Mariah Stewart - Cold Truth

“Okay, here’s another thing. Forgive me for stating the obvious,” Regan said, “but if we believe that the killer is the original Bayside Strangler-and we all seem to think he is-it follows that whoever is here now was here twenty-six years ago. But maybe not in the intervening years.”

“Because there haven’t been any other bodies-that we know of-until now,” Rick said.

“Oh, well, that narrows the field,” Denver said.

“Actually, it does,” Regan insisted. “If we understand that this person has been all over the country-he’s been halfway around the world-and has left a trail of bodies, though none of them here till now, then we have to think he’s been gone all this time. The killings may have started here, but he definitely took his show on the road for a long, long time.”

“The question is, what brings him back now? What brings this full circle?”

Denver and Cass exchanged a long, meaningful look.

“What?” Rick asked.

“The reunion,” Cass told them. “This week is reunion week. People have come from all over. They’re taking down the old high school and dedicating the new one. It’s an all-classes thing.”

“Maybe he came back for that,” Regan said.

“And once he got back here, the urge to kill-to repeat the past-was too strong,” Rick concluded.

“How many people do you think are in town for this reunion?” Mitch asked.

“It’s not only Bowers Inlet,” Cass told him. “It’s Tilden, it’s Dewey. Hasboro. Killion Point. All the little towns along the bay. It’s Bay Regional High. We all went to the same schools.”

“So we’re talking about how many people?” Rick asked.

“Couple hundred,” Denver replied.

“How do we narrow that down?” Regan frowned.

“Okay, look, we have to assume there’s an age range we can work with. He had to have been old enough in 1979 to have done to those women what he did, but still be young enough today to be physically strong enough to overcome healthy, strong young women.”

“Let’s say at the youngest, could he have been fourteen, fifteen, back then?” Cass suggested. “And the oldest he could be now? Mid-fifties, if he’s in really great shape?”

“We can use those as a starting point,” Denver agreed.

“And we can narrow that group even further,” Regan offered, “by figuring out who on the first list has been gone from the area and is here now.”

Mitch nodded. “And do an Internet search to track who’s been where in the intervening years.”

“We can do better than that.” Denver pushed a button on the intercom. “Phyl, I need you to call over to the high school and tell them I need a copy of every yearbook from 19…” He paused and looked around the group. “What we say, fourteen or fifteen years old back in 1979? He would have graduated in, say, ’81 or maybe ’82. If he was older than that… let’s see, it’s 2005, say he could be at the oldest maybe fifty-five? He’d have graduated…” The chief did some mental calculations. “Say 1968? Let’s go back as far as 1960. I’d hate to have missed someone because we didn’t factor in some unknown element.”

He turned back to the intercom.

“Phyl, ask them for all the yearbooks between 1960 and 1985. Just to be on the safe side. Tell ’em we’ll send a patrol car over to pick them up.”

“Will do,” Phyl replied crisply.

“We can look them over.” Denver addressed Cass. “You, me, Phyl. We can at least get a head start on eliminating people we know never moved away or ever traveled around like we think this guy has done.”

“If you get me the list of names,” Mitch told him, “I’ll start tracking them through the bureau. If we can get social security numbers for them, we can track them that much faster.”

Denver shook his head. “Don’t think the school will hand those out.”

“Maybe you could ask for everyone on the list to give a DNA sample,” Regan suggested. The entire group turned to stare at her as if she had suddenly sprouted an extra head.

“What?” she asked.

“We’ll have the ACLU all over us if we try to pull something like that,” Denver told her.

“They’ve done it in several places over the past few years. I read about it. The police in Massachusetts did this earlier in the year,” Regan protested.

“Right, they did,” Mitch agreed. “And the ACLU was all over them. These DNA ‘sweeps’ have been used eighteen, nineteen times. Only turned up a suspect once, and that was within a very small community of possibilities. Besides, the police department you’re talking about in Massachusetts did that as a last resort. We’ve only begun to narrow this down. You wouldn’t be able to do that without a fight. And fighting with potential suspects will only waste time. I say we follow the plan the chief outlined-narrow down the list by year of graduation, then see if we can determine who’s been out of state, out of the country. Then maybe-just maybe-we’ll have a list of potential suspects.”

“Well, then, unless someone has something else to add?” Denver scanned the faces at the table. “No? Okay, then, Agent Cisco, you’ll follow up with the profiler?”

Rick nodded. “I’ll make the call today.”

Cass stood and stretched, then said, “If there’s nothing else, I want to get back to the hospital.”

“Rick told me on the phone about your cousin being attacked,” Mitch said. “How’s she doing?”

“She was the same this morning,” Cass told him. “The doctors said she would come out of it, but they can’t predict when. She apparently was oxygen deprived for a time, we don’t know how long-and then there’s the trauma, the shock. She could come out of it tonight, or not for another week or two. No one wants to predict.”

“I hope it’s soon,” Regan told her as she gathered her files. “I hope she recovers quickly from this.”

“Thank you.” Cass turned to Rick. “If you have another few minutes, I’ll stop back in my office and see if the lab reports on the victim they found on the dock have come back from Tasha yet.”

“Ahhh, Cass…” Denver remained seated. In his hands, he held his glasses, which he appeared to be toying with. “I’ll get the lab results from Tasha and pass them on to Agent Cisco.”

Cass stared at him blankly.

“I need to take you off the case, Cass.”

“Off the…” Cass dropped her bag. “What are you talking about, off the case? It’s my-”

“Cass. You’re too close to one of the victims. And beyond that, I don’t know that you might not be the next target.”

“That’s bullshit.” An angry Cass grabbed a section of her own hair. “No long dark tresses here, Chief. And we all agreed he’s only going after women with long dark hair.”

“He also hit two women in the same day. Something he hasn’t done before. I don’t think we can safely predict what he’s going to do.”

When she started to protest again, Denver cut her off. “You messed up his game plan, Cass, when you walked in on him with Lucy. He has to be pretty pissed at you right now.”

“All the more reason for me to stay involved. I can draw him out.”

“I’m not using you as bait, Detective. And I’m not asking for your opinion. I want you to take a few days’ leave. I want you out of sight for a while.”

“So you want me to just go home and sit on my butt while the rest of you chase after this guy?” Cass was wide-eyed.

“Actually, no. You’re going to have to find someplace else to stay. Your house is off-limits. Have you forgotten it’s a crime scene?”

Cass grabbed her bag and walked from the room, slamming the door behind her.

“I knew she would not go gentle,” Denver murmured.