It’s like he’d just come out of a computer stupor and noticed we were all about to walk out the door.
“Lock the door behind us,” Jack said. “And Doug, if Chen tells you to move, you’d better move.”
Chapter Seventeen
The rain had indeed started up again, but none of us had taken the time to dress appropriately. Droplets of water clung to my hair and white puffs of air bloomed from my mouth with every breath I took. Martinez jumped into Cole’s truck, and I went with Jack in the Tahoe.
I turned the heater up to full blast, and Jack got on the phone and called Colburn.
“What’s up, boss?” Colburn asked.
“We can’t find Lily,” Jack said. “She was finishing up the autopsy on our BTK victim and she was supposed to meet us back at the house with her findings. She’s not answering her phone, and Sheldon told us she was wrapping up a little after seven. That’s the last time he saw her.”
“I’m only a couple of blocks away,” Colburn said. “I’ll have a couple of units meet me there and we’ll secure the area. We’ll find her.”
Jack gave him the alarm code and told him to break down the door if he had to.
I looked at Jack and it occurred to me at that moment that we might find Lily. Only she might not be alive. I must have made a distressed sound because Jack reached over and squeezed my hand, and then he turned on lights and sirens all the way into town.
By the time we arrived, a patrol car and Colburn’s white truck with the sheriff’s office logo on the side were parked out front. Jack parked in front of the funeral home instead of in the driveway, and Cole screeched to a halt behind us, throwing open his door and jumping out.
“Jack,” I said, and pointed to Lily’s little red sports car still in the parking lot.
He nodded and said, “Cole, maybe you’d better stay out here for now. Secure the perimeter.” Jack shot Martinez a look, and Martinez nodded. He’d take care of Cole. No matter what we found inside.
Cole was getting ready to argue when Colburn came out the front doors and waved his hand to get our attention.
“It’s clear,” he called out.
I felt the whoosh of relief as we all rushed inside.
“Did you find her?” I asked.
“No,” Colburn said.
“Her car is still here.” And I realized that could only mean one thing.
Every light in the funeral home was on, and I recognized Officers Durrant and Cheek coming down from the second floor. Plank came out from the kitchen.
“We found her cell phone,” Colburn said, leading us toward the private wing of the house. “The lab door was unlocked and partially open.”
“What?” I asked, stopping in my tracks. “That’s impossible. That door closes automatically.”
“It was propped open,” Colburn said. “You’re going to want to see downstairs.”
We followed Colburn into the kitchen. Jammed under the door was Lily’s red umbrella. Jack nodded at Cole, and Cole led the way down the stairs. Jack and I followed behind him, and then Colburn and Martinez followed behind me. The sound of our feet on the metal stairs seemed unusually loud.
I saw them before I reached the bottom of the stairs.
Four gurneys had been pulled out of the cooler and were lined up in the center of the room. The body bags were gone. There were no sheets covering their nakedness and the obvious signs that an autopsy had been performer. On all the bodies except for the one on the far left.
The body on the left had a plumpness and color that could only be achieved by embalming. I hadn’t seen the body before, but knew instinctively I was looking at Louise Chalmers. But it was Juliet Dunnegan’s headshot covering Louise’s face, and written on her chest in black marker were the words Where is my body?
“This is insane,” Martinez whispered, making the sign of the cross.
Next to the mock Juliet were each of the victims in the order they’d been discovered. Mark Lee, Tatiana Russo, and then Jody Burkett. Lily’s cell phone was sitting between Jody’s breasts, dead center of the Y-cut Lily had made.
“No,” Cole said, reaching for the phone. Colburn handed him a glove before Cole could touch the phone, and he didn’t bother putting it on. He just used the glove as a way to keep separation between his fingers and the phone. “This can’t be happening.” He showed us the screen and all the texts and missed calls that had come through.
“It gets better,” Colburn said. “Look around a little.”
I stood in the center of the room and moved around in a circle, trying to let my peripheral vision catch anything out of place.
Attached to the X-ray screen was an 8x10 photograph of Peter Trest, and the same black marker used on Louise Chalmer’s body had been used to mark a big #5 across the picture.
Jack was already on the phone. “Riley,” he said, putting it on speaker. “Any activity in or out of Peter Trest’s place?”
“No, boss,” Riley said. “Wachowski is at the back entrance and I’ve been parked here. Visible like you told us. There’s been no traffic in or out.”
“You and Wachowski do a welfare check,” Jack said. “We believe Trest might be the fifth victim. If the killer stayed to his timeline, he was dead before you and Wachowski got there.”
“We’re on it, boss,” Riley said.
“Call me back once you know something,” Jack said, and hung up.
“FedEx package,” I said and ran toward the stairs. I heard footsteps behind me, but I was already at the top of the landing and running to the office.
If Peter Trest was number five—and we took the BTK letter he’d sent us and treated it as gospel—it meant Lily was number six. I tried to do the math in my head. He was killing an average of every ten hours. Lily didn’t have long. We were racing against the clock, and I secretly wondered if we’d already lost the race.
I grabbed a pair of gloves from my top drawer, knowing he’d have come in here. It made my skin crawl to think of him looking at or touching my things, sitting in my desk chair. Jack must have had the same thought because I heard him tell Durrant to go to Emmy Lu’s office and check the security cameras.
A rectangular box sat in the middle of the desk. It was white with the purple FedEx logo, but there was no label showing it had been processed or paid for. My name was written in block letters across the front and the funeral home address was written below. There was no return name or address.
I put my phone on the desk and hit Emmy Lu’s number, putting her on speaker.
“Jaye?” she asked, answering the phone. “Everything okay? You don’t usually call this late.”
“I’m fine,” I said, my voice hoarse. “There was a FedEx package delivered today. You signed for it?”
“Yes, of course,” she said. “The driver almost missed me. I was just locking everything up and was walking out the door when he rang the bell. I signed for it and set it on your desk since Lily and Sheldon were busy in the lab. Why? Is there something wrong with the package?”
“Can you describe the FedEx driver?” Jack asked, moving closer to the desk so she could hear him.