Chapter 33

THIRTY-THREE

Gulf Shores, Alabama

Monday, September 23

11:07 a.m.

The hotel room was empty.

The officer waiting outside had attempted to utter what sounded like an apology as Leigh shoved inside, but she hadn't caught the actual words. Her heart rate pounded—too loud—in her ears. The beds were left unmade, last night's napkins from dinner still in the trash can. Housekeeping hadn't been through.

Leigh lunged for the bathroom. But there was no sign of Ava.

She'd tried the girl's cell another handful of times. Same result. "This doesn't make sense. Samuel Thornton is dead. There's no way he could've known she was staying with me. You had an officer posted outside the building. She should be here."

"Who else besides me knew Ava was staying with you?" Detective Moore assessed the room with that same investigative eye she'd used at the beach house.

Leigh threaded one hand through her hair. She couldn't think through the dozens of scenarios clashing in her head. Of Ava walking out of this room under duress. Of someone coming in. She'd been charged with keeping Ava safe during the course of this investigation—promised to protect her—and now her best friend's daughter was gone. "I don't… I don't know. We talked to a social worker before we left the station. After Wesley shot himself. She wanted to make sure Ava wasn't in crisis, that she could make the decision to stay with me of her own accord. We had to fill out some paperwork, and I told her I was staying here."

She circled her attention around the room. Looking for something—anything—that might be out of place. Ava's clothes were still in the bag Leigh had collected from the beach house. The toiletries she'd bought too. All lined up in the bathroom. But the girl's phone wasn't on the nightstand between the beds. Though her charger had been left behind.

"All right. I'll send one of my officers down to the front desk to request security footage of the lobby and exits on the first floor," Detective Moore said. "When was the last time you were in contact with Ava?"

"Right before I left to search Samuel Thornton's house. Three hours ago. I told her to call me if she needed anything. She asked if she could order breakfast from room service, and I told her to have at it. Get whatever she wanted." Except there was no evidence Ava had ordered breakfast. And suddenly Leigh felt as if she were in Annalea Fuentes's position. Trying to recall every single detail that might help in recovering her daughter. Only Ava wasn't her daughter. She was Elyse's and had suffered through an unimaginable event Leigh couldn't wish on anyone: losing her entire family. Everything Ava had known, everyone she'd loved… gone.

"We're going to find her. A fourteen-year-old can't get very far without any money to her name." The detective had used that same promise with Annalea Fuentes. Confident. Empty. "We can track the GPS on her phone as long as it's still on, and from what you said about your calls going to voicemail, there's a good chance we'll get a hit. Where would Ava go if she walked out of here on her own?"

"Somewhere familiar." That was what Leigh would've done. What she had done in Ava's position.

But Leigh thought of how sparsely decorated Ava's room had been in the vacation house. It'd never been home for Elyse. Ava must've seen the house as temporary too. Not a safe haven. Fourteen-year-olds didn't have the cognitive development to make logical choices when faced with grief and loss and anger. They just wanted to be somewhere that reminded them of the things they'd lost. But if Leigh's patterns didn't translate to Ava, they'd lose time they didn't really have in the first place. "Ava told us she had to schedule a ride-share to escape the night the girls all got drunk together. She has the app on her phone. It's connected to her parents' credit or debit cards. If she used it to leave the hotel, there's a chance we might be able to get the addresses of where she was picked up and dropped off."

"That information doesn't link anywhere unless you're in the actual app, and in my experience, ride-share companies are about as forthcoming with customer information and history as social media platforms." Detective Moore went through the trash, sifting past the pork nacho container Leigh had ordered two nights ago. "They like to put off warrant requests as long as they can and send a lawyer to run law enforcement around in circles in the name of client safety."

Leigh's phone vibrated from her blazer. "We can't just sit here and let her get farther away. After everything she's been through these past couple of days, my guess is she's headed back to Clarksburg." She answered the call. Unfamiliar number. "Brody."

"Agent Brody, this is Beau Pierce, Baldwin County coroner. You asked me to keep in touch about that collection of hair you left with me a little while ago." That last word dragged slower than the others, accentuating Coroner Pierce's southern accent. Molasses and peanut butter mixing to draw it out of him.

"That was fast." Leigh switched the phone to speaker, closing the distance between her and the detective. Every cell in her body focused on the call. This was it. This was when their theories about Samuel Thornton, about Elyse, about Saige Fuentes would prove true. Or fail. "You have something for us?"

"I was able to determine there were multiple sources for the samples in the bag. All of which I can tell you are human and were not forcibly removed. There's a residue of cleaning agents and body fluids coating the strands, though I'll have to send the samples to Mobile to narrow down a specific composition," the coroner said.

