Buried Read online

  Sayer took the printed photo Ezra handed her of Victoria Winslow. She taped it to the whiteboard and wrote the young woman’s name and abduction date beneath her smiling image.

  Ezra slid the cursor over to the second woman, a young blonde with short curly hair and a serious look on her face. “And this is Christina Jacobs. Jacobs was twenty-three, and also went missing on September twelfth, around two-thirty P.M. after leaving class at the University of Virginia.”

  “So our UNSUB…” Sayer paused. “That’s ‘unknown subject,’ Piper.”

  Piper nodded a thanks for the explanation.

  “Our UNSUB kidnapped Victoria Winslow, then drove three hours west and kidnapped Christina Jacobs on the same day? Then, based on time of death, they were held somewhere for over a month and then killed about two weeks apart?”

  Ezra nodded. “Exactly right.”

  “Well, that’s unusual. Okay, go on.”

  Ezra clicked on the next slide, displaying a photograph of a woman and child.

  “Oh, no,” Sayer said, voice heavy.

  “Meet the woman who wrote on Victoria Winslow with her own saliva. This”—he moused over the mother and child—“is Jillian Watts and her three-year-old daughter, Grace. They both went missing September fifteenth from Charlottesville, three days after the other two women were taken.”

  Sayer stared at the photo of the mother and child together. They both had blond curls sticking out from beneath sparkly party hats. Jillian Watts was smiling at the camera. She had her arms wrapped around Grace. The girl looked up at her mother with pure love on her face. Sayer’s throat tightened and she momentarily hated her job with every fiber of her being.

  “They both went missing? The UNSUB took a child?” Sayer asked. If their UNSUB only wanted the women, that could be very bad for Grace Watts.

  “That’s right.”

  “And the saliva writing on the body belongs to this Watts woman.” Sayer let that thought sink in. “Well, she used the term HELP US. The use of the plural means the UNSUB either has another victim we’re unaware of, or Grace is still alive. No matter what, it means that he’s been holding Jillian Watts for well over a month now.”

  “Jesus,” Max mumbled.

  “I want us to assume that her use of ‘us’ means that the child is still alive.…” Sayer trailed off as she walked up to the image to get a better look.

  Like the other two women, Jillian Watts was young, with wavy blond hair, blue eyes, and the same pointy chin. “I wonder if he took Grace for a reason, or if she was just in the way when he took Jillian? And why on earth hasn’t local law enforcement noticed these young women missing? I mean, look at them, they could all be sisters.”

  Ezra frowned. “Well, they’re all legal adults. It’s not unheard-of for women to take off, which means none of these cases were taken all that seriously. We’re just lucky they were all entered in our DNA database. The police might not have made the connection, but their families are clearly looking for them.”

  Sayer hated to think of the trail of devastated people she was about to create as she notified those families. “Okay, so we’re going to assume that Jillian and Grace Watts are still alive out there somewhere. Give me details about their abductions.”

  “I’m still compiling the police reports, but it looks like all of these women went missing while running errands or after class. The various police departments are sending me what they have now, so I’ll cross-check those reports next.”

  Sayer put the photos of the rest of the victims up on the whiteboard. “Did you try to find any connections between these women?”

  Ezra let out an indignant huff. “Of course I did.” He spun his chair around to grab a new stack of notes. “And I can’t find one. These women are all squeaky clean and, as far as I can tell, none of their lives have ever overlapped.”

  “Okay, keep digging.” Sayer stood next to the projected image. She hoped that Ezra could uncover some kind of connection. Completely unrelated victims were the worst-case scenario, because it meant there was no trail to follow. “So, we’ve got a kidnapped mother and child, and two dead women. They were all taken a little over a month ago from around Virginia. These victims are high-risk.” Sayer glanced at Piper. “High-risk means that they aren’t easy targets. People would clearly notice them missing. Either our UNSUB is incredibly smart or incredibly dumb.”

  Max leaned back in his chair. “I vote dumb; that kind is much easier to catch.”

