“And we’re getting off topic,” said Cate. “Focus, people.”
“I’m beginning to think our recent victims were totally random,” said Tessa in frustration. “We’re simply not finding a link between these two women.”
Cate leaned back in her chair and stretched her arms over her head. Tessa was right. “Okay. Let’s try a different approach for a while and refocus on Jeff Lamb. He obviously has a contact on the island. Who is it?”
“Where’s his prison visitor-and-phone-call list?” asked Tessa.
“I’ve got it here somewhere,” said Mike, reading his screen. “Sending it to the printer.”
Cate went to take the pages from the printer behind the bookstore’s counter. Her teenage employee sat on a stool at the counter, reading a novel, and didn’t look up as his boss took sheets from the printer for the tenth time that day. Cate didn’t care if her staff read on the job. Business was often slow—there wasn’t a lot to do—and if they discovered a book they loved, they could recommend and sell it to customers.
It was a good idea in theory, but she didn’t think it had actually happened yet.
She grabbed five sheets of paper and squinted at the tiny print. “So many phone calls,” she muttered. The last page was personal visits. She felt smug, looking at the short list, recognizing that most of the visits were from his attorney. She hoped it bugged the hell out of Lamb that he was alone for the most part. His family had hightailed it out of Washington and cut all ties when he’d become one of the state’s most notorious killers.
She went back to her chair and handed two of the pages to Tessa. “It’s mostly phone calls. No one can call him. He has to either make the call collect or with a prepaid card. And the phone number he calls has to be on an approved list.”
“Which we don’t have,” said Tessa.
“Sorry,” said Mike. “They wouldn’t give it to me. Something about inmate privacy.”
“But they’ll give you the numbers.” Tessa rolled her eyes. “So we have to look up all these numbers to see who they belong to?”
“Do you want to go back to searching for connections between the two identified victims?” asked Cate.
“No.” Tessa organized her pages on the table and got started.
Cate went through the visitor list first. There wasn’t much to research. A couple of reporters and a local true-crime author had visited. She knew Lamb wasn’t allowed to profit from his story and had a sour attitude about letting anyone else profit from it—even the families of his victims. She wondered why he had agreed to see the author.
He was bored.
She imagined he enjoyed teasing the author, letting him think he might get permission to write his story. He’d probably stretched out the entertainment for weeks.
Cate started to research the phone numbers and discovered many of them were Google numbers, leaving her no way to track the owner’s identity. “Mike, there has to be a way to get the approved-name list from the prison. Most of these numbers are unsearchable.”
“I’m finding the same,” said Tessa.
“So that’s why they let me have those lists. I’ll see what I can do.” He picked up his cell phone and stepped outside.
“Mike doesn’t want us to know who he’s going to call,” said Tessa with a grin. “Why didn’t he contact that person for the list in the first place?”
“Because he needs to leave an appropriate trail of inquiry.” Cate had done the same a number of times. Gone through all the accepted channels and then quietly jumped a fence when she hadn’t found what she’d wanted. “We might as well wait on searching these numbers until he gets a list.” She had no doubt that Mike knew someone who would get it.
Cate scanned the women’s social media accounts, which were still up, and looked for friends in common but found nothing. It was disturbing to see photos of the happy women, knowing they had been murdered. Especially the images with their kids. Cate stopped on one that showed Tianna hugely pregnant with her twins. She stood on a beach, the ocean behind her, her hand on her stomach and a beaming grin on her face.
So horrible for those babies to lose their mother.
As she looked at the photo, the hairs on Cate’s arms rose.
She knew exactly where Tianna had stood in the photo. Even though only a few yards of rocky sand was visible in the picture, Cate saw far in the background—nearly cut out of the photo—the distinctive profile of Ruby’s Island. The tiny island stood in the middle of Widow’s Bay. Tianna had been photographed on the beach just north of Harlot Harbor.
Cate’s brain spun with questions and possibilities.
Does this mean anything?
“Tessa, look at this photo.” She turned her laptop toward the deputy, who leaned closer.
“Wow. She was really pregnant there.”
“Can you tell where she is?”
“No—wait a second. That’s Ruby’s Island in the background!” Her excited gaze met Cate’s. “Tianna has been to Widow’s!”
“But she hasn’t even had the twins in this picture. They were nearly a year old when she died, and we know she wasn’t on the island when she vanished.”
“Let’s see if Nayla Reynolds has also visited the island. Wouldn’t it be odd if they’d been here on the same date?”
Cate switched to Nayla’s Facebook account, but the photos were hidden by her privacy settings. “Damn privacy options.” Noticing that Nayla also had an Instagram account, she pulled it up, crossing her fingers that it wasn’t locked down.
It wasn’t.
Cate started to scroll. “If I don’t find any pictures, we should try to get her old credit card records. Perhaps there are some charges that place her on the island.”
“On it,” said Tessa.
Cate scrolled and scrolled, noting that Nayla had consistently labeled her posts with her location. The woman had taken over two thousand photos, mostly of her daughter. Cate paused every time she saw something that could be on the island. She slowly searched through
