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I search for the Rent-a-Heap rental company online and find the address of the lot. It’s about twenty minutes from Bellamy and Eric’s house, putting it about fifteen from the Ward house. I isolate a few stills of the footage of the car and print them out so that I can bring them with me to show the people working at the rental company, hoping they might be able to give me some information about the car and who rented it.

The lot is loaded with vehicles that look like they might be nearing their last legs but still have a bit of good in them. Sufficient for a short-term rental or a really tight budget. The cars aren’t sparkling and impressively arranged like at other agencies, but at least they offer a variety of options, from big trucks I can see people moving with to the little four-doors like the one in the video.

I park off to the side of the customer lot and go into the small office. A man hops to his feet behind the desk he was sitting at and greets me with a broad smile.

“Hi there,” he says. “How can I help you this afternoon? What kind of car are you looking to rent?”

“I’m actually not looking to rent anything,” I tell him. “I’m Agent Emma Griffin with the FBI. I’m investigating a case, and I believe that one of your vehicles could be linked to it.”

The man’s face falls, and he glances out the window beside him like he’s wondering which of the cars lined up in the lot was used in a crime. He turns back to me and gestures at the chair across the desk from his.

“Have a seat,” he says. “My name is Boris Kemp. I’m the owner. When you say that you think one of my vehicles is linked to a case that you’re investigating, what exactly is it that we’re talking about?”

“I can’t provide all of the details since this is an active investigation, but I can tell you that an item associated with two murders was delivered to a home. The footage taken by the homeowner showed a vehicle pulling up to the mailbox and delivering the item. Inspection of the footage showed that the vehicle had what I believe is your company’s logo on the back window. I noticed all the other vehicles in the lot have stickers on the same spot.”

I take out the stills that I isolated from the footage and lay them out on the desk in front of Mr. Kemp.

“If you look closely at this image, you can see that the partial license plate is visible as they were pulling away. WD23. That’s all that I could decipher from it just looking at it. But does this vehicle look familiar to you?” I ask.

“It does,” he says. “This car was rented from the lot the day before yesterday and returned last night. It’s the only one of its kind that I have in that color, and the license plate fits, so I know it’s the same one.”

“Can you tell me who rented it?” I ask.

He turns to his computer and types in a few commands. His eyes scan over the screen.

“This says it was rented by a Nicholas Beamer,” he says. “But that’s just what’s on the registration form.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“One of the reasons my business model is so appealing to people is that I don’t make them jump through a bunch of hoops just to rent a car. In other places, you have to have a credit card and provide all sorts of identification and other information just to get behind the wheel. I understand that sometimes people don’t have all of that but still need a means of transportation. So I offer an online do-it-yourself-style rental option for a select number of my vehicles.

“Essentially, people can go online and see what’s available and sign up to take whatever they choose. They provide basic identifying information and then pay for the rental up front. Rather than having to come into the office and fill out anything, the keys to the vehicles are kept in a lockbox, and they get the code to their specific box after they make the payment,” he says.

“And you don’t require any type of proof of identification?” I ask. “No scanning their driver’s licenses or providing car insurance?”

“Again,” he says, “I understand that there are circumstances that don’t always allow for those kinds of provisions.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

“So essentially, you allow people to rent cars without knowing who they are and without any guarantee that they will return them, much less that they have the proper licensing and insurance to operate a motor vehicle,” I say.

“The cars are all outfitted with GPS, so if I need to track one down after it’s been rented, I can,” he says.

I’m trying to keep my emotions in and not show just how frustrated I am by what he’s telling me. Obviously, whoever rented the car—and I have no doubt their name is not Nicholas Beamer—knew about these policies and rented the car with them in mind.

“How did the renter pay for the rental?” I ask.

“It looks like a prepaid debit card,” he says.

I take a breath and let it out slowly.

“Has the car been cleaned since it was returned?” I ask.

“Not yet,” he says.

“I need to see it,” I tell him.

“No problem. I can bring it around to you.”

“Has it been moved since it was returned?” I ask.

“No, it’s still in the same spot,” he says.

“Then I’d rather see it there,” I tell him. “The police will need to thoroughly examine it, and I would rather it not be compromised.”

Kemp leads me outside and around to the back of the building where there are several parking spots with signs indicating they are for the online rental option. A couple of them look like they are in distinctly worse shape than some of the other vehicles at the front of the lot, but I’m not thinking about those. I zero in on the navy blue four-door in the fourth spot with the license plate that matches the partial tag I saw on the footage. The sticker on the back window is just what Bellamy pointed out to me.