  Sayer glanced at the clock. It wasn’t even eight A.M. yet. “Is that all you’ve got, Ezra?”

  Ezra clicked the image over to a DNA panel. “No, uh, this is where things get … concerning.”

  “Get concerning?” Piper said. “This all seems pretty darn concerning.” She looked around the room.

  “What is it?” Sayer asked as she began pacing.

  “They got a DNA match to each of the samples taken from underneath the fingernails of the two beaten women.”

  “But that’s great news.” Sayer knew that the DNA from under their victims’ fingernails was most certainly deposited by whoever beat them to death.

  Ezra cringed slightly. “The DNA matches the missing mom, Jillian Watts.”

  “What?” Dana said loudly.

  Sayer stopped pacing and looked at Ezra. “Jillian Watts? The woman missing with her daughter.”

  “The same.”

  “You got Jillian Watts’s DNA from underneath our beaten victims’ fingernails?” Sayer tried to clarify again, mind churning.

  Ezra nodded. “And off the swabs taken from their knuckles.”

  “But wouldn’t her DNA under their fingernails mean that she’s the one that beat them?” Piper asked.

  Sayer nodded slowly. “That would certainly be my first interpretation.” She looked more closely at the photograph of Jillian Watts holding her young daughter. The young girl’s eyes danced with happiness. Jillian’s casual stance and comfort with Grace made her look like nothing more than a loving mother. No hint of any darkness at all. Which Sayer knew meant nothing.

  “Okay…” Sayer tried to process. “If Jillian Watts beat the other two women, perhaps her disappearance wasn’t a kidnapping but a cover-up for her own role in all this. But then why would she also write HELP US in saliva on one of the victims? Ezra, dig hard into the mother’s background and let me know what you find. Until we know more, I want us to consider her a victim. And her daughter is certainly a victim in all this.”

  “On it.” Ezra typed himself another note. “That’s all I’ve got for now. The lab is working on the swabs from the sword thing next, so we should get those results soon.”

  “Great, thanks, Ez. Dana,” Sayer said, “could you fill us in on the X-rays of our two victims?”

  Dana cleared her throat. “Of course. Both women were brutally beaten. I found extensive damage to their faces, ribs, and even a broken leg. I’ll need to take a closer look to confirm, but I didn’t see any evidence of weapon marks on the X-rays. Based on the type of damage, my preliminary assessment is that both women were beaten to death. And based on the defensive marks on their hands and forearms, they put up quite a fight.” Dana paused.

  Sayer remembered that this was one of the things she loved about working with Dana. No matter how long she worked with the dead, the woman always seemed to remember the humanity of the victims.

  “Given the DNA match to Jillian Watts, when I do the actual autopsy I’ll see if I can figure out about how tall the killer was.”

  “Thank you, Dana.” Sayer wrote Beaten on the whiteboard. “So we’ve got our basic MO. That’s modus operandi, the method used to kill,” she said to Piper.

  “Don’t forget arson,” Max added. “He did try to set you guys on fire. Anything from that to help us track him down?”

  “The evidence techs didn’t find anything around the rim of the bone cave to help us track down our fire starter,” Sayer said. “Plus no tire tracks coming up the mining road from the other direction,
but the rain probably washed away anything of use.”

  She wrote Arson on the whiteboard. “One question: How did our UNSUB even know we were there? Max, you found the bones early in the morning, right? It wasn’t even noon when someone tried to set us on fire.”

  “This area is pretty small. Word gets around fast when dead bodies are found,” Max said. “It’s not crazy to think our UNSUB could’ve heard through the grapevine.”

  “All right, yet again that sure makes it sound like we’re looking for a local.” Sayer stared at the whiteboard. “No matter where this UNSUB is from, the fire yesterday means we have an active killer very nearby. A killer who doesn’t mind hurting law enforcement, which also means we need to be on high alert. I want everyone wearing their bulletproof vests when they’re out of the immediate vicinity of the building.”

