as anything. No police department announced that they had a serial killer on their hands if they could help it. Many did everything they could to hide the fact, hoping the perpetrator would eventually move out of their jurisdiction. But there was no need to explain this. Francesca had worked in law enforcement long enough to understand the dynamics.
“And when the site was discovered, there was some question as to the age of those bones,” Finch added.
“What’s changed?” she asked.
“It’s since been determined that they’re—” he lowered his voice even further “—recent.”
For the first time, her implacable facade cracked, revealing a hint of vulnerability. “How recent?”
“A couple are as old as five years,” Jonah replied. “The other women have only been dead for a few months.”
Leaning forward, she set her coffee cup on Investigator Finch’s desk. “Are you telling me you think the man who just attacked me might’ve already murdered seven women?”
Jonah wasn’t absolutely convinced of that. What were the odds she’d be able to escape a violent psychopath when she’d encountered him on his own turf? What this guy had done to his victims proved he was utterly ruthless. But if there was one thing police work had taught him, it was to keep an open mind. “It’s a possibility,” he conceded. “Somebody murdered them.”
“Oh, God.” She jumped to her feet, turned to Finch. “And you’re not letting the public know to be cautious? To avoid strangers? Not to take risks?”
Jonah stood in the opening behind Finch while the shorter, stockier man tried to quiet her. “Keep your voice down! We don’t want to disseminate the information prematurely. We could tell pretty quickly that it wasn’t an old Indian burial ground, but we weren’t sure exactly what it was until we got a forensic anthropologist in here. We’ve set her up in the old community center and given Jonah an office there, too, but that kind of work doesn’t go fast, not with such an extensive site.”
“But—”
“We just got her initial report last night,” he went on, refusing to be interrupted. “We were planning to release a statement this afternoon, but then you arrived. Now I figure we might as well wait and see what Hunsacker finds at the salvage yard. Maybe this guy who attacked you, this Butch Vaughn, is our man.”
Having a suspect would certainly go far toward mollifying the public. But Jonah didn’t point that out, either.
Francesca smoothed her skirt. Dirty and wrinkled, it hit her just above the knees, showing calves as tanned and toned as they’d been when he knew her before. The only difference was the abrasions on her knees.
“That would explain why April was still in the yard,” she said. “Maybe, since the discovery of those bodies, Vaughn’s been forced to find a new place to dispose of his victims and hasn’t come up with a location he’s comfortable with.”
Jonah shoved away from the divider, nudging Finch aside. “Or he simply hasn’t had an opportunity to dispose of her in a more permanent fashion.”
The way Francesca suddenly refused to look at him told Jonah she was still having trouble including him in the discussion. Although she’d lowered her defenses for a moment, she’d already raised them again.
“Like I told you,” she said to Finch. “I think he’s married, which would limit his movements. I saw his wife or significant other and his kid. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be here. He was just getting ready to bash in my window when they drove up.”
“Other people live at the property?” Jonah asked.
She didn’t like talking to him; he could tell by her unwillingness to elaborate too much on any one thing. “It looked that way. So why he’s trolling for women on matchmaking sites designed for singles, I don’t know.”
“Plenty of married men do that,” Finch said. “They can troll from the comfort of their own homes while their wife and kids are asleep.”
“Did he use his real name on that profile?” Jonah asked.
She dug at her cuticles while she talked. “No, a pseudonym. Harry Statham.”
“I guess a little insurance never hurt anybody—” Finch started to say but Jonah spoke at the same time.
“How did you connect Harry Statham to Butch Vaughn?”
“Before she left Saturday night, April told her sister, who’s my client, that she was going to meet her new love interest at a bar called the Pour House here in Prescott. Since that was the last time any of her friends or family heard from her, and she didn’t report to work on Monday, I went to the Pour House to see if she ever showed up. The bartender told me that while he was outside having a smoke he saw a woman fitting April’s description getting into a truck with Butch. He knew him as a regular and confirmed that he looked exactly like the guy in the picture I showed him from the dating profile. He said he couldn’t have gotten it wrong—the truck had a Prescott Salvage logo on the door.”
Jonah tried to piece it all together. “Why would he use his own truck?”
“Maybe he wasn’t planning on killing her when he picked her up. At the very least, he wasn’t planning on getting caught, right? A lot of murderers use their own vehicles.”
“But if Butch is married, he wouldn’t kill April and leave her in the salvage yard, where his wife could stumble across her.”
“Actually, if you saw the place, you wouldn’t find that idea so far-fetched,” she said. “The yard is ten acres. And it’s a maze. You could hide a dinosaur in there. I’m not even sure how I spotted the body with all the junk piled around it. He probably still plans on transporting it somewhere else.”
“With ten acres, he wouldn’t necessarily have to transport it off the property,” Finch said.
“True,” Jonah agreed but turned back to her. “So what happened when you first got to the yard?”
She scowled. “I’ve already been through it all with Investigator Finch. If you want to know, just have him debrief you.”
Finch loosened his tie and sat on the edge of his desk, straining the seams of his chinos, which were a little tight on the thighs to begin with, due to the bodybuilding regime he so often talked about. “I realize we’ve been through some of this. But Jonah has a lot of experience with these types of cases. Two months ago he helped Texas authorities bring down a hospice worker responsible for the deaths of six elderly men and women. That’s why we brought him in. I’d like him to hear the details from your own lips, if you don’t mind.”
Her displeasure didn’t ease, but she returned to her seat, crossed her legs and began to explain what he’d missed before he arrived.
The phone rang; Finch answered it while they talked.
“Did you see under the tarp?” Jonah asked when he understood that she’d gone onto the property and started looking around after no one answered her knock. “Were you able to make a positive ID?”
She didn’t seem completely comfortable with her response. Shifting in her chair, she
