Russo’s men had definitely been to the makeshift graveyard. Their fresh shoeprints showed they’d scoured the place, conducting a thorough search. But Asher did his own search anyway. He was more focused on specifics, like finding more of those neon-colored confetti tags shot from the Taser when fired. And he’d also been looking for bread crumbs. Not real bread crumbs, but some kind of sign that Faith had been there. She was smart and careful. If there was any way at all to leave any kind of trail to prove she’d been there, and to give someone else something to follow, she’d do it. But he hadn’t found anything to indicate she’d been there.
So much for his theory that the killer would have brought her to this particular mountain.
He dropped to his knees and spread the map out on the ground. It had been the foundation of Faith’s and his investigation. It had yielded them the missing Jasmine and her sister. It was proof that they’d done their homework, knew the killer’s habits to some degree. The clues had to be right there in front of him. He just had to figure out how to identify them.
Everything to do with this case was concentrated in a twenty-minute travel radius from this mountainside. He’d explained that to Russo when he’d sent his men out searching. With this exact spot as the epicenter, all of the abductions could be placed within the large circle he’d made on the map. Every single one of them. This circle was the killer’s comfort zone, where he hunted and where he buried his victims. He lived here, worked here, played his sick games here. So, where in this circle, was he now?
Think like the killer. Put yourself in his head. Where would you go to avoid the cops, knowing that killing a police officer means that every law enforcement agent within driving distance is going to join the manhunt?
I’d go somewhere I’m comfortable with, stay in my twenty-minute circle.
But the police were already looking in the places that they knew he’d been to before. That seemed like a waste of time to Asher. The killer already had his victim. The question was, where would he take her now that he had her? What place had special significance for him? What was the common thread between all of his victims that caused him to choose that special place?
Asher ran his fingers over the topographical symbols, studying the map as if he’d never seen it before. The names of the victims ran through his mind as he studied it. What did they all have in common?
The link that Faith had found between victims was the bar, The Watering Hole. Did something set it apart from other restaurants and bars, make it attractive as a hunting spot to the killer? What about it made it comfortable to him? All Asher could think of that was unique to that bar was the manmade waterfall behind it. Customers loved to take selfies and post them on social media in front of that waterfall. But there were hundreds of real waterfalls throughout the Smoky Mountains. That by itself didn’t seem unique at all. What else did he know about the victims themselves? Something that stood out?
Mud. Two of the victims’ bodies had dried mud, or what the experts believed was originally mud, in their hair or on their clothes.
Another victim had river rocks in her pocket.
Jasmine liked to go white-water rafting. What about the others?
He accessed the cybercloud from his phone to read the latest reports his team had been uploading with any information they’d gathered for the investigation. Mini bios had been created for all of the victims. Asher quickly skimmed the ones for the remaining victims he didn’t know as much about.
Natalie Houseman owned a boat.
Dana Randolph used to work at the Ripley’s Aquarium in downtown Gatlinburg.
Felicia Stewart was an avid fisher. Her favorite spot to fish was off the dock in her backyard.
Some of them had visited or frequented The Watering Hole. The link between all of that seemed obvious—water. Each of the victims he’d just thought about had some kind of water in common. Was that a useless coincidence or a useful fact? Was it possible that the killer had some kind of fascination with water? He certainly seemed comfortable in the outdoors, as evidenced by his taking Leslie up into the mountains. Leslie...wait. There was a waterfall at the trail-riding place where they’d found her. And a pond. Water yet again. Was that another coincidence?
He ran his fingers across the map more quickly now, his instincts telling him he might be onto something. Too many things kept coming back to water of some form or another. There had to be a reason. Or was he off on a ridiculous, unrelated tangent?
Think, Whitfield. Think. What do you know about this guy?
All of his victims were women. Everything else about them varied. Young, older, Black, white, Asian. He didn’t have a specific type of person he abducted, except, maybe, that they all had some kind of affinity for water either to work or play. Did the killer resent them for that? Or was it something he liked about them?
The idea that a serial killer would choose his victims because they boated, rafted, liked waterfalls or anything else to do with water seemed ludicrous. Then again, serial killer Ted Bundy chose his victims because they all had long straight hair parted in the middle. What could be more ridiculous than that?
He was onto something. He felt it in his bones.
It all went back to The Watering Hole. Asher knew the killer didn’t have Faith at the bar. The place was crawling with cops and UB investigators. But the killer had picked out his previous victims there. Because he frequented the place. It was his hunting ground. He’d likely listened to conversations and discovered interests in his favorite attraction—water—as a part of some recreational activity. He’d chosen them at the bar, stalked them, figured out the best place to abduct them, killed them, then buried them on this mountainside.
Close. So close. The missing puzzle piece was here. He knew it.
