Vanished (18 page)

“Good.”

Tomas looked at Kyle, standing silently beside Evelyn, then back at her. “The FBI is bringing some more bloodhounds from the closest field office.” He sighed, rubbing a beard that had come in during the few days she’d been in Rose Bay. “Different from the dog they sent before.”

“These are Victim Recovery Team dogs?” Kyle guessed.

Tomas nodded somberly. “In case there are bodies.”

In the distance, Evelyn heard vehicles coming closer. The Rose Bay residents were arriving.

“Damn it,” Jack muttered.

Then a car door slammed in the distance and a hysterical woman’s voice carried over to the officers and agents. “Where is she? Where’s my daughter?”

Brittany’s mom.

Evelyn cringed as an officer physically restrained her as she broke down sobbing in his arms. His partner was holding Brittany’s father back, but he yelled, “Did you find her? Did you find my baby?”

“Chief.”

The quiet, sad voice of the officer startled Evelyn; she turned and found him standing behind her.

His skin was ashen, and tears shimmered in his eyes. “I think we found Brittany Douglas.”

Seventeen

E
velyn felt Kyle’s hand on her back, steadying her, ready to catch her if she faltered. She walked numbly, her feet somehow moving even as her brain tried to shut down, following the rookie officer who’d told them they’d found Brittany.

A hundred feet past the cellar opening, a group of cops stood in a circle. Had they discovered another cellar?

As she neared, a rookie officer darted away, stooped over and threw up violently.

Beside her, Tomas swore and Kyle clenched his jaw and Evelyn just kept putting one foot in front of the other.

She suddenly couldn’t stop picturing the images of Brittany Douglas from the photographs her parents had provided. Her long, dark brown hair flung out behind her as she ran through a field not unlike this one, spirit in her hazel eyes and pure joy in her grin.

But she would never smile at anything again, Evelyn saw as they finally reached the cops.

Jack turned toward them, his eyes glistening with unshed tears as he shook his head.

Behind him, the cops had dug a hole, approximately three feet deep. “We saw evidence of a disturbance here,” Jack said in a shaky voice. “It’s her.”

She didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t stop herself. In the hole was a wooden box, with flowers painted on it in a child’s hand. The cops had pulled off the top and inside, wrapped in a soft blue blanket, was Brittany.

Spinning away, Evelyn took a few steps back, her gaze going to Brittany’s parents, way off by the road. Their images wavered through her watery eyes.

It didn’t help that she knew the statistics. Brittany’s chances had been slim before Evelyn had even arrived on the scene. She should be happy that they’d even brought one little girl home today.

But all Evelyn could see was Brittany, so small in that blanket someone had tucked carefully around her.

Something niggled in her mind, telling her she was missing an important piece of information, but all she could focus on was Brittany’s parents, yelling and crying, asking what was happening.

“Evelyn,” Kyle said, and she realized she’d sunk against him.

She righted herself and trod back toward the cellar where the CARD agents were climbing up, heading over to Brittany. Carly nodded solemnly as she passed, a hardness to her profile that told Evelyn she’d been at scenes like this one too many times.

It was the cops’ job to dig Brittany out, to deal with her parents. It was the CARD agents’ job to analyze the scene and advise in the manhunt for Darnell Conway. It was her job to descend into the killer’s hideaway and dissect his sick personality, and use that to catch him before he went after anyone else.

“Evelyn,” Kyle said again, sticking so close to her there was practically no space between them. “Greg is here.”

He pointed into the distance and Evelyn saw her partner coming toward them.

Evelyn nodded and kept walking, but Kyle took hold of her arm.

“Let
him
go down there,” Kyle said.

“No.” Evelyn shook her head. “I need to do this.”

But Kyle didn’t release her. “At least wait and let Greg go with you.”

She looked up at his face, the deep-blue eyes staring at her with such concern, and some of her numbness lifted. The world around her sharpened again and, with it, pain rushed in, stabbing through her with a physical intensity.

How many more graves would they uncover today?

She pushed the thought aside and nodded. She couldn’t leave this to anyone else, not even Greg. But he would be an impartial second opinion.

“Evelyn.” Greg strode up beside them, his worried gaze moving to Kyle.

They seemed to share some silent communication Evelyn couldn’t focus on and then Greg’s attention was back on her. “You ready?”

