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But this wasn’t about Troy. This was about Michelle. A woman who’d investigated an old abduction-murder before she’d been killed in the same manner as two past victims. Leigh had to remember that. “Fighting about what?”
“She was isolating herself, getting obsessed.” Tanja stared down at her hands, picking at a stray hangnail on uneven and thin fingers. “It started out with cancelling dinner plans, but then it got worse. She wouldn’t return my calls. She ignored my text messages. She missed her niece’s birthday party, all so she could prove police had the wrong man in a murder investigation that happened here twenty years ago.”
“The Joel Brody case.” Boucher didn’t look at her. Didn’t acknowledge Leigh existed in that moment, but the truth was, he couldn’t. Not really. She was a criminology consultant. Not law enforcement. Not an investigator with a personal connection to this case.
“It was all she talked about.” Tanja pressed one palm into her temple. “How Joel Brody was framed, why she thought those boys were targeted. She even had a theory the police department was involved in a cover-up. It was insane the amount of hours she spent trying to squeeze blood from stones everyone wanted to forget, that I wanted to forget.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “But Michelle just wouldn’t let it go. She even started selling our family belongings after our parents died to fund her investigation. Said she needed the money to give people compensation for talking to her about the case.”
“That would explain why it looked like she was squatting in her own house,” Boucher said.
“Why?” Leigh asked. “Why that case?”
“I don’t know. It didn’t start there,” Tanja said. “She came across one of those true crime podcasts a couple years ago. You know, the ones that walk you through a police investigation. She ended up guessing who the killer was before she got to the end of the season. It was like a switch had been flipped. Michelle became obsessed. My sister was diagnosed with ADHD a few years ago. She tends to hyper-focus on things that interest her. Sometimes for months at a time. I thought being consumed by that case would burn out within a few weeks, but she just wouldn’t let it go. She listened to every podcast she could find, bought every true crime book she could get her hands on, started watching those forensic shows on TV. After a while, I think she convinced herself she could solve a case that hit close to home, you know?”
“It’s come to our attention Michelle was involved in the Joel Brody investigation in a way.” Boucher took note in the same notebook from their search of the victim’s home. “She gave a statement at the time accusing someone else of killing those two boys. Cost the man his job.”
“Chris Ellingson. I remember him.” Tanja Carson sat back in her seat, the wear of grief heavy. “Michelle used to see him a couple times a week for problems she was having in school, but if you’re asking me why she told police her school psychologist was a killer back then, I can’t help you. She wouldn’t tell me. Anytime my parents asked, she’d shut down and hide in her room.”
“Apart from her latest obsession, how was Michelle lately?” Boucher cocked his head to one side, still taking notes. “Any problems at work, with neighbors? Did she say anything about someone new in her life?”
“No. Nothing like that.” Tanja attempted to fold her arms then but seemed to think better of it. “But as I said, we haven’t been in contact the past few weeks. I think she thought she was actually conducting an investigation, and she wouldn’t talk about it. No matter how many times I asked or tried to connect with her on her level. After she missed my daughter’s birthday party, I gave Michelle a choice. She could keep going down this path or she could be part of our family.”
“She chose to keep investigating.” Leigh understood that choice more than most. Friendships had never come easy to begin with—not since parents had started locking their teens behind doors to keep her away from them—but as an adult, she just couldn’t seem to connect the way most women her age expected. That left her with a lot of open nights assembling Legos and trying to fit pieces of the past into a uniform picture she could understand.
Fresh tears welled in Tanja Carson’s eyes as her gaze ping-ponged between Boucher and Leigh. “Do you think her death has something to do with the case she was looking into? The Joel Brody case? Did she really find a lead?”
“We don’t have all the facts yet, Mrs. Carson.” Boucher tapped the end of his pen against the table—too loud—and a deflating sensation flooded through the room.
