CHAPTER THREE

 

 

The drive from Ashmore College in Carmel to the sheriff’s station in Noblesville was long and aggravating in near rush hour traffic, even with Deputy Lester using his siren and lights. It had been a long time since I’d ridden along in a cruiser, but I hadn’t forgotten how much I hated it. People around here couldn’t be bothered get out of the way of an emergency vehicle, and I lost count of how many times we had to stop for traffic and bumbling drivers.

While we drove, I texted my sister. Did you find someone to watch Nate?

She replied, David, our stepdad. I’m going back to campus. We’re going to search for Jenna. You should be here to help. Where the hell are you?

I didn’t feel right lying to her, especially with how upset she was. Jayne sent me to the station to examine the phone we found. Sorry I was cryptic earlier. I didn’t know how much I was allowed to tell you.

After a pause, she replied, Exactly how worried should I be right now?

I rubbed my forehead, not knowing what to say. I didn’t want to assume the worst, and I didn’t want my baby sister to, either. Please don’t worry yet. Jayne and Baxter are working on finding her. Start your search, and I’ll join you when I’m done.

Lester dropped me at the station, my nerves worse for wear. I’d tried not to dwell on what Jenna’s missing phone meant for her situation, but dark thoughts kept swirling in my mind. I’d tried to convince myself that she and her guy had done something selfish and stupid. Maybe they’d run away together and gotten married, or decided to extend their romantic weekend without bothering to tell anyone. But in the back of my mind, I didn’t believe any of that.

I checked the phone in with the evidence clerk and then took it to the lab, hesitating for a moment before pushing open the door. If I was on bad terms with Baxter, I was on worse terms with Beck Durant, the head criminalist. I used to be his boss, but now he was the boss. When I had come back to consult, he was less than gracious about me being in his lab.

When I entered the room, Beck popped his head up and sneered at me, right on cue. “What are you doing here?”

I held up my bag. “I have evidence Sheriff Walsh asked me to process.”

“Nobody told me.”

That was no surprise. Beck didn’t get much respect around here. Mostly because he did nothing to earn it.

“You can call Baxter and ask him.”

Amanda Carmack, Beck’s assistant and a new friend of mine, heard us and came out of the adjacent office smiling. “Hey, Ellie. Are you consulting again?”

“Hi, Amanda. It happened kind of fast…but I guess I am.” I shrugged into a lab coat and twisted my long, dark hair into a messy bun.

“Great. What can we do to help?”

Beck threw me a glare and stalked away, likely going to take one of his infamous “smoke breaks,” even though I didn’t think he did any actual smoking during them. It was my opinion that he exploited a legitimate addiction to get out of as much work as he could.

“I need to pull some fingerprints off this phone and find a way into it. It belongs to Jenna Walsh.”

Amanda’s face fell. “Oh, I heard about her disappearance.” She beckoned me over to a workstation and helped me get out some fingerprint powder and brushes. “I’m sure you want to get this done quickly. As you lift the prints, I’ll input them into AFIS. Speed things up a bit. If we can get a good print of Jenna’s, I can run it through our 3D printer and get her phone unlocked. If she’s got Touch ID set up, that is. It’s worth a shot.”

“Thanks,” I replied, impressed that the lab had gotten some new equipment since I’d been gone. I put on some gloves and took the phone out of the evidence bag. As I examined the phone under the bench magnifier, I said, “Am I taking you away from Amy Donovan’s homicide investigation, though? I assume you guys are knee deep in it.”

“We are, but…” She trailed off uncertainly.

I got out a camera and snapped a few photos of the phone under the bright light. “But what?”

“This case has the priority right now.”

I put the phone back down again and set out the black fingerprint dust, a brush, and some DNA swabs. “I get it. Sheriff’s niece.”

First, I swabbed a few smudged prints I could see, hoping to get some touch DNA from them. After I was finished with the DNA collection, I dusted the phone’s screen, then studied it again through the magnifier. I saw a few prints I thought were viable to lift, but most of them were unfortunately partials. I got out some fingerprint lifts and collected the first print, which I passed to Amanda. She disappeared into the next room to begin examining it.