Evelyn nodded, suddenly feeling incapable of speech. She forced her feet to trudge toward the cellar and the world around her seemed to dim again, the cellar entrance, bathed in portable light, filling her vision like the destination at the end of a tunnel.

“Can you stick around?” she heard Greg ask Kyle behind her. Kyle must have nodded, because Greg replied, “Good.”

Then she was snapping on the gloves Greg handed her, slipping booties over her shoes and climbing back down into the dank cellar.

This time, instead of being pitch-black, it was lit with small portable lights the cops had set up. The bedspread was gone, bagged as evidence and already taken away. The sandwich was also missing, probably in its own bag, on the off chance that Lauren hadn’t been the only one to eat from it. A yellow evidence marker with black numbers stood where the plate had been.

Evelyn looked around the space, taking in new details in the bright light. She bent over and stepped closer to the picture stuck to the wall. It was drawn in crayon, clearly by a child, and covered in a layer of dirt and dust. There was a yellow sun in the top corner, a layer of grass and purple flowers dotting the bottom and, in the center, two stick-figure girls holding hands.

Who were they supposed to be? One girl had brown hair. Like Brittany or Lauren. Veronica had also been a brunette. Penelope had been a redhead, so neither girl was meant to be her. The other girl in the drawing was blonde. Like Cassie.

Evelyn continued to stare at it, contemplating. There were no crayons in the cellar, no paper. The picture was obviously old. Had it been drawn by one of the victims? Did it mean he’d kept more than one at a time?

A lot of abductors only chose, stalked and abducted the next victim after they’d killed the previous one. But some started a collection, keeping multiple victims alive at once.

She sensed Greg moving around behind her, taking in other details. The setup of the space, what the abductor had provided the girls—a bucket for a toilet in the corner, a bed and food. What he hadn’t given them—light or toys. Or if he had, he’d taken them when he’d left.

Evelyn turned in a slow circle, studying every detail, trying to see the meaning behind everything in the room. She and Greg didn’t speak for a long time. Finally, once she’d committed the space to memory, she looked at her partner.

Greg was kneeling down, staring intently at something, and Evelyn stepped closer.

“They found blood here when they sprayed Luminol,” he said, pointing to the sharp corner of the bed frame.

A sick feeling swirled in Evelyn’s stomach. She couldn’t see anything, which meant the killer had cleaned the blood. But Luminol applied in a darkened space would make any organic remnants glow blue.

“How much?” Evelyn asked. “And did they find it anywhere else?”

Greg’s face was grim. “They just found it on the bed frame corner, not on the bed itself. We should talk to the CARD agents and the cops. See what they know about this blood and how Brittany died.”

Evelyn nodded and walked to the ladder. It was only a few feet to the surface, but she couldn’t seem to climb it fast enough. Even with the light filling the tiny room, she didn’t feel as if she could breathe until she was back on the surface.

Evelyn grabbed at the ground outside the pit, stumbling as she pulled herself out of the cellar.

Kyle steadied her, helped her to her feet, and then Evelyn made her way over to the cluster of cops standing by Brittany’s grave. While she and Greg had been down in the cellar, someone must have told Brittany’s parents, because they were gone, and a coroner’s van was driving away.

How long had they been down there? Evelyn wondered, peeling off her gloves and rubbing her eyes, which felt as rough as sandpaper.

“What do we know so far?” Greg asked when they reached the cops and CARD agents.

Carly sent Kyle a brief, perplexed look, then focused on Greg. In a calm, professional voice, she said, “Initial assessment—unofficial, of course, until the medical examiner does the autopsy—is that Brittany’s cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head.”

Evelyn felt her throat constrict and she braced her feet a little farther apart, trying to steady herself as Carly continued.

“We found blood at the corner of the bed frame, and the shape looks consistent with the damage to her head. There’s a strong chance she hit the corner of that bed frame, likely from a fall.”

Surprised, Evelyn asked, “There’s a chance her death was accidental?”

Carly nodded. “Could be. It’s very possible the assailant pushed her or threw her and she hit the edge of the bed. I think there’s actually a pretty good chance that Brittany’s abductor didn’t intend to kill her.”

That meant there was a much stronger possibility that Cassie was still alive somewhere.

