Gregg Olsen - Fear Collector

“Next year, Everest,” Shane had teased as the guide snapped the photograph.

“Next year, Hawaii,” Grace had shot back.

She smiled at the memory as she picked up the phone.

“Alexander,” she said.

“I want to know something,” said a man with a Latino accent.

“How can I help you? Who is calling?”

“I don’t want to say my name. But can I still ask a question?”

“This isn’t the help desk at the library, sir.”

There was a short pause. “Yes, I know. I want to know something about the girl I saw on TV. The girls you were talking about.”

“Kelsey Caldwell? Lisa Lancaster?”

Another short pause, followed by, “I need to talk here. Go away.”

“I’m not going away,” she said.

“No. Not you. I want to know if she has DNA on her.”

“Sir, we don’t disclose that kind of information. Who are you and why are you asking?” The caller ID on her phone indicated a pay phone. Damn!

“Please look into a case in Yakima. Her name was Catalina Sanchez. Please check on her. Do the DNA. Please.”

“Catalina Sanchez?” Grace repeated as the phone line went dead.

Paul Bateman, in the next cubicle, had heard part of the conversation and had quickly planted himself in front of Grace.

“That sounded like a crazy or a good tip.”

“You don’t get many like that. The guy basically told me to try for a DNA match on another case in Yakima.”

“Yakima? Pretty far from here.”

“Far, yes. But let’s turn a few stones.”

Grace typed C-A-T-A-L–I-N-A + S-A-N-C-H-E-Z into the database and pressed the SEARCH key.

Her eyes met Paul’s as the screen flashed with a hit.

“Three years ago. Nineteen-year-old girl. Migrant worker. Unsolved.”

“Suspects?” he asked.

“None.”

“Interesting, but what’s her connection to Tacoma’s vics?”

Grace clicked through the report and a photo of Catalina Sanchez filled her screen.

“Jesus,” Paul said, refraining from using the Spanish pronunciation, something that undoubtedly took a lot of willpower. Dead girls were nothing to make light of and he knew it.

Grace looked up. “She looks like she could be Kelsey’s sister.”

Paul nodded as he bent closer to get a better view. “Same eyes. Same hair. Same everything.”

“Right, same everything,” she said. “Except this one’s unsolved. We’re going to solve our homicides?”

“Case still active?”

Grace looked back at the photograph of the dead girl from Yakima. She and Kelsey were a lot alike, except for one vital detail. Kelsey’s dad was not about to rest until someone led them to their daughter’s killer. Catalina Sanchez had no such champion. It made a difference, and every member of the media and law enforcement knew it. There were the moms of victims who had made it their lives’ missions not only to remember their daughters, but to make sure that every single person out there did, too. Beth Holloway never missed a moment to fan the flames of publicity surrounding the disappearance of her daughter Natalee while away on a school-sanctioned party trip to Aruba. Beth had gone so far as to even confront the chief suspect, a Dutch ne’er-do-well named Joran van der Sloot, while he awaited justice in a Peruvian prison. Same with Sharon Rocha, who had taken up the task of ensuring her pregnant daughter Laci Peterson’s murderer was brought to justice. Scott Peterson, a fertilizer salesman who’d wanted to be free of the constrictions of a family, awaited execution on death row in California.

And yet there was no one, it seemed, to mourn Catalina. The biographical background on the Yakima victim was devoid of any helpful information. For her parents it merely stated, migrants, address unknown. Her last place of employment was Jonogold Orchards in Selah. And as if it needed to be noted, Catalina Sanchez’s “illegal status” was listed by the report writer, the responding officer.

“Let’s find out what happened to Catalina,” she said, picking up the phone.

“You really are something,” Paul said, with a tiny trace of sheepishness.

“How do you mean?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“You started it, now go on.”

“Something Lynnette once said.”

“Pillow talk,” Grace said. “Great. I love the idea of you and her cuddled up talking about me.”

“Not so much about you. About the kind of person you are. The kind of cop.”

She kept her eyes on him, barely blinking. In a way, it felt a little good to make him squirm. “What’s that?”

“She said you were the kind who never left a stone unturned, a dog with a bone.”

Grace exhaled. The comment was either a compliment or a derogatory remark. She just didn’t know which.

“Thanks,” she said. “I guess.”

“Yeah. Anyway, what was it about the caller that makes you think it’s worthwhile to follow it up now? We got hotter stuff to work, you know.”

“Really? That’s news to me. Anyway, there was a kind of pleading in his voice. He might not know who killed Kelsey, but my bet is that he knows exactly who killed Catalina Sanchez.” She looked down at the photo on her computer screen. “She deserves justice, too.”

Paul thought of saying something about Lynnette once telling him that she thought Grace was not only a by-the-booker, but a little self-righteous. He held his tongue. Even though Grace’s statement hadn’t needed to be said, there was no getting around it.

She was absolutely right.

A report from the Washington State Patrol crime lab landed in Grace Alexander’s overstuffed email in-box. It brought with it the kind of news that no homicide investigator ever wanted to read. Her heart sank with each word. The DNA sample taken from Catalina Sanchez’s rape and murder had been lost among scores of other pending evidence in what had been the state’s criminal justice Armageddon the previous year. A small fire had broken out in the lab and the sprinkler system had done what it was supposed to do… gone off. And off. And off. It had ended up drenching and destroying evidence from almost every county in the state. Particularly hard-hit were counties with lesser means: counties that wholly relied on the state crime lab.

While the memorandum from the lab in Olympia indicated that, in fact, there had been a sample taken, it had been destroyed. Even the supporting documentation had been destroyed when a couple of employees had had the bright idea of using hair dryers to mitigate the loss of the original documents. Unbelievably, the electric dryers manned by none-too-bright, but well-meaning, workers had sparked a second fire.

Catalina’s case was among many relegated to complete and tragic limbo.

As Grace scrolled through the electronic file she noticed that only one item had survived-a partial witness statement indicating someone had seen a couple of young men carrying something to the river’s edge the night of Catalina’s disappearance. The witness, a Hispanic man named Tomas Martinez, had provided no address. He’d indicated he was following the harvest and would be in Central Oregon the next week. He had no phone, but he promised that he would contact the police again when he could.

But, it appeared, he never had.

Grace wondered if this Tomas Martinez had been the man who’d called her with the tip.

She printed out a photograph of Catalina and added her to the others pinned under the fluorescent tube that ran under the bookshelf of her cubicle.

Kelsey, Lisa, Catalina, Emma.

The similarities could not be denied. Each of the pretty girls was dark eyed. All had long dark hair, parted in the middle. She ran her finger along the row of photos thinking to herself that they had so much more in common than their mere physical resemblance and their youth. Each had died in a violent manner. Each had been violated in the worst possible way. Each girl was a victim who cried out for justice.