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Her discharge papers had finally come through.
The bullet wound in her shoulder would heal with minimal scarring. She’d landed herself in a three-day stay due to the concussion, broken nose, and battered bruises from Hailey Pierce’s bat, but overall, she’d live.
The same couldn’t be said for Boucher. Or his victims.
Police were still dredging the river and through the rubble for a body, but the lieutenant had most likely been caught under the mill’s collapse or washed farther downstream. It would take weeks—if not months—to finish the search. As for now, the case was closed.
Gabriel Boucher had tortured and murdered four victims in his mission to protect his son from the very same man who’d haunted him. The town was still reeling. News coverage had shifted from Chief Maynor’s admission to Officer Donavon Pierce’s arrest, then to Boucher’s involvement in the murders stalking Lebanon. They’d lost their trust in the very same police force they’d relied on to get them through the past twenty years. There was no fixing that. And, if she was being honest with herself, she wasn’t going to try.
Her life in Lebanon was over. No pieces of her left behind. No connection to the past or wondering what would’ve happened if things had been different. She was free to move forward. And help others do the same.
State investigators pulled every piece of clothing from Gabriel Boucher’s dresser and laid it out across the queen-sized bed wedged into the too small room. The one-bedroom, one-bathroom space the lieutenant had rented after moving out of his family home was nicer than she’d expected. Not as clean as Michelle Cross’s or Roxanne Jennings’s homes, but Boucher obviously hadn’t planned on having a search party.
Photographers did their due diligence as techs pulled a collection of medical textbooks from the bottom drawer. Hand-scribed notes and highlights told a story of a killer diving headfirst into the cardiovascular system. Where to cut. What to avoid. How long his victim would last if he severed blood flow just right. It wasn’t enough in and of itself to connect Boucher to these murders with hard evidence. They needed more.
And the evidence taken from the police station or the victims’ homes wasn’t here.
“Agen’ Brody.” Livingstone brought all eyes to her with an easiness Leigh had only tasted within the past few days. Authority. Respect. Confidence. Qualities earned in the price of bloodshed. “The hospital informed me you’d checked yourself out early. Thought I might find you here. I figured you would want to know I’ve gotten word Michael Agutter has made it back home to Fruitland with his parents safely.”
“I’m glad.” Though there was still the matter of why Chris Ellingson had kept his latest victim alive all this time. Why he’d brought Michael across the country to Lebanon. Without the opportunity to ask the man himself, she’d come to the conclusion Ellingson hadn’t actually meant to abduct and kill the boy. Not really. He’d kept control of his compulsions for close to twenty years as far as she knew, but the news of losing his mother had set off a relapse. However, faced with the past clawing back into his life, she imagined there’d been a bit of regret in his last days. Leigh pressed her thumbnail into the seam of her arm sling. “Boucher is dead, but this case still feels unfinished. I needed to know for sure.”
Livingstone motioned toward the techs pulling Boucher’s life apart inch by inch, and they systematically filed out the door without argument. “You told me the first day we met that you’ve followed my career. You’ve seen the good the BAU does to break into the serial killer mind and prevent more deaths, but do you know why I volleyed to become director of this unit to begin with?” Livingstone’s legendary discipline fluctuated with a dip in her voice. “Because I was right where you are now. Standing in the middle of a crime scene. Fresh off an attack that turned my world upside down. I was a rookie before the Ravelston Strangler killed my partner back in Edinburgh. I had no idea what I was doing or how I was going to take him down. Only that I never wanted anyone to lose someone to that kind of violence ever again.”
The Ravelston Strangler. One of Scotland’s most elusive serial offenders. Never killed close to home. From what police believed, he’d rented cars to go hundreds of miles out of his way to ensure his victims couldn’t be tied back to him. Planted murder kits in locations he intended to kill. Rope, cleaning agents, changes of clothes, tarps, shovels—he came prepared. Until he’d broken his own set of rules and murdered a man less than half a mile from his home. A police officer in the firearms unit. Livingstone had been part of that investigation? “I didn’t realize you’d lost someone.”
The director toyed with a thin band on her ring finger. Something Leigh hadn’t noticed until right then. “We’ve all lost someone, Agen’ Brody. That doesn’t make us special. It’s how we respond to that loss that defines us. I joined the Behavioral Analysis Unit when my fiancé and partner was found strangled to death.” Livingstone surveyed the sullen bedroom with its framed family photos and dark bedding. “What are you going to do?”
She hadn’t considered what would happen next. Her entire professional career had been lived moment-to-moment. Looking for the next lead, the next suspect, the latest data—all to put together a twenty-year-old puzzle that’d followed her no matter how far she’d run. Now that the puzzle was complete, she didn’t know where to go from here. Leigh’s mind went to that little boy she’d pulled from beneath Chris Ellingson’s garage. Michael Agutter had been kept alive for months compared to the short days her brother and Derek Garrison had survived. What if there were more boys out there who’d been kept alive? Or who’d escaped? Others who didn’t.
Boucher had suspected Chris Ellingson of taking his son and had done whatever it took to get Carter back, killing his abductor in the process and returning his son home. Not every victim had a father like that. One willing to fight. “I want to find them. Chris Ellingson’s victims. All of them. It might take weeks. It might take decades, but I think they deserve to have a voice.”
A wisp of a smile played across the director’s lips. “I can think of no better assignment. Assuming you’d like to do that with the full support of my unit?”
“I’d like that very much.” The hollowness she’d tried to keep from bleeding into other people’s lives—her coworkers, one-time friends, neighbors—wouldn’t have the same hold on her inside the unit. Livingstone and Chandler Reed were as committed as she was, and it was that sense of belonging, of knowing she was the perfect agent for the job, that eased the displacement brought on by years of hatred, anger, and punishment.
“Where will you start?” Livingstone asked.
Leigh caught sight of a patch of mud on one of the flannel shirts spread across the bed. State investigators had torn this place apart from air vents to cabinets. What were the chances they’d missed vital evidence connecting Boucher to these murders? Her fingertips tingled to run her hand over the patch, to feel the crust of dirt between her fingers. “I think I’ll start outside.”
She rounded into the short hallway from the bedroom and out the front door. Descending two floors, she took in the stretch of trees encroaching on the complex’s property. Boucher had been careful. He’d cleaned up traces of himself at each of the victims’ homes and the scenes in which he’d left the bodies to be found. He wouldn’t have kept evidence of murder within arm’s reach. Her breath solidified in front of her mouth. “But he’d still want it close by.”
She hiked up the soft incline leading to the trees. Hard-packed snow carved a path off to her left, and her gut demanded she see where it took her. Pines crowded around her the deeper she treaded, but it was only a dozen or so yards from the tree line she noted the disturbance in the snow. Mixed with streaks of frozen dirt.
Leigh didn’t wait for the crime techs to catch up. Grabbing for a broken tree branch with her good hand, she stabbed it into the earth.
And hit something solid.
THIRTY-THREE
Lebanon, New Hampshire
Friday, March 19
2:00 p.m.
It’d take days for the FBI’s computer crime squad to revive the laptops and phones buried under two feet of ice and frozen ground. But they finally had their connection.
Boucher had made too many mistakes. Inaccurately gauging the number of stab wounds inflicted on each victim, missing Michelle Cross’s research in the attic space of the victim’s home, killing Chris Ellingson out of revenge for abducting his son, then not destroying the very evidence that tied him to the murders.
