Yes. Her friend was definitely struggling lately. Payton had hinted as much. Miranda was going to make a point of getting Pierce alone, and getting the man to open up. She was a good listener—she made sure of it. “Exactly. He blames society for it, and women, his boss—anyone he believes takes from him without giving.”
“Then why assault Aimee at all?” Pierce asked. “The things he did to her—it feels personal.”
“It is, in his mind. In a lot of ways, anyway. Even though she was just a stand-in for the woman he really hates” Miranda thought about it for a moment, separating out the details about the woman’s son and husband. “Aimee was everyone who had ever wronged him. He was punishing her, over and over, for whatever failures he thought women had caused him specifically.”
“And where was Terra during those hours?” Pierce asked. “He had to keep her somewhere. She was thirteen, eighty pounds. She was capable of getting away if given the opportunity.”
“There was no opportunity. He had made sure of that before even stepping through that front door,” Knight put it bluntly.
“My bet is Terra was already secured somewhere else before he even touched her mother sexually.” Miranda had imagined it from every scenario. And DNA reports and all forensics reports had shown that the DNA of the daughter had been where it had been expected to be. There had been no significant signs of trauma to Terra in that home recent enough to indicate she had been there. They had no indication the girl had been there at all, except that she was missing. And her backpack with her most recent homework assignments half completed had been found on the foot of her bed. “What surprised me most is that there weren’t other signs of Terra being held there. Blood, urine. Anything. Twelve hours is a long time for a grieving, traumatized child to be bound and controlled in one location. There would have been signs—biological or physical. Or even just plain environmental. If he’d had her on the couch in the living room, for example, I seriously doubt she’d have been able to hold her bladder for that long. Not as terrified as she would have been. And if he’d killed her immediately, he probably would have used the two weapons he’d brought with him—knife or gun. Unless he cleaned up the evidence for that. But why would he do that—and not Aimee or the others?”
No gun had been found at the scene, and neither had the knife that had been used to kill Aimee. It was most likely he’d brought the weapons with him—and taken them with him when he’d left. Premediated.
“That would be too much deviation from his script,” Knight said. He was a big believer in life scripts of the unsubs. He’d studied that as well. He was a very well-educated man, her partner. But almost emotionless in his delivery. That had caused some problems for local law enforcement at times, but when they worked together, Miranda made up for it. Even they had their own life scripts they lived by. Everyone did. Just some were more aware of it than others. “He probably tied up Aimee, carried Terra outside to his vehicle, secured her, then went right back inside—free to do whatever he wanted, as long as he wanted. Taking Terra could have just been another way to control her mother.”
“Something about this family triggered him specifically,” Miranda said. It was the only thing that made sense. It could have been the composition of the family, the location, their ethnicity or religious background. It could have been Aimee’s physical characteristics, or something she’d said when meeting the killer casually around this town. It could have been anything. Miranda and Knight were there to help Pierce narrow it down. Identify the trigger, identify the location, and maybe…help find the man responsible.
“Now we just need to find out what,” Knight said.
It was really kind of creepy when he read her mind like that. It just was.
Chapter 7
PAVAD Forensic analyst Danielle Connor rolled her chair closer to the monitor, where her team leader’s face was blown up to a ridiculously big size. “Hey, Randi, what do you have for me?”
“Just the initial. We did a walk-through of the house yesterday after we arrived. I need what you have on neighborhood canvases back then. Can you track down everyone within a six-block radius? See what they are up to now?”
Of course, she could—and had already gotten started. They had worked this kind of case before. Cold cases were kind of what they did, after all. Dani had familiarized herself with the case the night before when Miranda had told her the file number before she and the hottest Knight on the planet had taken off yesterday. Her heart hurt for that family, for the older teenager who hadn’t been home. Dani knew what trauma was like. Violence.
Intimately.
