Chapter 3

THREE

Gulf Shores, Alabama

Saturday, September 21

9:40 a.m.

Forensic techs had already taken their samples from the pool of blood.

DNA would take days, if not weeks, to narrow down the identity of the victim. Victim. Leigh hated to think of Elyse becoming one of the statistics she studied for a living. But anyone who'd lost this amount of blood hadn't done so willingly.

Fortunately, Gulf Shores PD already had Elyse's hairbrush and fingerprints to compare. They just needed a match to prove it belonged to her.

She couldn't swallow that idea. That fear. She and Elyse hadn't known each other long, but there had been real friendship in their phone conversations and text messages. Something Leigh had never really had before. It was hard to get close to someone with a past like hers. A murdered brother, a father arrested for the crime, and an entire hometown turning on her for trying to get to the truth at the tender age of seventeen. Twenty obsessive years of trying to expose the real killer had taken over her life, had directed her into her career as a criminologist for the FBI. All of it left little time or attention for personal relationships. But Elyse had never given up.

"All right, Agent Brody. I've shown you mine. This is the point where you tell me more about the voicemail Elyse Portman left you." Detective Moore commanded attention in the simplest ways. Practiced to perfection. She'd been at this a while, though Leigh would've put their ages within a few years of each other. Late thirties. Maybe forty. A hint of competitiveness bled through that calm expression. Gulf Shores was a tourist town. The entire economy thrived on visitors and property taxes from homeowners. A missing woman and evidence of a struggle was a big deal, and the vultures were already beginning to circle outside. Detective Moore would do whatever it took to solve this case as fast as possible.

"It came in from an unknown number." Leigh pulled her phone from her blazer, thoroughly ruined with sweat. "I missed it at first. I didn't listen to the voicemail until I woke up this morning." She wouldn't elaborate, preferring to let the evidence speak for itself. Tapped the speaker option on the screen and held the phone between them.

Elyse's voice punctured through the speaker. Leigh, something's happened. I need your help.

The call ended.

Detective Moore stared at the phone long after the voicemail clipped short. "That's it?"

Wasn't that enough? Elyse wasn't the kind of woman to ask for help, let alone receive it without trying to return the favor. It wasn't in her nature. She much preferred to be the one offering her time and energy to fix a problem. The fact her friend had reached out for help at all set Leigh on edge. "That's it."

"She doesn't tell you where she is or where she's going to be." A healthy dose of suspicion laced the detective's question, and Leigh couldn't blame her one bit. A woman dressed in a full pant suit in Alabama's dead summer heat, claiming to be an agent of the FBI, was inserting herself into a case no one had invited her into. Right when a tourist had gone missing. Yeah. Leigh would be suspicious, too. "How did you know to come to Gulf Shores, Agent Brody?"

"Elyse told me she and her family would be here for two weeks. That they needed the break, and Ava's school schedule would give them the time. That was a week ago." Leigh took in the rest of the scene. They were operating on borrowed time. Something violent had happened in this living room. Whether that was Elyse's blood on the floor or someone else's didn't matter. Elyse had been there for Leigh when she'd needed her the most after surgery. At her bed when she woke from the anesthesia. Running to get ice chips and checking the surgical sites for infection when the nursing staff was too busy with other patients. Watching rerun after rerun of Everybody Loves Raymond until neither of them could stand it any longer. The final nail in the coffin of starting her own family had gone into the biohazardous waste bin along with her uterus and all the cancer inside it. Elyse understood, having lost the possibility of children—and so much more—herself. Now it was Leigh's turn to be there for her friend. "After I received that message, I called the number back. It went straight to an automated voicemail. I tried getting the GPS location, but there was no response. So I reviewed property records for this area, and I got on the next plane out. You're welcome to confirm the purchase of my ticket from this morning and my phone records if that helps move this process along."

"I'll do that." Detective Moore made a note. "Odd though, don't you think? That she would call you from an unrecognizable number rather than her own phone. Turns out, we haven't been able to find Elyse Portman's phone during our search of the house. Both her husband, her daughter, and I have tried calling it, but it's either been turned off or the battery is dead."

"Have you submitted a geofence warrant?" Launched in 2009, Sensorvault used GPS and related technologies to track the geo-location of every mobile device on earth and store that information in a searchable database. It contained precise historical location data for hundreds of millions of mobile devices worldwide, leading investigators straight to who may have been at or near a particular crime scene on or around a particular date or time. Leigh didn't wait for an answer, maneuvering around the end of an oversized couch much too big for the space. A wave of unbalance hit, as if she'd just stepped off an elevator. She pulled up short. It'd only lasted for a moment, but it was enough to break her focus on the scene.

"The warrant request is with the judge." Detective Moore rounded into her peripheral vision. "You're not having a stroke. It's the house shifting on the stilts. All of these homes are built on sand. They're bound to move, but the primary reason is to save them from flooding and natural disasters."

