The morning’s sunlight was giving her a headache, and last evening’s discussion with Rob weighed on her concentration. Evie rubbed aching eyes as she studied the case board. She was probably overthinking this. It wasn’t hard to find cases that were similar to Jenna’s. She’d chosen fourteen from the FBI report from the last dozen years, plus she still had the three cases the original cops had thought sounded similar. The problem was narrowing it down further.
She was sure she had something here, yet there were too many cases to all be her guy. Two, maybe three, might be his. Assuming—and that was still a big reach—that Jenna hadn’t been a one-time-only crime.
Evie shook her head to try to jar her concentration back into focus. It was now nine o’clock on Saturday morning. She was certainly a touch sleep-deprived, not a good way to proceed to make significant decisions. She picked up her empty coffee mug to get a refill. The only positive thing at present was that none of the photos on the board showed much similarity to Jenna. She hoped that by going through the full files, she’d be able to eliminate at least half of the possibles, which would then leave her with much less to ponder.
“Evie.”
The urgency in David’s voice drew her into the conference room. “Got something?”
“Something,” he replied, paging through a thick folder. “Take a look at this.”
He slid the folder toward her and began thumbing through a stack of thinner folders. “You’re holding the research for one of Saul’s suspended cases,” he explained.
She opened it, found newspaper clippings, scanned through them, and halfway into them realized what David had. “Well, this is indeed interesting.” She was looking at newspaper accounts of Jenna’s disappearance.
“My PI was looking into your missing college girl.”
“Which case connected to it?”
David pulled out a smaller folder. “Tammy Preston. Give me a minute to read the details. I looked at these suspended cases earlier, but the red flag only went up when I saw that research folder.”
“Take your time—you’ve certainly got a captive audience. Are you going to finish that coffee?”
“Just poured, it’s yours,” David replied with a smile after a glance at her.
She nodded gratefully, drank most of it, and then began sorting through the other items in the folder. Articles on a Wisconsin high school football team and its star running back. Several Jane Doe remains discovered. A variety of announcements for musicals, theater performances, and concerts in Chicago during a two-week period eight years ago. Then the news on Jenna’s disappearance.
“This isn’t good.”
Evie looked up at the tone in David’s voice. She’d heard a lot of cops say those words over the years, and with that tone the words were underselling how bad it actually was.
“A Wisconsin family hired Saul to look for their missing daughter, thinking she might have traveled from Wisconsin to Chicago,” he murmured, studying a sheet in his hand. “She had a history of taking off, was of age, revolving boyfriends, living with a girlfriend rather than renting on her own. But she had always called, stayed in touch with the mom. Then it just went quiet. A pretty girl, but not striking. Five-foot-four, auburn hair, one hundred forty pounds. Twenty-one when she went missing.” He slid the photo to her. “Something about her led Saul to look up the newspaper articles on your Illinois college student. You’ve been looking at cases possibly related to Jenna. Is this girl one of those? Tammy Preston?”
“No, I don’t recognize the name or photo. But I can check the full FBI report and see if I passed over the name. Time-wise, do both our cases overlap? My girl went to a Triple M concert the night she disappeared. And now your PI looked into my missing girl?”
“Think God is trying to tell us something?”
Evie wondered, shook her head. “I don’t know anymore.”
“Tammy was last seen on a Sunday night. She had attended a concert two nights before.” David handed her the slimmer file. “Look at the band, page three.”
She turned pages. “‘A Triple M concert,’” Evie read, a sense of dread coming over her. She looked over at David. This bit hard.
“Yeah.” He sighed. “My PI suspended his investigation because the family had asked him to spend no more than five thousand dollars for his time, but he was on the scent of something telling him these cases were similar. He might have tagged onto the concert link. The parents were thinking their daughter had left on her own, had hooked up with a new boyfriend they would find questionable, but Saul was wondering if it wasn’t something else.”
Evie went back to the beginning of the folder, reading the paperwork in Saul’s neat handwriting. “‘Tammy wasn’t in college. That’s why she’s not on my board, why she didn’t get picked up in the search for similar cases years ago. But she’s the right age and lived near a college campus.’”
“The date she went missing puts her a year after Jenna.”
“That could fit.”
“After two years with no contact from her, the police elevated Tammy to a suspicious missing. Her body has never turned up.”
Evie took a deep breath, let it out. She was holding a case file that was likely also her guy. “Someone likes Maggie’s music, likes those who like Maggie’s music? Is he traveling around to her concerts, or is it any concert that attracts a college crowd?” she wondered. “Jenna Greenhill. Tammy Preston. Two missing college-age women, living within a hundred miles of each other, both attend a Triple M concert the weekends they go missing. The raw numbers say it could be random, but it doesn’t feel random.”
“Find a third, it’s not random.”
She pushed back her chair. “I’ve got an Indiana case on the board that had a missing driver’s license, my best prospective match for Jenna. They had recovered a body days later. Let me go pull the full file.”