I continued lifting prints, stopping for a moment to run a few over to Amanda, who was concentrating on a blown-up version of the first print on an enormous computer screen. The first print I’d given her hadn’t been terribly clear, so it was taking a while for her to plot the individual characteristics, which was the information she needed to run it through AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. I returned to my station and turned the phone over, brushing powder over the decorative case. Its colorful pattern made prints difficult to see, but the smooth surface made it easy to get good lifts. I pulled several prints from this side, some of them full. Once I’d finished, I relieved Amanda at the computer and let her do an independent second examination of the phone.

The first three fingerprints she’d entered had come back with a list of possible matches in AFIS, with Jenna’s name at the top of every list. I called to Amanda, “Do we know why Jenna is in AFIS? She’s a goody two-shoes.”

Amanda yelled back, “The Sheriff said she’d been fingerprinted as a kid for safety reasons.”

I nodded, thinking I probably should have known that. Jayne insisted Rachel and I be fingerprinted when we were minors as well for the same reason. Nate, too. She’d seen too much not to be cautious about the people she loved. I tried to put that out of my mind as I took the next print and scanned it into the computer.

After several minutes, Amanda came into the office. “I finished my examination of the phone and didn’t find anything further. I’d help you with the prints, but we only have the one machine to work with.”

“No problem, and thanks,” I said, not taking my eyes off the screen. Seven out of the thirteen prints we’d run had been Jenna’s. I was beginning to lose hope.

Amanda said hesitantly, “You should probably know that…we think Amy Donovan’s death and Jenna Walsh’s disappearance may be connected.”

I stopped what I was doing to stare at her. “Connected? How? Why?”

She walked over to another table and picked up a file. Flipping through it, she found a photo and handed it to me. “Because of this.”

It was a large photo of a crumpled up note. My stomach plummeted when I read what was scrawled on it in black ink:

 

My life was ruined by your mistakes,

And now you understand how my heart aches.

For your incompetence I will show no pity

As I strike terror across the city.

Your only child is now dearly departed.

An eye for an eye? I’m just getting started.

 

“Where was this found?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

“In Amy Donovan’s mouth.”

My jaw dropped. “That’s straight up serial killer stuff.”

Her expression was grim. “It is, especially considering one of her eyes had been removed.”

“What?” I breathed. They hadn’t divulged that on the news.

“I know. It’s beyond disturbing, and they don’t have any leads on who did it. What they do know is that someone killed Amy to get back at Frank. The department secured the rest of Frank’s family thinking that the ‘I’m just getting started’ line meant the killer intends to go after them.” She blew out a breath. “But now that Jenna Walsh is missing…it puts a different spin on things. They’re worried now that the retaliation is also against the Sheriff since she and Frank were partners. Her niece ended up being the target since Sheriff Walsh has no children of her own.”

As the gravity of this hit me, I felt like I was going to be sick. I choked out, “So whoever killed Amy may now have Jenna.”

“Yes.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “You go get some air. I’ll take over while you wrap your mind around this.”

I did as she suggested, slinking out the back door of the station and collapsing on the concrete steps. As I sat there with my head in my hands, trying not to cry or vomit, my phone rang. It was Baxter.

“Yes,” I said around the lump in my throat.

“It’s Nick. Do you have anything for us on those fingerprints yet?”

“So far they’ve all come back as Jenna’s.” I frowned. “When exactly were you going to tell me that Jenna’s disappearance is connected to Amy Donovan’s murder?”

He sighed into the phone. “After you did the job we needed you for.”

A hot tear ran down my cheek. “I see.”

I hung up on him. Damn Baxter. We’d worked side by side for a good thirty minutes, and he hadn’t said a word about the cases being connected. Again he decided that he knew what was best for me and did whatever the hell he wanted to get the outcome he needed. I stood, clenching my jaw until I gained control of myself, then stomped back to the lab. I wanted to get my task over and done. My sister needed me, and I needed to get out of this soul-sucking place.

Beck was back in the lab processing some evidence. He ignored me as I passed him on my way to the adjacent office. Amanda was still hard at work at the computer station when I went in and pulled up a chair next to her.

She gave me a sympathetic smile. “More of the same on the AFIS hits, I’m afraid. But the 3D model of Jenna’s fingerprint is ready if you want to try to unlock her phone. I waited for you before I tried it. I didn’t know if you’d ever used one before.”

I nodded. “Thanks. I’ve used one in a classroom setting, but never in an actual case.”

She hopped up. “Let’s do it, then.”

She had laid out everything we’d need on a workstation, but stepped aside for me to do the task. Amanda loved tech. Since I’d met her, she was always emailing me articles she’d read on advances in forensics and attending scientific conferences when she could. It was too bad she was stuck in this lab with its outdated equipment.

