Page 18 of Her Last Farewell

The water glass trembled in his hand as he thought of Carla. He had prayed for another solution, had spent weeks searching for a way to avoid her execution.

But when he found the newest member of his flock standing on that bridge two nights ago, he knew what had to be done. Three cages. That was all he had room for. That was all he could manage while maintaining the strict routine necessary to keep his charges alive and cared for.

He moved to the living room window, drawn by a sound that might have been a distant siren. The forest pressed close around his house, a natural barrier between his holy work and the secular world beyond. But now, with Carla's body discovered, that barrier felt thinner somehow. Less secure. He knew he was running out of time. And maybe that was okay. Maybe his time for helping others was coming to a close.

He touched the cross that hung from a simple chain around his neck—not for luck, which would be sinful, but for strength. His work was not finished. Three lost souls still waited in his basement, still needed his guidance and care. And somewhere out there, perhaps even at this moment, another desperate person making their way to Patterson Bridge, seeking an end that he would not allow.

He was, in a very odd way, their savior. And if his role sometimes required difficult choices, even terrible ones, wasn't that the very nature of divine work? Hadn't God himself demanded terrible sacrifices from his most devoted servants? The Holy Book was filled with stories with that very lesson.

The sound he had heard faded away—not a siren after all, just the wind in the trees. He relaxed slightly, though the news of Carla's discovery still gnawed at him. He would need to bemore careful now, more vigilant. But he would not stop. Could not stop.

Not while lost sheep still gathered at his bridge, crying out for salvation they didn't even know they needed.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The bullpen of the Bowery Police Department had the stuffy, cramped feeling that seemed to linger around most small-town precincts. Rachel had visited her fair share of them during her time as a federal agent and had come to know the feeling well.

Currently, she sat at a desk that clearly belonged to someone else—family photos had been hastily pushed aside to make room for her laptop, and a coffee mug with "World's Best Dad" still sat at the corner. A small plastic toy dinosaur lurked behind a stapler, the kind of personal touch that made Rachel feel like an intruder in someone else's space. Across from her, Novak had commandeered another desk, this one mostly bare except for a stack of manila folders they'd been slowly working through.

The buzz of several officers working behind them and to the sides seemed to amplify the tension Rachel felt building between her shoulder blades. She was acutely aware of the sideways glances from the local officers as they passed by, their attempts at subtlety falling flat in the confined space. One young officer in particular had walked past their borrowed workspace four times in the last twenty minutes, each time finding some new excuse to shuffle papers at a nearby filing cabinet. Another kept adjusting the thermostat behind them, though the temperature hadn't changed.

"They're not used to the FBI being here," Novak murmured without looking up from his file. "Probably wondering if we think they're not up to the job."

Rachel nodded, keeping her voice low. "Small town, small department. Everything's personal here." She shifted another file from the stack Deputy Leery had provided fifteen minutes ago. The pile contained all eight missing persons’ cases from the past year. As she opened it, she caught another officer watchingthem from across the room, quickly averting his eyes when she looked up. The tension reminded her of being the new kid in school—all eyes on you, everyone wondering what your presence might mean for their established routines.

The first case file detailed the story of Marion Whitaker, an elderly woman with undiagnosed dementia who had wandered away from her home one cold April night. The search had lasted three days, with local volunteers combing the woods and fields around her property. Rachel's throat tightened as she read the details—how Marion's husband of fifty-two years had fallen asleep watching television, only to wake and find her gone. The report included photographs of Marion's garden, her prized roses still blooming as search parties tramped past. The conclusion was tragic but straightforward: Marion's body was found in a shallow creek bed two miles from her home. The assumed story was that she had apparently become disoriented and succumbed to exposure. The final photos showed items recovered from the scene—a single house slipper, a cardigan caught on branches, silent testimony to her final confused journey.

"Here's another solved case," Novak said, sliding a file across to her. "Tommy Chivers, sixteen. Ran away after a fight with his parents about his grades. Turned up three days later at his aunt's house in Glen Allen. Seems he thought his C-minus in chemistry was going to ruin his life."

Rachel nodded, making notes. The next solved case involved a man named James Whitman who had checked himself into a rehab facility without telling anyone, leaving behind a worried girlfriend and an unpaid bar tab. The fourth solved case detailed fifteen-year-old Amy Martinez, who had hidden at a friend's house after a pregnancy scare, only to return home when she realized she wasn't pregnant after all. There was even a small court case afterwards wherein Martinez’s family tried to sue theparents of her friend on completely baseless charges. In other words, each case had its own small human drama, its own resolution.

