Dead in Her Tracks (Rogue Winter #2)(15)

“About that,” said Hank as he bit into his toast. “The angle and depth of the cuts tells me your killer is right-handed. I know that’s not a big help because most of the population is right-handed.”

“Then Tony Cooper definitely isn’t our man,” said Stevie. “I had the pleasure of watching him eat scrambled eggs yesterday. He used the arm closest to the window in his home, his left.”

Zane nodded. “The left was his dominant arm during the fight last night. I’ve already talked to a few people who said he was in church all morning on Christmas, so his alibi holds up anyway.”

“Where’s that leave us?” Stevie whispered. “Another killer walking around Solitude?”

“Was there anything in your findings to tie Bob Fletcher to Vanessa Phillips’s death?” Zane asked Hank. His brain was working overtime. Did they have one or two killers still in town?

Hank shook his head. “Not in either autopsy. You’re going to have to do some more old-fashioned police work to verify your killer.”

Zane nodded, meeting Stevie’s gaze.

“We’ve hit a dead end on fingerprints and witnesses,” said Stevie. “I sent a few pieces of trace evidence to the state lab, but that can take weeks. People are starting to lock their doors at night. Especially the young women.”

“They should be doing that anyway,” asserted Hank. “The city of Medford has had two women in their early twenties go missing in the last six months. Haven’t found a sign of them. One possibly took off with a boyfriend, but the mother of the other one swears she wouldn’t leave town.”

The hair on Zane’s neck stood up. “You know about Samantha Lyle, right?”

Stevie leaned forward, nodding as Hank shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.

“She vanished from Solitude two months ago. She’d been talking about going to Nashville, so a lot of people think she took off without telling anyone. But if she did, she left all her clothing behind and it was after having a fight with her boyfriend at Fletcher’s.”

“Fletcher’s again, eh?” asked Hank. “I’ve always known it was a cesspool, but it seems to be the eye of the storm, sucking in more victims.”

“That makes five women killed or missing, if we include the Medford women,” said Stevie. “Was Bob involved in all of them? He implied to Tyler that Amber Lynn was a spur-of-the-moment-type thing.”

“Even though we think his motivation for killing Amber Lynn was to get that flash drive back, the footage of him putting a different young woman in his vehicle suggests that he might have been involved in the disappearance of at least one other. Who we still can’t verify was Vanessa Phillips.” Zane rubbed a hand over his forehead. “It looks like we have a predator with a taste for young women, and Bob was involved in some way. I’ll reach out to Medford PD today and talk to the investigators, see where they’re at in their cases. I hadn’t heard about the missing women from out there.”

“I remember seeing a notice about one of them,” said Stevie. “I forgot until now. But if they’re all related, could Bob Fletcher be the suspect?”

“We’ve got him on video with a young woman.” Zane ticked off points on his fingers. “We know he choked Amber Lynn, Samantha Lyle was last seen leaving Fletcher’s after fighting with her boyfriend, and now two more women of the same age are missing. Holy crap . . . have we been blind?” Dread filled him. Had a serial killer been operating in southwest Oregon?

“But who killed Bob?” asked Stevie. “Was it vigilante justice by someone who knew what he was doing to young women?”

“Or someone who simply had a bone to pick with Bob,” Hank suggested. “He wasn’t the type to make friends.”

Zane met Stevie’s gaze. “We need to search his home. Today.”



Stevie stepped inside Bob’s small house and wrinkled her nose. Ugh. “Smells like a single guy lives here.”

Zane winced. “My place smells like this?”

“Hell no. You’re clean. I should have said it smells like a sloppy single guy lives here. And that there’s a reason he’s still single.”

Bob’s small ranch home sat far out of town, way back from the main highway. Snow covered the long winding dirt road to the house, and Zane had cursed three times as his wheels hit deep ruts. He’d taken the house key from Bob’s personal effects at the station, and they’d both bootied and gloved up before entering the home, their evidence kits in hand.

Stevie began by photographing every room. The house felt claustrophobic. The ceilings were too low for Stevie’s taste and the windows too small. She could hear the Rogue River as it rushed by about a hundred feet from the back of the house. Tall fir trees blocked any view of the water or of his neighbors.

“Definitely a private home,” observed Zane. “No one would have noticed his comings and goings. Or heard anything either. There’s got to be at least a half mile between him and his closest neighbor.”

Private enough to bring home unwilling young women?

“I don’t see any outbuildings,” said Stevie, looking out a back window. “Let’s start in his bedroom.”

After photographing every inch of the room, she and Zane pulled it apart. Mattress, box spring, under the bed, behind wall hangings, every inch of his closet and dresser. She made no comment about the huge stack of porn magazines and DVDs in a cardboard box next to his bed. They moved into the bathroom, which rivaled those at the Wayward Motel. He had a mold problem on the bathroom ceiling.