Page 58 of The Girl from Devil’s Lake (Joanna Brady Mysteries #21)
Bisbee, Arizona
When Joanna walked into the conference room at ten a.m. sharp, she found a full house. Everyone was already assembled, including Craig Witherspoon. Joanna caught Deb’s eye. “Autopsy done?” she asked.
Deb nodded.
“Okay,” Joanna said. “Good to know.” Then she turned to the group.
“Good morning, everybody. Thanks for being here. I have a feeling this is going to be another long day. The county attorney is here today to be updated on the progress of our investigation in preparation for Stephen Roper’s charging hearing on Monday morning.
“First and foremost, I want to thank you all for the hard work you’ve done so far, and it’s paying off.
Last night, Mr. Roper changed his mind about lawyering up and summoned me to the jail where he gave me a full confession to six separate homicides.
Due to Casey’s hard work on examining items in what we consider to be the killer’s trophy case—we have physical evidence to back up every one of those.
As of this morning, I’ve been able to connect two more unsolved homicides to Mr. Roper, again due to contents of his trophy collection combined with the BOLO we sent out two days ago.
But based on the number of items in our evidence room, there are a lot more unidentified victims out there, and it’s our job to find them.
“But first things first,” she added. “Detective Howell, what can you tell us about Marliss Shackleford’s autopsy?”
It turns out that Kendra Baldwin had confirmed Dr. Ybarra’s initial assessment of the situation.
When the EMTs had attempted to move Marliss away from the foot of the ladder, pieces of shattered vertebrae had shifted in her upper neck and pierced her medulla oblongata, resulting in an inability to breathe.
In addition, Deb reported that she and Garth were in the process of creating search warrant requests to examine Roper’s electronic devices along with his banking records.
They were also requesting warrants to examine Marliss Shackleford’s electronic devices.
Dave Hollicker reported that his crime scene examination of Roper’s residence had turned up a glass jar on a kitchen counter that contained remnants of chloroform. He had also located a chloroform-soaked dish towel in the plastic bag lining the killer’s kitchen garbage can.
“He may have been intent on getting away,” Joanna commented, “but at that point he was no longer making any effort to cover his tracks.” Then she turned to Casey.
“What about you?”
Casey Ledford reported that, by the time she’d finished untangling all the shoelaces, she had fifteen in all—six of them dipped in blue ink.
“Roper explained that when I spoke to him last night,” Joanna said. “Blue ink indicates the victim was a boy. The ones without ink are girls, so six and nine, respectively. How many evidence bags in all?”
“Seventy-six,” Casey answered.
“And did you happen to count the number of X’s on that Rand McNally road map?”
“I did,” Casey said. “There are twenty-three. Why?”
“Mr. Roper indicated to me that each X was for a prostitute who didn’t have a suitable trophy item available.”
“Twenty-three plus seventy-six?” Craig demanded, speaking aloud for the first time. “That makes a total of ninety-nine victims. Are you kidding me?”
“And Marliss Shackleford makes an even one hundred,” Joanna put in. “As I said, we still have a lot of unidentified victims.”
“I’ve got a lead on some of them,” Casey said, “the four class rings. Last night when I was looking online at a class ring manufacturer, I stumbled across a Facebook page that uses crowdsourcing techniques to reunite lost-and-found class rings with their original owners. I went ahead and joined the group, saying that I had four class rings that might or might not be connected to a serial killer, and they expressed a real interest in helping.”
“The owner of one of those rings was already identified this morning, by Sheriff Moody of the Elko County Sheriff’s Department.”
“Which one?” Casey asked.
“The one with the initials EHS engraved on it. EHS stands for Elko High School in Elko, Nevada. The ring was owned by a kid named Kenneth Norris, but he wasn’t wearing it at the time it disappeared.
His eighteen-year-old girlfriend, Janice Jensen, was.
She disappeared on her way home from a nighttime bowling alley job on June 16, 1981.
Her father was the sheriff of Elko County at the time of his daughter’s death.
He’s now deceased, but Janice’s mother is still alive, and once Sheriff Moody got off the phone with me, he was heading out to let her know that, after forty-plus years, her daughter’s killer has most likely finally been identified and taken into custody.
“So that’s where we are, folks. We’ve identified nine of what appears to be at least a hundred different victims. I still have a few original BOLO callbacks to make. Anyone else have any of those?”
Deb raised her hand. “Garth and I have a couple.”
“Give them to me, and I’ll make myself useful by handling those. The rest of you have plenty of work to do, but for now my major focus—and I want it to be yours, too—is to bring answers to ninety-something still-grieving families.”
“Should we send out a second BOLO?” Deb suggested.
“Maybe,” Joanna replied, “but first try crowdsourcing those class rings. They’ve all been swabbed for prints and DNA, right?”
Casey nodded. “I swabbed each item before putting it in a bag.”
“Who’s our best photographer?” Joanna asked.
Dave Hollicker raised his hand. “I am,” he said.
“All right. Start by photographing the other class rings so Casey can send those out to her crowdsourcing crew. Come to think of it, take individual photos of each separate piece of evidence. Maybe we can include those in our BOLO as well. So back to the salt mines, people. Let’s solve ourselves a whole bunch of unsolved homicides. ”