Hours later I turned away from the computer screen, wishing I could unsee what I’d seen. The information that Tracy had compiled was compelling and sickening. The women in Dr. Howell’s files didn’t seem to have one common denominator other than being dead. Even the injuries they’d sustained varied: some showed signs of only recent trauma, others patterns of ongoing abuse.
I rubbed my throbbing temples and forced myself to walk away from my computer. It was nearly midnight, and all I’d managed to do was scan the collection of pictures, autopsy results, and police reports. Just enough to turn my stomach. My goal had been to get an overview of what Tracy was trying to tell me. As a woman, I’d hoped that the crazy things on television or in books were fiction, only fiction. As an investigative journalist, I knew they weren’t. Yet before tonight I’d never seen information compiled so succinctly about crimes against women taking place in my own city.
In an effort to clear my head, I wandered through my apartment and checked my phone. Dylan never texted me back after I let him know that I wouldn’t be coming over. It didn’t bother me. This relationship was relatively new. While I appreciated his having met me at the morgue, I needed space. I’d been on my own for too long to suddenly jump into anything serious. Staying at his house was nice—more than nice. But I wasn’t ready to leave a change of clothes or a toothbrush.
It would take more than hot, steamy sex and salmon on the grill to prompt me to move Fred’s fishbowl. Joint custody of a fish was more domesticated than I wanted to do right now. Besides, I had my own washing machine.
I needed to go to bed. It’d been a long day. Yet at the same time, I couldn’t stop thinking about the last profile I’d read on Dr. Howell’s memory drive. The picture the victim’s parents had given to the police showed two daughters: two beautiful twenty-year-old coeds with their entire lives before them, smiling for the camera. Unfortunately, no one had realized how short a time their entire lives would be.
The victim named in the profile was twenty-year-old Elisa Ortiz. Even postmortem, her attractiveness was obvious. She was tall, five feet nine inches, and fit, 135 pounds, with vibrant red hair and striking green eyes. The image was permanently etched behind my lids.
I poured myself a glass of wine and contemplated her unusual case.
In some ways Elisa Ortiz could be considered a lucky one. She’d been identified. As I thought about the Rosemonts and Mindy, I knew in my heart that closure was important.
Collapsing on the couch, I sipped my wine. The thing nagging at me about the Elisa case was that she wasn’t the only Ortiz daughter to have gone missing seven years ago. Elisa had an identical twin sister, Emma. Making the investigative leap, I pulled up the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System and learned that, even now, Emma Ortiz was considered missing.
According to the information in Dr. Howell’s report, the two sisters had been close and lived together in a small apartment near the campus of Wayne State University. There was no evidence of risky or suspicious behavior in either of their background checks. According to testimonials, the two sisters were inseparable college students with good GPAs. Interviews with Wayne State professors and students unanimously produced stories of friendly, yet quiet, young women. No one recalled seeing either woman with a young man, much less partying. By all accounts the two spent most of their time at school, at the library, in the gym, or in their apartment. Their parents confirmed these descriptions and added that their daughters were never in trouble, never had serious boyfriends, and were actively involved in their church in their hometown.
Apparently the only thing Elisa and Emma Ortiz did, besides study, was work out. They did it often. That was their activity the night they went missing. The gym willingly surrendered a surveillance video showing both women arriving, working out, and leaving. The video also confirmed that neither woman made it to their car, even though it was parked right outside the gym. The case had stumped the DPD and was still considered open.
Taking another sip of wine, I thought about how the circumstances of this case defied Dylan’s belief that there was safety in numbers. These two sisters had gone to the gym together. One theory was that they were taken at the same time. There was also speculation they’d left willingly.
Neither theory could be verified. Food in their refrigerator and a load of laundry in their dryer seemed to refute the theory of a planned exodus. Even their toothbrushes and bank cards were still in their apartment.
The gym, which had long since closed its doors for good, had time-lapse video of the parking lot. The older surveillance system consisted of a rotation of cameras: thirty seconds per camera with four cameras. The feed featuring the sisters and their car stopped recording as the women exited the gym’s door. In the minute and a half it took to get back to that angle, they were gone. Nothing suspicious was found on any of the other feeds. There were no witnesses to their disappearance. It was as if the two women had literally vanished into thin air.