Chapter 30

THIRTY

Gulf Shores, Alabama

Monday, September 23

9:01 a.m.

Gulf Shores PD had taken their time getting to the scene. So Leigh had taken hers in searching the rest of the house. There wasn't any rush when the victim was already dead.

Labeling Samuel Thornton a victim didn't feel right, however.

Not when Leigh took in Elyse's obsession and a deep suspicion the man dead in the storage closet beneath his own home might very well be the one who'd sent those messages to Katie Rose's fictitious profile.

She'd put the pieces together with the posts on Katie Rose's Instagram. The account hadn't existed until four days ago. Then a tangle of comments and private messages all within hours. More since then. Most of the comments had been innocent. But the private conversations—particularly Elyse's short-clipped, no-argument responses in all but one thread—told Leigh exactly who Elyse had been hunting. Perhaps to ascertain how a group of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old friends had come into contact with a middle-aged predator like Samuel Thornton. Maybe to uncover as much information about him as possible. Leigh wasn't sure which. The phone recovered from Elyse's home had been registered to Poppy Slater, paid for by John and Jill Slater, her parents. Elyse would've had to have visited the girl's home, perhaps talked with the grieving parents. From there, she must've stolen Poppy's phone and accessed the girl's account with login information stored in the device's password cache.

One thing was clear: Elyse had created an entire profile to hook Samuel Thornton into her web of underaged lies. She'd wanted evidence. Something she could use against him to prove he'd hurt those girls. But Elyse must've been attacked before she'd had the chance to go to the police. That was the only scenario that made sense.

Leigh had hoped Saige Fuentes or Elyse had been inside the storage closest, but she'd come out empty-handed. Leigh watched on from a branch of the Branyon Backcountry Trail, a mass of dunes between her and the crime scene. Officers had taped off the entire property, but there were no nosey neighbors or media that'd caught the report yet. Nothing that would've gone over the radio. Leigh had made sure of it. A single text. That was all it'd taken to get Detective Moore's attention.

A crime scene photographer cut off her view of the body left inside that hot, claustrophobic room beneath the house, but she'd already gotten what she'd needed from the scene. Toiletries skewed across bathroom counters had told her Samuel Thornton hadn't been planning on running, despite a woman he may have assaulted baiting him into exposing himself. Clothes hung straight in the main upstairs bedroom. No signs of panic or a struggle or evidence of another party. It was simply as though Samuel Thornton had walked himself downstairs into the storage room and died.

But that wasn't how strangling worked. She'd caught slivers of fiber in the man's wounds. Like twine. A rope? Her search hadn't produced any, which meant whoever had strangled Samuel Thornton had most likely taken it with them. Using rope to kill someone was a risk. The twine liked to collect all kinds of things. Skin samples, blood, sweat, DNA. Even if the killer had worn gloves, there were any number of other identifiers that could've caught in the braids. The killer must've known that. Taken the murder weapon with them. But none of this answered her most pressing question: If the predator was dead, where was Saige?

Detective Moore hiked through the dunes as easily as she'd crossed that beach leading to her niece's body. As if she'd done it a thousand times before. As a lifelong Gulf Shores resident, Leigh supposed she had. The detective squinted into the morning sun, apparently against sunglasses as a principle. "Got your message."

"I can see that." Leigh nodded toward the scene. "Your guys find anything to tell you who else might've been in that storage room?"

The detective slipped her hands into her uniform slacks and stared out over the water. She'd gotten thinner in the past few hours. It should've been impossible, but grief did terrible things. Turned you inside out while wringing you like a washcloth at the same time. "I told you if you came anywhere near my investigation, I'd have you arrested."

There was a beat of silence. Of dominance. Detective Moore wanted her to know who was in control. That she had the power to ruin Leigh's day, if she so chose.

"But considering we probably wouldn't have found Samuel Thornton for a few more days without your help, losing evidence pertinent to this case in the process, I'll let this one slide." The detective centered that unreadable gaze on Leigh. Ensuring she understood this olive branch for what it was. Temporary. "As a courtesy for your contribution to this investigation."

Leigh sucked in a lungful of humidity. "I know what it's like. The not knowing, the doubt. It feels like it's going to last forever, but you're going to get through this. Just don't give up. There are answers at the end."

Detective Moore turned her attention back out to sea. "I have a feeling I already know the answer. What I'm worried about is who else might've suffered while I scrambled to figure it out. Saige Fuentes, particularly. Administration and teachers at the high school place her in class up until just before second period Friday morning. Then she just seemed to walk off campus. I've tried contacting other students in her class, but it seems Saige kept a pretty tight circle of friends. Most of whom are dead now. I'm waiting on security footage from the school district to tell me where she might've gone."

"Taking responsibility for another person's actions is a dead end. Feeling like we should've known the truth from the beginning. That we should've been smart enough to see the warning signs. I put my entire life on hold because of that belief, and all it managed to do was consume me until I didn't feel anything at all. It doesn't make us better investigators. It just prohibits us from seeing the good things we still have." Like the brother and father waiting for her on the sidelines. Waiting for her to come back to them. Leigh wasn't sure she'd ever admitted that before. Not even to Elyse. But if there was even a chance to help Detective Moore avoid years of self-flagellation and hatred for her niece's death, Leigh would take it. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry for what I said earlier. I would've done the same in your position, taking on more cases to distract me from the loss. Actually, I have done that. A lot."

