But ultimately, she continued down the law enforcement career path. Her unique skill set enabled her to assess crime scenes with the eye of an experienced cop instead of the rookie she was, and her background in psychology added another layer to her abilities. Crime scene investigators collected and analyzed evidence, but they didn’t extrapolate or assign the human factor. They took facts and presented them; it was up to agents like Lucy and detectives like Tia to look at the evidence and add in the human equation.
While she loved her job, she sometimes missed the lab environment, so when Tia asked if she and Barry could stop by the lab after their late lunch to look at the evidence from the Elise Hansen shooting, Lucy agreed before Barry could comment.
The evidence was still in the main lab room being processed. They all donned gloves, gowns, and booties, then approached the table where a tech named Stuart was cataloging each item. Everything had been sealed and labeled in either paper bags—if there was biological material like blood—or plastic bags.
Elise’s clothes were hanging in a special drying chamber in the corner both to dry the blood and preserve the evidence.
Stu said, “The cell phone is a burn phone. We pulled down the data from the SIM card.” He handed a printout to Tia. Lucy looked over her shoulder. There wasn’t a lot there.
“Can you shoot a copy of this to my computer and the FBI?”
“Already done,” Stu said. “Your second canvass turned up a backpack in a ditch near the shooting site. Inside was a wallet, multiple IDs, makeup, a change of clothes, condoms, a flask of vodka.” He gestured to a series of plastic bags that had been sealed and labeled. “She had over five thousand dollars in cash on her. We also found an airplane ticket stub in the wallet.”
Lucy picked up that envelope. Barry took a picture on his phone of the information.
“She flew in to San Antonio from Dallas on May thirteenth. Under the name Elise Hamilton.”
“Dallas is a major hub,” Tia said. “She could have transferred from another flight.”
“But now that we have a name and date,” Barry said, “we can contact TSA and see where she originated.”
“Did she have an ID in this name?” Lucy asked.
Stu nodded. “She had several IDs. I made copies. A Nevada ID under Elise Hansen, age eighteen; a Nevada driver’s license under Elise Hamilton, age twenty-one; an ID from Virginia under Elise Harrison, age eighteen; another ID under Elise Hansen but from Texas, age eighteen.”
“Fake?” Tia asked.
“All authentic—but there are people who specialize in creating identities. But four authentic identifications? That’s odd—at least to me.”
“Which ID was issued first?”
“Elise Hansen in Nevada is a state ID that’s three years old. The newest is Elise Hansen in Texas—it was issued three weeks ago, the day after the airline stub.”
“She got the card in three weeks?” Tia asked. “That fast?”
“One day—the day after she arrived,” Stu corrected. “I don’t know how she did it or where she bought it. It has all the marks of being a God-honest Texas ID card, but the address is fake—they couldn’t have mailed it there.”
“Meaning, someone has the ability to create authentic but fake identifications,” Brad said.
“Bingo,” Stu said. “We’re going to run tests on it, but I ran the number—that is real. She’s in the system, under that address, posted on May fourteenth.”
“Then wouldn’t there be a record of who created the ID?” Tia asked.
“Yes and no. If it was created at a DMV, we can trace which one, and we can investigate further. There was a big scandal a few years back where one of the DMVs had a ring of employees who created false identification for illegal immigrants. The state clamped down on them, but that doesn’t mean that others couldn’t slip through. It’s a lucrative business. But it could still be a perfect forgery, especially if they use the same equipment and raw material.”
“She’s from Nevada,” Lucy said.
“Because that’s the oldest ID?”
“That, and because she had a second ID with her being over twenty-one. Important if you’re hooking in bars or clubs. Nevada also has legalized prostitution,” Lucy said. “She could have started there.”
“But she’s underage,” Barry said. “Legalized means regulated.”
“And she had false identification,” Lucy repeated. “You don’t think she could be eighteen, do you, Tia?”
“Slim to no chance. I talked to the doctor—based on x-rays, he put her age at sixteen, and he says that’s within six months.”
Lucy tapped the Elise Hansen ID card. “I don’t know if that’s her real name, but I’ll bet that’s her birthday, plus two years. All these cards have her birthday on April fourteenth.” She also thought it was her real name because it was the first card issued.
Tia said, “I’ll talk to my pal at NCMEC and run with that. We can focus on Nevada and the West. It gives us a place to start. Plus, I’ll narrow the missing-persons search to Nevada and surrounding states.”
“She lied to us,” Lucy said.
Barry and Tia turned to her.
Lucy continued. “She said she’d been here a week before meeting with Worthington. But she came in three weeks earlier.”
“Maybe,” Tia said.