Page 88 of Our Daughter's Bones

“That’s right.”

“What about the liquid on it?” Nick asked.

“It was beer, but based on the composition I was able to narrow that down to a very specific brand. Tequiza.”

“Tequiza?”

He snickered. “Yeah, sounds terrible, doesn’t it? It’s beer that tastes like tequila and lime. It was discontinued years ago, in 2009.”

“So, where did this come from?” Mackenzie asked.

“From a place buying alcohol from the black market.” Nick fiddled with the candy in his lap. “There are some places that illegally buy discontinued products at lower prices and mix them to sell them off as other drinks.”

“To avoid paying the actual price and save money,” Mackenzie nodded.

“Exactly. I’ll ask Jenna to look into which places are buying illegal booze.”

Mackenzie stood up to leave. “Also tell her to find out how many places use this cocktail napkin—without the logo. Maybe there’s some overlap?”

“Sure thing. Where are you going?”

“Nowhere.”

Back at the station, Mackenzie tapped her pen incessantly on the table. Against the chaotic sounds of phones trilling, a news anchor droning, and papers shuffling, the rhythmic tapping of the pen helped her focus.

She stared at her computer screen. She was planning to log into the database and access the old case files again. But something stopped her. What if not all the information was included in the database? What if something was kept off the record? A part of her knew she was being paranoid. Another part of her decided it was safer to be paranoid than careless. She had already missed the pattern before. She couldn’t make another mistake.

From the corner of her eye, she saw Lieutenant Peck walk by her office.

Her spine stiffened.

She picked up her jacket and went to the basement. There was a room where written records were still stored in case the servers were hacked. Within the next few months, the Lakemore PD would be shredding some old documents, which made sense considering the time and money it took to maintain them. The IT department had assured them that the firewalls and backup systems were in place.

Maybe that was the reason why, when Mackenzie opened the steel door, she was greeted by a damp smell and moist air. The room had no ventilation and was tucked in a corner no one visited. She shrugged off her jacket and used it to keep the door wedged open.

She sunk inside the pitch darkness of the long room. Her hand fumbled blindly for the switch. The lights weren’t working. Since this room would be empty a few months later, no one had bothered to maintain it.

Pulling out her phone, she turned on the flashlight and began skimming through the rows. Steel racks ran along the length of the room, containing stuffed files almost spilling over.

She had almost reached the far end of the room when she found the files from four years ago.

“September, September, September,” her whispers echoed in the unlit room. She spotted the files with the dates and cases she needed scribbled on them. She pulled out Daphne’s file and wiped away the dust collected during its exile in this forgotten room.

There were several records of a search party being led to look for Daphne in the woods close to Riverwood Rocks. Washington State Patrol had submitted their reports. There were key witness statements collected. Butnoneof this information had been conveyed to the Tacoma PD.

Mackenzie hunted for Chloe’s disappearance the following year. The standard protocol was followed but stopped abruptly. They found a receipt of a bus ticket in her bedroom. Six days after starting the search, they concluded that Chloe had left Lakemore willingly. They never confirmed if Chloe was at the bus station, if she boarded the bus at all, or if she even contacted anyone after reaching Seattle. They hadn’t done enough. Not nearly enough.

Mackenzie remembered Troy being eerily quiet and scratching his neck. He admitted that Peck told him to close this one and focus on other cases. Troy hadn’t been happy, but he was new and unseasoned. He didn’t fight it and did what he was told.

An idea sparked in her mind. She spent the next few minutes gathering the files on the burglaries in Lakemore.The group’s first target was none other than Nathaniel Jones, on October 5, 2015, just five weeks after Daphne Cho went missing. The second robbery came six months later. The target was Arthur Bishop. The third time, they went after Mayor Rathbone, on September 16, 2016—just three days before Chloe was reported missing.

That was their last robbery in Lakemore. As expected, resources and time were spent on tracking them. The burglaries were neat, following the same MO. Not a speck of valid forensic evidence was obtained. It was almost like they knew their targets too well.

They had vanished into thin air. There were no suspects, no leads that hadn’t been exhausted. And although Lakemore PD assumed the gang had moved on, they’d never been contacted by another force working a case with the same MO.

Mackenzie sat on the tiled floor. She gazed at the pages spilled in front of her. There was too much information to absorb. She had been there for all of it. Special Investigations had been flooded with work. All free hands were requested to assist them in any way.

But viewed as a whole, the picture looked completely different.