"You were right though." Detective Moore glanced back at the crime scene. "I was so invested in finding Ruby—for a lot of reasons—that I didn't put everything I had into helping Elyse. Now she's out there. Possibly murdered by Samuel Thornton, and I could've been the one to prevent it from happening in the first place. Not sure I'll ever forgive myself for that."

"I forgive you." The anger Leigh had lived off to drive her over the past two decades couldn't have the wheel anymore. Not if she wanted her family back. Not if she wanted to create a new one of her own. Maybe not soon. But it was a day she'd looked forward to for years, and she was finally in a position to reach out and claim it. "And this isn't over. You still have a chance to make it right. Saige Fuentes needs your help. You're a good cop, Moore. I know you'll do whatever it takes to make this right."

"How did you do it?" Detective Moore asked. "How did you keep going when all you wanted to do was let the world crush the hope out of you?"

She thought of her brother, Chandler. "I had someone who still believed in me. Relying on me to follow through."

"I could use some of that encouragement." The detective shook her head, casting another look back to the scene. "I have a feeling Ruby was in that house, Agent Brody. Her and Poppy Slater and maybe even Saige Fuentes. Now that we have Samuel Thornton's DNA, the Mobile medical examiner can compare it to fluids found on Ruby's and Poppy's bodies. I might finally have the answer I've been looking for these past three weeks. We'll have to wait for forensics to get back with results, but that same feeling is telling me Samuel Thornton got what he deserved. And that maybe Elyse Portman had something to do with him ending up dead in that storage closet."

But which had come first? The assault in Elyse's home, or Samuel Thornton's murder? "Does your coroner have an idea of time of death for Samuel Thornton?"

"No," Detective Moore said. "Not yet."

It was a dangerous thing for an investigator to determine the chain of events of a crime without evidence. Sooner or later, you started solely looking for evidence to support your theory and ignoring anything to contradict it. The prosecutor—if this investigation got to court—would spot bias from a mile away and maybe even refuse Detective Moore her time on the stand. But Leigh wouldn't have found her brother without that spark of obsession. She took a step off the asphalted trail. "I can help you find proof your victims were in that house before they were killed."

"Your director made it clear during our last conversation that you were to have no involvement in this or any other Gulf Shores PD case as a federal agent." Her instincts said Detective Moore would've retracted her threat of arrest for the slightest possibility of nailing Samuel Thornton for his crimes.

"Out of curiosity, did she say anything about a civilian consultant?" Leigh asked. "I've consulted for departments all over the country. Serial crimes, murder-suicides, even staged scenes. I have a business card and everything."

A knowing smile creased one corner of the detective's mouth. She squinted one eye closed as she swept the beach for… Leigh wasn't sure what. "I'll never get clearance to pay you as a consultant. It takes an act of congress to get updated equipment for the conference room and replacement parts on the patrol cars."

"Then today is your lucky day." Leigh headed for the crime scene, nearly losing one shoe to the sand in the process. This wasn't about the money. This was about Elyse. Just as it had been the moment she'd stepped into that vacation house two days ago. "I happen to be running a special."

"The techs are already collecting samples from the storage closet, and I have two officers going through the house." The detective followed on her heels. "I would've gotten word if there was anything to tell us how to find Saige."

"Have you been inside?" Leigh stared up at the house as they closed in on the property.

"I walked through a few minutes after I arrived on the scene," the detective said.

"Did you notice anything odd?" Hell, her muscles burned with every strained step through sand. How did people live like this? "How it looked?"

"Like it'd been cleaned." They hit the bottom of the stairs as one and ascended to deck level.

"I think it was." Leigh couldn't fight the theory taking up space in her head. Not anymore. "I found a bottle of homemade cleaner underneath the sink in the kitchen. Vinegar and essential oils, but I'm not sure Samuel Thornton was the one who made it."

"What gives you that idea?" Detective Moore scanned the deck. Looking for something—anything that might fill in the blanks of this case.

"There were other cleaners in the house. Upstairs in the bathrooms. Commercial, some half used. But Elyse had cancer four years ago. She lost a baby because of it." Leigh's own uterus seemed to contract at the breach of privacy. As though she was betraying everything her friend had ever admitted. "During chemo she got paranoid about using commercial cleaners, eating preservatives, and refused to use anything non-organic in her house. Even made all of her family's meals from scratch. Just to make sure they weren't eating anything that might bring the cancer back."

Detective Moore set those clear eyes on her. "You think the cleaner came from Elyse? That she… what? Posed as a cleaner to gain access to the house? Samuel Thornton would've recognized her. She claimed he assaulted her a week ago, and I had to keep her from attacking him here the next day."

"What I'm saying is, she murdered Samuel Thornton and cleaned up after herself." Leigh pointed up at the broken safety wire on the balcony above her head. "And I think I know how to prove it."