Hoping that Jenna had set up the Touch ID for her phone, I picked up the 3D image of her fingerprint and placed it against the home button of her iPhone. It popped up the message, “try again.” Amanda and I grimaced at each other, and I repositioned the print and tried again. This time, the phone came to life. We heaved a sigh of relief and gave each other a high five.

She said, “I’ll leave you to have a look through that, and I’ll get back to work on the rest of the prints.”

I sat down on a nearby stool and began scrolling through her text messages. Her last outgoing text message was sent about an hour after she’d left my house on Saturday. That was forty-eight hours ago, but I tried not to let that fact cloud my focus. The text was to a girlfriend of hers, declining an invite to meet for dinner Saturday night because she had a date. There were dozens of unanswered incoming texts from her friends, most of them similar messages asking where she was, with newer ones becoming more frantic and begging for her to reply. I recognized many of the names on the list, and there didn’t seem to be any conversations between Jenna and any males that would indicate that they were dating. The texts I read were all platonically friendly. No mention of planning for a weekend getaway or any sweet talk of any kind. All young people texted each other, so why was there no messaging between Jenna and her mystery man? Were we dealing with a much older man like Miranda had wondered?

Her Snapchat and Instagram private messages were much the same as her text messages—all platonic. I opened her email folder, not that I thought college kids used email as a primary communication tool these days. Her emails were mainly spam, Internet order confirmations, and a few to and from her professors, mostly to turn in electronic assignments and discuss class topics. There were no personal conversations in any of her email folders, either.

I checked the phone call log and found one number that showed up over and over in the last week. The contact’s name was “Derek” with no last name and no photo. I hit the message button, but it brought up a blank text message screen. “Derek” was someone she’d spent a lot of time talking to on the phone but had never texted. I hurried into the office and ran the phone number, but it came back as a prepaid cell.

I let out a groan.

“What’s up?” Amanda asked.

“The one contact I can find on this phone that could be Jenna’s new mystery man is someone she only calls and never texts, has no last name or photo in his contact info, and whose number is to a burner phone.”

Amanda’s face grew concerned. “That’s not good.”

“No, it’s not.”

I pulled up Jenna’s photos and scrolled through them. Her photos were mostly either selfies or photos with her girlfriends. Any photos with guys in them were shots of larger groups. There were no photos she’d taken in the last month that would indicate she was in a relationship. Rachel had said Jenna had only known this guy for a week.

I got my phone out and took a photo of the database showing that the number I’d found for “Derek” was to a burner phone, then sent a quick text to Jayne outlining the lack of information I’d found on Jenna’s phone about where she might have gone.

Amanda said, “If you’d input the last fingerprint, I’ll take the phone over to our cyber guys and see if they can delve any deeper.”

“Sure,” I said flatly, handing the phone over to her. I was fast beginning to lose hope that we were going to find Jenna happily holed up in a love nest somewhere.

I scanned the last fingerprint I’d collected and plotted the individual characteristics of it, having to stop a couple of times to rub my tired eyes as they clouded over. The AFIS results were again the same—Jenna Walsh was at the top of the list of several potential matches. Whoever had thrown her phone in the bushes hadn’t touched it with bare hands, so this was all for nothing. I shot Jayne another text to let her know that we’d struck out with the fingerprints. Her response was that I was to come back to Ashmore to participate in a campus-wide search for Jenna.

I sighed to myself. As much as I wanted to find Jenna, I thought it was a waste to do a physical search. Jenna would never deliberately hide on campus, and if someone had abducted her, it would be stupid to try to hold her somewhere against her will on a busy campus full of people. But, like Rachel, I couldn’t just sit and do nothing.

I said my goodbyes to Amanda and had a deputy drive me home to get some warm clothes and more sensible shoes. On the way back to Ashmore, I contacted Rachel to ask if she had ever heard Jenna speak of anyone named Derek. She hadn’t, which was the answer I’d expected. For all I knew, Derek wasn’t even the guy’s real name. I had the deputy drop me at the science building. Once inside, I headed for the sanctuary of my office. After all that had happened in the past few hours, I could think of only one thing that could help me get through this night. I took two shots of vodka from the bottle I kept locked in my desk, then rinsed with minty mouthwash and popped a cough drop into my mouth to mask any telltale odor.