"Good to know." Leigh shook off that uncomfortable feeling, but the embarrassment refused to budge. She forced herself to get her head back where it needed to be. On Elyse. An officer photographed the deadbolt installed on the back door. No signs the wood had splintered or shattered on the opposite frame. No bits of shards peppering the tile, which meant the assailant had gotten inside some other way. Or used a key. "When was the last time anyone saw Elyse?"

"Agent Brody, I understand why you're here. You got on a plane to answer a friend in need, but I don't need your help in this investigation," Detective Moore said. "Gulf Shores PD has handled missing persons cases before. We are perfectly capable?—"

"How many have you personally handled, Detective?" This was the kind of moment where she would usually plunge her hand into her blazer to feel for the toy soldier she'd carried with her since she'd been seventeen years old. Her brother's toy soldier. It'd been a gift from his killer. A talisman that guided her as she spent the last twenty years searching for the truth and proving that her father, arrested, charged, and sentenced for the murder, was innocent. In the end, she'd succeeded. Her father had been released. And she'd been able to rid herself of the object tying her to the past. Now she carried something far deadlier and just as precious: a foldable Marilla pocketknife she'd taken from her childhood home before it'd been burned to the ground. Once belonging to her father. The airline had made her check it.

Hesitation sucker-punched a bit of color from Detective Moore's face, but she didn't let it last long. "This is my second missing persons case."

"Were you able to recover the victim of your first?" she asked.

Detective Moore pulled her shoulders back but lowered the notebook and pen clutched between her hands. The confidence she'd practically hit Leigh over the head with at the door waned. "That investigation is still ongoing. A fifteen-year-old girl. Gone three weeks."

Leigh turned her attention through the sliding glass door out the back of the house. Toward the ocean. "I'm not here to take over your case, Detective. I'm here to find my friend, and I have the experience and the training to help you. So use me. Have you already started searching the beach?"

"We responded to the call an hour ago. During that time, we've been focused on the giant pool of blood inside the house." Detective Moore could push the issue. She could make Leigh get on that plane and head back to Quantico right now. "Do you really think someone who lost that much blood could have survived?"

Her gut soured at the idea Elyse was that someone, but bodies didn't just disappear. Not without help. "If she did, Elyse couldn't have made it very far. Have your officers expand the perimeter and start walking the beach and taking statements. There's a chance a witness saw something."

She wasn't going to bet her career on it. The killers she'd hunted while consulting for police departments around the country and then for the FBI were smart. Well prepared. Desperate to avoid arrest. That made them dangerous and unpredictable in a lot of cases. Her job was to find the pattern in the chaos. To predict what a predator would do next and hypothesize the motive behind such a violent act. The why was important. So why would anyone want to come after Elyse? "That other missing persons case. Were there any similarities to these circumstances?"

"Are you asking if we found a pool of blood in the victim's house?" Detective Moore asked. "No. I've never seen anything like this during my time with the department."

Leigh let the possibility of a connection shift to the back of her mind. For now. She couldn't discount anything yet, but finding Elyse had to be her priority. "Nothing looks out of place. No dust rings telling me anything was taken. Did the husband report missing cash, jewelry, valuables?"

"No." Detective Moore studied the main floor as if seeing it for the first time. "Their belongings are all accounted for, and we've searched their vehicle. No signs of a break-in. He claims he didn't notice or hear anything out of the ordinary until he came downstairs this morning to go to the gym."

And yet someone had come into this house. "Tell me what you know about Elyse's last twelve hours."

"The husband—Wesley Portman—reports everything was fine when they went to bed last night around ten p.m. No recent arguments or marriage or financial problems. According to his statement, Elyse usually wakes up before anyone else to have her coffee and read on the deck. As of right now, we believe Elyse must've walked in on an intruder and tried to take him on herself. The couple has a fourteen-year-old daughter. Mr. Portman isn't keen on us interviewing her at the moment, but he's not going to be able to avoid that forever," Detective Moore said. "She might have insight into her mother's whereabouts."

Ava. Elyse had talked about her a lot. Only child, and just as stubborn and impressionable as other girls her age. Brilliant, according to her mother, but refused to see her own potential. Spent too much time on her phone messaging friends and scrolling social media. And was starting to show signs of depression and anxiety because of it. Elyse had been trying to get her daughter interested in something—anything—else other than her phone. Violin lessons, learning another language, job shadowing Elyse at work. Nothing had brought back the spark there'd been in younger versions of her daughter.

"I'd like to be there when you interview the husband." Because any line of questioning from her would be thrown out of court as long as Leigh was on mandated medical leave. She needed Detective Moore as much as the detective needed her.

Leigh retraced her steps along the path the forensic techs had deemed safe to travel through the scene.

"There's one more thing, Agent Brody." Detective Moore flicked her notebook's cover closed as though she'd done it a thousand times before. "This isn't the first time we're responding to an incident involving Elyse Portman. She filed a police report with Gulf Shores PD five days ago. Claiming she'd been assaulted."