Faith spotted the black Taurus in the driveway as soon as Jarrod made the turn onto Greenview Terrace. If she’d been driving, she probably would’ve turned around and headed back out the gates of Heron Bay. The guardhouse – that they’d just passed, complete with a guard who had waved at them – was supposed to let you know when you had a guest. That rule must not apply when the guests are cops.
‘Were you expecting them?’ Jarrod asked quietly, looking over at her.
She shook her head.
After Jarrod had bonded her out of jail Wednesday morning, they’d headed to Chicago to spend Thanksgiving as planned at his sister’s with the rest of his family. It was a difficult trip and a difficult three days, even though they’d said nothing the whole plane ride up or back. Surrounded by family they hadn’t seen since last Thanksgiving, they hadn’t said much at Birgitte’s, either. Faith wasn’t exactly sure what Jarrod had told any of them about anything that had happened over the past year: the affair; the ‘incident’; and now, the DUI. So she’d spent most of her time upstairs in Birgitte’s guest room playing with Maggie when the teenage cousins tired of entertaining her, or going out for long walks by herself, trying to figure out how the hell she was going to fix the spiraling-out-of-control-mess that was her life.
While the absolute last thing she wanted to do after getting arrested, being strip-searched at the jail and completely humiliating herself, was go on a holiday trip to visit Jarrod’s family and pretend everything was great, she wasn’t in a position to tell him she didn’t want to go. So she threw her stuff in a bag, got in the car and drove to the airport. The positive was the trip had given her a few days’ reprieve from having to discuss what had happened and having to defend herself against the accusations she knew were coming about her drinking. And she would be a thousand miles away from Derrick Poole and the continuously degenerating turmoil happening in South Florida.
With the exception of Jarrod’s curmudgeonly dad who only mumbled in German around her, Faith got along well enough with the rest of the family: Jarrod’s mom, his sister, Birgitte and her husband Glen, and his brother Steffen and his wife, Sherry. Living thousands of miles away helped relationships stay superficial and friendly and inhibited them from developing into anything more. She helped set the table and decorate the Christmas tree Birgitte had already put up, made sure everyone’s wine glasses were full at the table, and drank her own glass when no one was looking. And she tried not to worry that the hushed conversations that suddenly stopped when she came into a room were about her.
Conversation was pleasant and generic and centered around the kids and the holidays until Friday night’s post-Black Friday dinner at Volare when Steffen brought up a developing story out of Palm Beach that he had seen on CNN that morning: A ‘Little Shack of Horrors’ had been found out by the Everglades with ties to a serial murder investigation. Apparently, a little girl and her mother from Parkland, Florida had somehow stumbled upon the killer with his last victim and were now primary witnesses in the case. Isn’t Parkland where you guys live? Have you heard of this case? As Jarrod carefully dodged the questions, Faith had excused herself to go to the bathroom and pulled up the story on her phone. Then she’d thrown up. They left after breakfast the next day. As the plane began its descent into Fort Lauderdale she could feel the pressure change, and not just in the cabin. With each mile they drove home the clock ticked down on her mini-vacation from dealing with the fucked-up reality of it all, officially and fittingly ending as soon as they pulled in the driveway and Detectives Nill and Maldonado met them at the car door.
Jarrod ushered both detectives inside and took Maggie upstairs to her room to watch a video. Everyone took a seat at the dining-room table.
This was it. Faith’s stomach churned.
Detective Nill wasted no time. ‘There’s been a new development,’ he said as Jarrod came back into the room.
She looked down at her lap and nodded. ‘I heard,’ she said faintly. ‘It’s on CNN, Fox. It’s … everywhere.’
‘Yes. We have found a crime scene. I didn’t want it to get out like that; the media picked it up on the scanners. Now we’re trying to control the flow of information, because there’ve been a lot of calls, a lot of interest. Like you already know, we found forensic evidence in this abandoned shack that leads us to believe it was used in the homicides of Angelina Santri and possibly three other women. Maybe a fourth. There’s a missing girl who we fear may also be linked to this location.’
She nodded and took a deep breath, but said nothing.
‘I also heard about your arrest on Tuesday. You were double the limit. That’s tough.’
The tears started. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.
‘You’ve been under a lot of stress.’
She nodded again.