  She looked around the room at her strange little team, making sure everyone understood. She’d lost an agent on her previous case and had almost lost Ezra. Sayer wasn’t about to let that happen again.

  Satisfied that everyone was taking the threat seriously, she continued, “Okay. We’ve got two dead women, and a missing mother and child still out there. We need to hit the ground running. There are too many questions that we can’t answer yet, so let’s focus on what we can do. Dana, you finish up the autopsies to make sure we didn’t miss anything, and settle cause of death. Once you finish those up, jump over to the bones. Let’s see if any of our skulls match Cricket Nelson.”

  “Sounds good. The rest of my team is already on the way to the bone cave.” Dana tapped the notes in front of her. “Now that we know stratigraphy doesn’t matter, they can yank those bones out in a few hours.”

  “Thanks, Dana. I’ll go make phone-call notifications to the victims’ families,” Sayer said. “While I do that, Ezra, first thing I want you to do is cross-check things like parking tickets and toll roads to see if you can tie a specific person to our abduction sites. Then dig into Jillian Watts. Is there anything that suggests a suburban mom could be our killer? Anything strange at all?”

  “Easy-peasy.” Ezra cracked his knuckles.

  “Max, I’d like you to take a look at the files from the missing persons cases. See if you can find a pattern. Also, can you take a look at the bladed weapon we found with the bodies? See if you can identify it? Figure out where it came from. If you can’t figure it out, find someone who can.”

  He saluted sharply.

  “Piper, you get the local police canvassing area businesses with photos of our victims. Did anyone see these women or this child come through here? Can you also update Kyle Nelson? Just let the chief know where we are with everything.”

  The park ranger nodded solemnly, clearly taking her duty seriously.

  Sayer continued, “Once I’ve talked to the families and have gotten some more info on our victims, I’ll talk to a profiler. A forensic psychologist just down the hill at UVA heard about the murders and called me last night offering to help. Since we’re spread thin at Quantico, I sent her what we’ve got and she’s working on a preliminary profile. Let’s see if we can figure out what kind of pathology is at play here. Maybe start to figure out how our UNSUB selected his victims. Once we have that information together, let’s assess next steps.”

  With a long sigh, Sayer sat down and rolled her shoulders, trying to stop the ache radiating along her left arm. “One last question: Do we need to close down Shenandoah National Park? None of the victims were taken from the immediate area, but we need to protect the public and we’ve got an active killer on the loose. Piper, you’re our park representative, what do you think?”

  “Oof, that’s a tough one. I would have to talk to the Park Service higher-ups, but the Appalachian Trail runs through the park. Closing down the trail is a big deal. Some people plan their entire lives to make the walk and … well, I don’t know.”

  “All right, our victims haven’t been taken from off the trail. No random hikers have been threatened or harmed. So let’s keep it open for now.” Sayer pondered. She didn’t think there was a risk to the general public, and she hated to set off a media feeding frenzy, but she also wanted to let people know to be cautious. “Ezra, can you tell PR to release a very basic statement saying that there is an active murder investigation in the area and that people should be alert?”

  “Will do.”

  Sayer faced the small room. These cases already felt like they were spiraling out of control. Old bones, a missing toddler, a girl gone for seventeen years, and a murderous mom? They sure as hell needed a task force.

  “All right.” Sayer stood. “Let’s get on it. I’m going to go call the families of these women.…”

  Ezra held up a folder. “All the victims’ family info is in here. Names and numbers.”

  “That’s why you’re the best, Ezra.” Sayer patted him on the back and reluctantly went to a small office to tell the families something unthinkable.

  SOUTHERN RANGER STATION, SHENANDOAH NATIONAL PARK, VA

  After completing the notification calls to the victims’ families, Sayer staggered out into the hall and sagged against the cool tile wall.

  Doing family notifications felt like standing next to a black hole of grief that siphoned off a piece of her every time. Her heart felt battered from listening to people crumble into sobbing or shrieking, though the worst was the reverberating silence of those so broken they could no longer make a sound at all. To ward off her own grief, she stood up, shoulders back, and strode into the small office where Max was reading through the current missing persons files.

