Chapter 14

FOURTEEN

A knot tightened in Kane’s belly. He found it disturbing, almost intrusive, to walk into a dead person’s room, more so when it was a young person whose life was cut off midstride. He scanned the room, taking in the football posters from twelve years previously. Pennants and images of him and Abby were plastered everywhere. Trophies crammed three sets of shelves. This young man was not only good at football, he excelled across many sports. He played baseball, won trophies in track and field, and was proficient in swimming as well. Kane’s attention was drawn to a collection of gun trophies and he discovered Cole was at competition level in rifle. He turned to look at Jenna. “What a terrible waste of life. This young man had everything going for him, didn’t he? I wonder who took it into their head to kill him. If this was a serial killer, surely there would be others going missing around the same time. Was this an opportunistic thrill kill?”

“As the sheriff didn’t bother to keep his files up to date, we have no idea.” Jenna made a beeline for the laptop, pulling on gloves along the way. “I guess we should avoid contaminating the room, even though it isn’t technically a crime scene.” She followed the power cord and turned it on at the wall. “Let’s see if this boots up after all this time.” She pointed to the phone sitting on the desk. “Can you hunt down a charger? Maybe it’s in one of the drawers.”

For a college student, Cole was incredibly tidy, unless his mother had cleaned the room after he’d left. The bed was made and there was not a speck of dust to be seen anywhere. He gathered that Cole spent a good deal of his time in the fraternity house and maybe came home on weekends. Halloween that year just happened to fall on a Friday. Kane opened drawers and found the phone charger. He attached the phone and plugged it in. It was an old phone and would likely take over an hour or maybe more to recharge. It seemed that the laptop was in good shape. It was slow to boot up but hummed along nicely and opened up using Alpha Pi as the password. “That was a good guess.” He leaned over Jenna’s shoulder, staring at the old screen.

“Ah, emails.” Jenna slowly scrolled through them one at a time. “I’ll take a quick look, but we’ll need to take these back to the office and go through them. We need to spend time searching the room.”

Kane straightened. “Although it’s so clean it’s hard to imagine he even lived here.”

He opened closet doors to find a variety of normal gear. Dumped in one corner of the closet was a duffel bag and he hauled it out to take a look inside. The bag was filled with dirty laundry. This would be the reason the room was so clean. No doubt his mother would have come in and dusted but Cole must have dropped in before he left to pick up Abby. He dumped his bag in the closet and likely forgot to tell his mother. If she had found it after he’d gone missing, perhaps she was reluctant to open it or destroy the last few things her son had touched. He recalled asking Wolfe about what had happened to his things as he didn’t have even one small reminder of his wife. Wolfe told him that, as he’d reportedly been killed in the accident, all his belongings had been moved into storage. It was a military storage unit and the items would be there for at least ten years before he would be able to access them if necessary. One thing that always bothered him was the fact that he had never been able to speak to his father or mother before they died. His going dark had been absolute, much the same as Jenna’s, but she didn’t have any family that he knew about to care where she’d ended up. Her parents died before she became an FBI agent.

He scanned the walls, his gaze moving over the photographs. It seemed that he printed many from his phone. One in particular caught his eye. It was a group of six young men. Cole was the center, with both arms resting on the other young men’s shoulders. All were wearing football jerseys, and the Alpha Pi fraternity pins were evident on everyone’s chest. He took the photograph from the wall and placed it on the desk beside Jenna. “I do believe I found the group of friends that went up the mountain on Halloween. This image doesn’t denote anything particularly special apart from a group of friends out having fun. This might be the clue we’ve been looking for.”

“There’s not much to and fro in the emails, mainly college stuff and information from various places offering Cole work over the breaks.” Jenna blew out a long breath. “There’s too much here to go through. He has hundreds of emails piled up. My bet is anything interesting will be on his phone. Not many people email their friends and that’s who we need to speak to—and Abby’s. It’s a shame we were never able to find her phone. My bet it would be in the cave where they were buried or somewhere close by, although were phones water resistant those days? I have no recollection of smartphone functionality twelve years ago. It’s not something I worry about too much.”

