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A task force was formed but no arrests were ever made. The reign of terror culminated in the murder of Abby Sinclair, the last known victim, in 2005. He went too far with Sinclair, choking her to death after the sexual assault. Following that, the attacks stopped, and the Pillowcase Rapist went dark.
“So it was a familial match,” Ballard said. “How close?”
“Very,” Troy said. “This guy who was arrested, he’s likely the Pillowcase Rapist’s son.”
Ballard nodded. She could feel her heart rate rising as adrenaline ticked into her blood. “How long ago was the arrest on the domestic?”
“Nine weeks ago.”
“Wow.”
“That’s how long it takes to process the arrest swabs and put them into the DOJ bank. These don’t get priority like DNA from crime scenes. Thank God you had that familial search in place.”
Ballard had joined the department and was in the academy and later in uniform patrol during the years that the Pillowcase Rapist had terrorized the city. She and her partner had been first on scene on the murder of Abby Sinclair. It was the first murder scene Ballard had ever been to, and although many followed, the image of Abby Sinclair’s naked body in her bed, the pillowcase pulled over her head, had stuck with her. It was the first case she’d pulled off the shelf in the library of lost souls—the murder-book archive.
“Okay, Darcy,” she said. “Give me what you’ve got on the domestic.”
Ballard wrote the information down, thanked Troy for the call, and hung up. She stood to see who was left on the raft. While the Monday-morning staff meetings were mandatory, the investigators were required to work only one day a week, and they often cleared out after the meeting, choosing to fulfill their commitment on other days. Ballard saw only Hatteras and Persson. She knew Aghzafi liked to work Thursdays or Fridays, and Masser had probably left to meet with the prosecutor and defense attorney on the Maxine Russellcase. Laffont was nowhere to be seen, but Ballard hoped he had just stepped out for coffee or to go to the restroom, because she was going to need him.
“Okay, Anders, Colleen, listen up,” she said. “We’ve got a hot shot here I want to go full-court press on.”
She referred to her notes before continuing.
“I want you to run down a Nicholas Purcell, DOB January twenty-nine, 2000. He was arrested on a felony domestic about nine weeks ago in West Valley. I want to know everything about him: where he lives, where he works, the domestic, everything.”
“What’s the case?” Persson asked.
“About twenty years ago, there was a serial offender called the Pillowcase Rapist,” Ballard said. “He assaulted several women over a five-year run. I’m talking dozens of victims. He finally killed one and then dropped out of sight. He was never caught. That murder—that’s our case.”
“But wait,” Hatteras said. “If Nicholas Purcell was born in 2000, then he—”
“Can’t be our guy,” Ballard said. “That’s right, he’s not. It’s his father. We got a familial match. Purcell’s father is the Pillowcase Rapist. Through his son, we find him, get his DNA, and go from there.”
“Groovy,” Persson said.
Ballard looked at him for a moment, not sure what part of this the Swede thought was groovy. She chalked it up to English being his second language. She nodded and then started toward the archives, listening as she went to Hatteras and Persson discussing the division of labor on their assignment.
The cases in the archives were organized first by year and then alphabetically by the victims’ last names. Ballard had to crank the shelves open to access the 2005 cases. The Abby Sinclair murder book was actually a murder box. It contained records of the murder investigation and the forty-six sexual assaults that had begun in 2000. Itwas a cardboard box with handles. Ballard pulled it off the shelf and lugged it back to her desk.
Hatteras and Persson were both turned in their seats and waiting for her when she came out of the archives. Ballard could not yet read Persson as well as she could Hatteras after two years of working together. And her read of Hatteras now was that something was wrong.
“What?” she asked.
“Well, we found Nicholas Purcell,” Hatteras said. “We also think we have his father.”
“That was quick. What’s the issue?”
“Take a look.” Hatteras stood up to give Ballard access to her screen. Ballard put the murder box down on the seat and leaned on it to look at the screen. It was a photo on Nick Purcell’s Facebook page of a family gathered around a birthday cake.
“I scrolled back three years to find this,” Hatteras said.
“Okay, what am I looking at?” Ballard said.
“Read the caption,” Hatteras said. “This is Nick’s twenty-first birthday. That’s his father on the right.”
Ballard studied the father. She was hit with a slight glint of recognition, but she didn’t know where she would have known him from. He looked to be a fit fifty with a ruddy face and a full head of dark hair. He wore a striped golf shirt with sleeves stretched tight around his biceps.
“Who is he?” Ballard said.
