“Two of these victims, obviously, were women,” I went on. “Two were found in Georgetown proper, although we don’t know for sure where Smithe was put into the river, so the primary crime scene there is still an unknown.”
The captain of our Homicide Branch, Frank Salazar, interrupted with a question—probably the question on everyone’s mind.
“Alex, I know we’re at the supposition phase, but what’s your bottom line right now? How many perpetrators do you suppose we’re looking at?”
I took a beat to think about it. The short answer was—I wish to hell I knew.
“Here’s the problem,” I said. “There’s no scenario right now that doesn’t defy logic, or at least, likelihood. We’ve never seen anything like this before, given the geography and the time frame. But I will say that it seems to me, a single killer is highly unlikely. The greater question in my mind is whether our perps are operating independently of each other, or not.”
That went over like a lead balloon. People were getting anxious for answers, both inside and outside the department. But without more information than we currently had, we were still flying blind on all three of these murders.
Meanwhile, the whole time I’d been talking, I could feel my phone vibrating—once, twice, a third time, in quick succession. As soon as Huizenga started fielding a few of the questions, I took out the phone and checked messages. They were all from Sampson—two voice mails and a text. That seemed like a good sign to me.
Since I was still in the briefing room, I checked the text first, and sure enough, it was exactly what I’d been hoping for.
Alex—Package found. Give me a call, ASAP.
CHAPTER
23
FIRST THING THE NEXT MORNING, SAMPSON AND I CAUGHT THE EARLIEST possible flight from DC down to Savannah, Georgia.
Elizabeth Reilly’s baby had been found three days earlier, newborn and alone, in a rental cabin on the northern edge of the Okefenokee Wildlife Refuge. If it weren’t for CODIS, the national DNA database, that little girl would have been absorbed into the system, put up for adoption, and probably never identified. Instead, as soon as her sample went online, it was only a matter of time before Sampson got a crossmatch to Elizabeth Reilly. With DNA, that meant a hundred percent certainty that this was her child.
A Charlton County sheriff’s deputy, Joe Cutler, met John and me when we arrived late that morning, at the entrance to Oke-Doke Cabins and Campground. The place had a dozen rental units spread out over a thirty-acre parcel, and Cutler briefed us while we drove back toward the cabin in question. I wasn’t even sure what I was hoping for here, just something to start clueing us in about what had happened to this poor girl.
“I was the one who responded to the call,” Cutler told us. “Found that little butterbean all wrapped up in a towel and crying her head off. She probably wasn’t more’n a few hours old, but we got her right over to the NICU at Charlton Memorial, and she checked out just fine. No thanks to whoever left her here, of course.”
“And you don’t know who called it in?” I asked.
“Just an anonymous ten twenty-one,” he said. “But I’d put my money on the mother. Probably some teenage girl who didn’t have the guts to admit getting knocked up, you know?”
Maybe, I thought. Cutler obviously had his own feelings about what had happened here, but I was trying to keep an open mind as we drove back through the woods.
Eventually we came into a clearing, where a single log cabin sat up against a stand of enormous kudzu-choked oak trees. The woods were fairly dense all around here, and if there were any other buildings nearby, I couldn’t see them.
This cabin was one of the so-called deluxe units, which only meant that linens were provided and there was an indoor bathroom. Still, Elizabeth could have theoretically had everything she needed to deliver her own baby here, including plenty of privacy.
At the front door, Cutler stopped to point out some gouge marks around the hammered iron knob. “Didn’t actually rent the place,” he said. “Just kind of helped herself. You can check availability online, so it wouldn’t have been too hard to know which one’d be empty.”
Inside the cabin was sunny, clean, and basic. There was a knotty pine floor with a farm table made out of the same wood, a small kitchenette, a queen-size bed under the dormered window. A bookshelf in the corner had a couple of games and some discarded paperbacks—Dean Koontz, Patricia Cornwell, Stieg Larsson. Nothing to indicate what might have actually happened here.
I tried to imagine the scene. Did Elizabeth set up her own IV by the bed? Would she have administered the Pitocin right away? How long did the delivery take?
She had to have been terrified, but that only meant that something even more terrifying had motivated her to come all the way down here.
&nbs
p; Something—or someone. Was it the father? The killer?
Were those one and the same? I had no proof either way, but that was the version of the story that made the most sense to me, as John and I poked around, trying to put together the pieces of this invisible puzzle.
“I’ll tell you something else,” Cutler said, watching us from the door. “I kind of hope that baby’s daddy never turns up. Considering the mother, I can’t imagine he’s any prize either, you know? I mean, seriously—what the hell was that girl thinking? That’s what I’d like to know.”
I didn’t say anything, but I was starting to think that Elizabeth Reilly just might have been trying to save her daughter’s life by coming here.
Also, that she just might have succeeded.