When Annie and Stone made it back to the station, he handed Glenna Lake’s DNA samples to Casey with the instructions of who to overnight them to.
“Joe and I finished interviewing all of the registered sex offenders in the area. Everyone’s alibis checked out, but we’re having a hard time pinning one guy down. He’s not home whenever we go by. Checked with his parole officer and he confirmed he’s missed his last two check-in appointments,” Casey said.
“Tell me about him.” Stone headed toward the fax machine while Casey followed.
“Richard Toolie. Forty-five. Did five years for rape and battery twenty years ago. Lives about an hour out of town.”
He looked at Annie, who shrugged. “It’s possible he started that way.”
“Put out a BOLO. Grab Joe and Robert. Find him and bring him in for questioning.” Stone collected the incoming faxes and began sifting through them.
“What about Dave and Hank?” Casey asked.
“I’ve got them working on something else.”
“Okay.” Casey took off.
Stone found the fax from Belkin and handed it to Annie. “Start on this, I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Kip ran over. “I finished the search for all the places that sell carved ravens like the one in evidence. Here’s the list.” He handed Stone some stapled pages. “There’s a gift store in Anchorage that sells native art online as well as in their shop. I put it at the top of the list for you.”
Stone slapped him on the back. “Good work. Thanks, Kip.”
Stone found Dave at his desk. “How’s it going?”
“Hank and I tracked down all the violent offenders and finished interviewing them. We’re just confirming the last of the alibis now, but so far they’re all good.”
“Damn. Okay, thanks.” Stone headed toward Captain Rosewood’s office. He found her amongst a huge pile of files stacked on either side of her. The pen in her hand flicked back and forth while she read. He stood there a moment before she acknowledged him.
“Sit.”
Stone complied.
Rosewood made a mark on the paper in front of her before she looked up. “All right, bring me up to speed.”
Stone filled her in with what they had, or didn’t have, since his last verbal report.
She stared at him for a moment, as if collecting her thoughts. “This is a tough one, Stone, but you’re competent. I know you’ll find the bastard doing this. Just keep me in the loop.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Stone stood. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“Now get the hell out of here and catch me a serial killer.” Her head bent and she returned to her reading.
Stone found Annie in his office, lost to all but Belkin’s investigation. He gathered everything they had on the case and found Patsy’s replacement, Gayle. He handed her the paperwork with instructions to fax them over to Detective Belkin at the Anchorage PD. When he returned, he sat behind his desk. A big sigh escaped.
Annie’s head came up. “Feeling a bit overwhelmed?”
“You could say that.”
She pointed to a mug on his right. “I got you some coffee.”
He grabbed it and took a big swig. “Bless you, woman.”
“Let me give you just the highlights, you can read the file later.”
“You’re too good to be true.” He sat back with mug in hand and put his feet up on the desk.
She rolled her eyes at him. “Okay, the UNSUB’S first victim was Heather Dunbow, age twenty-four, she lived with her parents in the town of Alyeska.” She placed a smiling picture of the young girl in front of him.
“Pretty girl.”
“She disappeared October 12th. She worked at the Jack Sprat restaurant in town as a waitress. The place closes at ten, then the girls have scut work before they can leave. Heather was done by ten-thirty. She said goodnight and went outside to wait for her teenaged brother to pick her up.
“Several of the staff saw her out there and offered her a ride, but she declined. Said her brother was always late. The last person to see her was the restaurant manager, Rikki Blankenship. She left a little after eleven. She also offered Heather a ride, but she declined.
“The brother showed up at eleven-thirty, an entire hour late. Said he’d been with his girlfriend and lost track of time.
“Poor kid, for the rest of his life he’ll have to live with the guilt that he got his sister killed.”
“No doubt. Her body was discovered six weeks later, November 27th, the day after Thanksgiving. Like your first victim, she was found under the ice in Eagle River.” Annie slid the crime scene photos over for him to view.
Stone began taping them up on the murder board, a giant white board where he’d displayed the crime scene photos from the first two vics along with notes he’d made with a dry-erase marker.
He hung the image of the woman alive first and wrote her name underneath. Next came one of the woman under the ice. Her bluish purple lips yawned open in a scream, her eyes wide, an expression of shear terror. Her hands were out in a defensive manner, her flesh a mottled grey.
He rooted through his ‘IN’ box for the snapshots from yesterday’s crime scene and displayed them as well.
“We may have caught a break, as they have a witness,” Annie said.
“What?” Stone turned and faced her.
“The manager remembered a man. He’d been coming in often lately and always requested Heather’s station. The other waitresses teased her about her ‘boyfriend’. Not only was he in that night, but he was her last customer.”
“Did he pay with a credit card?”
She frowned. “Sorry, no. Always cash.”
“Of course, that would have been too easy.”
Gayle entered the room and handed the case files back to him. Stone grabbed the offered stack. “Any problems?”
“None. I even called and confirmed he’d received everything.”
“Good job, Gayle, thanks.”
Once the secretary left, Annie continued. “We have a description: mid to late twenties, six feet tall, medium build, brown eyes, brown hair cut extremely short, hair-shaved above the ears, and his posture was ramrod straight.”
“Sounds military.”
