Cut and Run(63)

“The Ranger asked you a question politely,” Westchester said. “You can help or not.”

“Are the cameras recording?” Delany asked.

“I’ll switch them off.” The warden made a call from a phone mounted on the wall and after a few seconds turned and said, “They’re off.”

“Who told you about the graves?” Hayden asked.

Delany stared at the warden. Hayden guessed the prisoner was as good at reading the warden as the warden was him. “My stepsister, Heather.”

Heather. For a moment the name didn’t trigger any memories and then, he asked, “Heather Sullivan? She works for Garnet.”

“Is she still with him?” Delany asked. “Imagine that after all this time. That girl had nothing but blind loyalty for Garnet. She’d do anything for him.”





CHAPTER NINETEEN

Wednesday, June 27, Midnight

Faith knew Hayden had mentioned Detective Franklin and he was reaching out to her to search missing persons. On the chance that the detective had found something, she called.

“Dr. Hayden,” Franklin said after Faith introduced herself. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m working with the Texas Rangers on several missing persons cases.”

“I spoke to Hayden a few hours ago. I have his files,” the detective said.

“Do you? Would you mind if I came by and looked them over? The remains are arriving in my office soon.”

“Sure. I can go over the cases with you.”

“Thank you.”

Fifteen minutes later she entered the lobby of the Austin Police Department and took the stairs to the third floor.

Faith found a short woman in a small conference room painted in a faded beige and furnished with a rectangular conference table, several worn chairs, and a whiteboard covered in head shots. Franklin was frowning over a collection of files. She wore black, slim jeans, a cotton blouse, and heeled boots. Her hair was tightly twisted into a bun, and her badge hung from a chain around her neck.

“Detective Franklin?” Faith asked.

“Dr. McIntyre. I took the liberty of pulling all the files that not only matched the initials the captain gave me, but also fell during the suggested time frame of 1985 to 1993. That actually narrowed it down to three files.”

Faith set her purse on the conference table and rested her hands on her hips as she studied a stack of files the detective had decided didn’t match the criteria.

“All those women are missing?” Faith asked incredulously.

Franklin tacked up one last photo and stepped back. “There are always women who vanish, but it’s moments like this when I realize just how many.”

The disappearances of these women likely had never made the evening news, and if they had, it had been a brief mention quickly forgotten by the public. The fact that many lived on the streets and near the margins was what made them such easy prey. A hunter could go on for years, choosing and killing, without ever being caught.

“I’m particularly interested in Josie Jones,” she said.

Franklin tapped on the smiling face of a woman with feathered blond hair that skimmed her shoulders. She had bright-blue eyes and high cheekbones that could have been Faith’s own.

“What do you know about her?”

“A majority of the women I initially identified as missing had been prostitutes. But interestingly, the women who corresponded to the initials the captain gave me had only minor legal infractions and offended once or twice. All were also runaways, with blond hair, Caucasian, and under the age of twenty.”

“Tell me what you have,” Faith said.

Franklin tapped her finger on Josie’s face. “Josie Jones was the first to go missing, in 1987,” Franklin said. “Next was Olivia Martin in 1988, Kathy Saunders in 1989, and of course, Paige Sheldon in mid-May.”

Faith was impatient to hear about Josie but kept her thoughts to herself, allowing the detective to continue.

“Ironically, Josie Jones’s sister was very involved in her sister’s case until about ten years ago. Her name at the time was Maggie Jones. In the case of Olivia Martin, her brother, Ralph Martin, who’s fifty now and runs a sandwich shop in Austin, last checked in with the department a decade ago. Kathy Saunders’s father, Rex Saunders, also stayed up-to-date on his daughter’s case. He died five years ago, but she has a sister now listed as a contact.”

“Do you have addresses for these people?”

“I have last-known addresses for all these individuals, but I don’t know if they’re current.” She handed her the family names written in bold ink on a yellow legal pad.

“Thanks. What can you tell me about Olivia Martin and Kathy Saunders?”

“Olivia Martin, aged nineteen, vanished in 1988. She’d left home after a fight with her parents, but by the time her parents tried to find her, she’d fallen off everyone’s radar and whatever trail there might have been had gone cold. There were no hospital or arrest records for her. She’d been arrested the year before for trespassing and being drunk in public.”

Faith moved closer to the board, studying the faces of the victims. Like Josie, Olivia had a slight frame and light-colored eyes and hair.

“And Kathy?”

Franklin sifted through the three folders until she found the files. “Kathy Saunders was seventeen and had dropped out of high school. She was originally from Waco, Texas, but after a fight with her mother hitchhiked to Austin in 1988 and was arrested for larceny in December of the same year. Police determined she’d checked into a hotel in East Austin but vanished from there. The owner remembered her because she stiffed him a night’s rent. That was the last she was ever seen.”