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“Sixteen weeks,” he said when he sat down.

  “Sorry?”

  “Sixteen weeks. That’s how long it takes to get through the police academy. Then you’ve got about half a year of field training, and boom, you’re an officer. If that’s the career you’re after.”

  “Thanks for the recruitment info,” she said. She was dying for a cup of coffee. The messages she’d gone through last night had kept her awake. She hadn’t told Martín, didn’t want him to worry. Instead, she’d stayed awake alone, staring at the ceiling in the dark and jumping at every rustle and creak of the house.

  Sam looked annoyed. “Do you want to explain what you were thinking, going around and interviewing my witnesses before I even got to them?”

  Elle shrugged. “I didn’t know you hadn’t gotten to them. I mean, the ex-wife seems like a pretty obvious first step. I would have thought you’d talk to her right away.”

  The pale skin on Sam’s neck turned scarlet. “Just because you run some radio show where you like to play detective and it’s worked out a couple times doesn’t mean you can come in on an active murder investigation and do whatever the hell—”

  “All right, you’re right. I’m sorry.” Elle let out one short, harsh breath. “I swear, I wasn’t trying to interfere with your murder investigation. I really wasn’t. I was . . . I was trying to figure out if anyone knew Leo well enough to know what he was going to tell me about a case I am working. The case I was there to talk to him about when I found his body.”

  “TCK.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I don’t understand, what could his ex have helped you with?”

  “I thought maybe if he really knew who TCK was, he might have told someone. I’d ask his business partner, but I’m guessing he’s still on the run?”

  Sam shook his head. “No, local PD pulled him over the night of the murder, speeding toward his place. He and Leo were definitely running a chop shop business, and the guys in Robbery have been building a case against him for that. But between the time Leo talked to you on the phone and when you walked in, we have a pretty narrow time of death, and Duane was captured on security footage at the gas station down the block just five minutes before you walked in. We found no murder weapon at the scene and nothing at his apartment or workplace, but our best guess is the uniforms got him before he even made it home. So, either he ditched the gun on the way or he isn’t our guy.”

  The hair on Elle’s arms stood up. “You mean he didn’t kill him?”

  “Can’t say for sure, but we didn’t have enough to hold him. He’s been out since Friday afternoon.”

  He was going to tell me who TCK was. Leaning forward, Elle put her elbows on the desk and rested her forehead in her palms. The room was spinning, so she took a deep breath through her nose.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Shh, I’m thinking.”

  Closing her eyes, she tried to remember the apartment exactly as it looked when she got there. Leo was on his back on the floor, Duane kneeling next to him. The room had been undisturbed, the bare furnishings worn but tidy. Duane didn’t have a weapon on him, not that she could see. There was no one else in the room. Could someone have been hiding by the door, slipped out when she walked in the room? No, one of them would have noticed. They must have just missed the killer. Maybe whoever it was had passed her on the stairs, although she couldn’t remember seeing anyone. He might have gone one level up in the stairwell, waited for her to go in. That would imply he knew she was coming, which made her shiver.

  She was dying to ask about the flash drive in Leo’s pocket, whether the police had gotten access to it yet. Her best guess was it was sitting on some stack of evidence right now, waiting to be processed. Even if it had been, there was no way Sam would tell her, and he seemed just vindictive enough to charge her for rummaging around in a murder victim’s pants.

  Finally, she looked up at him. “I know you’re not a fan of independent investigators.” He opened his mouth to respond, but she continued. “I promise to try to stay out of your way, but I can’t promise to stay out of this case. If Leo knew something about TCK, I’m going to find out what it was. And if he died because he was going to give me that information, I owe it to him to find out who killed him.”

  For a moment, Sam stared at her. Then a smile spread across his face, parting his lips in an expression of disbelief. “You think TCK killed him.”

  Elle could feel her cheeks getting red, but she refused to look down. “I did not say that.”

  “But you do. You think this guy got shot by TCK because he wrote an email to your podcast?”

  The way he said it sounded more astonished than mocking, but Elle had had enough. She stood up and walked out of the room, ignoring Sam’s half-hearted calls for her to come back.

  She was waiting at the elevator when Ayaan poked her head out the door. “Hey, Elle, do you have a minute?” When Elle met her gaze, Ayaan pulled back. “Whoa, are you all right?”

  “Hyde,” Elle said, too tired to explain more.

  Ayaan nodded. “I hear that. He’s a new transfer. Does good work, but he’s a bit of a prick.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Well, maybe this will take your mind off things.” Ayaan stepped into the lobby between the elevator and the door to the station, folding her arms across her white blazer. “I’ve got a missing person, presumed kidnapped yesterday morning while waiting for the school bus. The girl’s mom loves your podcast. She’s losing her mind with worry, but all she keeps talking about is that she wants you on the case. I’ve just gotten approval from the brass to bring you on as a consultant, if you’re interested.”