She looked out across the vast field where cops were walking strip patterns, searching for any evidence—or additional cellars. A flicker of hope burst inside of her, and no matter how Evelyn tried to force it down, it kept growing.

“Evelyn?”

Evelyn realized Carly had been talking to her. “I’m sorry. Can you repeat that?”

“I said that our ERT agents went over the whole cellar for fingerprints and we’ve only got one set. We matched them to the ones from the elementary school safety program. They’re Lauren’s.”

“What?” Evelyn gaped at her. “How can that be?”

Carly gave a humorless laugh. “You forgot to mention that this guy is completely paranoid. Either he always wears gloves, or he regularly wipes everything down.”

“Maybe he suspected you were getting too close,” Kyle spoke up. “He did take a shot at Evelyn last night.”

If he’d planned this carefully in case his hiding spot was found, did he have backup plans? Evelyn glanced at Greg and knew he was thinking the same thing.

“He’s meticulous,” Greg said. “We knew that from the crime scenes, but this guy is a planner to the extreme. Wiping down a hiding spot that he obviously returns to on a regular basis means he’s very conscious of forensic countermeasures.”

Carly frowned, looking around at the cops and agents watching her somberly. “It means he could already be gone.”

“How far could he get without his car?” Tomas asked, gesturing to Darnell’s sedan, still sitting at the end of the road where he’d left it.

Carly shrugged. “If he’s this careful? Who knows what kind of preparations he’s made? But let’s not rule out anyone else until we can tie Darnell to this location with DNA.”

“That doesn’t look like it’s going to be easy,” a CARD agent said. “I’d be surprised if we get anything.”

“The bed sheets?” Evelyn asked, dreading the answer. Darnell Conway—if he’d murdered Charlotte Novak as she suspected—was a sexual predator.

Carly shook her head. “We got a hit, but from the smell, it’s urine. We’ll test, but I don’t think his DNA is there.”

“Sheets were new, though,” another agent said. “Not like that disgusting bedspread. It’s possible he changes them every day, just like he wipes the place down.”

“You taking the mattress?” Greg asked.

The agent nodded. “We will, but the mattress pad was waterproof.”

Evelyn glanced back at the entrance of the cellar, lit up like a landing pad. She thought about Darnell Conway’s house, the sliver of it she’d seen when he’d opened the door. Expensive, everything in its place, obsessively clean. It matched what she saw here.

But why the dirty pink bedspread? It was clearly old. Maybe he’d picked it for the first girl, eighteen years ago, and kept it for sentimental reasons. Just like the drawing on the wall.

When she turned back to the group, they were all staring at her. “What?”

“We’re wondering what you think about the other girls,” Tomas said. “What’s your professional opinion? Were they kept here, too, or are we looking for more cellars? Is there any chance the others could be somewhere under this field, like Lauren?” Tomas’s voice broke when he added, “Alive?”

Evelyn’s eyes instantly met Greg’s. She tried to push all emotion out of her analysis, but it was impossible. The desire to find Cassie alive had been whispering inside her for eighteen years. She knew it was clouding her profile, but she had to tell them. “It’s possible. If Brittany’s death was an accident...”

Greg nodded. “I agree. There is a chance. There’s also a chance that there are more girls than we know about.”

Evelyn dropped her eyes.

“Looking at Darnell Conway’s timeline, we can’t completely rule that out.”

Evelyn gave a shaky nod when Tomas turned to her for confirmation. If it
was
him, Darnell had waited two years between Charlotte Novak’s murder and his first abduction. But that was only what they knew about. It was possible he’d waited to let the heat from Charlotte’s murder fade, but it was also possible that he’d been working his way toward this pattern. He could have started with lower-risk victims, not left the notes initially. And since he’d moved out of Kiki’s house a year ago, the same was true now.

“How likely is this?” Carly sounded unhappy that the idea hadn’t been explored before.

“Percentage-wise? Low,” Greg said. “But it’s something we need to consider. Darnell—”

“Hey!” one of the cops in the field yelled. “Chief! Get out here!”

Everyone’s heads swiveled toward him. He was standing a few hundred feet behind where they’d found Brittany’s body, surrounded by several other cops, in a small copse of trees.

He waved the shovel in his hand, adding, “I think we have another body!”