Page 20 of The Sinner’s Son (Sawyer and Royce: Felonies and Fatherhood #2)

“Uh-huh,” Sawyer said. “I might include a few choice words for you. And, Eddie…”

“Yeah?”

“You cannot ever tell my mother that we shared our good news with you before her,” Sawyer said.

Eddie chuckled. “I promise to keep my mouth shut.”

“I’ll see you both tonight,” Sawyer said before hanging up. He took a minute to process everything he learned during the brief call, and then he shook his head and returned to the conference room.

Alec was leaning over the back of Ricky’s chair and squinting at the laptop. He straightened and acknowledged Sawyer with a quick nod. “I think the part I’m looking for is maybe thirty seconds ahead,” he said to Ricky.

“Okay. Let’s try this.” Ricky made the adjustments with a mouse and hit a key.

“I relive that night in 2003 every time I close my eyes,” a crying woman said.

“This is the right spot,” Alec said excitedly. “Let it play.”

“I should’ve walked with Emma to her car. I offered,” the woman rushed to say, “but she told me not to worry. Em was always so independent.”

Emma? Was she talking about Emma Sanderson, Andrew Bishop’s first documented murder victim? Both the year and the name matched. “Sanderson?” Sawyer whispered, though he didn’t know why. He wasn’t interrupting a live interview.

Alec nodded and pointed at the laptop, indicating the next part was crucial. In the recording, he asked, “And you last saw her where, Tiffany?”

The woman sniffed. “At the county fair. Emma had dressed up to impress a guy she planned to meet there, but he stood her up. She learned that he’d met up with someone else instead.

Em’s self-esteem had taken a few blows that summer, and she was feeling especially low, so we didn’t stick around.

It was dark when we left, but only around ten o’clock.

Maybe ten thirty. We’d driven separately and were walking to our cars when this guy approached us in the parking area.

He was good-looking but older than us. Clean-cut.

Dark hair. Light green eyes. Tall with an athletic build.

He wore a Western-style dress shirt that a lot of men wore to those types of things.

Instead of a cowboy hat, he wore a ball cap.

I’m going to be honest here and say that I didn’t remember what it said until an FBI agent showed me photos of Andrew Bishop nearly twenty years later.

Memories of that night came flooding back.

The hat he wore in the photo was red and white, but the one he wore the night at the fair was blue and white.

The trucking company logo was the same. I remembered wondering about that when he told us he was a photographer. ”

“A photographer?” Alec asked incredulously.

“Yes,” Tiffany replied. “And he said he wanted to take pictures of us. Said he’d photographed a lot of models, but we were the most beautiful women he’d ever seen.

He claimed to have connections with agents who could do big things for us, and we could see a world beyond our small town.

” Sawyer could hear the eye roll in Tiffany’s voice.

“He was standing at the back of a red Camaro. It was an older one. I knew very little about cars then, but I do now after decades of marriage to a classic car lover. He’s dragged me to enough shows that I can confidently say the photographer drove a seventies model.

I’d bet my life on it, just as I had when I told the local cops that Emma hadn’t run off with some guy who was old enough to be her dad.

Anyway, he popped the trunk and beckoned us over to look at some of his portfolios.

I said no way, grabbed Emma’s elbow, and marched on. ”

“How did he act when you told him no?” Alec asked.

“He was cool with it. Called out that he’d be back the following night if we changed our minds.

We reached my car first, and I offered to drive Em to her car.

She’d parked farther away, and I didn’t want her walking alone, especially with that guy lurking around in the dark.

Emma laughed away my concerns and continued walking.

‘Call me later, nerd,’ she’d said.” Tiffany cried softly for a few seconds before she spoke again.

“Those are the last words Emma spoke to me. Her call never came, and I never saw Em again. The idiot cops said she’d been lured by the photographer’s pretty promise.

You know what, maybe he was right about that.

Maybe she’d wanted to have some pictures taken so she could show Ryan Callahan what an idiot he’d been for choosing that skank Madison.

But she never would’ve run away with him.

And it doesn’t matter if she turned around and sought him out or if he followed her and attacked.

The result is the same. Your father killed my best friend. ”

“I’m so sorry,” Alec said. “I’d give anything to go back and make this right.”

