Girl, 11 Page 10

  Elle:

  What can you tell me about the bodies found in the cabin?

  Sykes:

  We estimate they were discovered approximately six hours after Eleanor Watson would have escaped, if we calculated the time she spent running correctly. Jessica’s body was the only one identified, as you know. Based on the ME’s report, we determined she died before the fire was set, thank God. It was the middle of the night on the seventh day, so it’s no surprise she succumbed to the poison then. The other two were the bodies of a man and a woman, both between twenty-five and forty-five years old, Caucasian, and unrelated. As of today, November 3, 2019, neither has been identified. While the autopsy determined Jessica succumbed to the effects of ricin poisoning, the adults were killed with a single gunshot wound to the side of the head, and the gun was burned in the cabin with them.

  Elle:

  And the cabin fire was definitely started intentionally?

  Sykes:

  Yes, firefighters found an accelerant and a lighter on-site.

  Elle:

  The bodies of these two have caused a considerable amount of controversy in this case, is that fair to say?

  Sykes:

  That’s putting it mildly.

  Elle:

  Can you explain why?

  Sykes:

  As you know, since Nora Watson escaped, we have never been able to tie another murder to the Countdown Killer. Like I said before, even though I’m retired, I still look into cold cases when given the chance. But I haven’t been able to find one in the years since that fits TCK’s pattern. Most people think that’s because he’s dead, because he was the man in that cabin and it was a murder-suicide. They say the woman he killed must have either been his partner in the crimes or an unsuspecting wife he killed to prevent her from turning on him.

  But there are others, like me, who know that’s what he wanted everyone to think. Say he’s alive. He would need to go into hiding and regroup, reassess his mission. He would have to decide whether to continue his countdown or run away and try to live a normal life somewhere else. If he did live, if the two people he killed and burned in that cabin were a decoy, we don’t know what he decided, what kind of life he chose to live. He could be a retiree in a villa in Arizona. Maybe he got put in prison for another crime later on, and that’s why he never returned to killing.

  Regardless of where he is or what he’s doing now, by burning that cabin down, he got exactly what he wanted. Once it was clear TCK was no longer active, once a year passed and no other girls were killed, they told me to pack the case up and focus on the others. There are more than two hundred thousand unsolved murders in the USA. If we all spent as much time as I did on one case, we’d never get anything else done.

  Every few years, I’d open it up again, chase down whatever leads I could, try to get media attention on the anniversary of one of the girls’ deaths or the day of Nora’s escape, but nothing ever panned out. That’s why I agreed to help you with this podcast, because I think the community has become complacent over time. They think the danger has passed, that he is long gone. And I’m not sure that’s true. I think it’s past time for police to actively look at this case again, to try to get justice for these victims, if nothing else. They won’t be happy about me saying it, but hell, I’m retired now. I’ve done my time. Let them get mad.

  Elle:

  What’s the one thing you wish people knew about this case? The thing you think would help solve it.

  Sykes:

  That no matter what anyone online says, no matter what the reporters and the other investigators tell you, there is no proof—none whatsoever—that the Countdown Killer is dead. And if he’s not dead, he’s not done.

  Elle voice-over:

  Obviously, I know I’m opening myself up to outrage by even suggesting that TCK is still alive. Most people are quite comfortable believing that he is long dead. But for reasons that will come to be apparent, I agree with Detective Sykes. I agree that it’s past time the public paid more attention to this case, that we demand it get solved. As he said earlier in this episode, we think a key part of that will be finding who his first victim was, if it wasn’t Beverly Anderson. If you know of any unsolved homicides in the area that preceded hers, please get in touch. Links to my website and email are in the show notes. You all know by now that I will listen and at least look into your ideas as much as I can.

  This is on us, now—the public. It’s time for us to look at what we know about the Countdown Killer. Who he was, what he did, why he did it. And if police aren’t interested in looking at the case anymore, then that’s what I’m here for.

  Next time, on Justice Delayed . . .

  11

  Elle

  January 14, 2020

  Elle sat in her desk chair and ran her fingers through her hair, examining the Wall of Grief—the name Martín had coined for the massive expanse of corkboard that held her case photos. She had two pictures of each girl in the Countdown Killer’s series: one alive, the other dead. A headshot and a crime scene photo. They were grouped together by year: 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999. It wasn’t the coldest case she’d solved since she quit her job in social work to do this full-time, but it was close.

  That designation belonged to the Duluth Phantom, who terrorized the city in 1991, stealing four babies from their rooms at night over the course of a year. Using an online database of self-submitted results from commercial DNA tests and the services of one of her listeners—a genealogist—Elle tracked down all four. They’d been told they were adopted and had no idea who their birth parents were. During questioning by police, their parents admitted to paying for what they had been led to believe was an elite—although suspiciously covert—adoption agency. Their descriptions and dodgy records led to the kidnapper. It turned out, the police had been close to catching him after he abducted the last baby in 1991, so he had used the money to fade into obscurity rather than risk continuing to build his black-market network.

