“I talked to the manufacturer,” she said. “They gave me the name of the surgeon like you said, Gardner. I called his office and asked about the woman.”
“So we’ve got a name for number four?” Richie perked up.
“Mavreen Isiah,” Shooter said. “Thirty years old. In 2018, she leapt from a second-story balcony. Suicide attempt. Broke her femur.”
“You talk to her family yet?” I asked.
“None I could find so far,” Shooter said. “But you know my go-to move.”
Shooter’s philosophy was simple: You learned more about people from what they spent their money on and who they owed.
“You ran her credit?” I said.
“And here’s the thing, Gardner,” Shooter said. “Mavreen Isiah is alive. She works at a plumbing supply house twenty minutes away.”
I blinked. “What?”
The skeletonized woman in our basement was clearly not with us anymore. Which meant that someone else was using Mavreen Isiah’s identity.
Which in turn meant we had a lead.
“You sure?” I asked.
“Active income,” Shooter said. “Federal and state tax taken out. This week, even.”
I looked at the time. Five hours ’til Cassie and I had to be at the Jacksonville airport.
“I got an address where our supposed Ms. Isiah works,” Shooter said to me. “You wanna go interview a dead woman?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Any Way U Like It Plumbing was in a town called Lideca, twenty-three minutes from Shilo, along State Highway 301.
As Shooter drove, I reviewed Richie’s notes on Patsy Davitt’s work, which he’d emailed before I left. I used my thumb to scan down as I speed-read them on my phone, stopping in a particular section.
Richie and Detective Quinones had gone through missing persons reports in the Shilo area, and an interesting name had popped up.
Tommy Herrera, also known as “Dog,” had been reported missing on January 17, 2020. This was the pimp boyfriend of Melanie Nelson, whose mother Cassie and I had interviewed that morning. Rebecca Nelson had described the boyfriend as tiny; in her words, “a solid wind” could blow him over.
Dog’s cousin had waited a full month before coming into the Shilo police precinct to report the missing person, presumably since Dog himself was a two-time offender.
All this led Richie to a theory. That the skull Davitt referred toas having “delicate features” was possibly Dog, somehow caught in the crosshairs by whoever had taken his girlfriend, Melanie.
I relayed this to Shooter, who scowled at me. “So what are we thinking?” she said. “Our man in the sketch is abducting couples now?”
“We don’t know enough to rule that out,” I said, acknowledging our ignorance with a frown.
Shooter switched lanes and got off the highway. The sun was still high, and the sky was streaked with red.
“You checked that this Isiah woman is at work?” I asked.
“I called before we left,” Shooter said. “Told the guy I was a customer who spoke to her last week. Mavreen works the afternoon shift. He said she’d be in by now.”
The area was industrial, and nearly every turnoff led into a commercial park, filled with buildings with roll-up doors and trucks covered in vinyl.
Shooter slowed the car by a sign with blue neon letters that readANY WAY U LIKE IT. I glanced around. Across the street was a liquor store called Silver Star.
“What is it?” Shooter asked.
