There were a lot of red rows.
"He drove past the Route 73 corridor six times in the last three months on nights he wasn't logged into the app," McKenzie said, tapping the screen. "Twice on the stretch near where Fiona's car was found. Once past the Cascade area. Three times on roads that connect to Bloomingdale."
"And those nights line up with anything?"
"Two of them line up within forty-eight hours of when forensics estimates at least two of the bog victims disappeared.Based on the timeline the M.E. gave us. Obviously that's still being refined."
Callie leaned back and looked at the ceiling. The fluorescent light above them had a flicker that pulsed every few seconds like a heartbeat with an arrhythmia.
"What about his phone?"
"Burner. Prepaid. He's got a personal cell that's clean, boring, nothing on it. The burner has call logs to numbers that don't trace to anything. Probably other prepaid phones. He was careful."
"Careful doesn't mean innocent."
"No. But it makes the warrant tighter. We've got the photos, the unlogged routes, the proximity to disappearance sites, and the assault charge from two years ago in Vermont." McKenzie pulled off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I talked to the DA's office an hour ago. They said we're close but they want the photo identification to be airtight before they'll sign off. If any of the women in those vehicle photos match our victims, that's the lock."
Callie nodded. "Brooke Danvers, Fiona Spence, and Hailey Benton. Run every image through facial recognition and have someone go through them manually. If he photographed any of them from inside his car, that puts them in his vehicle."
"Already submitted. Tech says twenty-four hours."
"We don't have twenty-four hours."
McKenzie looked at her. He'd been working this job longer than she had and he understood urgency but also understood what happened when you moved too fast and a judge threw out everything you'd built.
"We also don't have a case that survives a motion to suppress if we cut corners," he said quietly. "One more day. Get the photo matches. Get the warrant airtight. Then we go pick him up."
"If we can find him."
"We'll find him. APB is active. His plates are flagged in three states. He's driving a vehicle with a description that every patrol officer in the Adirondacks has memorized. He can't hide forever."
Callie stood and walked to the window. The parking lot was dark. A few patrol cars sat under the lot lights, their hoods collecting dew. Somewhere out there Derek Hollis was moving through the night in a vehicle full of cameras, and somewhere else Fiona Spence was either alive and waiting or dead and past help, and the distance between those two possibilities was measured in hours that Callie couldn't speed up no matter how many phone records she read.
She turned back to the table. "I want everything we have organized into a case file by morning. Phone records, GPS, photo inventory, the apartment search report, Mark Spence's statement about the RV and the apartment. All of it. When that warrant comes through, I don't want a single loose page."
McKenzie was already stacking papers. "You going home?"
"In a bit."
"You should sleep."
"So should you."
He almost smiled. "I'll lock up when I'm done. Go study for that exam."
Callie grabbed her jacket off the back of the chair. The study guide was still in her car, still bookmarked, still unread. She thought about interview and interrogation techniques. She thought about the four hundred photographs on Derek Hollis's hard drive, each one taken without the subject's knowledge, each one a small act of theft that the woman in the frame never knew had happened.
Tomorrow they'd have the photo matches. Tomorrow they'd have the warrant. Tomorrow they'd go find Derek Hollis and puthim in a room with no cameras except the ones that belonged to the department.
20
The visiting room at FCI Ray Brook was louder in the evening. During the day it had the feel of a library nobody wanted to be in, all whispers and careful postures, but the evening session drew a different crowd. Wives who'd driven two hours after work. Mothers who came every week and would keep coming until they couldn't. A couple of kids running between tables while a correctional officer tracked them but had learned that telling children to sit still in a federal prison was a losing proposition.
Noah signed in at the front desk and went through the same process he'd gone through before. Phone, wallet, belt. The wand. The walk through two sets of security doors. The corridor with its polished floors and recycled air. But this time when they brought Carter Lyle into the room, Noah understood something had changed.
Carter moved differently. The last time Noah had seen him, there'd been a stillness to the man, a conserved energy. He’d learned to make himself small and efficient inside a space that punished anything else. That was gone. Now Carter walked with his shoulders drawn up and his head on a swivel, checking theroom before he sat down. His left eye was swollen shut, the skin around it a deep purple that had started to yellow at the edges. A cut ran along his cheekbone, closed with butterfly strips that looked like they'd been applied by someone who didn't care much whether they held.
Carter sat down across from Noah. The chains clinked. He didn't settle into the chair the way he had before. He perched on the edge of it, weight forward, like he was ready to stand again at the first wrong sound.