  Elle’s eyes widened and she straightened up. She had been certain the police chief didn’t trust her, even after everything she had done to try to prove herself. She clarified, “A consultant on an active case?”

  Ayaan nodded. “If you want. I’d be happy to have your insights.”

  It would mean less time to work on the podcast, chasing leads and recording new content. On the other hand, it would take her mind off the garbage in her email inbox. Plus, if she turned Ayaan down now, she might never get an opportunity to help with a Minneapolis PD case again.

  Biting the inside of her cheek, Elle looked past Ayaan into the station. She could see Sam’s office from here, see the back of his head where he sat at his desk. He would hate it if she was working on an active case. That was an added bonus, but the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to do it anyway. Someone wanted her; someone thought she was a good enough investigator to trust with their own child’s case.

  Elle locked eyes with Ayaan again and gave her a firm nod. “I’m in.”

  13

  Justice Delayed podcast

  January 2, 2020

  Transcript: Season 5, Episode 4

  Elle voice-over:

  Minnesota has thousands of log cabins. Family homes dotting the countryside, hunting shacks hidden in clusters of trees. Mansions that belie the diminutive connotation of “cabin” hug the shores of some of our famous ten thousand lakes. They are beautiful, practical structures brought over from Scandinavia in the era of pilgrims and pioneers. But they are also fire hazards.

  Fire needs only two things to thrive: fuel and oxygen. By their nature, cabins are constructed of fuel—thick, dry logs notched together tight to keep out the wind and snow. Understandably, many of the people who own log cabins have a nostalgia for the past and forgo more modern heating systems in favor of fireplaces or wood-burning ovens. These families lie in their beds each night, listening to the wind whistle around their sturdy homes, soaking up the heat from the fireplace snapping in the corner. They might feel safe, but it only takes one element to turn their home into a pile of kindling. One small thing could transform this place of safety into a fiery death trap.

  A spark.

  [THEME MUSIC + INTRO]

  Elle voice-over:

  Police records are confidential, but between m
y inside view from Detective Sykes and the vague answers I’ve been able to glean from Minneapolis Police, no one is investigating the Countdown Killer case in any official capacity at this time. The position of investigators is that nothing more can be done until new evidence comes to light. That’s why I’m here, digging. Finding new evidence is my specialty. But I’m not the only one. After releasing the first episode of this season, I was contacted by a forensic scientist in the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. She wishes to remain anonymous, although her employer has authorized her to give me the information she is about to reveal. She simply doesn’t want to be contacted by anyone in the public or the media about her role in this case, and I respect her wishes. I’ll be calling her Anne.

  Elle:

  Thanks for agreeing to meet me here. I understand you have some information you want to share about the state of the bodies found in TCK’s cabin in 1999?

  Anne:

  That’s correct. To be clear, I wasn’t with the Bureau when the bodies were found. However, as you know, on the twentieth anniversary of Nora’s escape last winter, there was a temporary push in the media to solve this case, and I was assigned to review the forensic evidence in the case file. Of course, we’d never found any of TCK’s DNA, but they had found a long hair on the fourteen-year-old victim, Carissa Jacobs. This isn’t public knowledge—well, I guess now it is. The hair came from an unknown adult female; the mitochondrial DNA was not a match for any of the girls TCK had kidnapped, and at the time, that was the only DNA they were able to extract from a rootless hair.

  In my review of the evidence, I was able to use advancements in DNA extraction to get a better sample from the charred bones of the female victim in the cabin. It was so degraded that in 1999, they weren’t able to amplify the genetic markers enough to be confident in making an identification. However, in this recent round of testing, I was able to generate a stronger sample, as well as extract nuclear DNA from the strand found on Carissa’s body. Within a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, I can say that the woman whose hair was found on Carissa Jacobs’s clothing was the same woman who was found dead in TCK’s cabin.

  Elle:

  That’s a significant discovery. I’m sure there are some people who will wonder why you’re sharing it here for the first time, and not in, say, the Star Tribune or even a national newspaper.

  Anne:

  With all due respect to those publications, your podcast is the reason this story is even back in the papers at all. Everyone else has moved on. They did their duty by putting a feature and a call for information in the papers last year, but that’s it. You’re the only one who is investigating this thing for real, trying to find the guy who did this. The police got the information first, of course, but there’s no match for the woman’s DNA in CODIS, the national DNA database. They’re working with a forensic genealogist now to trace the family tree and find the woman’s relatives. This method has helped solved a lot of high-profile cases recently, but some of the databases used early on have made it harder for law enforcement to access people’s DNA results, so that has slowed the process. They may well find a close enough match to locate her relatives and identify her, but it could take months—maybe years. In the meantime, I think progress can be made. That’s why I contacted you.

  Elle:

  What do you think this means, personally? I know you said it’s outside your area of expertise, but if you had to guess.