I take out my phone and call Detective Fuller.

“Hey, I’m going to need a team to come out to the Rent-a-Heap car rental lot,” I tell him. “The footage that Ander gave me showed a car dropping off a note at his house last night, and I was able to track it down.”

“It was a rental?” he asks.

“Yeah. I’m assuming they didn’t want their vehicle to be recognized or identified by neighbors, so they rented from here. They have a policy not requiring any form of photo identification or anything for certain cars, and this is one of them. So we can’t conclusively identify the renter, but the car hasn’t been cleaned, so we might be able to find something. I want it to be searched and fingerprinted and any evidence collected,” I say.

“Be there as soon as we can,” he says.

I hang up and look over at Boris Kemp again. His face is sullen, and he looks like he might be reconsidering everything about his brilliant business approach. I can appreciate that he recognized a niche in the market for people who need to rent cars but don’t have a credit card to use or don’t want to go through the hassle of going into the office to fill out the paperwork, but his approach just begs for shady abuse of the system.

I’m eager to open the car and see what might be inside, but I know I have to hold back. Just opening the door could smear fingerprints, and leaning my head inside to see anything could compromise fiber evidence. I have to resign myself to waiting for the team to get here with the proper equipment.

It doesn’t take long for them to arrive, and I meet Detective Fuller out front. He looks exhausted. I imagine he didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and has been going steadfastly on the Sabrina Ward investigation since this morning. Since the heat and the intense pressure of the case are starting to drag on me, I know he’s feeling it. He wipes his brow as he walks up to me.

“I found a neighbor behind the Ward house who was up early with their new baby. They say they saw someone walking out from between two houses and then going down the sidewalk away from her house early this morning. She was looking through an upstairs bedroom window, so she couldn’t see anything, but she thinks it was a man with long blond hair, and she noticed he was carrying a bundle that looked like clothing,” he says. “We’re trying to find other neighbors with doorbell cameras or anything that might have captured him.”

“Long blond hair,” I say. “Just like the description Jesse Kristoff gave of the person who killed Gideon Bell and attacked him. If it was same the person who killed Sabrina Ward, that bundle he was carrying was likely the overclothes, mask, and gloves he was wearing. He would have taken them off to walk through the neighborhood because that would have caught the attention of anyone who saw him. As it is, he was seen, but if he was wearing all that, it would have been much more of a cause for concern.”

“Exactly,” Detective Fuller says. “The neighbor didn’t really think much of it. She just figured someone was taking a shortcut through the houses. She said they didn’t look like they were rushing or anything, just walking down the sidewalk. It didn’t occur to her that anything might be off until she heard the sirens and then the officers went to talk to her.”

“I hope we can get some clear images of him from something,” I say. “Let’s take a look at this car.”

The team follows me around to the back of the building, and I point out the vehicle. I show Detective Fuller the still from the camera footage and instruct the photographer to take a few shots of the vehicle before they go inside. Boris provided me with the keys to the car, so the first thing we do is have a gloved officer open the trunk. There’s nothing inside, and the strong smell of chemical cleaners tells me it’s unlikely the trunk has been used in a while.

The officers search for fingerprints on the door handle before opening the car and looking inside. I stand back with the detective while they search, wanting to get in there myself but knowing they need to be allowed to do their job. They process the inside of the car for fingerprints and search for any evidence that might have been left behind. It takes a while, but finally, one of them emerges and comes over to me.

“Everything has been wiped clean. No fingerprints. Not on the steering wheel, the controls for the air-conditioning, the radio, anywhere. Whoever did this was really careful to make sure that they weren’t leaving anything identifying. But we did find this.”

She displays a pair of tweezers, and in it is a single long fiber. It’s thicker than natural hair, and I immediately recognize it.

“Another wig fiber,” I say.

“So we’re looking for someone who is going to pretty great lengths to conceal their identity,” Detective Fuller says. “Where do we go from here?”

“Keep looking,” I say. “Try places you don’t usually think of. Get me a print, a receipt, something.”

“Check the seat adjuster,” Boris says, coming around the side of the building again. “I’ve had some people tell me that the driver’s seat in that car is a little tricky, and sometimes it will fall a bit backward so the driver has to use the adjuster to get it back up. They might have done that.”

“That’s great,” I say. “Thank you.”

The team checks the lever and comes up with a thumbprint. It’s a long shot, considering how many people have driven the car, but it’s something.