"What about Lakyn Monroe?" I ask.
"Lakyn doesn't have anything to do with Greg. They were completely separate investigations," she says.
"Lakyn was interested in helping people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes, and you investigate cold cases. What do they have to do with each other?" I ask.
"Again, I prefer not to discuss my investigations when I don't know who might be listening, but considering the police you're working with already used my database entry, I might as well tell you."
"Wait… your database entry? What do you mean?"
"The missing persons database. I run that, along with a true-crime website with other investigators. It was my post that was used to reveal that Mason Goldman was missing," she says.
"I don't understand. What did any of this have to do with Mason Goldman?"
"It wasn't his disappearance I was investigating. He has a pretty checkered past. And last year, a man sitting in jail for murder and embezzlement gave information that implicated Mason. That's why I spoke with Lakyn about it. I had no idea he was missing. I thought she might have an interest in looking into that man's case and having it reopened, as she had with some of the other people she's helped. She said she would consider it, but that wasn't long before she disappeared. I kept looking into everything and just recently heard that Mason hadn't been seen or heard from, so I included him in the database."
"So, that's three people," I note.
"What do you mean, three people?" she asks.
"How did you know?"
"How did I know what?" Her face scrunches up in a confused expression.
"You just suddenly decided you were going to post Mason as missing, then two days later, he's found burned into oblivion. How did you know?"
Lydia shakes her head. "I didn't know. Trust me, it wasn't a pleasant thing for me to find out. And I didn't want to get involved. I had already come forward about Greg and was told the information I had wasn't important. I never spoke to Mason Goldman or had anything to do with him. I just researched him. But then you found Lakyn, and I knew I had to say something."
"When was the last time you spoke with Lakyn?" I ask.
"About a month before she disappeared. But the day she was last seen, I got a voicemail from her. She said she needed to talk to me, and it was important. Of course, I never heard from her again."
"And you have no idea what she wanted to talk to you about?"
Lydia shakes her head again. "No. The only thing I can think is that she was planning to look into my case."
I've had all I can take.
"Well, thank you for finally getting in touch with us. I appreciate your sending those notes."
"You're welcome. Again, I'm sorry it took so long. I wish it was under different circumstances. I've always admired you as a fellow investigator. And Greg spoke so fondly about you," she says.
"He didn't speak about you at all."
I end the chat and stare at the blank screen for a few seconds, trying to settle the pounding of my heart.
"Do you trust her?" asks Dean, from his seat just out of sight of the webcam.
I look over at him. "No."
Chapter Forty-Five
“Prometheus?” Sam frowns. “I don't understand.”
“Neither do I. Not yet, anyway. But it means something. I know it does. He wouldn't just be babbling about mythology class for no reason,” I say.
“He might, though,” Sam shrugs. “Even you admit he gets distracted when he's talking.”
“Yes, but I don't think that's what this is. He was very deliberate when he was talking about it. It didn't feel as if he was just babbling. Some of the other things, sure. But this. He meant every single word he was saying. This was completely different from our first meeting. He wasn’t using metaphors or radically changing the subjects; he was keeping an entire through-line during the conversation, even if it was about…mythology class.”
“Then why didn't he just say what he was talking about?” he asks.
“He believes people are listening to him. They're watching him. Maybe he wanted me to figure it out so that nobody heard him talking about it,” I say.
“Talking about a mythological being,” Sam says.
“That's what I was able to piece together. A couple of times now, he's talked about making people, sculpting out of clay. And then he talked about his mythology class and his professor drawing this being with fire in front of him. He said clay in one hand, flames in the other." I pull up an article on my phone and hold it out to Sam. "Look,” I say. “Prometheus. The god of fire, said to have created all of humanity by sculpting it out of clay. Gave fire to humans, angering the other gods. It's the only thing he could have been talking about.”
“God figures envisioning themselves creating society,” Sam notes. “That sounds familiar.”
I let out a slightly shuddering breath. “I know. But this isn't Jonah. This isn't Leviathan. Remember, he was focused on chaos. He wanted huge, showy events, things that devastated and damaged as many people as possible. That's not what's happening here.”
“All right,” he says. “What else do you have?”
The massive piece of white paper smoothed across the conference room table has notes from the messages written on it along with what I found. I point to the list of names.
“Raymond James, Anderson Whitley, Brad Coleman, Ashley Teiger, Van Carlton, Presley Hanson,” Sam reads. “Who are they?”
“These are the names that are specifically mentioned in the messages from Lakyn to Xavier. When I mentioned to them to him the last time we spoke, he said he didn't know. But that's why she was saying their names. That he didn't know.”
“He doesn't know who they are?” Sam asks.
“I think it's more that he doesn't know what happened to them. You see, these three