But it was the unsolved cases that drew Rachel's full attention, making her skin prickle with that familiar investigator's instinct. For instance, one of the longer reports dealt with the story of a young woman named Monica Turner. Her file was thick with witness statements and false leads. Twenty-two years old, recently graduated from Virginia Tech with a forestry degree. Her disappearance had sparked a significant search effort, with multiple agencies involved, but the trail had gone cold quickly. The photo clipped to her file showed a young woman with bright eyes and an eager smile—the kind of smile that made Rachel's chest ache, knowing it might never be seen again. The file included a transcript of her last known phone call, a mundane conversation with her sister about borrowing a dress.

Then there was another young woman named Sarah Dupree. Her case was newer; the nine-week-old disappearance still carried the urgency of recent loss in its paperwork. Twenty-eight years old, married, no children. The initial investigation had been complicated by the note she'd left behind—not quite a suicide note, according to Leery’s notes, but something that had made the investigators wonder if Sarah had simply chosen to start a new life elsewhere. Her file included receipts from a gas station the day before she vanished, showing she'd bought a coffee and a package of mint gum. Such ordinary details made her disappearance seem even more jarring. And sadly, Rachel had seen plenty of cases just like it.

Rachel set Sarah’s case to the side, on top of Monica Turner’s. She then turned her attention to the next-to-last one in the pile—a woman by the name of Jane Casagrande. Her file painted a picture of a woman trying to escape an abusive relationshipwithout coming out and stating plainly that it was the cause of her disappearance. Rachel studied the timeline carefully. Jane had vanished just several days before Carla Rhodes, almost six months ago. The proximity of their disappearances sent a chill down her spine. The file contained photographs of Jane's apartment after she vanished: a half-empty closet, dishes still drying in the rack, a calendar marked with hopeful future plans that would never come to pass.

"Look at this," Rachel said, spreading out the photos from each case, pushing them a bit closer to Novak. “There might be something here. Monica Turner, Sarah Dupree, Jane Casagrande—they're all within the same age range as Carla Rhodes and Andrea Haskins." She lowered her voice further, aware of another officer lingering nearby, pretending to study a bulletin board. His reflection in the window showed him straining to hear their conversation. "And they all went missing within a fifty-mile radius."

Curious, Novak began to look over each of the case files. While he busied himself with that, Rachel looked to the final file in her pile. This particular unsolved case stuck out like a sore thumb—Terrence Colby, age fifty, whose disappearance seemed to follow a different pattern entirely. His file showed a man with a history of financial troubles and a recent divorce. Rude and belligerent to his neighbors, he had a small criminal record that was populated with petty charges. Rachel set his file aside for now, focusing on the women.

She felt the familiar surge of adrenaline that came with potentially connecting dots, but forced herself to remain methodical. Five women, all relatively young, all gone without a trace, all from the same general area. It couldn't be coincidence. The pattern was too neat, too precise. Each disappearance seemed to echo the others in ways that made Rachel's investigator instincts scream for attention.

"Deputy Leery," she called out, catching sight of him passing through the bullpen. When he approached their makeshift workspace, she noticed how the other officers suddenly seemed to find reasons to drift closer, their curiosity barely concealed. One pretended to be deeply absorbed in a water cooler conversation, while another became fascinated by a nearby wanted poster he'd surely seen hundreds of times before.

"Anything jumping out at you?" Leery asked, pulling up a chair. His uniform creaked as he sat, and Rachel caught the faint scent of cigarette smoke clinging to his clothes.

"What can you tell us about these cases that might not be in the files?" she asked. "Sometimes the smaller details, the things that seem unimportant at first, can make all the difference."

Leery scratched at a small growth of stubble on his cheeks, considering. "Well, Terrence Colby—that one's pretty straightforward in my opinion. His truck was gone, clothes missing from his closet. We figured he just started over somewhere else. Happens more often than you'd think. His ex-wife said he'd been talking about moving to Florida anyway."

"And Jane Casagrande?" Novak prompted, leaning forward. Rachel noticed how his hone was already opened to the notebook app, his fingers ready.

"That's where it gets interesting," Leery said, lowering his voice conspiratorially. Rachel noticed how the nearest officers shifted slightly closer, straining to hear. A young rookie nearly knocked over a stack of files in his eagerness to eavesdrop. "Her ex was a real piece of work, currently doing time in Henrico Prison for domestic violence. During the investigation, we spoke to several of her friends. At least three of them mentioned she'd been talking about running away to Kentucky, staying with an old college roommate. Said she'd been saving up money, making plans."

Rachel listened intently, but her mind had already humped ahead to the next question she wanted to ask. The pieces were starting to align in her head, forming a pattern she wasn't sure she liked. "What about Sarah Dupree? The case files mentioned a note she’d left behind."

"Yeah, that was an odd one," Leery said, shifting in his chair. "Not exactly a suicide note, but definitely apologetic in tone. Her husband still has it—Mark Dupree. Still lives in town, actually. Works at the farm supply store on Route 29."

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