  He glanced up and did a double take. “Jesus, rough notifications?”

  “Eh.” She waved her hand dismissively, not wanting to dwell.

  “Did you talk to Jillian Watts’s family? Anything to suggest that she’s more than a victim here?”

  “Nothing strange. Her husband was suitably upset. He seemed genuinely worried about Jillian and Grace. He’s been putting up flyers, talking to anyone who will listen, searching for his wife and child. Anything here?”

  “Sadly, not much here. The women all disappeared like ghosts. Winslow and Jacobs from campus and the Wattses while Jillian and Grace were out running errands. They left home and just never returned. No one saw anything, their cars were found abandoned in parking lots outside a grocery store or on campus.”

  “Damn. No security cameras caught anything?”

  “Not as far as I can tell. I’ve got a few local uniforms canvassing the abduction sites to see if there’s any chance of security footage.”

  Sayer flopped down in a chair. “I guess no one was taking their disappearances very seriously.”

  “I mean, there are over forty thousand women missing in the U.S. at any given time.” Max lifted the small stack of files in one hand. “The locals took missing persons reports, but none of the investigations went any further.”

  “Did you get a chance to look at the sword we found with the bodies?” She looked over where the weapon rested on the table. Through the thick plastic evidence bag she could see that the curved blade was rusted.

  “Yeah, one of the techs processed it this morning and I got to take a closer look. It’s definitely not a machete. It’s more like a long sword of some kind. Weirdly, I think it looks like a yataghan.”

  “A what?”

  “It’s an old Turkish sword. I only recognize it because I went through a nerdy sword stage in junior high. I took a few photos and sent them down to a professor at UVA that specializes in Ottoman history. Hopefully he can ID it.”

  “A Turkish sword? Well, that’s definitely not what I expected.…” Sayer let that sink in.

  Max was about to say something more when Sayer’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She read the text.

  “Hey, that UVA psychologist already has a profile ready.”

  “That was fast.”

  “No kidding. She said we could come by her office later to discuss her preliminary thoughts.” Sayer assessed Max. She still was
n’t sure what to make of his story about Cricket. He seemed like a solid agent, but she wanted to observe him in the field before she decided how much to trust him. “Why don’t you come with me to hear what she has to say? I’d love a second set of ears if you think everyone is safe here without you and Kona on watch.”

  “Sure thing. The building is secure and we’ve got a ranger on watch. Going to UVA will be perfect. We can swing by and see if the historian has had a chance to look at the sword. Actually, can we just bring it with us? If he doesn’t know, maybe someone else on campus can help.”

  “Okay, as long as it’s already been processed and we keep it wrapped we can bring it along. I’ll have someone run it up to Quantico later for further analysis.”

  He and Kona jumped up. “Great. I’ll check in with the ranger on watch, and get Kona settled, then meet you at my truck.”

  As they left the office, Ezra’s voice called from the conference room next door.

  “Hey, Sayer?”

  Something about Ezra’s tone made Sayer and Max glance at each other with concern as they hurried to find Ezra looking even more pale than usual.

  “I, uh, set up a notification alert for any missing women that fit our profile, blond and young, basically, and I just got a hit.”

  “Oh, no.” Sayer leaned over Ezra to look at the photo on his screen. A woman with a messy blond bun and sparkling blue eyes smiled back. Other than having slightly darker skin, she looked just like the other three women.

  “Meet Hannah Valdez, a UVA grad student who went missing two days ago just down the hill in Charlottesville. Police found her abandoned car with her toddler still strapped in the car seat.”

  “Is the kid okay?” Max asked.

  “Fine. The kid’s with Hannah’s wife. I have the case file on its way.”

  “Two days ago,” Sayer said. “Why are we just getting the notification now?”

  “The Charlottesville department must have just uploaded the case to the missing persons database,” Ezra said.

  “Two days ago is just after we think the most recent victim’s body was dumped in the cave,” Max said.