Page 62 of Her Frozen Heart

Nikki hadn’t realized she’d answered the phone. “Don’t tease us. We’re all too tired.”

“Fine,” Courtney said. “We’re still trying to figure out the pattern on the towel, but Blanchard was right about Neutrolene. Each body bag had a significant amount inside.”

“So Victim B was killed some time after mid-2012, when the product launched.” Liam stood and walked over to the whiteboard. He drew two parallel lines several inches apart to represent the mass grave. “Victim A is prior to 2012, Victims B and C had to have been killed in late 2012 but before summer 2020 because Victim D—Elyssia Kaiser—disappeared in November of 2020. The Hendersons were killed in September of this year.”

“Eight years is a lot of missing persons cases to go through,” Miller said.

Courtney’s exaggerated sigh came through the speakerphone. “It would save you guys time if you’d let me get through all of my results before you started theorizing.”

Liam rolled his eyes. “Why do you always save the most important information for last?”

“I like to build up the suspense. Plus, your hanging on my every word is kind of awesome.”

Liam’s face reddened enough to match his hair. Nikki held up her hand and took over before the bickering wasted more time. “Just tell us, Court.”

“Fine,” Courtney said. “We’ve been using the electron microscope on the towel the oldest set of remains were in. It’s cotton, with a white background. It’s also got stripes in different colors, most likely a rainbow, and what looks like an orange cat tail and the letters ‘is’ underneath it, as part of a name.”

“Garfield,” Liam said. “Written by Jim Davis. Still my favorite comic.”

“We’re going to be lucky if we can recover fifty percent of the towel’s design,” Courtney said. “But we searched online for ‘vintage Garfield towel rainbow’ and found one that looks very similar to what we’ve seen so far. According to the eBay listing, it’s a collector’s item from 1978.”

“If the towel was already faded when Victim A was buried,” Nikki asked, “would you still be able to see the design under the microscope?”

“Depends on how faded,” Courtney said. “But given the type of soil in the area and the water table, it seems unlikely the towel was very old when the victim was wrapped in it.”

Nikki’s chest felt tight, but for the first time she thought they might have a real chance to catch the killer. “Liam, check Washington and surrounding counties for missing females between 1978 and 2012. Prioritize Washington County, the 1980s, and include the Garfield beach towel. It may have been Victim A’s and she had it with her when our guy took her. ViCAP and AFIS, too, in case Courtney manages to get a fingerprint.”

Courtney snorted. “Highly doubtful. I’ll call you if we find anything else.”

Nikki muttered goodbye, her mind already on the next step. “That victim is the key to his identity, I can feel it in my bones, no pun intended.”

“Based on the towel?” Miller asked. “It could have been old when she was wrapped in it.”

“But not older than 2012, because of the Neutrolene granules,” Nikki reminded him. “Willard’s pretty confident the remains are at least twenty-five years old, and we know there was a gap between killing Victim A and B—possibly a large one. Combine that with the towel, assuming Courtney’s right—and she likely is, because she wouldn’t tell us about it if she wasn’t confident—the chances are strong that this guy first killed when he was fairly young.”

Liam nodded, his eyes blazing with the adrenaline rush that only came from a major breakthrough in a case. “Chelsea said he looked like he was in his forties, right?”

“Eyewitness statements are so unreliable,” Miller said.

“Entertain us for a second.” Liam turned back to the whiteboard and added the new information Courtney had given them. “Blanchard said Henderson was a bigger guy. Moving dead weight is hard work. Willard dates Victim A’s remains to at least the mid-nineties, so even if you take everything but the towel’s manufacture date out, we’ve narrowed our window down to about twenty years instead of thirty-plus. The gap between Victim A’s death and B’s death also suggests the killer wasn’t an adult when he murdered her.”

“Because if he were an adult, he’d have murdered someone else sooner?” Miller asked.

“Most likely,” Nikki said. “Some serial killers do cool off, like BTK. That’s not as unusual as we once thought it was. But to cool off at the beginning, when you’ve gotten away with it once?” She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I think we’re looking for someone who started killing when he was a young teenager. It takes him a long time to get the guts to do it again, not to mention it’s a lot harder to dispose of a body when you’re a kid.” Nikki stopped talking, an idea niggling at the corners of her mind. “He wouldn’t have taken her body very far to bury her, especially if he wasn’t old enough to drive. Big Marine Lake’s always been there, but when I was a kid, there were more houses around it and the landscape looked totally different.”

Mayberry Trail, the road that bordered Big Marine Lake and led to the St. Croix Scenic Byway, was part of the original road created by the first settlers on the west side of Big Marine Lake, leading to the town of Marine on St. Croix. The land and settlements on both sides of the road had changed since then, but Nikki wasn’t familiar with the historical details.

“It was,” Miller said. “The park reserve opened in 2008, but it was in development for twenty years before that. The big focus was getting the land back to the way it was before it was settled, to restore the natural resources. Work started in the late eighties.”

Liam finally sat back down, deep creases between his eyebrows forming as he typed something on his laptop. “I noticed on the plat map that the area the bodies were buried is about an acre-sized tract that’s changed hands and zoning designations a few times, but interestingly enough, it’s been zoned as protected forest land for the last decade, so right before the odor-neutralizing agent was made available to the mass market. Before that, it was zoned as agriculture, but the property changed hands several times.”

Nikki tried to keep up with what he was telling them. “Basically, throughout the last couple of decades, the small tract where the bodies were found hasn’t changed much, even though a lot of the area around Big Marine Lake has been part of the project to reclaim the land and its natural resources. Before the project started in 1989, there were several older homes through here?”

Miller nodded. “But this was still a lot of rural area, without houses built on top of each other.”

“That’s the area we have to focus on,” Nikki said. “Liam, you run point on that. See if we can find out who lived within a five-mile radius of the burial area in the seventies and eighties. Miller and I have to focus on searching for Parker.”

Miller turned on the smartboard mounted next to the dingy whiteboard that Liam had been writing on. Maps of Washington County and Forest Lake appeared. “Chief Peek sent me these with the locations they’ve already searched marked. I want to start outside of city limits and push east toward the St. Croix River.” He pointed the cursor at Highway 97, which ran through the city of Forest Lake and the north to the river. “We’ll use Highway 97 for the dividing line. Peek and his team are going to search north of the highway, we’re focusing south.” He used the pointer to circle the large swatch of land southeast of Forest Lake. “We’ve got a good-size area between Big Marine and Forest Lake that hasn’t been checked, including the O’Brien State Park. The northern part of the park is in Chisago County, and they have a couple of deputies who will search tomorrow too. Our assigned search grid”—Miller glanced at Nikki as he outlined the area on the smartboard, south of Highway 97—“is this rectangular-shaped area. There’s a fair amount of development, but there are also open fields as well as a big section of the park that runs along the St. Croix. I talked to Reuben, and he’s willing to bring the K9 out tomorrow for a couple of hours, once the temperature hits zero. I want to start at the river and work west. That’s the area most similar to Big Marine.”

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