Page 38 of Vengeance of Childhood Proportions (Till Death Do Us Part #7)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Mal

As much as I hated the reality of it, Mira got her wish.

I was leading the Atelihai Killer Task Force—because that was the most generic name I could come up with—and Mira was named my second in command.

Carr made it very clear that we needed to make progress before the Behavioral Analysis Unit sent their man across the country.

After Criminal Minds had aired, it was thought that the BAU traveled in packs and had a massive support team.

In reality, they sent one agent to assist the local agents and didn’t take command like they did on the tv series.

I was still in charge.

And I was fucking exhausted.

I hadn’t seen my little owl in two days and I was fairly certain I hadn’t slept since the night before the DB in the dog park was discovered.

Since then, two more bodies had dropped.

Dr. Robinson had them in his lab and our forensics teams were doing the best they could to get the information we needed quickly.

We were up to five bodies, but more were reported missing.

I had taken over the Beta Conference Room on the floor above my office. It had the most windows and the largest whiteboard. I was a visual guy and needed to see the connections in front of me, not just in my head.

I had the 2011, 2012, and 2013 Atelihai Valley High School yearbooks open on a table before my whiteboard.

On the left was my victims’ column. I had the headshots of the five who had been found: Christopher Evan Harrow, Amber Renee Jamison, John Michael Wise, and the two newest, Wyatt Daniel Butler and Andrew “Andy” Frank Martell.

Butler had been discovered glued into a gorilla suit and staged in an Atelihai Valley grocery store.

He’d been found sitting in a produce bin filled with bananas.

Martell was an entirely different story.

He wasn’t ‘staged’ because there wasn’t much left to him.

He was completely bloated and nearly unrecognizable but for a tattoo on his shoulder.

His body had been found in an Atelihai Valley bakery in their display case.

The middle of my board was my assumed victims’ column of those who had been reported missing by family members with a connection to Atelihai Valley High: Samuel “Sam” Justice Keene, Alicia Mary Cohen, Jesse Dean Ritter-Hogan, Hannah Darling Terwilliger, Roman Paul Fitzwilliam, and Jerald Lincoln Kelly.

On the right, I had a column for my suspects, but it was currently empty.

“Here’s what I’ve been able to piece together so far,” I told Carr.

My boss was currently leaning his ass up against the long conference table where my laptop, phone, water, and uneaten lunch sat.

He at least looked presentable and like he’d gotten some fucking sleep.

I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d paused just to take a piss.

“Everyone, from the victims to the missing, are from Atelihai Valley. They graduated from the high school between 2011 and 2013. But all the men were on the hockey team that won the 2010 State Championship. You haven’t been to this high school, boss.

It’s like they’re living in the past, still riding the high of a championship from fifteen years ago.

The second Mira and I stepped inside that school, it was all Principal Hagley talked about. ”

“What about the two women?”

“Both were cheerleaders back in high school. Based on the yearbooks and what the techs found online, they were definitely the clichéd ‘in crowd’. However,” I tapped the woman’s photo on my board, “according to Facebook, Hannah Terwilliger was also dating one of the hockey players in 2010.”

“Which one?”

“John Wise.” I pointed to him. “We discovered his body in the dog park.”

Carr’s eyebrows went up. “That’s an interesting connection. Have you been able to speak with the former sheriff?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. He’s in a hospice facility. Mira and I are going to see him this afternoon. I wanted another crack at Hagley before I went to see the sheriff.”

“What about the current sheriff?”

“Transplant from the lower forty-eight. He wasn’t around fifteen years ago, but he gave us all of his files prior to us knowing this was a serial case. Mira and I spent yesterday with a team of interns going through them.”

“There are more teens in this picture than on your board,” Carr pointed out, gesturing to the photo in his hand.

“We’re contacting who we can. Two are dead.

I mean, dead before now,” I clarified. “They were in a drunk driving accident during college. The rest will be coming in over the next week or so. We’re also contacting their local LEOs to let them know that they may be targets.

Until we have more substantial proof, though, no judge will sign off on a protection order. ”

Carr stood up, walking closer to my board. “What the hell is going on in Atelihai Valley? What does a hockey tournament from fifteen years ago have to do with today?”

“I watched the recording of the game. There’s a possibility that it’s retribution for the loss, but it doesn’t quite fit.

” I reached towards the picture he had in his hand to point to a redhead.