Evie sat at her laptop, found the FBI report and case number, figured out how to get from her Illinois police account over to the Indiana police database, then sent the full case report to her printer. She grabbed up the first ten pages, leaving the rest to print, and was reading as she walked back to the conference room. “Case highlights: Virginia Fawn, a student at Indiana University, went missing on a Saturday night. Body was found on Thursday three miles outside of town. Probably smothered. Her purse was near her body, cash and credit cards in her wallet, but no driver’s license.” Evie scanned the summary for more details. “Boyfriend repeatedly questioned. Where was she before she disappeared?” Evie searched the pages. “The day of her disappearance, a credit-card charge at Famous Eddie’s Burger Palace, 4:42 p.m., followed by a credit-card charge at State Fairgrounds, 6:12 p.m., for eighty-four dollars and change.”
“Stadium seating, forty bucks a seat plus tax,” David guessed.
“It sounds like a concert,” Evie agreed. “Let me get the rest of the report off the printer. Maybe the interviews will tell me what band was playing.”
“No need. I’ve already got it.” David had turned to his laptop and was searching the band website history page. “Triple M played at the Indiana State Fair, April 28, 2010.”
“A date match.” They stared at each other.
“Three cases,” David said, fury in his voice. “He’s been using Maggie’s concerts as his hunting grounds.”
“I’m so sorry, David.”
“Jenna, Tammy, Virginia. And Maggie, the connecting point. You’ve now got more than casual crossovers on your case, Evie. I’ll try not to step on your toes, but we will find this guy.”
“Partners all the way until it’s solved,” Evie promised. She didn’t want to touch the emotions coiling in him—she had no idea how to defuse them. Instead, she would put her attention where she could help, and that was on the case details. They both knew there might be other young women once they dug deeper.
“An obsessed fan?” she wondered aloud. “Or a vendor maybe? T-shirts? Food? They would travel the circuit just like the bands.”
“That’s a good idea.”
“He’s picking off college students, has to look young himself to blend in, not get remembered when cops start asking questions. So, someone close to their ages. Jenna was twenty-one, Tammy the same—” she paused, checked papers—“Virginia, twenty-three.”
“He’s in his early thirties now,” David guessed. “I need you to dig into the other similar cases on your board, tell me if there are more Triple M overlaps or more missing driver’s licenses. I’ll send the band-history page to the printer so you have concert dates and locations. We need to look for missing women around all those concerts. Virginia Fawn went missing six years ago. What’s he been doing since then?”
“I’ll do that next,” Evie agreed. “Ann is already on her way in. She can make sure we don’t miss a name. I’ll call and get us time with the Indiana detectives. Virginia’s body was found—there’s got to be something useful to work from with the physical evidence.”
“I’ll push on Tammy’s case in Wisconsin. Work with Saul’s notes, get the missing-persons file from their local PD, talk with Tammy’s parents, find out if they hired someone else after Saul. I hate to rip open their grief, then tell them we’re working a similar disappearance in Chicago, but it’s what has to be done.”
“Go see them in person? Make a road trip and link up with the local PD?”
“I’ll feel it out. If not today, Monday.”
“I’d vote for today. It’s only . . . what, a three-hour drive? Seeing the area after having viewed Jenna’s in detail, it’s going to click that these are similar cases or toss them apart as being separate.”
“Going today does make sense if we can pull it together.” He looked at the time. “Let’s make that call in two hours.”
Evie suspected as soon as they let it be known the three cases could be linked, getting others to join them in the search was going to be the easier part. The real challenge would be in coordinating things so that the various PDs didn’t step on each other.
Evie knew of one decision that could be made right away. “Don’t say anything to Maggie, David. This guy likely moved on to another hunting ground as he grew older, has probably been caught related to another crime by now. We figure it out, we make sure he’s in jail, but Maggie doesn’t hear a word of the overlaps we discovered. She had nothing to do with this, didn’t inspire it—it’s just bad luck he likes her music.”
“I agree about Maggie, and I sincerely hope you’re right about his already being in jail. It will make it easier to charge him with three murders once we crack the case.”
“Does this help in any way figure out Saul’s disappearance?” Evie asked, hoping to move him onto another track.
He considered that, shook his head. “Saul had a lot of suspended cases he could have picked up and worked on his own time, but there’s no obvious indication he had been looking at this one when he disappeared. Nothing noted in the file suggests he had a new lead.”
“Didn’t Saul’s sister mention he was considering a concert that Wednesday evening? I know you’ve got Saul’s movements now traced through Saturday night, so I’m not implying a concert is related to Saul’s disappearance too, but what concert was he talking about? Did you ever figure that out?”
“It was in Arlington Heights, a band called the Fly’rs, lead singer Evelyn. It’s a soft-rock group. There’s nothing in Saul’s notes to suggest he was going to that concert for work reasons. But maybe . . .” David got up to add another note to his whiteboard. “Maybe Saul did choose that concert for a reason.
