“Annie Church and Dede Paris,” she says. “We just found their bodies.”
I close my eyes. Somebody—Aiden, Isaac, Noah—just made their next move.
92
MY THIRD TIME in two days driving in this neighborhood. But this time, it’s not directly to Aiden Willis’s house. And this time, traffic is at a standstill, logjammed as far as the eye can see, traffic down to a single, narrow lane on the turnpike.
I inch forward until I reach the barricades blocking access to the very road on which Aiden Willis lives. TV crews have lined up their vans and satellite feeds, well-coiffed reporters taking their turns before the cameras with their microphones. Once past the barricade, the turnpike opens up again, so I head north another quarter mile to Tasty’s, where I park in the lot and head back to the scene on foot.
Two bodies discovered in the woods, almost directly behind Aiden Willis’s property line in the backyard, buried ten feet belowground.
That was all I got from Lauren Ricketts, one of the officers on the scene. She didn’t have much time to talk to me; I was lucky to get as much as she gave me.
I walk down to the barricaded street. A reporter from one of the local stations, a guy with hair so brittle from hair spray that he could weaponize it, recognizes me. He probably doesn’t know I’ve lost my badge. Either way, he allows me inside the van and shows me the feed his station’s helicopter is getting, an overhead shot.
The overhead view: A lot of the work has already been completed. A bulldozer has already excavated the dirt, and a crane has somehow lifted the bodies out of the crater. The team is on the ground, officers and forensic investigators and medical examiners.
Two gurneys are loaded into a hearse and driven off the property. I step out of the news van. Five minutes later, I see the hearse approaching the turnpike barricade, officers removing the barriers to allow it to leave.
Annie and Dede. Why now? And how did it happen?
I send a text message to Ricketts: I’m here on the scene when you have a minute. It will be a while, I expect, before her work is done.
But thirty seconds later, I get a reply: Where?
I text back, then wait. Ricketts, looking the worse for wear—dusty and dirty, like a soldier emerging from battle—but excited, too, approaches the barricade.
“It’s Annie and Dede?” I ask.
She nods. “I think so. One of the fingers was missing.”
Right. He cut off one of Dede’s fingers and left it for the cops to find, a few years ago.
“The knife was there, too,” she says. “The murder weapon.”
Wow. He left the murder weapon with the girls? Our killer was probably too careful to leave fingerprints on the knife, but you never know.
“I found the bodies,” Ricketts says. “It was me.”
I put my hand on her shoulder. “How the heck did that happen?”
“Well, that’s the thing—someone put a note on my windshield this morning.”
I draw back. “What?”
Ricketts looks around at the bedlam, the reporters and onlookers, practically shutting down the turnpike. “A note said I could find their bodies back here. By the large elm tree with the X in red spray paint.” She shrugs. “Why would someone do that? Why would someone write me a note?”
I think about that. But she knows the answer, same as I do. The note was written to her because she was working on this case with me.
“Whoever did this—he wants you to know,” she says. “Since I’m the responding officer, it’s my case. I have access to all the data. He wants you to have the information, Murphy. He knows I’ll tell you.”
She’s right. It makes sense.
“Aiden didn’t work alone,” I say. “There are at least two people doing this. Aiden and someone else, maybe two somebody elses. Someone who knows we’re working on this case together.”
She thinks about it, nods. “So what do we do now?”
“Do your job,” I say. “Find out all you can. And then, when it’s safe, you and I should work through this.”
“Okay. Right. Okay.”
Ricketts takes a deep breath. This is a big moment for her. It’s not every day a rookie patrol officer breaks a major unsolved case.
“Watch your back, Officer,” I say. “They may be trying to communicate with me, but they’re using you to do it.”
I walk back to my car as a light mist begins to fall, my mind racing with questions. He’s messing with me now, telling me something, sending me in a certain direction. But which direction? And why? How does showing me Dede’s and Annie’s bodies help him?
My head starts to ache. Another new piece of evidence, yielding nothing but more questions.
When I reach my car, Noah Walker is leaning against it, his arms crossed.
“Hello, stranger,” he says to me.
93
“I’VE BEEN CALLING you,” Noah says. He pushes himself off my car. He’s in his construction gear, jeans and T-shirt, boots, protective vest. Off work now, catching dinner at Tasty’s.