

  They sat in silence for another twenty minutes before Lori finally stood and sulked to her car. Rilynne watched her drive away before standing and walking back inside. Like she found herself doing every time she walked through the crowded station, Rilynne avoided meeting anyone’s gaze as she pushed through and climbed into the elevator.

  When the doors rattled closed, she pulled out her phone to send a message to Joe. Though Lori said she was on her way home, Rilynne couldn’t be certain she actually was. If she were in Lori’s shoes, she wasn’t sure she would actually be able to just wait around for an answer. She sent him a text letting him know she was on her way and informing him to notify her if she didn’t arrive.

  “Evans,” Matthews called out, motioning her over as soon as she stepped into the office. She pushed her phone back into her pocket and walked across the room to meet him. “You aren’t going to believe this.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rilynne looked around him to the television screen and her jaw dropped. “No way,” she said. She was certain her eyes were playing tricks on her. Surely she couldn’t be seeing what was there in front of her.

  “This is the second tape I’ve found him on,” Matthews continued. “He was, indeed, following them.”

  “And it couldn’t just be coincidental?” she asked. “It’s not uncommon to see the same people when you’re out and about. This isn’t exactly a big city.”

  He shook his head and looked up at her. “He was watching them and making an effort not to be seen. If you watch here,” he said, rewinding the video, “you can see him step behind a car when Lori turns toward him. He was actually doing a fairly good job at staying hidden.”

  “Did he purchase anything?” she asked. “Anything he might have used a credit card for?”

  “No,” he replied. “He didn’t go in the grocery store after them. He sat on the bench outside and waited for them to come back out. I had Ben send someone out to dust the bench, but it’s bound to have hundreds of prints on it.”

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s run his face through the registered sex offender database.” She hesitated for a moment as she watched him again move behind a car. “Let’s also look into private investigators in the area.” Noticing his puzzlement, she continued. “Lori’s cautious, especially when it comes to Kim. This man managed to follow them around without her noticing, so he might be a pro. If that’s the case, he might have been hired by someone else to tail them.”

  “If he was, it could also open our suspect pool up,” Matthews said. “Pay someone enough and they would be willing about doing pretty much anything. Our kidnapper could even be a woman who paid this man to take her. A voice distorter like the one used to make the ransom call makes it impossible to tell the sex of the person calling.”

  “I’ll call Joe and see if he can bring Harper back in,” Rilynne said as she pulled out her phone. “It may take a little while, though. He apparently hasn’t really slept at all since that night, so Joe was going to try to get him to nap for at least a few hours.”

  “And Lori was sure she didn’t recognize him?” he asked.

  Rilynne shook her head. “No, she didn’t remember seeing him around. I know she’s been a little distracted lately, between my wedding and planning her own, but he would’ve had to have been very careful for her not to have spotted him.” She paused and glanced around the room. “Start searching the database for him. I’ll also have Wooldridge send it up to Bodker for them to do the same. I’ll see what I can do about getting Harper in here. As soon as we get a confirmed identification from him, we can start a citywide manhunt.”

  Matthews nodded and headed back to his desk. As soon as he sat down, she turned her attention to LaShad.

  “Have you found anything?” She sat down on the edge of his desk and glanced over the files in front of him.

  He leaned back in his chair and groaned. “Nothing good,” he replied. “In addition to our Jane Doe, I found two additional cases over the last five years. Both were young girls found in the woods with signs of being held for an extended period of time. The first victim, also a Jane Doe, was estimated to be around fifteen or sixteen. The second, Marisa Denny, was found just two days after her fifteenth birthday. She was a local girl.” He paused as he fidgeted with the pen in his hand. “She was reported missing when she didn't make it home after school. The bus stop was just half a block from her house. It appears that she was grabbed between there and her front door. She was five.”

  Rilynne closed her eyes and cursed. “He had her for ten years,” she said. When she opened her eyes, she found LaShad staring blankly at his computer screen. “When were they found?”

  “The first was five years ago and Marisa Denny was found a few months before you arrived.”