Leigh lifted her gaze to Detective Moore's. Body fluids. That could mean anything from urine to saliva or blood, but semen was the one that came to mind first. "Any sperm?"

"Yes. I can confirm the presence of semen in the samples, but the crime lab will be the ones to determine DNA. Because Samuel Thornton's remains are here in the morgue, I was able to match the strands most similar to his first." The coroner was winding up to something. Leigh could hear it in the slight accelerated rhythm of his voice. "Now, it's not possible to give a one hundred percent match, but the texture, color, length, and condition of the hairs are similar enough to make a compelling case. Samuel Thornton's hair is one of the primary samples."

"Like elimination prints." The detective shifted her weight. Needing the answer that would set her on a path she hadn't been allowed to travel thus far: one that ended in closing Ruby Davis's and Poppy Slater's cases. In the same way the coroner was building himself up, Leigh felt a shift in Detective Moore's energy. "What else did you find?"

"That's where things get a bit tricky. Some of the samples showed significant damage from heat, cleansers, and well, time, and there are still a few knots to untangle, but so far I have found three additional samples in the bag you gave me." The coroner let that information sink in for a minute.

Leigh ran through their potential list of victims. Poppy Slater, Ruby Davis, and… Saige Fuentes. "Were you able to match them to any of our victims?"

"Unfortunately, I'm not able to tell you whether or not they belonged to a male or female source, but the condition and strength of the strands suggests female on the other three as they tend to take better care of their hair." Beau Pierce rushed to fill in as many of the blanks possible then. "I took the liberty of comparing the samples to those taken during the Poppy Slater and Ruby Davis investigations as you suggested. I'm fairly confident the hairs you collected are matches to these samples from Samuel Thornton's home."

Detective Moore's sharp inhale reverberated all the way in Leigh's bones. Confirmation. "She was in that house. She was… He hurt her…"

"What about the other sample, Mr. Pierce?" Leigh latched on to the detective's arm to hold her in place. To make sure she didn't do anything she would regret. Samuel Thornton was already dead, but that wouldn't stop Detective Moore from burning down his house. "The forensic team collected hair from Saige Fuentes's home the day her mother reported her missing. How long will it take to do a comparison?"

"Get the sample here within the next hour, and I'll have it to you before the day is over," Pierce said.

"Thank you for your help." Leigh moved to end the call. "We can have an officer bring you the source sample taken from Saige Fuentes's home by then."

"Agent Brody, there's something else," the coroner said. "The Alabama Department of Forensic Science took my request to have Ruby Davis's autopsy rushed to heart. I'm emailing you and Detective Moore the results now."

Her phone vibrated with the incoming message, and Leigh thumbed into her email inbox while keeping Beau Pierce on the phone. The detective did the same on her own device. "Okay. What are we looking at?"

"Time of death has been narrowed down between fifteen and seventeen days after Ruby was reported missing. Due to accelerated decomposition, insect activity, and humidity, it's impossible to get the window smaller than that, but the ME has determined she was on that beach for multiple days before anyone found her. The sand most likely protected her from weather exposure, but there were a lot of nasty critters that got to her first. Perimortem bruising was found around her wrists and ankles, suggesting she was restrained. I couldn't see that in the initial examination. Adhesive residue was collected from both of those areas and across her mouth. Most likely duct tape. In addition to evidence of strangulation, there was also signs of multiple sexual assaults." Beau Pierce's voice lowered in empathy. "The ME discovered traces of spermicide and latex in the lacerations of her cervix. No DNA that I can use to compare to Samuel Thornton at this time. There were no drugs or alcohol in her system at time of death. As for postmortem indicators, blowflies collected from her remains were about forty-eight hours old, which means she was on that beach for at least two days before the body was called in. The medical examiner dusted and swabbed Ruby's neck to identify her killer, but the results came back inconclusive. There's nothing that helps identify her killer."

"I already know who killed her." Detective Moore took a step back, out of Leigh's reach. Simmering anger threatened to escape as she lowered her phone to her side. "And there's not a damn thing I can do about it. The son of a bitch is already dead. He abducted Ruby, probably killed Poppy and took Saige. He used them for his own sick obsessions, and discarded their bodies like they were nothing but trash."

"Saige is still out there, Moore. She still needs our help." Leigh couldn't argue with the detective. With any of it. Because she was right. There was a difference between not being able to prove your loved one's killer had done the deed and an entirely different thing to not be able to do anything about it. She forgot all about the coroner on the other end of the line, putting everything she had into what came next.

She'd taken a private oath after the Chris Ellingson case. To find every single boy he'd hurt and bring them home to their families. To give closure and answers and peace. But they weren't the ones who needed her now. Leigh centered herself in the detective's line of vision. "And she might not be the only one."