It was why she had wheels now, after all. She would never forget. The violence she’d experienced at seventeen years old had left a daily impact on her life. She still had the nightmares, more often than she wanted to think about. This job probably didn’t help, but she’d dedicated her life to helping people in the worst moments of their lives. This is the way she did it. “I have already started. I’m running every key name, and everyone on the periphery. See if anything pops. I have two men with repeated domestic violence reported on a far too regular basis in the fifteen years since—and one woman with an even worse line of credits here. She’s currently incarcerated, actually. Battery against a child.”
“I figured you already had. Anything standing out to you?”
Dani shook her head. At the moment, they were just getting started, going over everything done before. “Nothing outside the norm yet. Although, I did pull up a photo of one First Sergeant Pierce Asher fifteen years ago. He looked like a very young, very boy version of Dr. Lucas. Only much, much…bigger.”
“He has gotten far better with age, Dani. Far better. But…he has the ghosts in the eyes now. This case weighs on him. I’d like to find the answers so he can have some sort of ending. He’s quitting the biz after this one. Not even taking a desk job. Walking away from law enforcement completely. He’s done.”
“I’ve seen those kinds of ghosts before. I play the same game on that.” Dani had her own questions, about her own case, so long ago. She was finally coming around to the idea she’d probably never even get to ask those questions. It had left one of her closest friends dead, and Dani lying next to the highway, almost gone. She didn’t really remember what had even led up to that day.
No one else seemed to want to find the answers, either.
She had never really understood that, either. She didn’t have a passionate Pierce Asher-type cop on her case now. Dani’s case had just been forgotten. She was dealing with that, too. In her own way.
“I am keeping you exclusive on this one. We are under a bit of a time crunch. Pierce is relocating to Texas in a week—I think. He seems extremely conflicted about that. This Asher tends to be slow to make decisions, I have noticed. I want to get as far as we can on the Gibson case before that happens.”
“Have I met this one? I mean, I’ve met some of her brothers—but I can’t remember which ones. They all look alike.” Big, blond, muscled, and beyond beautiful—the Asher brothers were definitely hard to forget. Their only sister Payton had worked three labs over from where Dani was right now. Payton had semi-retired when she’d married one of the richest guys in the world—half the tech in Dani’s lab had his icon on it, he was just that good. Payton was still in at least once a week, consulting on Questionable Documents. She was now considered one of the world’s best experts and the FBI kept her as a consultant. Payton had invited Dani to dinner multiple times. Sometimes, Payton’s brothers would be there. Dani had noticed, Dani had noticed. But…she didn’t think she remembered one named Pierce.
“Probably. Pierce spends the most time in St. Louis. We’ve been to dinner a few times, when our paths crossed.”
“Oh, so is First Sergeant Pierce Asher the secret boyfriend?” Recent rumor around the building had it Miranda had been dating someone. Dani just hadn’t heard who the boyfriend was. Sometimes PAVAD was worse than a soap opera. But…entertaining, no denying that.
“That he is not. And…let’s not talk about that guy ever again. Totally didn’t work out. Moment he learned about the kid, he had a problem. No issue with the job hours, but the whole mommy thing totally freaked him out. Especially the adopted part of it. Asshole.”
“Jerk. He’s so not worth the time.” Dani very rarely went out in the field, being the most lab-bound of the Cold Case unit. She had babysat Miranda’s little boy multiple times. He was an awesome kid—who had been through literal hell in his short years before Miranda had found him during a case gone horribly bad that had left him out there in the world alone. Now Miranda had him, and their teammate Jaclyn Jones and her big, beautiful husband had his half-sisters. Dani considered herself his unofficial godmother. She loved spoiling that kid. “Bentley is the best kid in the world.”
“I happen to think so.” Miranda was quiet for a moment. She had that look in her eyes again that said she was trying to figure something out and just couldn’t. Yet. Dani had seen it before. “His group home I found him in wasn’t that far from here. I may do some digging while I am here. Before I head back.”
