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Bledsoe, now retired from the police department, had been the arresting officer who had put Donovan Caldwell behind bars for the murders of his twin sisters. A thorn in Bentz’s side while he’d been with the department, Bledsoe was adequate at best in Bentz’s opinion.
“I even went to LA to talk to the police there,” she went on, “but no one was interested. Bledsoe’s retired.”
“So I heard,” Bentz admitted.
“So I ended up with Detective Hayes, your old partner. He worked the case with you, before you left, then with Bledsoe, so I figured he’d want to hear what I had to say.” She held Bentz’s gaze. “Turned out he didn’t. No one in the department, including Hayes, was interested. I was told that the case was closed and was politely but firmly given the brush-off.” Her jaw tightened visibly, bone showing through her skin.
“They’ve got their convicted killer,” Bentz pointed out. “The murders of twins stopped when they locked up Caldwell.”
“For a while.”
“You think 21 is killing again?”
“I know he is, but I hope to God that he’s not behind the De
Was it possible? Was the wrong man imprisoned, leaving 21 still at large? Bentz was skeptical, despite his own gut fears, the similarities to long-ago crimes. He looked back at the photos of the girls. “Tell me what you know about these young women.”
Bria
“What’s your personal interest in the 21 Killer?” he prodded.
She explained that she was a twin herself, as well as a cousin of the Caldwell twins and their brother, Donovan. She’d begun studying the case because of the family co
Reaching into her beat-up leather bag, she found a sheaf of papers and slid them across his desk. “Zoe and Chloe De
“But you can now?”
Her gaze drilled into his and silently assured him that she was dead right. At least in her mind. He glanced down at the pages, most of them articles taken from the Internet. Two sets of twins who had gone missing in the past six months, twin brothers in Phoenix, a sister and a brother in Dallas.
“These kids all disappeared not long before their twenty-first birthdays. To my knowledge none of them has been located.”
“They’re still considered missing, right?” He narrowed his eyes, the knot of dread in his stomach tightening as he sca
“Not yet.”
He glanced up.
“They’re out there, somewhere.” She was nodding, as if agreeing with herself. “He’s hidden them.”
“Just because they can’t be located—”
“Twins. Every one of them. Twenty years old. Went missing only weeks or days before they turned twenty-one. Don’t you find that strange?”
“Could be unrelated.”
“But not necessarily.” Her eyes darkened a bit. “Look, Detective,” she said. “I wish to God that I believed for even a second that they were still alive. But I don’t. And my guess is, when you dig a little deeper into this, you won’t either.” Her anger washed away into worry. “And now, Zoe and Chloe . . . Jesus, I hope I’m wrong.”
It wasn’t much, but it was something. Bentz had never been completely convinced that Caldwell had been the killer, but he’d been off the case since he’d moved to New Orleans, long before Donovan was collared.
“LA was his killing ground.”
“Was,” she repeated. “He’s on the move. Heading east.”
She held his gaze for a second as he sca
“Now, he’s here because of you.”
“Me?” He lifted his head to stare at her. “Why?”
“Because you were one of the first detectives on the case. There was a big gap when he killed, twelve years, right?” When he nodded, she went on. “The first time when you were the lead detective on the case, and then a dozen years later when you went to LA on a different case, something more personal,” she said.
The muscles in his back tightened when he remembered that trip and the reasons he’d ended up in LA, a place he’d left years before and a place he’d vowed to never return. He met this serious woman’s gaze. So far, she had her facts straight. “That’s right.”
“And I bet there was some speculation at the time that the reason he’d quit was that he’d moved on, or had been imprisoned or was somehow out of commission. Did anyone suggest that your appearance in Southern California might have spurred the new killings?”
“There was discussion, yeah. Never any real proof.”
“So what if that’s right? What if you are the impetus for him to start killing again?”
“I’ve never worked in Phoenix or Dallas.”
She waved away the argument. “He was on his way east and opportunity struck.”
“21 doesn’t leave much to chance.”
“Whatever,” she said, her gaze level. “My guess is he’s taunting you, but really, who knows?”
He wanted to dismiss her, to believe that she was dead wrong and the killer was locked away forever, but he saw desperation in her eyes. “Okay, so just for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right, so 21 does what? Drives to Phoenix to find his next victims?”
“Maybe he didn’t choose Phoenix. Maybe he found out via the Internet or mutual acquaintances that there were twins about to turn twenty-one, so he drove there.”
Bentz sifted through the papers and found the Missing Persons Report for Garrett and Gavin Reeves, who had disappeared in early February, three days before their twenty-first birthday. “Men?” he said, staring at the photos from the driver’s licenses of the two brothers. They appeared identical.
“I know that 21 usually targeted women.”
“Only women.”
“That you know of,” she said, then added, “or until now. Sometimes a killer’s MO changes due to outside influences.”
Unlikely. The homicides had been ritualistic, the victims left naked, a sexual element to them. And yet . . . Bentz shifted the pages and read the next reports. As he sca
“That’s right.”
His jaw tightened. “And the LAPD knows about these?”
“They do now. I faxed over the information to Detective Hayes last week, once I found out about it.”
“Wait. You live here, right?” he asked, and she nodded. “So if you didn’t have proof when you went to LA, why did you go?”
Her gaze flickered and he wondered if she was going to lie to him. “I was out there visiting relatives. Including Donovan Caldwell,” she admitted. Then quickly added, “The point is, 21 is still at large. He didn’t just land in Louisiana, Detective. He came here with the express intent of flaunting the fact that he’s smarter than the first detective in the case against him.”