Behind him the facility sat in its clearing, lit and orderly and quiet, holding a man who was either innocent of everything or guilty of the one thing that couldn't save him.
21
Six faces stared back from the wall and none of them were smiling.
Callie stood in front of the board with her arms folded, studying the photographs the way a person studies a puzzle they've been working on too long. The faces had been identified over the past forty-eight hours as forensics and missing persons databases did their slow, grinding work. College girls. All of them. Ages ranging from nineteen to twenty-three. Gone missing over a span of four to six years from various points across the Adirondacks and northern New York. Some had been reported immediately. Some had taken days. One, a girl named Tessa Garland from Potsdam, hadn't been reported at all until her roommate came back from winter break and found her things still sitting in their dorm exactly where she'd left them.
Six faces. Six sets of parents who had been called. Six conversations that no one in this building wanted to have and that everyone in this building would remember.
Noah walked in with a cup of coffee in each hand. The war room smelled like dry-erase markers and the industrial carpet cleaner the janitor used on the overnight shift. Morning lightcame through the single window and caught the edges of the photographs, giving them a brightness they didn't deserve.
"You look tired," Noah said. He held one of the cups out to her. "You should get some sleep."
"Not while this animal is out there." She didn't take the coffee. Her eyes stayed on the board.
Noah set the cup on the table beside her. "I respect your dedication, Callie. And your desire to prove yourself. Maybe that's because you're about to take your detective exam. But don't forget that sleep is vital. Without it we make mistakes. You can't really afford to make mistakes in this business."
She yawned, as if the word sleep had given her body permission to admit what her mind wouldn't. She picked up the coffee and drank.
"Kara Ellison and Fiona Spence weren't among them, Noah." She shook her head at the wall. "Five years. Five years and no one has caught this sicko. What makes us think it will be any different this time?"
Noah said nothing. He studied her instead. The look in her eyes. He'd seen it before in the faces of detectives who had been at this long enough to know what it cost. That hollow intensity. The inability to look away from the work even when the work was looking back at you with six dead faces. The hooks were in. She couldn't let go now even if she wanted to. It was the same feeling he carried about Luther Ashford. That gnawing question of whether the target was simply untouchable, whether all the hours and all the sacrifice would amount to nothing more than a case file that gathered dust while the people responsible kept breathing.
"Like, why is he doing it?" Callie said. "What's the motivation? Is it sex? Control? Both? Or just the thrill?" She glanced at him. "Did you speak to Lyle?"
Noah nodded. "He says he doesn't recognize Hollis."
"And you believe him?"
"He's days away from being executed. If he could see an out, he would take it. Even if it meant throwing someone else under the bus. I believe him."
Callie shook her head. "It just doesn't make sense. I mean, if it wasn't for the jacket and ID on Brooke Danvers, this would be like any other case of murdered college girls. Sure, maybe Carter Lyle is responsible for the women in the bog, that spans cases from four to six years ago when he was out. But not Brooke Danvers. Not Fiona Spence. Not Hailey Benton."
"Could be a copycat," Noah said. "Or a partner."
"But what's the common thread through them all?" Callie turned from the board and leaned against the edge of the table. "All of them are college girls. All of them were driving. All of them had rags in their tailpipes, clearly to get their vehicles to stall. All of them at one time or another worked at White Stone Deli. Some of them modeled, some didn't. So who do you blame?" She spread her hands. "It's maddening."
"Welcome to detective work. Where things aren't clear cut." Noah took a deep breath. "All we can do is stay with it. Follow the crumbs and piece it together."
"You have much luck with the old witnesses from the Kara Ellison case?"
Noah thought about Ray and Luke and the knife. The chain of custody gap. The corrupted body cam. The prosecution summary that said confirmed where the lab report said inconclusive. He thought about the knife itself, which Ray had said was in evidence storage at the Adirondack County Sheriff's Office. Noah had made a call. The evidence clerk couldn't locate it. Said she'd look into it and get back to him. She hadn't.
He shrugged. "Nothing that stands out." He paused. "Listen, did you get the rags checked for DNA?"
"Yes. Nothing. They must have worn gloves. That's probably why they left the rags behind. No trace to worry about."
"And what about the stalling itself?"
Callie pushed off the table and went to a folder on the far end. She pulled a sheet and handed it to him. "That's what I can't figure out. One of the guys put Fiona Spence's vehicle up on the lift and ran it with a rag stuffed in the exhaust. The engine spat it out."
"Just by revving?"
"Yeah."
Noah shook his head. "That's an apples-to-oranges comparison. Running a vehicle stationary on a lift isn't the same as driving it at speed. The back pressure, the exhaust temperature, the airflow, it's all different. It would make more sense to run a real-time test."
"Driving it with the rag in?"