He glanced around at the mounds of dirt where the graves had been filled in. Killing them, then bringing them here to bury them didn’t feel right. It was a lot more work to carry a dead body than to force a live one where you wanted them to go. It made more sense that he’d kill them right here. But if that was the case, wouldn’t he stick to his routine and...try to kill Faith here? There was another puzzle piece. Maybe he did kill them somewhere else and brought them here. But it was harder to move a dead body. Maybe he did it anyway, used a litter or something like that to pull them up the mountain. Seemed crazy to think he’d do that. But, hey, serial killers were crazy as far as Asher was concerned. Trying to understand them was next to impossible. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t predict what they’d do, not if he sifted through the evidence the right way. Setting aside the logistics question about moving bodies, he explored the next obvious question.
How did he kill the women?
The ME couldn’t find an obvious cause of death. But Asher knew the most common way that serial killers murdered their victims was strangulation. Hanging was an obvious choice to strangle someone since he’d tried to hang Leslie. But without any bones broken in any of the bodies they’d found, it didn’t seem to make sense that he would have hung them. That threat was exactly that: a threat he’d set up with Leslie to force Asher to choose between going after the killer or saving his victim. Hanging wasn’t his method of choice for killing all of his victims.
No obvious stabbing or bullet wounds found with any of the victims. No broken bones. No blunt force trauma. Poison didn’t seem likely, either, given their earlier discussion at Grayson’s house.
He was left with suffocation of some kind. So how did you suffocate someone without breaking bones in their necks?
He blinked as he stared down at the map again. Water, water, everywhere. How do you take away someone’s ability to breathe and explore your twisted fascination with water at the same time?
You drown them.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He grabbed it without looking at the screen. “Asher.”
“It’s Lance. We struck gold. Just as you thought, the common link is the bar. Asher, we know who he is. There was a freaking picture of him on the wall, one of dozens of framed pictures showing crowd shots. I grabbed it and showed it to nearly everyone there. I got a name. And right after, I swear, to the very second, Ivy called. She’s been visiting every Podunk police force in all the neighboring counties and got a fingerprint match from that knife. It was a small police station that didn’t enter the fingerprints into AFIS because it was for a minor arrest, a traffic violation. He—”
“Lance, for God’s sake, who is he? Tell me something to help me find Faith.”
“Malachi Strom. Get this. He saw his father drown on a family trip when he was only twelve. Then his mother died seven years ago of leukemia. That’s when the killings began. Maybe that was his trigger to start killing.”
“Water. His father drowned? That’s the link.”
“Okay, you’ve lost me now.”
Asher quickly explained his theory about water and that he’d drowned his victims.
“How is that supposed to help us find Faith?”
“I don’t know yet. Obviously, we can’t search every river, stream or waterfall in the county. My gut tells me that’s where he’s taking Faith, to some body of water. She can’t swim, Lance.”
Lance swore.
“You said his father drowned. Where did he die? Is it in our twenty-minute circle?”
“Oh, man. Hang on, let me see what Ivy sent.”
Asher fisted his hand at his side, torn between frustration and hope as he waited. “Hurry, Lance. Hurry.”
“This is it. Yes, yes! It’s in that circle you gave us. Holy...it’s on the other side of the mountain from the graveyard. Crescent Falls. His father must be the person Russo said drowned there twenty years ago.”
Asher’s shoulders slumped as hope drained out of him. “He wouldn’t have taken Faith there. On a day like today, that place is crawling with tourists.”
“No, no, it isn’t. Remember a tourist drowned there a while back, the day you found the graveyard? The park system shut it down until they can do a study on the safety measures. It’s still closed.”
“That’s it. Has to be. Get everyone over to the falls. Get that chopper up there. And tell me everything you know about what happened to his father.” Asher took off running.
The falls couldn’t have been more than a football field away. But by the time Asher reached the parking lot, his healing lung was burning and he was having trouble taking a deep breath. His back ached, but it always ached these days, so he didn’t pay much attention to that.
“You okay, buddy?” Lance asked over the phone. “Your breathing doesn’t sound so good.”
Probably because it wasn’t.
Asher tried to take a deeper breath, but every time he did, it felt as if a knife was being stabbed into his lung all over again. Didn’t matter. He couldn’t let it slow him down, not with Faith’s life at stake.
He stopped at the taped-off entrance to the path that visitors used to go to the top of Crescent Falls. Something neon orange on the ground caught his attention. One piece of Taser ID confetti. The Taser hadn’t been fired here or there’d have been dozens of them. Instead, someone had specifically dropped one piece.
Faith. It had to be her. He was on the right track. She must have secretly pocketed some confetti after getting Tased beside the police car. She’d left him a bread crumb.
“Asher?” Lance called out. “Give me an update. Are you okay? Have you found anything?”
He studied the path that followed a steep angle up the mountain, winding around rocks and trees. The falls weren’t visible from this vantage point. But he could hear them. He was close.
“This is the place. She’s here. Tell everyone to hurry.” He ended the call, silenced his phone, then ducked under the yellow tape and began jogging up the steep path toward the falls, as quickly as his burning lung and aching back muscles would allow.