Kane chuckled. “Me neither. I’m usually just impressed how many things the phone can do these days. It seems every new model has something I desire greatly and need to buy right away. Often during my missions I was literally a guinea pig for some of the new technology in weapons and armor. I never minded and enjoyed giving anything they gave me a thorough workout. I figure Wolfe is much the same as me. He has every possible innovation in his laboratory that POTUS offers to send him. He has things there that are usually sent out only to military doctors for evaluation. This is how he had the special laser to alter my fingerprints.” He sighed. “I haven’t found anything of interest apart from the photograph and the duffel full of unwashed clothes in the corner of the closet. I didn’t believe this room looked lived in by a college student, and seeing the duffel would mean he came home to say hello to his folks, dumped his dirty washing, and took off to meet Abby.”

“I would agree because his mom would have cleaned his room while he was away for the week at college.” Jenna stood slowly and placed one hand on her rounded belly. “The baby is very active today, especially when I sit down. I’m coming to the conclusion it has very large feet.” She gave him a long stare and then chuckled. “I do believe big feet come from your side of the family.”

Kane collected the laptop and phone. “Only on the male side. My mother was dainty.”

“That’s good to know.” Jenna pulled a receipt book out of her pocket and made a list of the items they had taken. “We should show the picture to Mrs. Peters and ask her if she can identify the others in the photograph with Cole. I wouldn’t mind betting that they’re the same men who Rowley and Rio hunted down.”

They headed downstairs, and Mrs. Peters came out of the kitchen to greet them. Kane handed her the photograph. “Do you recognize any of these young men with Cole?”

“I do. They were his best friends in college.” She pointed to each of them in turn. “Wyatt Twotrees, Jess Hallon, Clint Wasser, and Dustin Crawley.” She smiled. “We used to enjoy watching them play football together.”

“Do you recall if Cole mentioned going with them as a group to the forest on Halloween?” Jenna leaned forward. “It would be a great help if we knew who was with him on that evening so we can talk to them.”

“No, he never mentioned it to me.” Mrs. Peters’ eyes filled with tears again. “I’m sure if they had been with him, he would have been okay, but as far as I know, that evening he was going out with Abby. He didn’t even mention the forest, so I assumed they were going through town like everyone else does on Halloween. I know he’d purchased a Halloween mask, but at the last minute he left it behind.”

Kane straightened. “You wouldn’t by any chance still have it, would you?”

“Yes, in fact I do. Do you believe it will make any difference?” Mrs. Peters hurried off and returned a few minutes later with a horrific Halloween mask. “I recall, he believed it was too scary for Abby as she really wasn’t into all the graphic Halloween costumes.”

Kane held out his hand. “It might make a whole lot of difference. Do you mind if we add it to the list of things that we need to take with us?”

“If it would help find my son’s killer, you can take the entire house.” Mrs. Peters folded her arms across her ample chest. “When will we be able to bury our boy?”

“The medical examiner, Dr. Shane Wolfe, will contact you.” Jenna handed Mrs. Peters the receipt. “You must understand that because it’s been twelve years, these things take time, but I can assure you that Dr. Wolfe’s team gives everyone who goes through his hands the utmost care and dignity. His fiancée, Norrell, is the forensic anthropologist working on the case with her entire team and Emily his daughter is a medical examiner in training. Cole and Abby couldn’t be in more caring or better hands. You have my word.”

“Thank you, that eases my mind some.” Mrs. Peters took the receipt and followed them to the mudroom. “Are you going to search his truck? It’s unlocked.”

They pushed their feet back into their boots and pulled on their slickers. Kane had the phone and laptop along with the photograph and mask in one large plastic evidence bag. He turned to Mrs. Peters. “Yes, we’ll go and check out his truck and then leave. We’ll keep you up to date with the investigation, and as before, if you can think of anything unusual about that night or if you heard anything that people were saying that might be of interest, please give us a call.”