Page 61 of Last Seen

Chapter Forty-Two

Donnata Kade is worse for wear. That’s an uncharitable thought, Theo knows it, but she looks like she hasn’t slept in weeks.

There are dark rings under her very large eyes; her short graying hair is unwashed and mussed; there is a stain on her shirt.

When he does a quick, discreet search on the name, the first headline is damning.

She is former FBI, emphasis on the former .

Something about that triggers a memory, maybe a piece in the Washington Post about her fall from grace, but he doesn’t have time to access it before she starts to speak.

Her words are fast and sentences staccato like she’s hopped up on caffeine, or cocaine, spilling out so quickly he wonders if she’s afraid they will shut her up before she can get them all out.

But he is chilled to the core by her accusations.

“You’ve probably already looked me up. They all think I’m crazy, but I’m not.

I swear to you I’m not. I’ve been following a killer across multiple states for years.

He leaves almost no evidence. The cases are all unsolved.

Sometimes there’s no body, either; the woman just disappears.

He’s tied to Brockville, Tennessee. I know he is.

I lived there once, and saw all sorts of things.

Terrible things. And I spotted him in Marchburg the night Kathryn Star was murdered.

He was doing something to Halley James’s Jeep. ”

Lemke interrupts her. “Okay, okay, slow down.”

“You don’t understand. This is huge, and no one believes me. But now there’s proof.”

“Proof?” Theo asks. “What sort of proof.”

“He took your wife. What more proof do you need?”

“You know this how? Did you witness the crime?”

“No. But how else did her Jeep get to Nashville? He took her and had one of his women drive it here. He collects them. He’s a collector. Terrifying psychological profile.”

Theo looks over at Lincoln Ross, who is watching Kade with interest. “Where did you get that information? About her Jeep?”

“I’m right, aren’t I? This is his MO. The women’s cars are always found somewhere else. It took me forever to figure out that he has someone working with him. It’s much easier to get away with murder and kidnapping with a helper.”

“A woman is helping him?” Theo doesn’t offer Catriona’s name. Her DNA at the crime scenes has just been explained in the most terrible way.

“Yes.”

“I admit, that’s a compelling story. I’m curious, though. Why are you here, now?”

“Because I thought you might want to know how to get your wife back.”

“So you followed me here?”

She huffs, throwing her arms in the air and her head back.

Her actions are overly animated. “I knew you wouldn’t believe me.

I knew you’d be just like the rest of them.

Fine, I’ll see myself out. I will find him.

I will find Halley. She has to be somewhere close to the head of it all.

I’ve been watching. They think they’re so careful, but I know what they’re doing. ”

“Wait,” Theo says, trying to keep this on point. The woman is all over the place. “I didn’t say I don’t believe you. You said she’s near the head of it all. The head of what?”

“The cult. Miles Brockton is running a cult.”

“A cult. In Brockville?”

“Yes. There are tepees in the woods with all sorts of dark things inside. Witchcraft and devil worship. They burn things in the night and sacrifice their children at his whims. They will do anything he bids them to do. And he has an isolation chamber. You can see the purchase order here.” She thrusts papers at them.

Her eyes are gleaming with a fervor that Theo recognizes as madness.

His last hopes for Halley’s safe return are starting to fade away.

“Are you saying it’s some sort of religious cult? Preppers? What sort of message is he preaching?” He can’t help himself. Theo immediately thinks about Waco and Ruby Ridge. Kade is still talking.

“Not religion. Sex. It’s all for sex. They are slaves. There are tunnels. They hide there. They wait for their prey to go mad. He built it, and he puts women in it to torture them. And when they come out they will do anything to avoid being put back in again.”

Lemke isn’t buying it. “How do you know this? Have you been in the tunnels? Do you know where they originate?”

“No. If I had, I would have already been down there to rescue the women.”

“Ma’am—”

“Special Agent Kade,” she hisses.

Theo shoots Lemke a look. Go gently, man, he thinks. She’s the only lead we have.

“Agent Kade, will you look at a picture for me?” Theo asks.

“Of course.”

He shows her the photo Halley texted. Her reaction is remarkable. She starts to shake, and tears form in her eyes.

“That’s him. That’s the devil. He’s the one I’ve been following. Where was this taken? That looks like the Farm at Brockville.”

“Possibly. Who is he?”

“Miles’s eldest son. His name is Ian Brockton.”

Saying the name aloud seems to break something in her, and everything becomes unintelligible gibberish. Devils and sacrifices and sex slaves, like she’s having a waking fever dream. A full-blown meltdown.

Lemke is trying to talk to Kade, reason with her, but she’s rambling now, off on a terrifying tangent of words only she can truly understand. Even if there’s a grain of truth in her accusations, they seem internally generated. Fantastical. Lemke finally shrugs and escorts her from the room.

Theo looks at the papers she thrust into his hand. The top page is a sketch of triangles. All four edges of the paper are covered in intricate three-dimensional triangles that reach into a darkened room.

He realizes this space must exist in her head and feels sorry for her.

She seems like a very disturbed woman. But it’s been his experience that for every ounce of madness consuming a person, there is a tiny bit of the truth.

Of reality. And he wants desperately to believe she is right.

That Brockville is some sort of crazy cult and Halley is still there.

It’s a stretch, but he has nothing else to go on.

“Who the hell is this Ian Brockton?” Theo asks Ross, who types like his life depends on it.

“A ghost,” Ross says. “Supposedly died back in 1989. Around the same time as the Handon murder, actually. A month or so before. Hey, can I see that?”

Theo holds out the page. Ross frowns at it.

“That looks like an anechoic chamber. They use them to test jet engines to make them less noisy.”