“That’s what I was thinking. It also matches our sketch.”
“There’s a military facility near the city of Anchorage, the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson. Fort Richardson was already the largest US base in Alaska, but after it merged with Elmendorf Air Force Base in 2010 it became even larger covering over sixty acres and housing around twenty thousand. I’d say at least half are probably men who match that description,” Stone said.
“But it’s a lead we didn’t have yesterday.”
“No, you’re right. Tell me about the girl who may or may not be Patsy’s granddaughter.”
“Okay.” Annie passed him the photos and he put them up while she talked. “She was found yesterday, Dec. 31st. Wait.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her look of surprise. “Did you realize today is New Year’s Day?”
“Hell, with everything that’s been going on, I completely forgot. Is that significant in some way?”
“It’s the first of the year. As you stated before, there were two victims found yesterday. What if he was working on a deadline? Remember the case in Wisconsin? There were five victims. I assumed the killer was interrupted, or he stopped because they’d convicted someone for the crime, but what if he was done?”
He dropped back into his chair. “That means we may never catch him.”
“Not necessarily. If he’s in the military, he’s stuck here for the next three years. Which brings up the question, how did he get stationed here in the first place?”
“He put in for a transfer.”
“Right, but Alaska has been known to have the fiercest winters of all the states. That has got to be nirvana for a man with his proclivities. This would be his ultimate destination, so how did he finally land here? I mean, was he recently promoted to a higher rank and that gave him the pull to select where he was stationed?”
“So we’re looking for an officer?”
“Better yet, he could be career military. That means he can’t take off unless he goes AWOL, but then he’d lose his pension and all his benefits.”
“Well that narrows it down significantly.”
She nodded before she glanced down. “It says here that Belkin’s latest victim was found standing on the Knik Arm of the Cook Inlet.”
“That backs up to the base, so it fits with our theory perfectly.” Stone took a big drink of his coffee.
“It does.” She tapped her pen on top of the desk. “I wonder why some women were left on top of the water, and some underneath?”
Stone glanced at the murder board. “The perp’s first victim, the girl left in Eagle River, was put there during the first big storm of winter, meaning it hadn’t frozen over yet. It’s also smaller than the other lakes or rivers in the area. Therefore, he could be pretty sure it would freeze completely.
“The next victim he dumped, Allison Monroe, was a month later.” He pointed to the murder board. “Draper’s Pond is larger than Eagle River, but not as large as the Knik. You may not know this since you’re not from Alaska, but this winter has been wacky in that we haven’t had as much snow as usual.
“I blame global warming. Anyway, before that big storm on Christmas Eve, the only frozen bodies of water in the area were smaller: creeks, some rivers, but not Draper’s Pond, which is the size of a small lake.”
“But how the hell would he know that?”
He shrugged. “It’s simple deduction.”
“No, I mean, if we’re right, this man transferred to Anchorage only last January. Alaska is vast with multiple bodies of water.”
Stone slapped his hand on the desk. “He’s from here.”
“That’s what I think. He didn’t just pick Alaska or even Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson on a whim. He was coming home.”
“Son of a bitch. I bet you’re right.”
“We need to take our sketch to the base and see if anyone recognizes this guy,” she said.
Stone stared at the photographs of the women they’d identified and found a resemblance. “These women could be sisters. They all have long, straight brown hair, brown eyes and the same build.”
Annie followed his gaze. “He definitely has a type. At least we don’t have to worry about what these women have in common anymore. That also explains why the ages are all over the place.”
Dave and Hank entered the office. “We’ve finished with the confirmations, and they all have alibis for the nights the women were taken,” Dave informed him.
“Thanks. I’ve got another job for you two. I need you to help with the identification process on the last vic.” Stone handed them the cleanest facial photo he could find from the autopsy photos.
“Take copies and bring this print back to me. Put ages 16-29, brown hair, and brown eyes in the missing persons search engine. Bring me your findings.”
“Got it,” Dave said.
“Yes, sir,” Hank replied.
Stone stood. “We need to get to that base.”
“Are the roads passable?” Annie asked.
“They must be. Walt made it through this morning.” Stone found a copy of the sketch, then ripped the top page off of Kip’s list and put them in his jacket pocket.
They grabbed a couple of sandwiches from Arby’s on their way out of town and ate on the road.
Annie munched on a fry. “How long is the drive?”
“The base is this side of Anchorage, about thirty-five miles, but how long the drive is would be anyone’s guess. Being that it’s New Years Day, most folks are home nursing hangovers. It should be smooth sailing. That is unless we’re detained by an accident involving cars or wildlife.”
“If a person can get killed by hitting a deer, I can’t imagine what would happen if they hit a moose or caribou.”
“It’s not pretty, that’s for sure. A bull moose can weigh over fifteen-hundred pounds.”
She stared at him with wide eyes. “That would demolish a compact car.”
“Yup. I’ve witnessed the damage firsthand when I was a deputy. I’ve seen a car resembling a smashed tin can, but the moose got up and walked away. That’s not always the case, but at least when a moose or caribou die in a moving vehicle accident, the meat gets donated to feed the less fortunate.”
Annie gave him a big smile. “That’s really cool.”
Damn, but she was easy to please.