“Ms. Walsh! Thank you for joining us!” Jeff Sanders called, standing up at his desk.
“Just doing as I’m told. How is the case going?”
“Not as well as we had hoped. Which is why we asked you in today. Gentlemen, this is Special Agent Sarah Walsh. Sarah these are some of out people who have been working on this case, Trevor Whitely and Mike Young.”
“It’s nice to meet you.” She shook hands with each of the men before turning back to Jeff. “So what’s going on?”
“Well, not much... we need you to do some review of the evidence and see if you can figure out a pattern or something. We know how good you are at that.”
She wanted to roll her eyes. Sure she was good at the office stuff but that wasn’t why she had trained for two years to become a FBI agent. “OK... where is all the stuff.”
“Don’t think that you are going to be doing this alone... that’s why Trevor and Mike are here. You will be going through the reports while they look at some of the crime scene evidence. “
“OK.”
An hour later
Sarah cringed. The pictures were what always got to her. Especially in this case. She didn’t understand how someone could get pleasure from kidnapping, raping and then killing anyone, let alone the 12 girls that this one had.
The frustrating part was that there was no connection to any of them. There wasn’t a hair color, eye color, or common acquaintance. None of them were even in the same state. The only link they had was the amount of time between each of the kidnapping. They were each a month apart, but they had no idea how long he would keep each of them before he killed them. The days were getting numbered... they already knew that it was too late to catch him before he kid napped someone else... he had a girl already. Her only hope was if they found him before he killed her.
Her name was Yolanda DeFranco and she had no connection to any of the other victim, except that she too was being put through hell before he would finally put her out of her misery. And even then it would be a slow and painful death.
They needed to figure out his pattern of selection and they needed to find it fast.
“Sarah...” Jeff yanked her out of her thoughts. She looked up at him and didn’t like what he saw. “They found another body. It’s the DeFranco girl.”
“Dammit!” She banged her fist against the desk in frustration. “Anything different from the others?”
“Nope, you’d think it was the same girl over and over again. Sarah I’m gonna need you to work double time on this thing until it’s over.”
“I would have even if you hadn’t asked me to.”
Jeff leaned closer to her. “I know you hate doing office work. I promise that if we have to send someone in that it will be you.”
“Thanks Jeff.” She smiled at him and went back to her work.
She had poured over everything for hours. Her eyes hurt from staring at the 13 names on her computer screen and she was close falling asleep. She grabbed her coffee cup and took a sip. She spit it back into the cup. It was cold. “Gross.” She said to herself, setting the cup down on her bed stand.
She had tried to go to sleep but the case was bugging her. She couldn’t figure out why, but she knew that the answer they were looking for was in the names of the girls. It had to be. “But where?” She asked hitting a few keys on the computer. The names went into alphabetical order. “You know there is no connection like that. Think. What other order could there be?” She tired their social security numbers, in every order she could think of. They were all just random numbers.
She looked at the clock. It glowed 3:30 at her in bright green. She groaned and hit her head on the keys of the laptop sitting on the bed in front of her. “Oh crap, what’d I do now?” She questioned as she looked at the screen again. The names were being sorted out and put into a new order.
She looked at the information once it was done sorting. It was in an order that she hadn’t thought of before. She read down the list of names. Yolanda was on top. The capital letters of each girl’s first name caught her attention. It seemed to spell something but she couldn’t read it. She pressed another button and the order reversed. She tried reading it again.
“Oh my....” She grabbed the phone next to her bed and dialed the seven digits quickly. After four rings the other end was finally picked up.
“Hello?” A groggy Jeff answered.
“Jeff, I think I’ve found something!” She told him what she had found and within minutes Jeff was awake and with it.
“This is a huge breakthrough. How did you figure that out?”
“Um.... Just luck. I couldn’t sleep so I decided to work on the case.” She wasn’t about to tell him that it had been by accident.
“Well you might wanna get some sleep now because this is just the beginning, Sarah. This is a huge case and you are going to be a key player in it. We’ll get people researching first thing in the morning.”
“OK Jeff, I get the picture. I think I’ll be able to sleep better now.”
“I know I will be able to.”
“Good night Jeff.”
“Night Sarah. And good job.”
