Waiting in her office for Kane and Wolfe to return from searching Josiah’s house and his eighteen-wheeler truck, Jenna tried unsuccessfully to ignore the throbbing in her leg and spent the time updating case files. After reading the report from the DA on the Kim Strickland case, she’d been relived to discover the woman had pleaded guilty and had a court date coming up for sentencing. One thing was for sure, she’d be spending a long time behind bars.
It had been a lonely morning but she’d had Duke to keep her company—well, at least his snores and running in his sleep had kept her amused until Rowley dropped by to give her a report on a minor road accident. She had read his case notes and nodded. “Send the people involved a report for their insurance and then you can go to lunch.” She heard voices. “Is that Kane calling you?”
“Yeah.” Rowley poked his head around the door. “It looks like he dropped by Aunt Betty’s to grab takeout. I’ll go help him.” He smiled at her and hurried out the room.
Jenna opened her notebook and selected a pen from the chipped mug on her desk, ready to take notes.
Kane had been gone for a long time, longer than she expected for a forensic search of a house and truck. When he eventually led the way into the room with Rowley close behind, Duke woke with a start, waddled around her desk, and did his happy dance, as if Kane had been missing for a week. She smiled at the display of affection. “He’s missed you.”
“More like he can smell hotdog sausage, Susie Hartwig put them by for him. They were left over from the Friday special.” Kane dropped bags on the table and unpacked a six pack of to-go cups. “I picked up double the coffee, I figured it’s going to take time to unravel everything we discovered about Josiah Brock.” He opened a paper bag and emptied a pile of sausages into Duke’s plate. “Wolfe has left the explaining to me, he has a ton of evidence he needs to analyze.” He dropped into a seat, sighed, and reached for a bag of takeout. “We had to drive to Brock’s employer out at Blackwater and collect his truck. Wolfe drove it back to the morgue and set Emily and Webber to work on it.”
Jenna sipped her coffee. “So was the cabin as Ava described?”
“Yeah.” Kane pulled out his phone and tapped the screen. He looked up at her. “I’ve transferred all the images I took at the house to the files. It will be easier to explain, if we go through them one at a time.”
After setting down her cup, Jenna accessed the file and turned her computer screen so everyone could view it. “Okay, the first series seems to be a kitchen.”
“Yeah. Everything we found verifies Ava’s account of what happened there.” Kane motioned with a sandwich to the image. “The kitchen table with the TV opposite, where Brock made her watch as he strangled Isabella. Can you make out the metal rings on the table where he handcuffed her? If you flick through, you’ll see the ones he has on the floor too. Moving on to the next frame, there’s the dumbwaiter and if you scan the images, you’ll see the gap inside the wall, where Ava escaped only to be caught and taken back. It’s all as she detailed.”
Dumfounded Jenna stared at the hundred or so images as Kane explained. She looked at him. “And the truck?”
“Before I go onto the truck, open the file marked, ‘physical evidence.’” Kane narrowed his gaze. “Our killer took trophies. There’s over fifty. Wolfe will examine them all but they tally with the images we found on his computer and phone.”
Jenna stared at the strands of hair carefully arranged and labeled on coat hangers. “Fifty?”
“At least.” Kane pointed to the screen. “They’re not labels, they’re IDs of one sort or another and the hair was pulled out, not cut. This is the reason we took so long, every strand of hair had to be processed separately. I’ve sent a list of the names on the IDs to Carter. The FBI will take it from here and track down the victims’ families. He’ll send you a full report when it’s done but it may take months.”
Astonished, Jenna sat back in her chair trying to grasp the enormity of the crimes the quiet, helpful, Josiah Brock had committed. She shook her head. “How did he do this under our noses?”
“Beats me.” Kane flicked through his phone. “Before I forget, he kept their clothes as well and shoes. Ava’s story checks out. He kept women prisoner in his cellar. It’s impossible to know how long this went on. He was very smart and chose hitchhikers from other states, brought them here and stored them until he needed to kill them. Ava mentioned three of them at once, so he was collecting women to kill.”
Jenna pushed her sandwich away, no longer hungry. “If he was keeping the women holed up in his cabin and dispersing them in other states why suddenly start leaving bodies all over town?”
“Ah, I have a theory. Well, Wolfe and me came up with a theory after examining his truck. I’ll explain.” Kane took a bite of pie, chewed, and swallowed. “Brock has a refrigerated section in his truck, it was well hidden behind a blocked off section with a door. I guess he made it look like an extra sleeping area in case he was pulled over and inspected. We also found body bags and Carter has been running his credit card purchases and Brock regularly purchased dry ice. We figure he picked up women on the road, killed some, and stored them in his truck. He used the dry ice to quick freeze them. He dumped them in other states, weeks and sometimes years after.” He sipped his drink. “Those he killed here, he transported to another state and left the bodies in unusual places, all posed and eyes wide open.”
“He must have had a place to keep them frozen here?” Jenna swallowed hard. Her head ached with all the information. “We know about the meat locker but that would only work in winter.”
“He had that covered.” Kane eyed her over his cup. “In the basement, he had the section where he kept the women and what could only be described as a kill room. Plastic draped walls and a row of industrial sized freezers. He had five or six chainsaws, a bench for dismembering them, knives, everything.” He frowned. “There’s more. We found a hard drive, packed with video footage of him strangling and dismembering his victims in that room.”
Jenna stared at him dumbfounded. “Are you saying he kept his victims frozen until he had a delivery in another state, and as the women were from all over and homeless, nothing tied him to Black Rock Falls?”
“Exactly.” Kane finished his pie.
Jenna frowned at him. “That doesn’t explain why he started dumping bodies here?”
“We figured after he’d collected three girls, he needed the space, and the urge to kill was escalating, so he had to dispose of the bodies fast.” Kane shrugged. “His usual disposal methods included waiting until the temperature dropped to freezing. His victims were always found at the beginning of winter. This way, he avoided any chance of decomposition and the accompanying smell.” He cleared his throat. “We might have found a trigger.”
Jenna sighed. “Do tell.”
“Carter discovered Brock had a problem with intimacy all his life. He’d seen many doctors about being impotent. Jo figures this is the reason he never raped any of his victims. It’s obvious by the images he took of them in a drugged state, he was attracted to them. If Delores discovered his condition and used it to taunt him after being bullied for so long at school it could have pushed him over the edge.”