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CHAPTER NINE

Jude Archer stood at the back of the conference room as Special Agent Raheem Davidson walked the Talbot family through the FBI’s two-decades-long case against Frederick Arnold Henley.

The room was dark, the only light coming from the monitor at the head of the long table.

The blinds were all closed over the large windows that overlooked San Francisco’s Civic Center.

The muffled sound of car horns and street vendors penetrated the thick, blast-proof glass of the Phillip Burton Federal Building as Golden Gate Avenue came alive.

Inside the room, there was nothing but talk of death.

Nineteen family members were present and twelve more followed via a secure link.

Some were taking notes. Some looked down at their hands.

Others were silently following the laser pointer as Raheem indicated areas of interest on a map.

Hiking trails. Climbing routes. Nesting areas.

Caverns and talus caves that served as home to at least thirteen different species of bats.

“As you know,” Raheem said, “Freddy Henley admitted to murdering twelve girls between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. Without the perseverance of Special Agent in Charge Jude Archer, we wouldn’t know where any of these victims are today.”

Jude kept her expression neutral as they turned to look at her.

Raheem had gone badly off script. Family meetings were designed to provide information, to answer questions, to make loved ones feel heard.

This was a somber moment, not one for recognition or applause.

Particularly where Freddy Henley was concerned.

He’d murdered his first victim in 1993. The local police hadn’t put it together that he was a serial until 1996.

The FBI had arrested him on December 22, 1999, and it wasn’t until sixteen days ago that they’d finally located the remains of a seventeen-year-old girl named Darlene Talbot who’d disappeared on March 12, 1995.

She’d been Freddy’s third victim, but her remains were the last of the twelve they’d found.

“Let’s continue.” Raheem waited for the family to turn their attention back toward the monitor.

He used the laser pointer again. “A lot of you have probably seen this already, but in the interest of transparency, I’ll go through the list. Valerie Lydelle was found in the southern portion of the Machete Ridge rock formation.

Jennifer Wu was located here, in the canyon along this creek.

Kayse Nguyen was located further up under a stand of cottonwoods.

Steph Haver was inside the Balconies Cave here. ”

Jude checked in on the family. Hearing the names was overwhelming.

The family knew intimately the grief that was attached to the loss of each girl.

All of the pens were down now. A few of them had started to cry.

There were so many more names to get through.

Tanya Butler had been buried in a shallow grave near the dam.

Honora Rios was disposed of in the reservoir.

Natalie Daniels. Wanda Trochek. Mary Kay Morris.

The Resurrection Wall. Frog Canyon. Hawkins Peak.

Freddy had taken advantage of every scenic location spanning over 26,000 acres of land.

Pinnacles National Park was located in Central California, a roughly two-hour drive from San Francisco and less than half that distance from San Jose.

Vehicles could only access the park from two different directions.

The east approach led to the visitor center.

The west was favored by rock climbers. Each of the roads hit a dead end on either side of the eroded remains of an extinct volcano whose rust-colored pinnacles had inspired the park’s name.

If you chose the wrong route, you could burn through an hour finding your way back.

Jude had wasted multiple hours, then days, then months, years, and eventually two decades searching the park, driving down to Folsom Prison, returning to the park, following the scant clues that Freddy kept feeding her.

Occasionally, he would tell the truth. Occasionally, Jude would stick a shovel in the ground, shine a flashlight in the right spot inside the right cavern, and find the remains of one of his victims. The relief of discovery had always been overshadowed by the crushing realization that only Jude could locate the rest.

Freddy wouldn’t talk to anyone but her. There was a prison log somewhere that held an exact record of the hours Jude had spent with him.

It said a lot about the state of her life that the longest relationship she’d ever had was with a sadistic serial killer.

Maybe the most sadistic serial killer she had ever spoken with.

Like many psychopaths, Freddy had delighted in reliving the details of his crimes.

His bloodlust hadn’t been satiated by rape and murder.

He’d tortured his victims for days. Desecrated their bodies.

Sent harassing emails to their families.

Posted horrific photos on the dark web. Texted their mothers and called their sisters and even stalked some of them until they were pushed to the edge of sanity.

They were the people that Jude had thought about as she’d sat across from Freddy Henley at Folsom Prison.

She’d kept her expression passive, her body still, as he’d tried in vain to elicit a reaction.

He craved a look of horror or disgust. A fleeting flash of terror.

He’d thought he would break her. What he didn’t realize was that she was slowly breaking him.

Like Freddy, Jude had come from the world of academia.

She knew how to communicate in his language, had a deep bench of knowledge about what made him tick.

She had studied not just his crimes, not just his modus operandi or his perfectly normal childhood or his spotless high school discipline record.

She had studied his interests. Freddy had received his doctorate in earth sciences from UC Santa Barbara.

The rock formations at the Pinnacles were his area of expertise.

His dissertation investigated how the shifts in the San Andreas Fault over millions of years had moved the westernmost half of the Neenach Volcano 200 miles from the Pacific Coast Ranges.

He could talk about the Pinnacles for hours.

His family had vacationed there for generations, well before the land was officially designated a national park.

As a teenager, he’d volunteered at the park.

As a student, he’d taken soil samples from the park.

He’d camped at the park. He’d hiked at the park.

He had a photographic memory of every nook and cranny, every ridge and peak.

And for twenty years he’d used that knowledge to play cat-and-mouse games with Jude over the locations of the bodies of twelve young women and girls.

She let her gaze travel back toward the monitor on the wall. Raheem was still going down the list of victims. They were all as familiar to Jude as her own family tree. Teenagers with braces and pimples and hopes and dreams and plans for a future that Freddy Henley had ripped away.

On October 22, 1993, Mandy Crull had been abducted from a Santa Barbara department store.

Her mother had sent her to find a shopping cart, and the fourteen-year-old had never returned.

Freddy had tortured and raped her for two days before taking her to the park, burning her body, then burying her in a shallow grave on a scenic overlook favored by picnickers.

Jude had found her body on December 20, 2004.

On January 6, 1994, Johna Blackmon was walking the family dog in her neighborhood.

The dog returned to the house. Johna did not.

Freddy had abducted her in his van. He had taken her to the Pinnacles and raped and tortured her for three days.

He had dismembered her body, then scattered the pieces around the reservoir.

Jude had sent divers down to find her on March 11, 2007.

The others came later, spread out over the years. Freddy only hunted victims in the spring or fall because of the park’s dangerously hot Mediterranean climate in summer, and he was more likely to tell Jude where to find a victim during the more moderate months.

You oughtta be appreciative doll I don’t want that pretty face of yours getting sunburned.

Raheem changed the slide on the monitor.

Someone gasped as a photo of Darlene Marie Talbot filled the screen.

Frozen in time. Never forgotten. Daughter to Lara and Danny Talbot.

Big sister to Thalia, Ronny, Jimmy, and Daniel, Jr., granddaughter to James and Miriam.

Niece to so many uncles and aunts that Jude had to record them all in her notebook so she could keep them straight when they called. And called. And called.

Where is she why haven’t you found her you found the other girls don’t you care?

Darlene had been on a kayaking trip in the Bear Gulch Reservoir with some friends when she’d disappeared.

One girl thought she’d walked to the bathrooms. Another thought she was catching a break on the shore.

In truth, Darlene had accidentally dropped her hat on the trail.

She’d jogged back to retrieve it, then Freddy Henley had jumped out of the woods and hit her in the head with a climbing ax.

The drag marks through the forest had been soaked with her blood.

Sometimes it’s better when they’re unconscious, doll. You know what I’m saying? It makes it easier to do what you need to do.