I See You (Criminal Profiler #2)(9)

“Understood. See you in two hours.”

After he ended the call, he knocked on motel room doors for another hour but discovered if there had been a witness, they weren’t talking.

When he had less than a half hour before his meeting with Spencer, he notified Officer Monroe he was headed back to the station, and then he texted his partner, Detective Cassidy Hughes, about this current case as well as the pending update on Jane Doe. Hughes replied quickly, informing him she would be tied up in court for at least another hour.

He slid behind the wheel of his car and turned on the engine and air-conditioning. As he pulled out of the lot, the motel room sign glinted in his rearview mirror. Already he felt as if he had let the dead girl down. If he got an ID, then he could search arrest records and last known associates. Jesus, there had to be someone out there who had known her.

He forced his mind to shift gears and focus on the Jane Doe Nikki McDonald had found in the storage unit early in the summer. When he and his partner had arrived on the scene, Nikki had already uploaded footage to her social media pages.

He’d asked her to hold off on any more posts, but when she’d realized her post had gone viral, she’d doubled down. He had posted a uniformed officer at the scene to keep curiosity seekers and crime junkies away.

Nikki’s posts had generated a couple of spots on local news, leading to more speculation about the victim’s identity. The pressure to solve the case had steadily built.

He and his partner had interviewed the owner of the unit, but she’d had no idea how the trunk had ended up in her space. There had been no prints on the trunk and no usable DNA in or on it. They had hit one dead end after another.

Now, as he drove toward the station, he hoped Spencer had identified the victim. The snag of traffic irritated him more than usual because he was anxious to hear what Spencer had to say. Fifteen minutes later, he walked through the front door of the police station.

The sergeant behind the desk, a bulldog of a man with a thick mop of gray hair, looked up. “That special agent just arrived. She’s in the conference room.”

Vaughan straightened his tie. “Thanks.”

“This about the head case?” the sergeant asked.

Dark humor might have offended some on the other side of the blue line, but it was how cops coped with very grim realities. “That’s what she tells me.”

Vaughan climbed the stairs two at a time and pushed through the second floor door to find Spencer sitting in the conference room. Her head was bent, and her gaze was on her phone as she quickly typed a message.

Spencer had a long lean body suited for her trademark black suits and tall heels. Auburn hair was always plaited into a french braid, emphasizing her sculpted cheekbones and vivid blue eyes. She wore minimal makeup, but as far as he was concerned, she did not need it.

Vaughan cleared his throat. “Special Agent Spencer.”

Her pensive expression slipped away as she raised her gaze from the phone. “Detective Vaughan.”

As she began to rise, he motioned for her to stay seated. He took the chair across from her. “I’ve texted Hughes. She’s stuck in court.”

“I know she hates that.”

“No doubt.” He didn’t want to talk about his partner. Spencer had been working a case in Nashville the last couple of weeks, and he wanted to tell her how much he had missed seeing her. Instead, he asked, “You have an identification for me?”

“I do.” She opened a file. Her fingers were long. Graceful. Like her legs. She had mentioned something once about being a ballerina but had never explained how a dancer transitioned from the stage to the bureau.

“As you know, I’ve spent most of the summer working on a facial reconstruction project,” she said. “We believe we were able to identify the subject. Her name was Marsha Prince.”

Vaughan sat back in his chair, his thoughts pivoting from her legs to business. “I had just joined the force, and the case made a real impression on all of us. Marsha Prince vanished after visiting a local nightclub.” She had been underage and had used a fake identification. Unlike the Jane Doe back at the motel, Marsha’s case had dominated headlines. “Where in the World Is Marsha Prince?” had been one article. It hyped theories ranging from her being buried in a shallow grave in the Shenandoah Valley to working as a sex slave in Mexico.

“It appears Ms. Prince didn’t make it more than five miles from her family home.” She laid out a picture taken of Marsha Prince her freshman year of college and then beside it a photograph of the bust she had sculpted.

He was struck by how sweet the girl looked. Thick blond hair swept over an oval face sporting a bright, wide smile. She had earned straight As her freshman year while balancing a part-time waitress job and volunteering at a food bank.

“Shit,” he muttered. He picked up both pictures. “The faces look identical.”

“Even I was surprised by the accuracy.”

“It’s one hell of a job, Agent Spencer.”

“Thanks.”

“As I remember, Marsha Prince’s family appeared squeaky clean. Younger sister, Hadley, was a cheerleader and a senior in high school. She was also slated to follow in her sister’s footsteps to Georgetown. However, during the investigation, the cops learned of the father’s financial troubles.”

“Her father, Larry Prince, owned Prince Asphalt Paving Company, and her mother’s illness put the family on the ropes.”