“Jerome Roberts was a defender. He had a scuffle after the game with two of the opposing team members. It was caught on camera, but I cannot logically connect that to now. Who would possibly hold a grudge that long and why? There’s more going on than just a hockey championship. ”

“Agreed. Still, did you identify the two Roberts had the scuffle with?”

“I did. They both work on Wall Street now and have million dollar apartments in Manhattan. I can’t see them traveling up here to commit all these murders over a fifteen-year-old fight.”

“While I agree with you, I want their alibis,” Carr said sternly.

“Already have the NYC field office on it. I’ll have the reports by the end of the day.”

Carr nodded once. “Good.” He turned towards the window. “Now, who are these people?”

“Atelihai Valley has had a rapid decrease in population over the past fifteen years.”

Carr raised an eyebrow. “Have they now?”

“A lot of families have been moving away, but there also has been a high number of suspicious deaths over the years. The cause of deaths are not suspicious on their own, but put them together and…” I let my voice trail off as I gestured to the pictures lining the window.

I tapped the glass next to the headshot on the far right.

“These are the deaths that stood out to me over the last fifteen years.”

“Walk me through it,” Carr prompted, putting the hockey photo on the open yearbooks on the table.

I gestured Carr to follow me down to the left.

“Dr. Peter Sorgin was a hit-and-run almost ten years ago. One of the ER nurses who worked closely with him, Roberta Quinn, was shot during a robbery gone wrong eight years ago. Parker Shah and Cordelia Young were both EMTs and within a week of each other, Shah was stabbed on duty by a druggie and Young had a carbon monoxide leak in her apartment. Want to know the kicker?” I asked rhetorically.

Carr still raised a dark eyebrow. “Her dog survived the accident. Neighbors found him wandering the halls and that’s how Young’s body was discovered.

” I kept going down the line. “George Benedict was the hockey coach both years Atelihai Valley won their state championships. He was run over by a Zamboni in a freak accident.”

The look on Carr’s face said he didn’t believe it was an accident any more than I did.

I pointed to a couple. “Genelle and Allen Marteen. They were a murder-suicide, the first in Atelihai Valley history.”

“Fuck,” Carr murmured.

“These two were police officers in 2010 but both were dead by 2014,” I said to point out the significance of the 2010 championship. “Myles Hansen was shot while on duty and Troy Allis was arrested for tampering with evidence and then shanked while in prison.”

“How big is this small town?” Carr questioned.

“In 2010, population was around thirty-one thousand. Current census is around twenty-eight.”

Carr looked between the whiteboard and the window. “And you think all of these are connected? That Christopher Harrow wasn’t the first?”

“These,” I held my hands outward towards the window, “were made to look like accidents. But I think they were staged just as much as these were,” I said about the pictures on the left of my board. “Just more subtly. This is so much bigger than a fucking hockey tournament. I just don’t know how.”

“How long before the principal gets here?”

“He’s on his way,” I told my boss. “Mira went to get him so he couldn’t refuse.”

“Have him come in here instead of interrogation,” Carr instructed. His eyes were falling over the two displays of headshots. “I want to see his face when he sees all this.”

“The day I met him when we were called to Harrow’s dumpsite, he freaked when he thought the victim was a woman.

Said ‘they did it again’, but when I asked him what he meant, he did not elaborate.

Said it was a prank that went wrong, but since the victim was actually male, it didn’t matter.

It hadn’t happened again. At the time, it was a single murder that we’d been called in on because neither local nor state police had ever seen anything like it.

I figured I’d revisit it when I got around to looking into the murder. ”

It was a sad statement but true. Police, both federal and local, just did not have the time and resources to devote one person per case.

“I’ll go down and wait in the lobby for them. Go get yourself freshened up in the locker room and, for the love of all that is holy, Mallory, take a fucking shower . I’ll text you when we’re on our way up.”

I wasn’t embarrassed about my stink. It was to be expected, as I hadn’t showered since I’d last slept. “Thanks, Delroy,” I said with sincerity, dropping the formality. “I’ll be quick.”

“If I see you sooner than twenty minutes, Shawn, I’m taking you back to the showers myself and will scrub you down like I used to do to my children.”

I chuckled, grabbing my phone and suit jacket. I didn’t bother with my uneaten meal, because I had something more important than eating to do with my twenty minutes of freedom. If I took a fast shower, I could devote the rest of my time calling my little owl.

I just hoped she picked up.