  The Phantom launched Elle’s podcast from its modest but loyal following into a cult phenomenon over a year ago, but the TCK case had already topped it. This was the case she wanted to solve more than any other, and she had a new lead. She just needed to crack it.

  The hunt for Luisa Toca had taken her all over Minneapolis the last two days, with no luck. Her employer still hadn’t heard from her. The woman was in the wind. City council confirmed that several complaints had been filed about the condition of Maria Alvarez’s house, so the man’s story in Falcon Heights seemed to check out. It had been five days since Leo was killed, and Elle was no closer to finding out who Leo was referring to, or what might have been on the flash drive in his pocket, than when she started.

  Her podcast listeners often acted as crowd-sourced investigators once she got through the first few episodes, where she set up the case. Even so, there was a limit to how much information she was willing to put out publicly when it came to persons of interest. If she put Luisa’s name on the Justice Delayed subreddit, she might be able to track her down faster, but then listeners would assume she had something to do with the case when there was no evidence she was involved at all. It would also be breaking the rules Elle had set for herself and her listeners since the very first episode. Don’t dox each other, don’t dox suspects, don’t be a dick. They were pretty simple, and in general, people stuck with them.

  Well, her normal audience did. Since she’d started season five, there had been some nonsense from a few vocal new listeners clogging her feed. Then there were the dozens of red-flagged emails in her inbox to tend to.

  Elle opened her laptop and took a deep breath. A season on the Countdown Killer was always going to be big, but even she couldn’t believe how fast it had taken off since the first episode launched in December. She went from around a million overall downloads to nearly two million. Armchair detectives and true crime aficionados who had followed TCK’s case for years tuned in to Justice Delayed for the first time, and it seemed like all of
them had something to say about how she ran her investigative podcast. Her social media accounts and podcast forums—normally her places of refuge, where she went to brainstorm with listeners and bounce theories off each other—had become unwieldy. There were great thoughts and questions being shared, but it took a lot longer to find them than it had before.

  Before she could tackle her email, she called Tina. Her producer’s face lit up the screen.

  “Elle, this next episode. Hot damn, it’s going to singlehandedly give all of Reddit an orgasm.”

  Elle’s lip curled, but she laughed anyway. “Ew, I hope not.”

  Tina leaned forward, eyes close to the screen as if she could stare into Elle’s very soul. “No, I’m serious. If you’re right about this, it’s huge. You found TCK’s actual first victim.”

  Elle put her hands on her face, the skin burning underneath her fingertips. She’d been so busy hunting Leo the last couple days, she’d almost forgotten the next episode might be an even bigger reveal than the last. She looked back at the screen between her fingers. “Not me. We. You’re the one who did all the legwork, got me the information I needed.”

  “Psh, fine, we’re both badasses, let’s just agree and move on.” Tina grinned, swiping her straight black hair over her ear. “Now, on a more serious note. I’m glad you called; I want to talk to you about the show account.”

  Elle pulled up the browser next to the video call box. “Yeah, I see we’ve got a lot of fire in here.”

  “Mostly embers, I’d say,” Tina said. “But a couple of them imply they know your location, at least the suburb. I’ve reported them to the local PD, but those guys aren’t really equipped to handle cyber cases like this. I tried to help them out by tracking down a couple of the senders’ IP addresses, but some of them have been routed through VPNs.”

  Shivering, Elle took another drink of wine. She opened one of the emails Tina had flagged red.

  You’re going to cost innocent people their lives you stupid bitch. I will come for you if anyone I love gets hurt I will end you. That pussy handgun won’t save you you know.

  Well, they knew she was carrying. That might be a good guess, or an observed behavior. The email went on for several paragraphs, but there was no other personal information. She archived it.

  After a few more, she felt like someone had poured a bucket of fire ants on her head.

  Tina sat silent, watching her read them. “You okay?” she asked when Elle started topping up her glass of wine.

  “I’m fine. Thanks for going through these. Are you okay?”

  Her friend nodded. “Sure.” Then she shrugged. “I mean, no, not really. Like, I’m a business analyst, Elle. I didn’t exactly train to deal with these kinds of creeps. The most heated I get when writing an email is saying shit like ‘per my last email’ to my coworkers, and half the time I delete it because I sound like a bitch. I’m not going to lie, I had to smoke a joint after reading those this weekend.”

  Elle licked across her lower lip, tasting the bitter tang of red wine. Her tongue was purple on the web cam. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to keep reading them if it’s too hard. I really do get it.”

  Tina waved her off. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve got my girlfriend here, and she likes it when I’m needy.” She winked, but her smile didn’t go all the way to her eyes.