  “So assuming it’s the same man, he's holding more than just one girl at a time,” she thought aloud. “He's holding them until they reach fifteen or sixteen. Either they reach the point where they start to rebel against him, or he's done with them when they hit a certain age.” The words tasted bad in her mouth. “He has the capability to house and hold at least three growing girls. Assuming he has a job and is acting alone, he has a place to hold them where he's confident they won't escape or be discovered. I would recommend looking into anywhere wit
h a basement, or anyone who’s filed a permit to do any work that required the underground lines to be marked.”

  “Are you thinking underground bunker?” he asked.

  Rilynne shrugged. “It would provide the most privacy. If he's out in the woods, though, he would have all the space he needed.” The thought made her sick. It must have shown on her face because LaShad just gave her a weak smile.

  “I've put in a call to all surrounding counties to see if they have any cases that match, either bodies or missing children,” he said. “I've also asked your sister to go back over all of the evidence from the first two bodies. If this same man did take Sibrian's little girl, hopefully we'll find something to tell us where he has her.”

  Rilynne let out a big sigh and stood up. “Even if he doesn't have her, this is something that needs to be given top priority,” she said. She wasn't pleased with the idea that the attention being given to finding Kim could be divided, but it had to be done. “There's no telling how many children this man has. We have to find him.”

  She walked into the conference room and grabbed Tylers and Steele to help LaShad with the new avenue of investigation. After quickly filling them in, Rilynne retreated to her desk.

  “What’s going on?” Matthews asked.

  Despite not wanting to give him anything else to worry about, she knew she couldn’t keep it from him any longer. “The young girl found last night showed signs of being held for an extended period of time,” she rattled off quickly. “LaShad found two other cases in the last five years of teenage girls being found dead after being held for close to a decade. The only victim that has been identified was grabbed when she was five and her body was found just after she turned fifteen. The latest victim was killed the day before Kim was taken, so it’s being looked into as a possibility.”

  If Matthew was cross from having been kept in the dark, his expression betrayed no hint of it. Instead, he seemed to be searching his mind for something.

  “I remember that case,” he said finally. “There were scars on one of her ankles like she had been shackled. Her parents had separated just before she went missing, and the mom was fighting for sole custody. The working theory at the time was the father had been holding her to keep her away from his ex-wife out of spite. We weren’t able to find any evidence, though.”

  “Well, it looks now that it might be a serial case. Elise is looking over the evidence from all three bodies, and the guys are calling neighboring counties to see if they can find any other cases that could be connected,” she stated. “I don’t want to think about Kim with a man like that, but it would mean he was planning on keeping her alive. At least for the time being.”

  Matthews picked up the picture of the man. “He looks too young to be responsible for the other girls,” he said. “If the first victim was discovered five years ago, that would have made him a child at the time she was taken. He couldn’t be older than twenty-five.”

  “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t connected,” she said. “He could have been trained as an apprentice of sorts. Or maybe this is the son of the man who took the girls we’ve found, and he’s being groomed to follow in his father’s footsteps. It will be impossible to tell without getting a little more information from the original cases. Maybe the first girl wasn’t taken as young. He could have been in his teens when the others were abducted and would have still been able to operate on his own.”

  “Okay, so the first thing we need to do is find the identity on the first victim,” he said. “When was she found?”

  “Five years,” she replied. “I believe it was in March.”

  She watched over her desk as he pulled out his keyboard and went to work. After a few moments, a hint of recognition flashed across his face. “I remember this one, too. We weren’t able to find any missing children that matched her description, but we didn’t know she had been missing as long as she was. I’ll start searching for the reports for the mid nineties.”

  As he began combing through the database, Rilynne turned her attention to the files Wooldridge had sent over from Bodker. He had everything they had pulled together on Maloy in hopes that they could find some answers. Despite having a new lead to work with, she still knew Maloy was involved somehow.

  “I know that face,” Ben said as he pulled a chair up to the side of her desk and sat down. “You have an idea floating around that clever little head of yours.”

  “It’s just something that Matthews said,” she thought aloud. Matthews stopped what he was doing and looked up at her. “Guys like this seem to have an uncanny ability of recognizing one of their own. What if Maloy realized that this guy was following them and took Kim to keep her safe? In his mind he’s a parent figure for her. What does a parent do if they sense their child is in danger?”

  “Get them somewhere safe,” Matthews answered. “Harper couldn’t pick him out of a lineup, though. He was adamant the man who took her wasn’t in one of the pictures we showed him.”

