Twelve
Mark listened to the recording of Colleen’s session with Dierdre as they drove.
Colleen studied the notes on the cases Angela had discovered when diving deeply into old files on unsolved murders.
Angela had widened her search, seeking female victims of any age, found buried with cause of death likely to be asphyxiation.
Brenda Mar, twenty-five, a known prostitute, had disappeared off the streets of New York City. After two years, her badly decomposed body had been found in a wooded region of eastern New Jersey—near the site of a recently demolished cabin.
Nancy Henley, also a known prostitute, had been found in a similar condition in southern New York State. Her body had been reduced to bone and ash; she’d been discovered when firefighters had come to put out a blaze in the forested region.
Candy Gates, a runaway, had been missing four years before her decomposed remains had been discovered in North Carolina along the Blue Ridge. She’d been found surrounded by strange wooden planks.
“We need to find out who was where when,” Colleen muttered, barely aware that the recording of her speaking with Dierdre was still going. “I’m sorry,” she added quickly.
“It’s okay. I’ve got it. But now that I’m listening to this, I’m curious about Sally. She was down in that basement with Carver a long time. We need to find out if there were any specific smells she remembers.”
“But if our guy was out kidnapping Dierdre while Carver was with Sally—”
“Which is what we believe. And if Sally doesn’t remember a particular scent, it helps affirm what we believe. Of course, the scent may be something Dierdre remembers because it’s a scent she knows.”
“You’re back to Gary.”
“I honestly don’t mean to be. But listening to Dierdre during the interview... Someone knew she was on that road when she was on that road. They knew she was kindhearted—if she thought she hit someone, she was going to stop.”
“It does sound that way. But we can’t ignore the fact someone might have followed her from the restaurant.”
“No, we can’t ignore that fact, and I don’t intend to do so,” Mark assured her.
“Front Royal, Virginia,” Colleen said. She grinned over at Mark. “I actually kind of know it. We used to come to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, when I was a kid, and we made a few day trips. It’s beautiful. The population is only about fourteen thousand plus, and they say it was named for an old oak tree. Troops used to drill there and the command would be, ‘Front the Royal Oak.’ Then there’s another legend that claims during the American Revolution, sentries would call out ‘Front’ and the password was ‘Royal.’ Then there’s a third legend explaining the name came from the early days of settlement when the French called it ‘le front royal’ meaning the British frontier.”
Mark glanced over at her quickly. “Nice you know all that.”
“Trivia from growing up with folks who believed you needed to learn about a place you were visiting. Harpers Ferry is fascinating too. I love the area. Beautiful! And fun white water rafting. And of course, the history there with the John Brown raid having taken place is important to me. I mean, it’s important we always move forward in our country, right?”
Mark nodded thoughtfully.
“What?” she queried.
“I just wonder about history as far as, well, as far as whacked-out criminals go. Herman Mudgett—aka H. H. Holmes—is often considered to be America’s first serial killer,” he said. “And they don’t know how many people that man killed. He had a ‘murder castle’ in Chicago, but there were victims at other times in other places. But it makes me fear there was so much we don’t know, and of course, in the nineteenth century, we didn’t have psychologists and psychiatrists and behavior analysts to try to determine what makes people tick.”
“True,” Colleen mused. “Then again, way before, they knew Madame Báthory killed hundreds of young women, anywhere from three hundred to six hundred, according to eyewitness reports at her trial. And that was in the sixteen hundreds, so...”
“We’ve always had people willing to harm others.”
“But better methods to stop them these days,” Colleen said hopefully.
He smiled and nodded.
“We have to find this hideout,” he said firmly.
Red barked from the back seat as if he understood every word.
The drive was only about an hour and ten or twenty minutes—Colleen hadn’t really paid attention to the distance they’d been traveling, and still, it was surprising when they arrived at the edge of the only incorporated city in Warren County and met with Detective Oscar Lindberg.
He was a tall man with salt-and-pepper hair and a lean physique. He’d been waiting just outside a city-owned cabin to meet with them. He was quick to welcome Red, and equally quick to tell them that he had been taken aback by the entire affair.
“Always amazes me how close we are to DC, and how places that are less than an hour and a half away—minus traffic, of course—can be so incredibly different. Warren County and the surrounding areas are heavily wooded. Even the Blue Ridge and Shenandoah National Park have acres of land where anything could go on, and West Virginia and the area around the Blue Ridge and the Piedmont Mountains is heavily forested land.”
“We’re aware of that,” Mark assured him.
“But you think there’s a cabin near Front Royal where a man has been building coffins to bury women alive?” Lindberg asked. “Because...?”
“Carver likes puzzles and riddles, and he used the words ‘front’ and ‘royal’ several times,” Mark explained. “We are looking for a needle in a haystack—we realize that. But we were hoping you could direct us to anything you know of.”
Lindberg nodded. “That’s why I had you meet me here. We have a map of the county and surroundings. I can at least show you where we know there are cabins or shacks and old ruins. Come on in.”
Colleen, Mark, and Red followed him into the cabin. It was one big room with a main desk, a computer and printer, two smaller desks, a leather sofa, and walls that were covered with maps of the surrounding regions.
Lindberg approached one, pointing to circles and initials on the image.
“Here, you have woods where colonials tried creating settlements, but too few or... I’m not sure. Maybe the terrain just wasn’t what they needed. There were people living in the various cabins or homes until the mid-eighteenth century. By the end of the Civil War, most were gone. But you do have ruins in those locations. You have an area right here—” Lindberg paused and pointed “—where some students came out to investigate an old burial ground around several abandoned old home sites about two years ago. Most have been lost, of course—markers, I mean. Markers were often made of wood and you know how time takes care of returning wood to the earth. But some people used stone markers, so there was some research done there. Over here, you have what was once known as the Jones place—a man named Jones brought his family, but they headed west after the Civil War, and it’s just a name for an area of forest. There are roads—many of them just earth—that will bring you near most of these places.”
“He’d need a road. He’d need a way to get his victims there—and then out in a coffin. Ask your officers if they’ve seen any kind of truck or van in these areas recently,” Mark said. He couldn’t say so, but he realized that Alfie would have noticed a car parked in front of Carver’s house.