  Anne:

  Well, it lets us know that the woman probably wasn’t just a random victim TCK killed to confuse detectives. She was known to him for at least a year, since she had proximity to Carissa before she was killed. Unfortunately, all other potential forensic evidence was burned up along with the house, and there was no male DNA found on any of the victims’ bodies, so we have nothing to compare to the man in the cabin with her. I performed the same test on his bones, and the results have been entered into CODIS too. They didn’t come up with a match, which means he was likely never arrested before his death. That doesn’t rule him out as being TCK, but it doesn’t necessarily make him likely to be the killer either.

  Elle:

  Because most serial killers start with low-level violent offenses and petty crimes, like stalking or burglary, right?

  Anne:

  That’s what I understand, although it’s not my area of expertise. Now, TCK could have done crimes like that and just never got arrested, but it’s something to consider. But for those who are so confident the man in the cabin was TCK, there is one other key piece of evidence that you should be aware of. As best we can tell, the DNA belonged to a man in his forties. This corroborates initial age determinations our office made after examining his skeleton.

  Elle:

  That’s . . . huge, actually. Every expert profile developed on TCK determined he was late twenties or early thirties. Even if the profilers were wrong, the statistics bear out that most serial killers are in that age range. Why was the age of the man in the cabin never made public?

  Anne:

  By the time they provided the age estimation of his skeleton, the media fervor surrounding the TCK case had died down. There were no killings in 2000, and then the eyes of the nation were on New York City and the nightmare surrounding the terror attacks on 9/11. The few papers that did report the findings buried the information in later paragraphs, and even if people did see it, they didn’t seem to think it mattered. The consensus among law enforcement was that the profiles must have been wrong. Everyone was more than happy to believe he was dead. It was easier—neater—to imagine that TCK took his own life after killing his partner and setting fire to that cabin. The murders stopped, after all.

  Elle:

  The question I always get when I posit that TCK is still alive is, “Well, then who was the man in the cabin?” I have to be honest, it’s one question I have a hard time answering. I’ve imagined dozens of scenarios, but I can’t seem to come up with anything I feel confident in. Do you have a theory?

  Anne:

  It’s pure speculation, of course. Like you said, it’s probably something we will never know unless and until they catch the killer. But if I had to guess, I’d say there are two options: one, TCK killed a man—someone known to him or a stranger on the street—or two, he robbed a fresh grave to steal a decoy. Either way, the public and law enforcement have fallen for it for two decades.

  [SOUND BREAK: Skype ringtone chiming and then being answered.]

  Elle:

  What have you got for me, Tina?

  Elle voice-over:

  After I interviewed Anne, I got in touch with Tina Nguyen, whom you might remember from previous seasons of Justice Delayed. She’s my intrepid producer-slash-researcher extraordinaire.

  Tina:

  I looked into all the missing persons records in the Midwest for men in their thirties and forties, like you asked. You wouldn’t believe how short the list is. I opened up the timeframe to eighteen months on either side of the cabin-burning incident, but still. I only turned up about a hundred names.

  Elle:

  Middle-aged white men don’t go missing without explanation very often.

  Tina:

  Lucky them. I tracked down a few of the guys, even though their case files were still open. Contacted the local departments to make sure they knew where they were. They seemed surprised, so oops. Sorry, fellas. Guess your second families are in for a shock.

  Elle:

  Of course, you solved a couple decades-old cold cases while you were researching another one. That’s very on-brand for you.

  Tina:

  What can I say? I don’t like it when men ditch their child support payments to start new lives in Florida. Anyway, I managed to narrow it down to three really good possibilities. These guys all went missing within a week of the cabin burning, and they have supposedly never been heard from since. I can’t find anyone who resembles them online, and their personal information hasn’t been used since they were reported missin
g.

  Elle:

  You’re amazing. Anyone in particular catching your eye?

  Tina:

  Yeah, this one guy, not-his-real-name-Stanley. He was reported missing by his secretary three days after Nora escaped. No wife or family of his own to miss him, poor guy. There was suspicion he had run away with a married woman he was having an affair with—someone from his office. Apparently, neither of them showed up for work after that day, and no one ever heard from them again. Rumor was the woman’s husband was abusive, so everyone assumed that’s why they ran off together and didn’t tell anyone where they were going. Her husband seems to have gone AWOL at the same time. I looked into him, but from what I can tell, he used a fake name on their marriage certificate and there are no records of him before 1990. His wife, though, she has a whole history. Her social security number has never been listed on another job or credit card application. She didn’t have a passport, so it’s unlikely she got on an international flight.

  Now, it’s possible they really did just run away together. Back then, you could cross the border into Mexico without a passport. Maybe they drove to Central America and are living a life of leisure on the beach, selling hemp bracelets for enough food to get by. But I doubt it.