Page 105 of Her Last Whisper
“That’s an understatement,” she said.
“I wanted to update you—we haven’t found anything else since you were here.”
Katie remained quiet.
“I’m sorry, but we’re about to wrap things up as far as the searches are concerned. John and the forensic crew are still finishing up processing the scene. It will take a while, most of the night,” he said.
“Okay, thank you.”
The sheriff ended the call. Katie still held the receiver and slowly hung up.
“Nothing?” McGaven asked.
“No.”
“It seems like the perfect area for a killer to keep his victims hidden. He could’ve had all kinds of victims scattered throughout that abandoned neighborhood and nobody would have ever known.”
“That’s it,” Katie said with urgency.
“What?”
“When I was at the county planning department, I noticed that when Shane pulled out these drawings there were notations about another area. There were notes that said something about a non-profit. It seemed strange that this would be written on those particular blueprints. I didn’t think anything of it.”
“Where is it?”
Katie rolled out the blueprint copies—there were more than a hundred pages to go through. “It was next to the legend—handwritten.” She turned another page. “Wait, here is the notation. It says in quotes Highland Project NP #367-44. Does that mean anything to you?”
McGaven thought a minute. “Sounds somewhat familiar and I’m not sure why.” He sat down at his computer and typed in “Highland Project Sequoia County California.” “Okay,” he said. “It was the first area where the county and state government wanted to build a low-income housing development, but the community was outraged and didn’t want it in their neighborhood. A crazed group of so-called concerned citizens against crime actually torched the place—several buildings were burned to the ground and two firefighters were seriously injured. It was an ugly situation.”
Katie shook her head; she wasn’t familiar with that project.
“Oh, wait. I keep forgetting. It was when you were in Afghanistan.”
“What’s the status now?”
“Everything has been locked up in multiple lawsuits and the places have been just sitting. What else is new?”
“How big is it?” she asked. “It must be a crime zone.”
“Wait,” he said and hit a few keys to bring up articles about the housing project. He scrolled through several and stopped on one in particular. “There are only five houses still standing and the others were burned. I’m not sure why those five stood through that. This area is next to a large agricultural property of more than two hundred acres—making it pretty isolated. They originally wanted to build a small community and a small shopping strip mall, but protesters were adamantly against housing near agriculture fields that use pesticides. Protection of children, food, and the overall community, and so on.”
Katie skimmed the stories and said, “Looks like they called it the ‘Humanity Project,’ which was originally planned for one hundred units, or single-family dwellings, but had been downsized to less than fifty. And now only five houses remain after the fire? Wow, it’s so isolated,” she said, studying the map. “Seems strange to build that there.”
“Maybe that’s where the contaminated water found in Amanda’s hair came from?”
She stood up and scrutinized her preliminary profile. “Definitely possible. What makes you think that a killer would only stay to one small area? He would spread out, but remain in his comfort zone. Not keep all his victims in one place. His distinct signature is to keep his victims in condemned, foreclosed, and abandoned houses. Simple, but brilliant.”
McGaven followed what she was describing. “You think that he’s using another area.”
“But,” she back-pedaled her theory, “there was nothing in Sykes’s background that had anything to do with this project. This project wasn’t Jamison’s Magna Group. So we can’t link Dr. Jamison. What, or who, is the connection? Someone would have to be connected to this other project. It looks like Simms Construction took over.” Katie was frustrated. They were close—very close.
“Who do we have now?” McGaven pulled up the three suspects they were able to link from First Memorial Hospital and the Basin Woods Development. “Okay, some of my reports have finally come through from the last background checks.”
“What do you have?” she asked.
“Looks like Sebastian Harding has been doing time for robbery for the last year and half.”
Katie frowned. “He’s out. Whose this other guy?”
