“Call the FBI first,” Cate said. “You need someone who knows the background of the Lamb case, if this turns out to be what I think it is.”
Tessa eyed her. “I have someone. You.”
“Absolutely not,” Cate stated. “I’m done with that.”
Henry heard a faint questioning tone behind her firm words.
She wants to be involved.
“I’ll call, but what else can you tell me first?” Tessa asked Cate. “Why did he choose the women he did?”
Cate closed her eyes, her brows coming together in concentration. “He wouldn’t say. They were all mothers. They all had young children.” Her lids flew open. “I almost forgot. He always kidnapped them on the fifth of the month. Not every month, but always on the fifth.”
“Shit,” said Bruce. “That’s just days away.”
“This skeleton has been here for a few years,” Henry pointed out. “I think we would have heard if women were disappearing every month.”
Bruce grinned sheepishly. “True.” He turned to Cate. “Did he tell you why he picked that date?”
“He said it was a coincidence.”
“Six coincidences?” asked Henry.
“A psychiatrist theorized that the date and the fact that the victims were young mothers had to do with some trauma from his childhood.”
Henry didn’t respond. He respected psychology. But not killers. Mental health issues were real; he’d seen more than he could count in a Los Angeles ER. But plenty of people had shitty childhoods and trauma without turning into murderers.
“What’s going on?”
Henry spun around to find Luke Ruell watching them. Luke’s gaze went to the excavation site, and he pushed his hair out of his eyes.
“Is that a skull? Cool.”
His tone was diffident. Henry hadn’t interacted often with the island resident who avoided most people and rarely talked—a rarity on Widow’s Island. Luke’s age was uncertain. Somewhere between thirty and fifty. It was hard to tell behind the thick beard and the hair in his eyes. Luke shaved the sides of his head, exposing intricate tattoos on his skull, but let the dishwater-blond top grow long.
He didn’t have tattoos anywhere else.
That I can see.
Luke owned the kayak-rental shop near the bay, but his business was very seasonal. Henry didn’t know what the man did to support himself the other nine months of the year. He was an odd duck on an island full of unique people.
Even Jerry Hooper thought Luke was weird.
“This is a police investigation,” Tessa told him. “Please leave the area.”
“You don’t own the park,” Luke told her. “I have every right to hike through here.” His gaze went to the grave again. “Got a murder?”
“Deputy Black politely asked you to leave,” said Bruce, stepping between Luke and his view of the grave.
“You gonna make me, big guy?” Luke’s tone was bored.
Luke was pencil thin with spiderlike limbs. His kneecaps protruded and looked as if a mild blow would knock them off. How he managed to lift a kayak was a mystery.
If Henry were Luke, he wouldn’t challenge Bruce Taylor. The deputy was young and muscular.
“Beat it, Luke,” Tessa told him. “Or I’ll tell everyone here what I caught you doing behind the ice creamery.”
Luke flushed. Even his tattoos on his skull reddened. He turned and left without a word.
Cate snorted as Luke vanished into the woods. “What’d he do?”
Tessa wrinkled her nose. “It was last summer. One of the insanely hot days. He was using ice cream like suntan lotion on his chest and shoulders and legs.” She raised a brow. “He was just about to start on body parts that don’t need suntan lotion when I found him.”
Henry couldn’t speak. “In public?”
“Not really. His kayak shop isn’t that far from the creamery if you take the alley behind the buildings. No one else was around.”
“That’s creepy,” added Cate.
“He’s harmless,” said Tessa. “Other than being rather odd, he’s never done a thing.”
“Will he spread the word about what’s going on up here?” Henry asked.
“I don’t think so,” said Tessa. “He’s not a gossip.”
“Unlike everyone else on the island,” said Cate. She was studying the ground, walking away from the current grave.
Henry agreed. There were few secrets on Widow’s.
Cate halted. “I think we’ve got another depression. And it makes an almost perfect line if the first depression is another body.” She paused. “That’s how we found them before. Six graves in a line. This is looking more and more like Jeff Lamb’s work.”
Tessa sighed and pulled out her phone. “Anyone got a signal?”
No one did.
“Radio works,” said Bruce.
“I need to make a call, so we’re done for now. Bruce, I’d like you to stay here to keep an eye on things. Hopefully no one else will come by,” Tessa told him. “I need to talk to the FBI before we dig any more.”
Henry squatted to see the depression Cate had spotted. She was right. He looked up and met her gaze, then caught her mix of emotions. Dread. Sorrow. And interest.
She wants back in the game.
3
“What do you think, Cate?”
Cate paused, her phone against her ear. She had called Phillip, her former supervisor at the FBI, after she’d returned home from the excavation. Phillip had held a different position in the Seattle office when she’d worked on the case of the murdered women.
“I think it’s too big of a coincidence,” she said slowly. “I’m positive there are two other graves nearby. All three line up neatly. The locket. The photo. That’s too many similarities.”
“I’ve been reviewing the case since your county sheriff’s office called. There’s no hint in the notes that Jeff Lamb buried victims on an island . . . or killed more women than we found.”
“I know. But he wasn’t one to volunteer information. He was incredibly cocky even after we arrested him. During our interviews I always had to fight off the feeling that he was the teacher and I was an inept student. He always asserted that it was pure luck that we’d caught him.”
“So it’s possible these
