Page 84 of Our Daughter's Bones
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“They would never let me be on this case if they knew I had a personal connection. I could have told you, but I didn’t know you enough to trust you with this.”
“You believe that Daphne, Chloe, Erica, and Abby were taken and hurt by the same person. That’s why you’re here. You withheld important information. You’ve known a lot more about this case since day one.” Mackenzie couldn’t keep the spite out of her voice.
“I didn’t mean to. I don’t know anyone here. The last thing I wanted was to risk getting kicked off this case.”
“You misled us! We could have been a lot closer to the truth by now if you hadn’t chosen to be dishonest.”
Daniel took a shuddering breath and looked away.
“Start from the beginning,” Nick said.
“Chloe’s my half-sister. She grew up with our father in San Diego after our parents divorced. We were close when she was growing up, despite the age difference.” He swallowed hard. “And then she… rebelled. She dropped out of school when she was fifteen. I tried talking her out of it, but she wouldn’t listen. She ran away from home. She was crashing at friends’ places. I sent her money whenever I could. She was just passing through Lakemore, trying to get to Seattle.”
“She was never found, but the case was closed.”
He let out a mirthless laugh. “Yeah. They closed it citing lack of any leads after they found a receipt for some bus ticket dated the day she disappeared. But I know how this works. She was a drifter. She had a reputation. No one cared. I believed the police too, for a few months. But I started looking into it again and found out about Daphne and Erica. Then I had to wait for an opportunity to find my way here.”
“We are trained to keep victim bias out of the equation, but it can find its way in. Did you talk to Troy when you got here?” Nick asked.
“I couldn’t without arousing suspicion. I did access the case file.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “He dideverythingby the book. Peck recommended shutting it down after reviewing the evidence. There was this big burglary ring running in Lakemore around that time. He was more focused on that.”
Mackenzie remembered. Burglars were targeting rich households. Even the mayor had been burgled. It always irked her that they were never caught. After stealing money and jewelry worth two hundred grand, they disappeared. The Lakemore PD assumed that the ring had moved on to another city or state after looting whatever was worth looting in Lakemore.
“Did you come across the number 916 when you looked into Chloe’s disappearance?” she asked.
“No.”
“When did you find out that Daphne had this number branded on her?”
“Before I came here,” he avoided their eyes. “I have a buddy at the Tacoma PD; I called in a favor.”
“And why did you assume that all these disappearances were linked?”
His shoulders slumped. “I was doing some research and came across this thread on Reddit about girls disappearing in Lakemore. Some anonymous users were discussing how their friend, Daphne, disappeared three years ago from a party. Another mentioned how Chloe went missing the next year. Then, Erica vanished. The only thing that linked them together was the month of September. When I dug deeper, I realized there was a pattern. The way Lakemore PD handled Daphne’s disappearance was… frankly infuriating. Same with Chloe. If Chloe actually skipped town, why hasn’t she been in contact with any of her friends? They didn’t bother to follow up. Hell, the Sheriff’s Office doesn’t even advertise her face anymore. Young, irresponsible girls with no strong roots in the community disappear, and no one gives a shit.”
Mackenzie watched Daniel’s incessant blinking and bobbing knee. A man who was usually cool as a cucumber was on the brink of fracturing in front of them. What many would confuse for pain, she recognized as guilt. Two years later and he was no closer to finding out what happened to his sister. He was an agent at the FBI with tools and skills at his disposal, and still there were powers and bureaucratic tape holding him back. He didn’t do enough to bring her home when she was out in the world, and then she got lost forever.
Pain was seasonal. Guilt, on the other hand, was a constant state of mind. It was that icy weight on the chest. It was the brain bending at an agonizing angle and trying to function.
Mackenzie knew that more than most.
“When you showed me that napkin with the number on it,” Daniel continued, “that was the first tangible proof that there’s a connection beyond the timing. Before that I’d only seen the number on Daphne.”
Mackenzie shot up from her chair and paced the conference room. Suddenly, she felt hot. She wanted to pull her hair and scream till the air chafed her lungs. She knew she was coming undone.
916 had been abducting and killing young girls in Lakemore in September for four years. Mackenzie had never felt this stupid. She wanted to scream at herself. A growl threatened to rip out of her throat, but she swallowed it, knowing she had company. The pieces were right in front of her all this time. They were sitting in the local database. But it took Vincent Hawkins to give her a nudge in the right direction and bring them all together. She remembered what he’d said to her.
“It’s not hard to notice if you’re looking for it. But that’s the problem. No one had been looking till now.”
This was about more than two best friends disappearing a year apart. This was a systematic operation of girls being snatched, raped, and murdered right under the nose of the police.
Daphne was murdered with “916” branded on her skin. Chloe was never found. Erica was found dead but even though her skin was decomposed, a cocktail napkin with the number 916 was in her room. Abby had been missing for ten days. She had the numbers “916” in her journal and locker.
Six months ago, Abby’s behavior had changed. She became paranoid. She stole money from her mother and dropped it with Erica’s phone at the gas station, probably because she was being threatened. Someone was trying to slow her down by switching out her pills before they took her.
Everything suggested that Abby had started looking into Erica’s death and discovered something about 916, or maybe 916 itself.
