Page 53 of The Ice Sisters

They stared at each other for a long, heated moment, her heart pounding, his breathing erratic. “Don’t you even want to know what was in there?”

Ellie knocked back the rest of her vodka then gave a frustrated nod. “Of course I do.”

Cord laid his phone on the bar between them and allowed her to scroll through the photos. Pictures of little girls’ things, a hair tie, bow, bracelet, a beaded one that spelled Friends.

Her anxiety mounted with each one. Now she understood why Cord thought this was important. Serial killers often took trinkets, mementos from their victims, to remember them by.

The corded letter necklace must have belonged to his daughter.

But where had the other items come from?

Could Modelle have other victims they knew nothing about?

SIXTY-THREE

CROOKED CREEK POLICE STATION

Sunday, November 29

The team met in the conference room at eight-thirty the next morning. Ellie rubbed her tired eyes and filled a mug with coffee then joined her boss Captain Hale, Derrick, Sheriff Waters, Deputies Eastwood and Landrum. Cord strode in, his shaggy hair and rugged appearance giving the impression he’d come from the woods. She wondered if he’d gone back to Modelle’s.

Their gazes locked but he didn’t say anything and she decided not to share their conversation the night before. But he might have found something important to the case, so she’d have to inform Derrick.

“Thanks for coming, everyone,” Ellie said as she stood in front of the whiteboard. “I’m afraid we have another murder.”

A collective sigh rumbled through the room. “Another child?” Shondra asked.

Ellie hesitated. “No, a counselor named Delilah Short but we have reason to believe her death is connected to our current case. That Barbara Thacker knew her from a support group.”

Ellie used the whiteboard to add photos of the crime scene. “Dr. Whitefeather is conducting Ms. Short’s autopsy this morning, but her initial assessment is that the woman died of blood loss due to stab wounds.”

“Looks pretty violent,” Sheriff Waters commented.

Ellie nodded. “We think the killer may have tortured her to extract information.”

“What kind of information?” Shondra asked.

“About Barbara and a group of her friends.” She added photos of the women and children together. “I found these on a thumb drive from Barbara Thacker’s house. Which, by the way, had been ransacked.” She displayed pictures she’d taken at the scene then pointed to one of the group photos.

“Our victims, the twin girls, are here.”

Ellie continued to plug in details, adding the questions and theories she and Derrick had discussed, the ones that had kept her awake half the night.

“So you think Barbara is the biological mother of the twins?” Shondra said.

“That’s what DNA tells us,” Ellie said. “Although both Barbara and her ex-husband Thomas claimed to be childless.” She added a picture of Thomas Thacker. “Thacker works at a car dealership but so far we don’t have much on him. He and Barbara divorced shortly after she delivered a stillborn baby.”

Shondra made a face of disgust.

“Was the divorce amicable?” Sheriff Waters asked.

Ellie shrugged. “He didn’t seem to hold any animosity toward her, but who knows?” She shifted. “Deputy Landrum, I want you to dig deeper into Mr. Thacker. Also see if you can access his phone records and dig around there. Sheriff Waters, obtain a warrant for Thacker’s DNA so we can determine if he was or was not the little girls’ father.”

“On it,” the sheriff said. “If he’s not the father and his wife told him he was, that might give him motive to hurt her.”

“True,” Ellie agreed. “Although they’ve been divorced for years so why kill the girls now?”

Derrick tilted his head. “Maybe the truth was about to come out and Thacker didn’t want it to. Or maybe he didn’t know the twins were his and he found out and wanted to keep it quiet.”

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