Girls Like Us(37)

“Yes. We went back as far as we could. Nothing in the tristate area.”

“You might want to expand that search. Maybe the killer moved here recently.”

“An immigrant.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Maybe he’s killed before and we haven’t found the bodies.”

“Possible.”

A photo catches my eye. I move closer. My breath quickens.

“Lee.”

“What?”

“Look.” I point. The photograph depicts Ria Sandoval’s burial site in the Pine Barrens. The grave is in the center of the picture, her burlap-shrouded body still inside. I’m not looking at the grave, though. I’m looking at the edge of the frame, to a small pile of rocks that, on first glance, are easy to miss.

“Holy shit.”

“Do we have a loupe? Or a magnifying glass?”

“Yeah.” Lee turns. “Donnelly,” he barks at a young guy passing in the hallway. “Get us a magnifying glass. Now!”

Donnelly nods and hustles down the hall. We wait for him to reappear. Officers have begun trickling into the incident room. Most of homicide, it seems, wants to be briefed on this case. There are a few rookies, too, who have, no doubt, been rounded up to do some of the basic procedural work. This has to be one of the largest, most brutal cases Suffolk County has seen in years. The kind of case that requires all hands on deck. All internal hands, anyway. Dorsey’s reticence to bring in outside assistance rubs me the wrong way, and not just because I’m a Fed. It seems shortsighted at best, destructive and suspicious at worst. Either way, every second that ticks by is a lost one. The longer he drags his feet, the farther away the killer gets. Given that Dorsey seems to only have one suspect in mind, he’d better be damn sure he’s right.

Donnelly returns with a magnifying glass. Lee holds it up and peers through it.

“A cairn,” he says. I feel my skin prickle. “Damn. I don’t know how we missed it. What do you think it means?”

“I think it rules out the possibility of a copycat. If you guys didn’t know it was there, it wasn’t a detail that was released to the press.”

“What do you think it means to the killer, though?”

“Either it’s a marker so he can come back and visit the site later on, or it has some kind of psychological significance for him. He’s someone who camps and hikes regularly, or maybe it’s something he remembers from his childhood.” Someone like Dad. Someone who grew up camping in state parks in Suffolk County, who continued to camp in them until very recently.

Lee frowns, considering. “What if it’s a marker to someone else?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if it’s a team? One person digs the grave, the other buries the body there.”

“That’s an interesting theory.”

“The Shinnecock site in particular is so hard to get to. Even if he had all night, it’s a helluva job to dig that grave and then drag a body from the parking lot all the way up there. It’s possible that’s why the bodies were dismembered, too. Makes them easier to transport.”

“So maybe Morales is involved, but he has a partner.”

Lee raises his eyebrows. “That would explain a lot. According to Milkowski, the shooter is tall and left-handed. Morales is neither. He’s a pretty small guy, actually. Maybe he was just responsible for disposing of the bodies. We have to get into your dad’s office. I need to figure out what he knew and when.”

The room has filled in behind us. I glance around, assessing the crowd. Most of them are staring expectantly at Lee. As the lead detective on the case, he’s the one who will be running the briefing. “Are you waiting on someone?” I ask.

“Dorsey. He’s on the phone with Judge Mahoney now, trying to get a warrant.”

Lee seems nervous, like a kid preparing for a high school debate. He flips through a notebook, his mouth moving as he reviews the facts of the two cases. I soften a little. There’s something disarming about Lee. A kind of earnestness that makes me want to trust him, despite my best instincts.

“Can I ask you something?” I say quietly. “Something personal?”

“Sure,” he says, distracted.

“Was my dad seeing someone?”

“Seeing someone? What do you mean?”

“Did he have a girlfriend?”

Lee looks up, surprised. “I don’t know. We didn’t really talk about that stuff.”

“He never mentioned a woman named Maria?”

“No. But your dad was a private guy. And I wasn’t like his best friend or anything.”

“You guys spent ten hours a day together in a squad car.”

“Fair. But most of that was him telling me to shut the fuck up or silently judging my taste in music.”

“You do have terrible taste in music.”

He holds up a finger, warning me. “You don’t get to say that until we do karaoke together.”

“I’ll think about it. Could you do me a favor?”

“Sure. Shoot.”

“My dad was paying rent on an apartment in Riverhead. A woman named Maria Cruz lived there. She moved out a few weeks ago, but I want to try to track her down. If she was important to my dad, I’d like to get to know her.”