A First Love to Die For

Chapter Thirteen- Connected

(Josie's POV)

I watched Lincoln wave as he drove out of the parking lot and took a deep breath. Being close to him was nerve-wracking. Add in the threat of a serial killer hunting in the area, as well as the pressure to do my job to the best of my ability and I could feel the stress eating away at my insides.

I took a minute of quiet before calling Lucy to fill her in and see where she was at with her own investigations.

I waited until her voice vibrated through my speakers to pull out of the parking lot myself. "Hey Jose, I'm onto something here so I sent off the traffic cam stuff to Charlie to get someone on it from the office. There aren't many in the area, so I don't know for sure that they'll turn something up but it's being looked into regardless."

I felt excitement zip at the fact that she was onto something and stopped her to share what we had found before she could update further, "We didn't find anything extra from the report at the actual site, but we've got a voyeur."

She immediately knew that I was describing our killer as someone who wanted to watch the distress of others. It wasn't uncommon for serial killers to be complete showboats, "From where?"

"A cliff that looks over the graves. It has a perfect view. I would imagine the killer chose the burial spot originally for exactly that."

"How did you know it was the killer?" I could hear her typing her notes and assumed she was adding to the profile.

"Gut feeling took me up there but there was a body indentation from where someone had sat watching for an elongated period. Probably put in the tip, set up shop, waited and then feasted on the show all fucking night."

She whistled through her teeth, "Organized, planned and patient."

Exactly what I had taken away, "Your turn."

We had worked together enough that we switched easily as we shared information. "I've been making my way through the missing person reports on each of the women and then trying to trace the days before their time of death."

I sifted through the mountain of information currently residing in my brain. I was on overload with everything that I had read and heard throughout the last couple of days, "Only Izzy Fox went into ViCLAS right?"

I could hear the sadness in Lucy's voice, "Yup. I've gone through all her notes. Apparently, her family was adamant that she would never just up and leave without telling anyone. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that it was suspicious. The other women weren't so lucky."

This wasn't that uncommon. We had come a long way in our tracking of violent crimes. Years ago, Canada had discovered a serial rapist turned serial killer, who had managed to stay undetected for so long because of the lack of communication between different regions. After investigators had used ViCLAS to find and capture Paul Bernardo, the database was implemented throughout Canada.

I had an idea of how this would have happened but asked anyway, "Walk me through it."

"In this case, the system didn't flag the disappearances because the women weren't entered.  All of them were from different areas. They were independent, known to travel a lot and it wasn't necessarily odd for them to not touch base with family and friends for long periods of time. Not one of them had anything suspicious other than the fact that they went completely missing. Every single one had a different officer investigating from a different region and it just never connected."

I digested that for a moment. What the majority of people didn't realize was that the pressure of a missing person can dissolve over time. It is often family pressure that causes the push for officers to keep up the hunt because if the trail goes dry, it takes a great deal of money and resources to keep that search going. Police are overworked as is, once they don't have any leads they move on to the next case in their never-ending pile.

The thing about a missing person was that it left behind an empty hole, with no closure for the families of the loved one.

"Now that we know they are connected, what have you found?"

She had said that she was onto something, I could only assume that this was it.

"How would you feel about checking out a salon today?"

I sighed, of course, I would need to check out the salon. Stephie owned the Beauty Boutique, a one stop beauty salon in downtown Fenelon. Her mom and aunt had opened it in the 1980's and she had taken it over when they had both retired.

"I think I could make it a part of my day, care to explain?"

"Our first victim is the only one that never visited the Beauty Boutique. Every other woman visited there sometime in the month before she died. For two of them, it was the last place their card was used."

"Interesting. Yes, I'll stop in and have a chat. Do you think I should go in official? Or just casually ask if they knew the girls?"

"I've been considering the same thing. I think that we know that Fenelon is the hunting grounds but at this point, the salon could be a coincidence.  I mean you go on vacation and get your hair, or your nails done. It's not like that would be outside of the norm. I was thinking casual. Let them know that you're helping out and just want to know if they know anything about any of the girls."

"Okay, I'll make an appointment now and let you know how it goes."

I was hoping that she would need to talk a little bit longer, willingly spending time with Stephie was not something I was in a big rush for. Sadly that was not the case. Lucy rushed me off the phone, "I'm getting back to these financials. I'll let you know if anything else pops."