Xander crossed his arms on his chest. “Why did Matcliff leave the FBI hanging, not knowing whether he was alive or dead? Not reporting in, running away from his duty. These don’t seem like the actions of a patriot.”
“No, they don’t,” Thurber said. “He walked away from his world, his training, his job. There must be a reason. I think he snapped, and started killing, and realized he liked it. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had a military man start killing on American soil.”
“I think you’re reaching,” Xander said evenly. “He’s a very convenient scapegoat.”
“Then who planted Kaylie Rousch’s things at Wright’s house? I don’t think we’re too far out on a limb here thinking Doug was involved.”
Baldwin shook his head. “I don’t know, Rob. That theory has always felt like a reach.”
There was an awkward silence, which Fletcher broke. “So we have a disappearing cult, a missing, now dead FBI agent who might have been a serial killer and a resurrected girl. The will clearly has some clues as to what’s been happening to Doug Matcliff over the years, right? I’d say that’s something to go on.”
Jordan Blake finally spoke up. “All this speculation is great—we need to brainstorm what’s happening. But I don’t have time to sit here and reminisce. We have another child missing right now, and I vote the rest of this case is shelved until we find her. Rachel Stevens has to be our priority. We owe it to her, and to her parents. We don’t need another Kaylie Rousch on our hands.”
Chapter
32
FLETCHER RAPPED HIS knuckles on the table. “I agree with Agent Blake. The Rachel Stevens case must be the priority. What do you want us to do, then?”
“You continue to work with Jordan to find the Stevens girl,” Baldwin said. “Rob will be recusing himself from this part of the case. He’s going to work on identifying the body we’ve mistakenly identified as Kaylie Rousch. Sam, Xander and I will work on Matcliff and Eden, see if we can’t shake things loose from this end.”
Sam caught Thurber’s eye—he wasn’t at all pleased with this turn of events. He hadn’t offered to recuse himself. He’d been instructed to. No wonder he was being so pissy.
“You know, Baldwin, if your profile is correct, Rachel Stevens could still be alive. She’s only been missing for a day,” she said.
Baldwin nodded. “That’s why we need to get this profile to the media right away. Since Rachel went missing after Matcliff died, it stands to reason we were wrong, and he’s not involved in the cases, after all.”
Thurber said, “Hey, now, hold up. Doug went undercover in a psycho NRM and has the DNA of one of the missing girls on his body. Are we sure we want to dismiss him as a suspect? He’s certainly involved in this, up to his neck.”
“He reached out from the grave to get help solving his murder, which tells me he might have been on the run,” Baldwin said. “Maybe we’ve been approaching this wrong all these years. Maybe he’s the innocent one in all of this.”
“I don’t think so. I think his letter, the will, it’s all a confession. Because if he’s innocent, why the hell would he go to her instead of coming to us?”
Thurber’s face was red, and Sam flinched at the tone of his voice. Bitterness, fury, hurt, all bled into the word her. She understood, she really did. When someone you trust, who you think is a friend, betrays that trust, it’s hard not to have negative feelings.
She tried to calm him down. “Agent Thurber, I’m not sure why I’ve been brought into this, either. But Doug clearly had a reason for reaching out to me. Maybe he knew I’d take things to you, and you’d know he was trying to help you solve this case. Maybe he thought I’d look at it with a fresh eye.”
Thurber crossed his arms on his chest. He looked like an angry kid whose best friend had just kicked a rock at him. “Or maybe he’s fucking with us, like he’s been doing for the past ten years. He went native in a whacked-out cult, for Christ’s sake. How can we take anything he has to say seriously, especially when we have no proof he’s the one saying it?”
Thurber’s thin veneer had finally cracked, if they’d angered him into using the nonapproved term for Eden. Sam took note. Thurber was more than angry about this—he was bordering on thermonuclear.
“He makes a good point, Sam,” Fletcher said. “This guy had a lot of chances to make things right with the FBI, and instead he stayed quiet for years, then out of the blue went to a country lawyer and made up a bizarre will and spent quite a bit of time following you around. None of this is adding up.”
Sam took a breath. They were right. Of course they were right. This was all too weird for words. She looked at Thurber. “Do you have any idea where the cult might be now? Can we go interview them about Doug? And maybe we’ll get lucky, and they’ll know something about Rachel Stevens.”
“NRM,” he snapped.