“But you can’t, and neither can I.” Tiffany wept for a few moments before pulling herself together. “But you helped get justice for Emma, and for that, I am eternally grateful.” She sniffled again. “Can I hug you?”

“Of course.” Chairs scooted and clothing rustled as two people stood up and embraced.

Alec gestured for Ricky to kill the audio and then turned his attention to Sawyer.

“There’s a single line in Monica’s case file that caught my attention.

An unnamed friend reported that a photographer had approached them at the county fair the night Monica disappeared. He drove a red Camaro.”

Sawyer wanted to urge caution, but it was hard to do when his heart was racing a mile a minute. “That would be one hell of a coincidence,” he said. “But we’re going to need a lot more if we’re going to connect Andrew to Monica’s murder.”

“Or we just need one irrefutable fact,” Alec said with a wry smile.

“Why do you look like Sylvester after he just shoved Tweety Bird in his mouth?” Sawyer asked.

“Because I have an ace in the hole.” Alec pulled a second laptop over and typed frantically for a few seconds. “Here. Come look.”

Sawyer rounded the conference table and dropped into the seat beside Alec.

On the screen was a collage of photographs taken of objects, mostly hair accessories and jewelry that had likely belonged to young women.

Sawyer’s blood rushed fast enough to roar in his ears.

He turned his head and stared at Alec. “Is this what I think it is?”

He nodded. “I took pictures of everything inside Andrew’s treasure trove before I handed it over to the FBI, and it’s a damn good thing I did.

They solved the straightforward cases, which were the ones that had newspaper articles or computer printouts about the victims wrapped around their trinkets.

” Alec tapped the screen. “These items were loose in the bottom of the box, so I figure these murders occurred before Andrew fine-tuned his process.”

“Possibly,” Sawyer agreed.

He catalogued several unmatched earrings, wondering if the mates had been left on his victims. There were a few charms and pendants without their necklaces or bracelets.

Had those been left behind too? There was a golden tassel that had likely come from a graduation cap.

Any identifying number or high school mascot or name had been removed from it, making it extremely hard to match up.

There was a peachy-pink strip of velvet with an old-fashioned cameo in the center.

Andrew had collected scrunchies, banana clips, headbands, and brightly colored butterfly clips.

Damn, there were a lot of treasures in that box.

Did any of them belong to the same person, or did each single item belong to a different woman?

If the latter were true, Andrew Bishop was likely the most prolific of all serial killers.

He and Alec were on good footing, so Sawyer thought it was best to keep that thought to himself.

Instead, he said, “Even if we could tie one of these to Monica, how do you plan to connect the others? How do you even know where to look?”

“The easiest places to start are the ones like this—locations where Andrew lived, both during my parents’ marriage and after.

I started with you because of your commitment to solving cold cases,” Alec said.

“Andrew kept exceptional business records for four decades. His log entries detailed everything I need to track his movements. Andrew had meticulously documented who hired him, what he hauled for them, and the destination for the shipment. He’d noted the daily hours he drove and every cent he spent on business expenses.

He’d kept accordion files with receipts to back up the entries. ”

“You found all of that with the souvenirs from his victims?” Sawyer asked.

“No. The FBI found the business records when they served warrants on his property. The trinket box provided the just cause to get the warrants after they interrogated me for eight hours and accused me of being the killer.”

Sawyer crossed his arms over his chest. “You haven’t talked publicly about that before, have you?”

“Nope,” Alec said. “I’m not sure I will either. If I think objectively, I can understand why they were skeptical about my accusations.”

Sawyer nodded slowly as he recalled the circumstances that kicked everything off.

“Son gets summoned to a hospital to see his estranged father after his heart attack. While he’s in surgery, the hospital staff hands the man’s belongings to the son, which includes a set of keys to the dad’s semitruck.

Either boredom or curiosity got the best of the son, who uses the keys to access his father’s semitruck.

He snoops around in the private sleep quarters and stumbles across a serial killer’s treasure box. ”

“Plays out like a Hollywood movie, doesn’t it?” Alec asked. “It was just as likely that I was bitter about the estrangement with Andrew and tried to pin my murders on him.”