Cadence took the file. “Thank you.” The twist in her gut told her this wasn’t going to be the news the task force wanted to hear.
She opened the door and headed inside. Dani looked up from her computer. Ben frowned at Cadence. Kyle didn’t look her way. He was still staring at the sketch of his sister.
She cleared her throat. After a moment, Kyle glanced up and then over at her, blinking, as if he’d just stepped out of a daze.
“We have an ID on the remains that were dug up.” Her breath eased slowly from her lungs, feeling cold. She rolled her shoulders. They were tight with tension that wasn’t going away. She opened the file. The tension got worse as she read the results. Her stomach knotted. Before she could speak, Kyle said—
“Landers?”
That was what she’d feared—and it was what the report showed. Cadence nodded. “Yes, Landers has been identified from his dental work.” Her gaze scanned the file. His ID had been confirmed from two sources. Dental records and from an old knee surgery he’d had years before. The bones—the only things remaining—were definitely Jake’s.
“How long has he been dead?” The question was Ben’s. He was tapping his fingers on the table, a gesture that from anyone else would have indicated nervousness. With Ben, it meant he was trying to connect the puzzle pieces.
“Quite some time,” she murmured. And this was where things were going to get even worse for their investigation. She’d determined this part herself during the exam. “At least four years.”
Kyle swore.
Cadence wet her lips, which felt far too dry. “I’m waiting for more testing, but I believe his body was moved recently, that it was put out there in those woods. The clothes we found in the cabin were put there for us. I think the scene was staged.” A trail for them to follow. “The killer wanted us to know Jake Landers wasn’t the perp.” She closed the folder.
Ben’s hands flattened on the table. “He wanted to make sure he got the credit. He wanted us to know he’d taken all those girls.”
Time to tell them all the rest. A last minute report wasn’t needed on this one. She knew all the details. “Dental records also helped us to ID our female vic,” she said, rubbing the back of her neck. The muscles there had clamped down, squeezing too tightly. “She’s Judith Lynn, originally from Tampa, Florida. She was headed up to Chicago.”
“Four years ago,” Kyle said.
Right. Judith was one of the victims Dani had pulled for them. Back in Paradox, her driver’s license photo was on their victim board.
And in Maverick, her sketch was just to the left of Kyle. His gaze cut to the sketch, then back to Cadence.
She’s not missing any longer. Four years. Cadence suspected that Jake Landers had been killed right before Judith’s abduction. He’d been killed and his cabin and land had been used by the man who would later dump Jake’s body in the woods.
Cadence pushed a copy of her report—and the coroner’s file on Landers—toward Ben. “She never made it to her aunt’s place, and she’s been listed as missing since then.”
Kyle squared his shoulders. “You’ve finished examining her body.”
Not really a question, but she still softly said, “Yes.”
“She disappeared four years ago,” Kyle repeated. “So how long has she been dead?”
This was the most painful part. “Based on the decomposition and the presence of insects…” It was the insects that could tell them so much about the time of death.
She saw Dani shudder.
Cadence cleared her throat and said, “The ME and I both agreed Judith Lynn was killed approximately six days ago.”
“Fuck,” Ben snarled.
Exactly.
“Four years,” Kyle said, hands clenching. His eyes had darkened, his cheeks flushed. “He kept her alive for all that time, and killed her now?”
She nodded. “There were signs on her body to—” Cadence broke off, hesitating. God, she hated telling him this. She feared that when she described the things that had happened to Judith, Kyle would picture those same things happening to his sister. “There were signs to indicate long-term abuse.” Broken bones. Malnutrition. Severe vitamin D deficiency.
Cadence fully believed Judith Lynn had been held prisoner every day since her abduction. She also believed, based on the vitamin D deficiency, that the woman had been held in darkness.
In the caves?
“Why kill her now?” Dani barely whispered the words. Shocked horror was etched across her face. “After that long…”
“Maybe she did something to upset him.” Only the killer could tell them for sure. “Maybe she broke one of his rules.”
I didn’t scream. Lily’s voice replayed through Cadence’s mind.
“Or maybe he just got tired of her,” Kyle growled. His words were hard, biting. “He wanted someone new.”
“He already had someone new,” Cadence said. She walked toward the sketches and pointed to the woman with the heart-shaped face and big, wide eyes. “Melanie Myers disappeared a year after Judith.” She moved the pictures, lining them up as best she could, in order of disappearance. No, not disappearance. Abduction.
She lightly touched the images that came after Judith. “He had Melanie. He had Bridgette Chambers.” A square jaw, oval-shaped eyes. “He also had Fiona Slater.” High cheeks and a long curtain of hair. “He had them, and he still took Lily Adams.”
“He takes one girl a year,” Ben said as he ran a rough hand through his close-cropped hair.
Cadence nodded. “Now we know he doesn’t always kill the girls.” At least, not right away.
Four years. Why couldn’t we have found her three weeks ago? Why couldn’t someone have found her?
And who would die next?
“Where’s the guy going next?” Dani rose and headed toward the sketches. Her question seemed to mirror Cadence’s own fear. “He’s following a pattern now, right? Paradox, Maverick, so next up is—”
“Deerfield,” Cadence told her. Deerfield, Georgia.
“We’ve already got cops patrolling there,” Kyle added, still in the emotionless voice that was not him.
Ben nodded. “They pulled in patrols from two other counties over there. When I checked an hour ago, they were patrolling the back roads and sending out public alerts on every news channel.” He glanced over at Dani. “There have been no reports of abductions or abandoned vehicles from the area. If there were, trust me, we’d be on our way to Deerfield.”