Page 46 of Hack
Archer took them as Carter handed them to him, sliding them into the file.
"This is my associate," Carter told her, not giving a name.
Archer offered his hand. "Pleasure is mine." He gave her a slight nod as she shook his hand.
"Nice to meet you." Dana smiled. "I'm glad I could be of help. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you more."
"You've given me more than I hoped to find with those articles. I appreciate it. We need to get back to the office, but I hope we see you again." Carter glanced at Archer with a nod and they started for the door.
Dana continued to watch them until they were out the door, but Archer was glad she didn't say more. It was a rushed exit on their part, but he didn't want to linger there any more than Carter did. They had too much to discuss away from curious ears. They didn't speak until they were both in the car.
"This changes everything. If Lyle kidnapped this girl before even leaving town, his brothers had to know about it. That could have been the big fight that caused Lyle to leave town. We need to find out exactly how long it was before Lyle left. Dana said he waited until after graduation, but if we can find out for sure…" Carter arched his head back against the seat. "How many more victims are there?"
Archer didn't want to guess. Common sense told them that the mass graves wouldn't have been his first victims. He would have needed to build his confidence, get comfortable enough to hold, then kill several at once. "If he took these girls, or even one of these girls, what happened to her? Did he bury her on the family property? What about Luis and Levitt, do they know about her? I mean, they had to have known she was there, right?"
"You'd think so." Carter stared out the window. "Fuck, this just gets worse."
"It does, but we are also closer than we were to finding him. The question is, now what direction do we go? Do we confront Luis and Levitt tonight about what we know or do we hold back and work the case from other angles for now?" Archer glanced over at Carter.
"I don't know. Let's get back and regroup, look through these and see where we're at." He tapped his finger against the file folder in his lap. "The last thing I want is to have Luis or Levitt warn Lyle we are close, but is there enough here to move forward?"
"I don't know. I didn't get a chance to read through it all." Archer hadn't wanted to waste the time reading it while at the police station. He'd had other questions to ask and things to do. He was just happy he'd been able to get a copy without having to fill out all the paperwork first.
Carter cracked his window, letting cool air fill the car. "I want to try and figure out what Luis's link to North Carolina is, and I don't know why or if it matters, but I need to find out why Mark Carmen was dead broke when everything shows his father was a very rich man. Where did the money go? I'm assuming since Luis got custody of Levitt and Lyle, there were no grandparents around at the time, but I want to check. I'm assuming if any were living at the time of Mark and Tonya's murder, the younger boys would have gone to live with them. Fuck, I'm not even sure any of this matters." Carter pinched the bridge of his nose.
"We'll figure it out. The only way to figure the puzzle out is to find all the pieces first. We've hopefully found a few more today. Now we just need to see if they fit the rest we already had. I have some theories, but that's all they are for now, and until I can find something more conclusive, I'll set those aside. Let's get back to the motel and look through all this. There could be more there that we don't even know about." Archer hated seeing Carter so frustrated, and it was probably only going to get worse the closer they got to taking out Lyle. He had no idea how to help him carry the burden he had to have weighing on him. Nothing would take it away until Lyle was brought to justice, and even then, it wouldn't bring his wife and daughter back. They'd still be gone.
He pulled the car into the parking lot of the motel, glad it was still early. They had hours before they would leave for the bar, and even then, depending on what they planned, that might just be to attach the tracking devices and nothing more. They had a lot to work through, a lot to talk about, but one thing was for sure, they'd learned a lot during this trip. It had been worth it, and he was glad Carter was with him. One way or another, this was going to be the beginning of the end, and through that, hopefully, Carter could get some closure.