“Tammy had been at a concert in Wisconsin,” he went on, “and Saul had been looking at news articles about Jenna’s disappearance after she went to a concert. Maybe he was checking out this one in Arlington Heights because someone working there had also been part of the crew at those other two—someone doing stage setup, a food vendor, possibly someone as extra security. Multiple concert venues mostly use the same union workers. Crews shift locations depending on the crowd size. That’s the most likely reason I can come up with for Saul being at the Fly’rs concert. But if that’s the case, my PI—who took extensive notes on everything—either didn’t write that lead down, or he had a notebook on him when he disappeared, with a name of interest he was pursuing.”
“Union workers at the various concert venues,” Evie mused, “that’s another useful list for us to review.” Something significant could be there, she thought. “Saul was at a concert, David. It wasn’t a Triple M concert, but it was a concert where he might have been working a lead. It would be a nice tribute if somehow Saul is the link to solving this.”
David nodded. “I’ll start making calls to get info on those who worked the different concert venues. Then I’ll find out what concerts Saul attended after he took on the Tammy Preston case—he usually charged his ticket purchases. If he was onto something, we’ll find an increase in his ticket purchases. And while that keeps me occupied, get me the bad news on how many missing young women overlap with Triple M concerts.”
“We’ve got possibly three,” Evie replied. “I’m willing to predict it’s not more than a handful in total,” she offered, knowing it would sting, but anything less than one a year would be a blessing in such a case.
“Let’s hope.” David glanced up. “Jesus, help Evie find them all. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”
“Amen,” Evie said. “Set your alarm for two hours. We’ll make a call regarding Wisconsin then.”
“Agreed.” David reached for his phone and set an alarm. “Go wide in your search, Evie. Missing one now is worse than doing work on a case we later eliminate.”
Evie was already planning the method for the search. “I’ll use the concert dates and locations and look at every case within a certain window of time regardless of age, gender, or college affiliation. I’ll first make sure your Tammy Preston shows up in the list, then let Ann verify the ones I think overlap.” At David’s nod she added, “Do you want to call Sharon? You’ve got the most insight on how we handle this with Maggie.”
David hesitated, shook his head. “Your case, your call.”
“Then for now, I’ll just say we might have an overlap out of state and we’ll know more once we see the files. We’re putting out the requests for those now.”
David smiled his appreciation.
“We solve this and move on,” Evie suggested lightly, “because I hate cases that turn personal. It takes all the fun out of the job.” She actually got a brief chuckle out of him, considered it a good sign that he would be able to temper the anger this overlap to Maggie had caused.
Evie left David to make his calls and turned her attention to matching cases against Triple M concert dates. She sent full case reports to the printer for the photos she had on the whiteboard. If they didn’t crack the case by the end of January, she would be very surprised. She just didn’t envision much sleep in her near future.
Evie made her own calls, to Ann to alert her to what she would be walking into today, to her researcher at the State Police, and then to their task-force boss, Sharon Noble.
“Do you want help, Evie? Theo can shift off his case, Taylor off his,” Sharon offered.
“I don’t know how big this is yet or if we’re actually dealing with false-positives simply because of the law of large numbers. Thousands attend these concerts, pickpockets work the crowds, a high percentage of concertgoers are college-age women, and every year a few of them go missing. What we’ve got now may be only smoke and mirrors. David is motivated, and I’m dug in until this is set to rest. Ann can give us some time. For now, we’re tagging other states for data because we’re being thorough, not because we want FBI and other cops thinking multistate murderer and stepping in.”
“I can keep that at bay for a while.”
“I appreciate it, Sharon. David and I both do.”
“I’m hoping it’s just smoke, Evie. Some of these cold cases are going to lead to guys who have committed multiple crimes, we know that. But if that’s our first county, it just gives us more press interest than I would like at this point. We need some light and good news to go along with dark and heavy arrests.”
“Which way is yours looking?”
“The missing wife and two daughters left an abusive situation and are likely still alive somewhere. The woman’s sister is so nervous with my questions, I’m beginning to think they could actually be living in her neighborhood. Theo suspects his missing teenage boy was killed by a high school classmate and has it narrowed down to a couple of names. Taylor knows who killed his businessman; he’s just got to find the body or come up with new evidence so the DA will file charges without one.”
“So you’re all basically flying through your cases,” Evie remarked.
“Pretty much,” Sharon agreed. “But we didn’t step into quicksand, which it sounds like you and David did. Tag us, however and whenever you want help.”
“Thanks, boss.”
Evie clicked off, genuinely pleased the rest of the team was making good progress. Jenna’s case was breaking open and that was a good thing. Add the still-fragile intersect with one of Saul Morris’s clients and it wasn’t bad for the first week of the task force’s time. And it wasn’t so much them. Evie was beginning to see what David already thought—God’s hand was in motion, helping them find justice. “Thanks, Dad,” Evie whispered.