Tess spent the day waiting for Michael to report back on how the search of Craig's apartment went. The morning passed slowly for her, and so she spent her time going over the missing persons cases from the time period that might cover when the child was buried. She went back several years and added up all the children aged between five and ten who went missing during the twelve-year period from 2002 until 2017, just two years earlier. That was a lot of ground to cover, and she figured she'd have quite a number of missing children who fit the description, but she was wrong. Most missing children under the age of ten were found and taken off the database. They were abducted by the non-custodial parent and were located quickly.
There were only three children in the correct age range in the database who went missing and stayed missing over the past two decades.
She wrote down the names and pulled whatever other details she could off the NamUS site.
One of the missing children, a girl named Julia, had been murdered by her mother, the girl's body thrown into the river. The body had not yet been recovered, but the mother had been convicted and put in jail. Another had been abducted by the non-custodial parent. There was a warrant out for his arrest but that was several years earlier, and the child was still missing. That left only one case where there was no apparent conviction of anyone and no information on a possible non-custodial parent abducting the child. A girl, aged nine, who went missing in the middle of the night, with the only signs that the child had gone being an overturned bench under an open window. No one had heard anyone enter or leave the house, and the family's dog had not barked. The child just vanished. That was the oldest case and was from thirteen years earlier.
The ME said that the body could have been in the ground for as short as two years or as long as a decade, so it could have been her.
That would mean that someone either abducted her in the night, or one of the family members killed her and concocted a story. The family was located in Bellingham, which was less than an hour's drive from the location of the body.
Tess wasn't sure that it was a good fit, but it was possible. According to records, there were three other children in the family, including an older sister and two younger brothers.
She printed off the photograph of the girl and created a case file.
It was the first possible victim.
Tess wondered if perhaps the skeletal remains had been someone Rachel had known. Possibly a friend or sibling and that was why her car was found at the site. But if Rachel really was from Montana, why would she know someone who was buried near Mt. Baker? In the end, there were only two possibilities: either Rachel's abductor had taken her there for a reason, or Rachel had gone there for a reason and both reasons seemed to be the buried body of a child.
Had Rachel gone there to see the location of the body? Had she dug up the grave, knowing it was there? Or did her abductor go there to gloat over the kill? But then why leave the vehicle there? And why leave the evidence there for anyone who searched the area to find?
She had so many questions, and tried to sort through them logically, to get some kind of order out of the disparate pieces of evidence.
Next, Tess did the same for Idaho and Montana. Rachel had claimed to be from Montana, and so Tess wondered if the body of the child had been someone she once knew -- or a family member. But why would someone bury a child in Washington State if they were from Montana?
There were only two cases in Montana that fit the age range and possible interval. One was a boy who went missing when he and a group of children were swimming in a river and the other was a girl who went missing while on her way home from a friend's house. Tess printed off the case files and photos and posted them on a cork board beside her desk.
It wasn't much to go on, but it was all she had.
Three children who could be the victim, who went missing in the appropriate time period and who had never been located.
Of course, it was possible that none of the potential victims were right. The dates and locations were based on speculation and a story Rachel told Craig and Mickey about where she was from. Tess didn't even know Rachel's real name or where she was really born. She could have been from anywhere in the US for that matter -- or even from Seattle itself. Until they identified her correctly, it was all speculation.
Michael called her later that morning, while Tess was out getting a fresh cup of coffee. She stopped on the street on her way back to the Sentinel's offices and sat on a bench so she could answer the call.
"Hey, there," Michael said, his voice warm.
"Hey," she said back and smiled. "What's up?"
"We searched Craig's apartment," he said. "Nothing really to be found of interest, except some old clothes and possessions of Rachel's and Sadie's, which were taken into custody. Fingerprints taken, and Craig's laptop and a cell phone were also taken to see what websites he had been searching. There's really nothing else to report at this point. Once the evidence has been processed, we might have more to go on but there was nothing glaring that I could see in the apartment.
"No cache of child porn or links to Satanic cults?" Tess replied, a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
"No. Nothing like that. The place seemed pretty ordinary, just a little messy. Craig isn't very good at taking care of himself."
Tess had been only joking of course, and then felt bad.
"I shouldn't joke," she said guiltily. "I feel sick about this. I always liked Craig and if he's innocent, he's really hurting right now. If he did it, I hope he burns in hell. Was he there while you searched?"
"No. He was at work, so the landlord let us in. It makes it a lot easier to do a search when the suspect isn't present."
"Poor Craig," she replied, imagining poor Craig when he arrived home after a long day at work. "He'll come home and discover that the police were there searching through his possessions."
"He was called and arrived at the apartment within an hour," Michael said quickly. "By then, we were finished. Did you know he came from a wealthy family, and inherited a bunch of money? He's been living well-below his means ever since. He's given half his money away to homeless shelters since his parents died."
"No, he never talked about himself."
"Well, he's wealthy, but you wouldn't know it from his apartment."
Tess took a sip of her coffee before replying, her mind working, trying to square this new information about Craig. "His parents are dead?"
"Yes, they were older, and he was an only child, born to his mother when she was in her forties. His mother was a professor at Washington State University, and his father was a judge."
"That's so strange that he never talked about his family. I feel bad for him that all of this is happening. He seems like the least able to deal with all the publicity and contact with the police. Did you leave the house in a mess?"
"We did our best to return the apartment to its pre-search state, which was pretty clean except for a mound of Craig's dirty clothes on the bathroom floor and his dirty dishes in the sink. Oh, and newspapers all over the sofa and empty food containers on the coffee table. Of course, we removed the computer and any other electronic devices we discovered."
"Poor Craig. He must be so afraid for Rachel and Sadie. Any update on the skeleton? DNA results?"
"No. I don't expect the DNA results from the bones for a while. They take a bit longer. The ME has to extract the DNA and then process it before it can be put in the database to look for matches."
"Can you estimate how long?"
"Dr. Keller said late this week or early next week. She's prioritized the case and hopes to get us a profile to use as soon as possible."
"What about the blood in the car? Have you talked to Craig about it?"
"We did. He said he cut himself when changing a tire. We checked and Rachel did in fact have a flat and was driving on the spare, so that checks out. We also found blood on the jack. Just a bit but some. It backs up his story. But when I see blood on a jack and know there's a missing woman and child? I get nervous."
"I just don't see him killing anyone," Tess said, feeling despondent at the prospect that Craig had done it.
"I don't see him for it, but as you know and I know, we can't always rely on our gut instinct."
Tess sighed. "Don't I know it. I hope we're both right and he's innocent," she said, imagining Craig entering his apartment and seeing police there.
"We'll see what a search of his laptop and cell shows. Until then, who can say whether he's a likely suspect?"
Tess shrugged. "I know. Well, I gotta get back to the office."
"Okay," Michael replied. "See you for supper."
"Bye."
Tess entered the Sentinel's offices and went to her desk by the window, determined to focus on Craig's case. Michael seemed concerned about the blood found in the car but like her, didn't see Craig as the proper suspect.
Whatever the case, she had work to finish, and needed to go over the final draft of her latest article on missing and murdered women and girls in Washington State.