They weren’t getting anywhere. Boucher knew it. She knew it. Without a crystal-clear picture of what Michelle Cross was doing in the days leading up to her murder, they couldn’t be sure of time of death let alone who’d tortured her until she’d bled out. It’d taken an hour to get the wall of notes, articles, and surveillance photos from the victim’s attic space catalogued. Despite Michelle Cross’s obsession and organizational skills, none of it would prove Chris Ellingson had abducted and murdered two tween boys.
Or that he’d killed again.
They’d found hand-scrawled theories on yellow legal pad paper—most of which had snowballed into rumor and become the subject of town gossip. A list of questions that’d haunted Leigh for years had been scribbled on the back of a plain white envelope with the top torn open. Nothing detailing who the questions had been meant for or if their victim had gotten an answer before her death.
But the killer had targeted Michelle Cross for a reason.
If not for the vague research she’d collected in her attic, then for something else. Assuming this was tied to Troy’s death in the first place. Leigh’s gut said it was. Why else replicate a signature of Lebanon’s deadliest killer? Why carve her name into the bottom of two toy soldiers and leave them with these current victims? Why pull her in now? “Mrs. Carson, we believe the person who killed your sister may be responsible for the death of another victim. Gresham Schmidt. Does the name sound familiar? Did Michelle ever mention speaking with a detective from London or Scotland Yard? Maybe she reached out to him in some capacity during her investigation?”
“I don’t recognize the name.” Tanja shook her head, and a fresh wave of tears glittered in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I just… Maybe if I pushed her to tell me what she’d gotten herself into, she’d still be alive, or I’d at least have something to contribute.”
“That’s okay. You’re doing your best, and that’s all we can ask for.” Leigh wasn’t sure where the empathy had come from, except she knew what helplessness felt like from sitting on the other side of that table. “One last question, and we’ll let you get back to your family. We found a collection of notes, photos, and newspaper articles your sister had gathered during her investigation into the Joel Brody case in the attic space of your family home, but her laptop and phone were missing. Presumably taken by her killer. Can you think of a reason why? Did she keep other notes or sources stored digitally that you know of?”
Warning solidified from her left where Boucher turned his attention to her.
“Um, the last time Michelle came to my house, she disappeared into the guest room. I went to get her for dessert and realized she’d left the door cracked. She was speaking into her phone like this.” Tanja tipped her hand back, fingers up, to mimic speaking into the bottom of a phone, where the microphone would’ve been on Michelle Cross’s device. “No one was answering back, so I assumed she was recording herself. Asking questions. I didn’t catch the whole thing.”
“But you caught part of it?” Leigh asked.
“Just a couple of words. A name, actually,” Tanja said. “Katherine Garrison.”
“Katherine Garrison.” A line of tension wrapped through Boucher’s expression. He shifted in his chair, chancing a glance in Leigh’s direction before turning back to the victim’s sister. “As in Derek Garrison’s mother? Are you sure?”
Tanja nodded confirmation. “I think she was recording a list of questions to ask her. I only got bits and pieces of it before my daughter came running down the hall to ask if she could have more ice cream. Michelle must’ve realized I’d been listening. She pulled open the door and accused me of spying on her. We argued, and she left right after that. It was the last time I saw her.”
There it was. The guilt that simmered beneath the surface until it burned out a person’s insides. Leigh could see it in the slight digging of Tanja’s fingers into her palms, hear it with the drop in octave of the woman’s voice. People who hadn’t lost someone to this kind of violence wouldn’t acknowledge it for what it was: a call for help. But Leigh recognized it, and a suctioning black hole behind her rib cage begged her to answer.
“We’re doing everything we can to find who did this, Mrs. Carson, and for what it’s worth, I’m sorry for your loss.” Leigh didn’t know what else to say. Didn’t know how to ease the heaviness and the hurt this perfect stranger would have to live with. She didn’t even know how to do it for herself. How could she expect to help someone else? “Truly.”
“You’re her, aren’t you?” Tanja’s voice softened. “Joel Brody’s daughter.”