  “Thanks, Tina. Take a break if you need to, though.”

  “Will do. And you . . . just, please take care of yourself, okay? You might want to consider calling Ayaan, letting her know about the threats.”

  Elle nodded, but she knew that she wouldn’t. For all she knew, Ayaan’s department was still working to make sure she had nothing to do with Leo’s murder. They probably wouldn’t look kindly on a requested favor right now.

  When she hung up with Tina, Elle closed out the email. There were still hundreds of unreads, but she had hit her limit on the red-flagged menaces for tonight. If she had her way, she would shut the whole thing down and go downstairs to watch a movie with Martín. But she had been avoiding this for days, and she needed to stay engaged. Her listeners did their best to give her good information; the least she could do was listen to them.

  She opened her social media. Her post with the link to episode five, the one from last Thursday, had more than ten thousand comments. Elle took an extra-large gulp of wine and started weeding her way through.

  @truecrimeobsess

  @castillomn love your latest episode—holy shit! *mic drop*

  @TCKlives

  @truecrimeobsess @castillomn ikr? Can’t believe she scored that interview. That’s our girl, though. If anyone can get people to finally look at this case again, it’s Elle Castillo.

  @iowafairy

  @castillomn I WAS NOT PREPARED OMG. How did you find her???

  Elle scrolled through, liking the encouraging and exclamatory tweets, answering questions where she could. But when she swapped over to her direct messages, she saw the Requests inbox lit up with notifications from people she didn’t follow. She took another sip of wine and clicked them open.

  She should have known better. People had gotten more brazen in public comments over the years, but the private messages were always worse, and these were no exception. She’d been part of a panel discussing online harassment at last year’s CrimeCon, alongside four other women who ran high-profile investigative podcasts. The moderator had put together a slideshow of comments from their mentions with the usernames blurred out. They were hardly able to guess whether a comment was directed at them or one of the other panelists—they all saw similar fare in their own feeds every day. The only exception was the Black woman, who had to deal with both sexism and racism on her accounts.

  To be a vocal woman online was to face constant abuse for the things you said and did, no matter how meaningless or innocent.

  Elle started scanning the direct messages. Unlike the show’s email inbox, her social media accounts were hers alone; Tina didn’t have access, and therefore couldn’t filter anything.

  It was mostly trolls, the people who thought they knew this case better than she did and were determined to discount everything she said. Most of the messages followed the same theme: she was lying about her sources; she was misleading people about the police investigation; she was fearmongering by implying that TCK was still alive when most experts had concluded that it was him in the burned-out cabin. No one was outright threatening, but there was an ominous undertone to the messages. One person had messaged simply, Careful what you wish for, and for some reason it chilled her more than any of the others. Her investigation was being closely watched, and some people weren’t impressed.

  Her phone buzzed and she jumped, reaching for it with shaky hands. The police station’s number flashed on the screen.

  “Hello?” she said, sounding drunker than she felt.

  “Castillo, are you working my case?”

  Knowing it would piss him off, Elle sat back in her chair and said, “Who is this?”

  “It’s Detective Sam Hyde. I know you’re nosing around my case, and I’d like you to come in and explain yourself. This is completely unprofessional, and I could have you charged with obstructing an investigation.”

  That snapped her into focus. “Detective Hyde, I’m sure you’re aware that I’ve worked closely with Minneapolis PD on a number of recent cases.” It was only one, but the red wine had loosened her tongue. “I am confident you’re not suggesting that I don’t have a right as a private citizen to go talk to other citizens about any topic I so choose.”

  “You told a woman her son had been murdered.”

  “I told a woman her ex-son-in-law had been murdered. Several days after the fact, I might add.”

  For a moment, there was silence on the other end of the line. Then: “I’d like you to come into the station and tell me what you know. Maybe tomorrow, since you obviously shouldn’t be driving tonight. And then if you don’t mind very much, I’d like you to stay the fuck away from my case.”<
br />
  Part II

  The Reset

  12

  Elle

  January 15, 2020

  It was obvious when Elle got to the station that something was in the air. Homicide and Crimes Against Children sat near each other—often, unfortunately, working cases together. She walked through the doors and signed in at the desk, surrendering her handgun before turning toward Ayaan’s office out of habit. The commander was sitting at her desk, staring intently at her computer screen. It was the same look she’d had on her face when they were digging into the Jair Brown case together—that don’t-talk-to-me-I’ve-almost-got-it look. Damn. Elle was really hoping she’d get Ayaan on her side before talking to Sam Hyde.

  Bracing herself, she turned on her heel and headed toward his office alone.

  Sam was waiting there for her, leaning against his doorway with a scowl wrinkling his brow. He gestured for her to come in and take a seat, then closed the door and sat on his side of the neatly organized desk.