“An annie-what?”

“Anechoic. Without echo. The ultimate sensory deprivation.” He pulls his laptop over, starts typing.

“There aren’t a ton of them, they’re very expensive to build.

There’s one at Orfield Laboratories in Minneapolis rated as the world’s quietest room.

Reporters go to do stories, and there are YouTube videos of them hallucinating in the absence of sound and sensory details.

Around here, the music studios all have variations of this.

They have to buy specialized foam to line the walls to help absorb sound for recordings. Kade said there was a purchase order?”

Theo flips the page. The paper is soft and old. It is a bill from a place called Newson’s Electronics in Waverley, Tennessee, for a load of ferrite tiles to be delivered to Brockville. It is dated November 1980.

Ross reads it and whistles. “Those tiles are military grade. And the company that sold them ... We had a case recently down in that area, woman who went missing. There’s a military supplier down there, and if I remember correctly, Newson’s is one of the fronts.

Those tiles aren’t something you can just waltz into a store and buy. ”

“What the hell? What would someone in Brockville be doing getting military-grade matériel delivered?”

“Well, it could be they’re a private facility and off the radar. Happens a lot, there are places all over the country that are quietly government run, or at least contractors. Could be Brockville is one. It’s not terribly far from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which is a black site.”

“I mean, I know that. But a bill of lading from 1980 hardly proves there’s some sort of sex trafficking now.”

“I agree. She was crazier than a bedbug.”

“Look up Brockville and see if they have this anechoic chamber she claims they have.”

Ross taps away, his eyes skimming the screen. “Not exactly. Let me just run a quick search ...” His fingers fly over the keyboard. “Okay, this could be something. Bjorn Lingham, who is tied to Harvard’s electroacoustic lab, is on the board of Brockville Township. He has a vacation home there.”

“You’ve lost me.”

“He’s a scientist. Specializes in cutting-edge acoustics.

He worked on the anechoic chamber at Harvard.

Then he moved to grid management for Con Ed, working on ways to make the audible electronic exhaust less impactful to the flora and fauna around the plants.

Now he’s big into clean energy, all that.

I can buy him being on the Brockville Township board.

According to their website, Brockville is one of the highest-rated biophilic communities in the world. ”

Theo shakes his head. “Dude, that’s not a lot to go on. Nor does it explain Halley’s Jeep being dropped here in Nashville, and her text to me with the photo, nor her running and going missing for a week. And Kade is following me around now, wanting me to investigate a cult. I don’t get it.”

Ross throws Theo a gap-toothed grin. “I agree, it doesn’t make a lotta sense.

But I can keep digging. There’s something here.

Kade might be nuts, but she also might be onto something.

” He taps his lips thoughtfully. “Using sensory deprivation is a pretty effective deterrent. White-room torture, all that.”

Lemke comes back into the office, blowing out a breath. “Sorry about that. She left of her own accord. I thought I was going to have to get someone to take her to Vanderbilt’s psych unit.”

Ross looks up from his screen. “She might not be totally loopy. We did find some sketchy evidence that there might be an anechoic chamber at Brockville. And there are a few influential people on the board.”

“I still don’t know what that means,” Theo says. “Do you actually think Miles Brockton has some sort of weird nonsensory cult hidden away in Brockville?”

“Who knows?” Ross says. “Rich, famous, insular people can get into all sorts of bizarre things. Ask me how I know. You’re right, though. It’s a rabbit hole. I’ll play with it later.”

There’s a ding from his computer. He taps for a few seconds. “Well, that’s interesting. Got a hit on the driver of the Camry.”

“Who is it?”

“Name is Heather O’Connor. Five-seven, Caucasian female, brown on brown.

Went missing three years ago from San Diego.

Shop owner, owned a bookstore and café. Twenty-eight years old.

Left a kid and a husband. Well, they’re going to be happy to hear she’s alive.

How the hell did she get from San Diego to Tennessee? ”

“Trafficking?” Lemke suggests.

“Maybe. A little old for it, but anything’s possible.”

“If Kade’s right and he’s running a cult, maybe she left willingly. Maybe she was following him online and finally decided to join up in person. Who the hell is this Miles Brockton guy anyway?”

Ross reads Brockton’s bio from the Brockville website. “So this guy marched off into the wilderness twice? And learned so much about living off the land he made a town that was self-sustaining?”

“And named it after himself,” Lemke points out. “Raging ego, if you ask me.”

“I admit it’s the right sort of mentality for a cult leader, but if this place is so world renowned, why hasn’t it come across our radar before now?”

“Darkness hides in unlikely places,” Theo says.

They toss around some more ideas. Theo’s frustration is rising. None of this is helping him find Halley.

“I have to go back to Brockville. Whatever is happening with Halley, it stems from there. I’m not convinced now that she ever left. And if there’s a chance they’re trafficking, we have cause to tear that place apart.”

“I don’t disagree,” Lemke says. “We’ll keep in touch if there is anything new. Sorry we didn’t find her, but we’ll keep looking here.”

“Hey, you did great helping ID the drivers. Thank you. You should loop in Baird Early in Marchburg. He has some CODIS data that you can plug into your machine there. Maybe you can find some more missing or murdered people with ties to Brockville.”

“I’ll do that.” Ross shakes his hand; Lemke follows suit. “Good to meet you. I’ll shoot you more info as we get it.”

Theo looks at his watch. “I have a four-and-a-half-hour drive ahead of me. See if you can’t find me enough to get my team into Brockville with a search warrant. Anything, okay? Anything at all.”

Ross’s eyes gleam with the challenge. “You got it.”

“What if we can’t get anything?” Lemke asks.

Theo shrugs. “Then I’ll go in myself.”