“I think we know what happens next. I don’t think we need to rehash the room. Is she awake when she goes into the water?” Angie sounds disturbed.
I nod, swallowing my bile. “Yes, she had been knocked out in the room of torture, but woke—” I heave, and everything inside of me threatens to come back up. “She woke from the cold water as it rushed over her. Her eyes opened, and she saw him, Mr. X. He was there, rinsing the blood from his hands. She managed to get her face above water and gasp some air in. It went black, her vision went black, as she washed down the shore. I don’t think he even came close to expecting her to make it.”
Angie’s voice sounds shaken. “That river is known for being particularly violent. A few years ago a girl went missing from up there, and her car was parked near the river. So the police attached a tracker to a dead bear along the shore, tossed the bear’s carcass in the river, and tracked its movements. They lost the bloody bear in the rapids. They had hoped the bear would lead them to the girl, but they lost the bear too. So technically Ashley shouldn’t have made it.”
I shrug. “Mild winter. All it did was rain this year, not a lot of snow. Rapids might have been less, giving poor Ashley a chance. Something he clearly never expected.”
“This really was the worst of the worst, eh?” She taps a finger against her lips. “I wonder if that river is where the others are? Girls like Steph who would have gotten in the way of his story or planning? Or girls who didn’t fit into the cellar lifestyle. People like him have been proven to habitually dump bodies the same way.”
I nod. “Look at Samantha Barnes and her father.”
“Aye.” Angie runs her fingers down the page. “And how strange that all the other girls are all dead when we got there.”
“It is strange.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Almost as if he somehow knew we had found Ashley, even though no one leaked the information of a girl being found to the press.”
“Yeah, that’s true.”
“And there’s the DNA. The forensics said that the girls have DNA all over the damned place—fecking blood and all. That room was all about the vaginal fluids, and they have apparently found fluids from seven other girls too. But as far as he was concerned . . . I wonder if the way he knows Ashley survived the river is the same way he knows how to clean a scene. Maybe we need to think about the possibility that he killed off all the girls and cleaned his DNA off the scene because he’s a uniform or a Fed?”
It hits me right in the guts. She’s completely right. “Seriously! You are probably dead on. And had it not been for the fact uniforms found her and the FBI came in instantly to take over the scene, he might have been able to kill her off in the hospital. But the moment the FBI took over, no one was going into the room without security. So even if he was a uniform he didn’t stand a chance.” I shake my head.
She turns off the recorder and nods. “That is all a strange coincidence.”
“Where is the file going now?”
“We’re stuck with it. None of us have been taken off. I have heard nada about transfers to the next thing. It seems to me until they have some answers, this is our gig for now. At least you won’t be going to Manhattan for a while.”
I glance around, wanting a subject change from Manhattan desperately. “Well, then I guess we should see if any of the other information triggers anything in my mind or makes sense to us. Have you seen the rest of the intel on the guy who owned the cabin? The one who was dead a couple of years ago?”
She winces. “That’s another nearly dead end. Whoever our Mr. X is, he’s a smart asshole. The family who own the cabin are useless for us at this point, as far as I can see.” She lifts a huge folder off the desk and slides it my way. “Interesting reading, to say the least. The owners are about as scummy as it gets.” She cocks an eyebrow.
“Great.” I drag the folder to me and open it. The first page is a picture of the cabin. I flip past it, shivering with memories.
“So why don’t ya want the military gig now?” she asks as she scans the page. “There must be something behind you taking it and now looking ready to back out.”
I shrug but don’t answer, pretending to be looking at something.
“No, ya have to tell me.”
I don’t lift my gaze from the photos of the garage and the cabin as I scan. “I don’t think I ever really wanted it. I said yes because it was what Dash wanted and I knew that; he wants us to be two office workers who start at nine and are off at five. He wants normal. But I’m not sure I do.” Something catches my eye. I narrow my gaze, staring at the bedroom photos. The bed that was there, the one Mr. X cuffed Ashley to when he masturbated on her, is different. I remember the frame being metal and the headboard being scratched up from the cuffs. This one isn’t metal. “Did we shoot all the bedrooms?” I flip through the pictures, but none of the rooms have the railings I’m looking for. “Where’s the metal bed?”