The man shrugged, and I tried it in my best Spanish. “Cuántas casas estan aqui?”
“Not much,” the man said. “Más hoteles.”
Frank pulled out the photo of El Médico and showed it to the man.
“Conoces?” I asked, seeing if he recognized the man.
“No,” he said.
Frank began walking farther south, away from where we’d parked, and I shook my head at him.What the hell?
He passed a driveway for another boutique hotel and approached the next house down, a similarly tall gate covering the back of the property.
“I can think of better uses for our time,” I said, catching up.
“Really?” he snapped, turning, the rain gathered in little dots along his hairline. “Like what?”
“Like one of us going to local police and checking in on these missing persons Shooter has identified. Statistically, in serial killer cases, eventually one victim will have a clear personal connection to the killer.”
Frank stopped walking. Blinked. “And where have all your statistics gotten us so far, huh? I gotta call Richie’s parents. That’s onmylist today.”
I examined Frank. Last year, he had been taken by a killer. Kidnapped and put in a life-or-death situation. I could see that he was starting to decompensate, the longer Richie was in the hospital.
“Frank,” I said. “There’s nothing here. Let’s go.”
Frank stared at me, his face falling before he nodded. We walked back to the car, and I looked at our group text chain. Cassie was updating us.
In Jacksonville and going through the parameters of the dataset.
The rain began to come down harder, and I started up the engine. Frank seemed to have lost the fight and was now subdued.
“You’re right, Gardner,” he said. “If Richie didn’t come down thisway, there’s no point in me being here, either. You still want to check on missing persons?”
“I do,” I said. But more than that, I needed a place to focus. Away from Frank.
He knew I preferred to work alone, and I wanted to look into missing persons in Lucas Beach. For his part, Frank wanted to be in Shilo. Closer to where we’d last seen El Médico.
Fifteen minutes later, we met with Detective Brian Johnson at Lucas Beach PD, who Shooter had called about the missing persons. Johnson had wavy hair that reached his shoulders, and a sandy brown mustache. He wore a suit jacket, but his shirt was open two buttons down.
“It’ll take me a half hour to pull the physical files,” he said to me. “You got something to work on?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
Frank took off for Shilo, and Detective Johnson gave me a room to work in, one that looked out over a lawn full of mature fruit trees. I unpacked my workbag and took every item off the Formica desk. Then placed each missing persons file in a straight line. I began taping up a series of colored Post-its on the window—each with some note that might help me find a pattern I had not yet seen.
In my head, a series of questions echoed:
Why does El Médico want these women?
How does he locate them?
What’s his connection to the medical community?
Or Freddie?
Why abduct Dog? Both he and Freddie were breaks in El Médico’s pattern.
I moved back through the inventory we’d found with each skeleton. A necklace with Melanie Nelson. A custom pin made by AraceliAlvarez’s mom. The intramedullary nail embedded in Mavreen Isiah’s femur.