  It didn’t make sense. Rilynne knew Kim was in Maloy’s motel room, though all of the evidence was leading away from him. She dragged her fingers roughly though her hair as she dropped her head down hard on her desk. It was a little harder than she had intended, and she was sure it would leave a mark. She didn’t care, though. The only thing she cared about was finding answers.

  Kim was sitting on the floor with a television on in front of her. On her lap, she was balancing a bowl of cereal as she took a sip from a large cup of orange juice.

  On the other side of the room, there was a man sitting at a table with his back to her. Kim sat the juice back down and turned to face him.

  “When I finish, can I go back home to see my mommy?” she asked. “I’ve been really good. Can I see her now?”

  He turned around and offered her a weak smile. “Just a little while longer,” he said.

  Kim sighed and turned back to her cartoons. She was disappointed and sad. Her little face tightened. She was fighting off tears.

  Her eyes had barely opened when Ben pulled her out of her chair and led her into the conference room.

  “What did you see?” he asked as he shut the door behind them.

  “She's all right,” she said. Rilynne let out a sigh of relief and leaned against the table, running her hands over her face. “Oh, she's all right.”

  Ben let out his own sigh before pushing her further. “Did you see who has her or where she is?”

  Rilynne nodded quickly. “It's him, the man in the pictures,” she said. “I could feel her. She misses Lori, but she's not hurt. Whoever this guy is, he doesn't scare her. He had her in what looked like a house or maybe a motel room, but I didn't see anything that could tell us how to find them.”

  “Good,” he said. “So now we know who has her. We just need to find out where they are.”

  “I'll have his picture distributed to the state troopers and have Bodker pass it out, as well. I don't think he would have been able to get her out of town with the road block, but just in case,” she rattled off quickly. She was talking so fast, she found herself needing to stop to take a breath.

  “What about updating the Amber alert?” he asked.

  She thought about it for a moment before shaking her head. “We'll wait for another couple days,” she said. “If he knows we know who he is, he might panic. If he does that, there's no telling what he’ll do to Kim. She's seen his face, so there’d be no denying it was him.”

  They sat on the table in silence, watching the others hustle around through the window on the door. As relieved as she was that Kim was okay, she still couldn't let herself feel it. They had pictures of the man who had taken her, but they still had no idea who he was. He could be anyone, and though she hadn't felt anything that would make her believe he wanted to hurt Kim, she had no idea what he was actually capable of.

  “So how are we going to find out who this guy is?” Ben asked ten minutes later. “You already showed the pictures to Lori, right?”

  “She didn
't recognize him,” she replied. “Joe and Harper are on their way back in now. As soon as Harper picks him out, the entire force will be looking for him.”

  “Well, what are we going to do in the meantime?”

  Rilynne hopped off the table. She paced around in front of him, trying to clear her head. Matthews was already running through the Addison Valley database to see if he had ever been arrested, and Wooldridge had Bodker doing the same. Without a name, though, it was unlikely they would have any luck.

  “I'll have his photo sent out to every hotel, motel, and cabin in town. Unless he’s a local, he has to be staying somewhere. Hopefully someone will recognize him,” she said. “Other than that, I don't know what else I can do.”

  Ben's knuckles pulled up and dragged along his chin. “What about the biological father?” he asked after a few more minutes. Rilynne stopped and turned toward him, not sure what he was getting at. “This guy has to have some personal connection to Kim. Maybe he'll know who he is. I know he said no one in his family knew, but maybe someone did.”

  Rilynne smiled and kissed him on the cheek. “And that's why I'm marrying you!” she said. Before he could respond, she turned and hurried back to her desk.

  She grabbed for her phone and dropped down so quickly into her chair that it rolled out from under her and she landed hard on the ground. Blood rushed to her cheeks as cheers and clapping filled the room. “Oh, hush!” she called out.

  “And that's why I'm marrying you,” Ben chuckled as he reached down and pulled her back up.

  Rilynne pulled her chair back in and reached again for her phone, avoiding meeting anyone's eye.

  “Well,” she said when she hung up minutes later. “Fore is working now but will go into the station in the morning. Hopefully he’ll recognize our guy and can give us a name.”