The detective tapped his pen on the table. ‘I’m gonna be honest with you here, Faith. I’m gonna fill you in on some of the evidence we found out there, so you know what we got, what we’re dealing with, and you understand where it is I’m coming from. We found fibers in this place: red and black fibers. They match the fiber patch we found in the wooded lot in Pahokee and the fibers in Poole’s trunk and the passenger seat of his car. We found a lot of blood on the walls and floor that we’re running tests on, but we believe it will match DNA samples we have from the dead women and missing teenage dancer. We found body parts in buckets, and we found Angelina’s black boots.’
Faith covered her mouth, her eyes still locked on a spot on her jeans. It was getting hard to breathe. She knew there was no way to adequately prepare herself for what was coming.
‘The building dates back to the early fifties,’ Detective Nill continued. ‘It was a lot of things over the years, including a restaurant, but through the seventies and eighties it was a storage facility for sugar cane, with the front room being a sort of makeshift souvenir shack. There used to be alligator-wrestling on site, cockfighting and gambling in the late seventies. The property has been abandoned since 1994. The owners picked up and moved to Wisconsin and never looked back and the place fell apart. Inside we found restraints, and a trap room that at one point in the building’s history may have been used to house the alligators or roosters for cockfighting. We think it was used to hold these women before they were murdered.’
‘Jesus,’ said Jarrod, his head in his hands.
‘I have a theory that I want to try on you, Faith. Stop me if you think I’m wrong. I believe Angelina Santri was beaten in that wooded lot across from where your car was parked that night. She fought with her attacker and ripped a piece of his shirt that was likely sprayed or smeared with her blood. She was then taken to Poole’s Honda Accord and placed in the trunk, alive, but likely unconscious. As you know, we found several strands of her hair in that trunk. To prevent the transfer of blood or bodily fluids, she was likely wrapped in tarp or plastic sheeting. The person whose shirt she ripped then got into the passenger side of Poole’s car, where Poole and this person drove to the abandoned shack that we found yesterday. Angelina was once again restrained, then tortured, and ultimately murdered. I’m thinking that since she was missing for over a day when you saw her, maybe she was being held there after she was abducted from the parking lot of the Animal and somehow escaped, running off barefoot into the cane fields, which explains her dirty feet. Then she found you, Faith, asleep in your car.’
Faith nodded.
Jarrod looked at her, then back at the detective. ‘Wait, you said someone got into the passenger side of Poole’s car. You think there’s a second suspect? There’re two of them?’
Nill didn’t take his eyes off Faith. ‘We were able to get DNA off the fabric patch. That DNA came from the blood spatter of Angelina Santri and from the sweat deposits of an unknown male who is not Derrick Poole. We’re planning to execute another search warrant on Poole’s house. That’s why we’re here: I want to know what else we should be looking for once we get back inside.’
‘Faith?’ Jarrod asked.
‘Do you see where I am going with this, Faith?’ asked the detective.
She nodded again, wiping her tears with the back of her sleeve.
‘One of the bartenders at Animal Instincts places Poole in the club the night Angelina went missing,’ Nill pressed. ‘He wasn’t alone; he was with a friend.’
‘Faith?’ asked Jarrod again.
‘There was someone else out there with Poole the night of the tropical storm, and I think you saw him, Faith. That’s my theory. I don’t know why you didn’t tell me about him from the get-go, but my concern now is finding him because he’s a killer. He and Poole hunt women and then take turns torturing and slaughtering them in different, insane ways. My problem with Derrick Poole, the reason he’s not behind bars yet, is there has so far been no hard evidence directly connecting him to Angelina’s murder. All I got is you and your daughter seeing him with her when she was still alive. I got a great case, however, against an unknown subject wearing a red-and-black plaid shirt. I have his DNA, I have the victim’s blood on his clothing, I have the fibers of his shirt all over a crime scene where I think five women have been brutally tortured, dismembered and murdered. But I need to link Derrick Poole to Angelina’s murder; I need to link him to this unknown subject. I need more, because there’s too much room for argument.’
She buried her face in her hands and began to sob.
Nill leaned in across the table and handed her a pocket pack of tissues. ‘I know you called me for a reason the other day, Faith. I think you knew what it was you needed to tell me. I need to find out who the DNA on that fabric patch belongs to, Faith. And you’re going to help me do just that.’