Per our plan, Richie and I held back talking to Quinones aboutthe weapons case, which left the fraud investigation as the only context we’d shared.
“So you guys are here why?” he asked. “You wanna reopen an investigation into these murders?”
There was an edge to his voice, and I studied his office. Quinones used a wooden side table as his main desk, which created enough space for a seating area with an armchair. My eyes moved to his bookcase, which was not standard fare for cops. On his shelf, I saw theDSM-5andPortrait of an Addict as a Young Man. He was a thinking man’s detective.
I turned back to him, surer now of my approach.
“We’d like to go through the missing women’s files,” I said. “Look at anything that didn’t make its way into Agent Offerman’s notes.”
“Huh,” Quinones said, a slow burn of surprise.
It was an unusual reaction from a local cop who had previously invited the FBI into his investigation. Technically, didn’t we still have jurisdiction?
“Sounds like you wanna make sure my pesky little murders aren’t messing up your fraud case,” he said, sitting back and crossing his arms.
As it pertained to Craig Poulton’s goals at the Bureau, Quinones was not far off. In the new director’s FBI, local murders, even if they rose to the level of a serial, were usually best left with locals.
“I run a group called PAR,” I said to the detective. “It stands for Patterns and Recognition. When cases are particularly puzzling and police departments or Bureau offices cannot solve them, we are sent those files. From all over the United States.”
“Except you’re not coming here for that reason, are you?” Quinones said. “My murders are long cold.”
I thought of Frank in the elevator with Offerman years ago.“True,” I said. “But perhaps we should have come here a long time ago, instead of Ed Offerman.”
Quinones pursed his lips. “You’re a little different, aren’t you?”
I hesitated. I don’t particularly enjoy it when people point this out. But I don’t get emotional about it, either. “Yes.”
“And this PAR—it’s full of people like you?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“Okay,” he said, his attitude relaxing. “I don’t mind that. So what do you need?”
Richie jumped in. “Copies of everything,” he said. “Every missing person’s report. Notes from every interview. Suspects you considered. Crime scene photos. All of it.”
Quinones stood up. “Last time your people left, I knew it wasn’t over. We had one of our admins make a clean copy of every paper. I have a box downstairs.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Richie and I sat in a small conference room at Shilo Police Department, and I read every interview that Offerman and Quinones had conducted. As Richie looked through a list of locals brought in as suspects, I spread out a county map—a clean one I’d requested from Detective Quinones.
I was marking points on it, using the file as a straight edge and extending property lines. Noting public and private roads. Waterways and floodplains.
Quinones popped in his head. “Questions?”
“Do you have a couple shovels?” I asked.
“Not on me.”
He smiled, but his face went serious as he stared at the twelve circles I had drawn on the map, with lines in red running tangent to them.
“I can ask facilities,” he said.
When he came back ten minutes later, I had punched a set of coordinates into my phone. “We need to go here,” I said.
Quinones used his thumb and index finger to zoom in and outso he could see the area better. “That’s right on the border of us and Putnam County,” he said. “Unless I’m wrong, all you’re gonna find there is a pile of dirt, Agent Camden.”
“Dirt is where I expect to start,” I said. “That’s why I wanted a shovel.”
