The arrival of midnight found them both crammed in a closet, Ilse sitting on the desk. She watched where Sawyer reclined in his chair. The rest of the office was quiet. Most of the workers had gone home for the night. The naked bulb above Tom's desk glowed angry yellow across the lacquered surface of the furniture below. Ilse was staring over Sawyer's shoulder where he sat, half twisted, angling the desktop screen so she could see.
The case files were messy, and Sawyer was still grumbling, trying to sort through the faxed and scanned photos from decade-old reports.
"Didn't they have a damn filing system ten years ago?" Sawyer was muttering. “This is ridiculous."
Ilse was sitting on the edge of the desk. She glanced at her dumb phone. Technically it was the next day. The digital clock was racing towards one AM. Sawyer had a bottle of caffeine pills sitting on his desk. So far he hadn't taken any, but she knew, once exhaustion started setting in, he would forgo coffee and prefer his energizing pills instead.
For now, Ilse's skin was still buzzing. For the last few hours, they had been combing through the files. Ten years old. That was the last they'd heard of the Ice-Road killer. But she knew he'd been active for at least twenty years before that. Some cases had even been tied to attacks in the eighties. But since he'd never been caught, nothing was confirmed.
"Alright, here we go," Sawyer was saying. "This is the last of them." He clicked on an attachment in his email and began to drag the files over into a folder he'd created on his desktop.
Ilse shifted on the uncomfortable desk. "There might be more. It's possible he was active for thirty years. At least twenty. Hell, maybe even in the last decade if he started up again and we just missed it."
Sawyer looked up. He glanced at the files and tapped a finger. "Most recent one we have is from ten years ago."
"I know. I worked with the victims. Both Claudia and Evelyn."
"Lauren," Sawyer corrected.
Ilse nodded once. "Cops found his lair," Ilse said. "At the time I wasn't tracking the case closely. I only knew from what Claudia told me. But when I did look it up, the Ice-Road killer was said to have been chased out of his hiding place. But they never did find the man himself."
Sawyer glanced up now, leaving his mouse hovering over a file with victims’ names. More than sixteen of them. Sixteen women and children all around Washington over twenty years. Some of the girls as young as thirteen. Ilse shivered in horror. As far as the police knew, only two of them had ever escaped. Both Ilse's clients.
"So he was never even identified?" Sawyer said.
"Never. There was a manhunt, but it turned up nothing."
Ilse still sat, tucking her legs up under her on the lacquered desk surface. She stared at the computer screen, her mind spinning. Could it really be him? The icicle killer after all these years? So much time had passed. He'd been absent for ten years. The FBI had hunted him before that. Would he still be in Washington?
"He would be old now," Sawyer said. "If he really was active for that long and then took a break. He'd be very old."
Ilse shrugged. "He could even be dead. Or maybe fled the country," she murmured. "I still don't know how he was never caught." She frowned, and then clicked her fingers. “Hang on—I actually remember now. The cops tracked him to his lair and encircled the place—an old, abandoned house. The whole thing burnt down. No cops were injured, but they did find bones on the scene.”
“Bones?”
“Nothing confirmed, but the going theory, apparently, was the serial killer crisped himself to escape justice.” She shrugged a shoulder. “Good riddance,” she muttered. “He was a sexual sadist. Which, I might add, is a different MO than our current killer.”
"I don't mean to burst your bubble, but we still have to consider this might not be a murderer. There are such things as group suicides. We now know both the victims knew each other. For all we know, they agreed to kill themselves. Maybe some sort of pact."
Ilse shook her head, her temper flaring. "You don't know them like I do. They didn't kill themselves. They were doing well. Just because people suffer trauma doesn't mean they automatically kill themselves."
"I know that. Calm down."
"Don't tell me to calm down."
Sawyer held up his hands in mock surrender. Ilse glanced off, closing her eyes for a moment, feeling sleep weighing heavy. She had a bad feeling about this. Maybe Sawyer was right. Maybe it was her fault. Maybe she had missed something. But as she glanced at the computer screen, staring at the decades of files, she felt a slow weight form in her stomach. There were no clues at the crime scenes. No evidence according to the coroners. Both victims had cut their wrists in their tubs. But now, even the bathrooms had been cleaned.
Ilse murmured, "Who gave the interview to the police?"
"Come again?"
"For Eve? Lauren, I mean. Who gave the interview?"
"Hang on. Right, there it is. The mother. Lauren's mother." Sawyer massaged his neck and closed his eyes briefly. "You want to talk to her?"
"She's the only witness."
"She didn't see anything."
"Fair. But you know what I mean."
Sawyer bobbed his head once. He glanced around. "I think we should get a few hours of sleep. She's going to be asleep anyway."
Ilse slowly nodded. She hated to do it, but Sawyer was right. "I'll meet up with you here again tomorrow morning."
"No, that's fine. I'll meet you at the mother's house. She's in the suburbs just outside the city. I'll send you the address. Get some sleep. Let's say nine?"
Ilse nodded.
For a moment, she was grateful at Sawyer's matter of fact, direct approach. She wasn't sure what to think. Slowly, she pushed off his desk, and moved through the door of his office.
She paused and gave a little nod of gratitude towards the baseball cap wearing FBI agent.
As she met his gaze, both of them tired, sleepy, she wondered if he was thinking the same thing.
Eve had been killed four days ago. Now that the clock had shifted past midnight, it meant Claudia had been killed two days ago.
If this was a serial killer, and he was picking up victims, he was doing it every two days.
Which meant, by the end of the day, in 24 hours, he could easily strike again.
Ilse massaged her eyelids, feeling a shiver along her spine. Maybe she was wrong.
But part of her—a horrible, cloying part of her didn't think so.
Someone was picking off the women she'd been helping. Someone was coming after survivors.
Ilse felt a flicker of dread, gave another nod to Sawyer and then moved back towards the elevators.