Girl, 11 by Amy Clarke (grave mercy TXT) 📗

Elle sat in her desk chair and ran her fingers through her hair, examining the Wall of Grief—the name Martín had coined for the massive expanse of corkboard that held her case photos. She had two pictures of each girl in the Countdown Killer’s series: one alive, the other dead. A headshot and a crime scene photo. They were grouped together by year: 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999. It wasn’t the coldest case she’d solved since she quit her job in social work to do this full-time, but it was close.

That designation belonged to the Duluth Phantom, who terrorized the city in 1991, stealing four babies from their rooms at night over the course of a year. Using an online database of self-submitted results from commercial DNA tests and the services of one of her listeners—a genealogist—Elle tracked down all four. They’d been told they were adopted and had no idea who their birth parents were. During questioning by police, their parents admitted to paying for what they had been led to believe was an elite—although suspiciously covert—adoption agency. Their descriptions and dodgy records led to the kidnapper. It turned out, the police had been close to catching him after he abducted the last baby in 1991, so he had used the money to fade into obscurity rather than risk continuing to build his black-market network.

The Phantom launched Elle’s podcast from its modest but loyal following into a cult phenomenon over a year ago, but the TCK case had already topped it. This was the case she wanted to solve more than any other, and she had a new lead. She just needed to crack it.

The hunt for Luisa Toca had taken her all over Minneapolis the last two days, with no luck. Her employer still hadn’t heard from her. The woman was in the wind. City council confirmed that several complaints had been filed about the condition of Maria Alvarez’s house, so the man’s story in Falcon Heights seemed to check out. It had been five days since Leo was killed, and Elle was no closer to finding out who Leo was referring to, or what might have been on the flash drive in his pocket, than when she started.

Her podcast listeners often acted as crowd-sourced investigators once she got through the first few episodes, where she set up the case. Even so, there was a limit to how much information she was willing to put out publicly when it came to persons of interest. If she put Luisa’s name on the Justice Delayed subreddit, she might be able to track her down faster, but then listeners would assume she had something to do with the case when there was no evidence she was involved at all. It would also be breaking the rules Elle had set for herself and her listeners since the very first episode. Don’t dox each other, don’t dox suspects, don’t be a dick. They were pretty simple, and in general, people stuck with them.

Well, her normal audience did. Since she’d started season five, there had been some nonsense from a few vocal new listeners clogging her feed. Then there were the dozens of red-flagged emails in her inbox to tend to.

Elle opened her laptop and took a deep breath. A season on the Countdown Killer was always going to be big, but even she couldn’t believe how fast it had taken off since the first episode launched in December. She went from around a million overall downloads to nearly two million. Armchair detectives and true crime aficionados who had followed TCK’s case for years tuned in to Justice Delayed for the first time, and it seemed like all of them had something to say about how she ran her investigative podcast. Her social media accounts and podcast forums—normally her places of refuge, where she went to brainstorm with listeners and bounce theories off each other—had become unwieldy. There were great thoughts and questions being shared, but it took a lot longer to find them than it had before.

Before she could tackle her email, she called Tina. Her producer’s face lit up the screen.

“Elle, this next episode. Hot damn, it’s going to singlehandedly give all of Reddit an orgasm.”

Elle’s lip curled, but she laughed anyway. “Ew, I hope not.”

Tina leaned forward, eyes close to the screen as if she could stare into Elle’s very soul. “No, I’m serious. If you’re right about this, it’s huge. You found TCK’s actual first victim.”

Elle put her hands on her face, the skin burning underneath her fingertips. She’d been so busy hunting Leo the last couple days, she’d almost forgotten the next episode might be an even bigger reveal than the last. She looked back at the screen between her fingers. “Not me. We. You’re the one who did all the legwork, got me the information I needed.”

“Psh, fine, we’re both badasses, let’s just agree and move on.” Tina grinned, swiping her straight black hair over her ear. “Now, on a more serious note. I’m glad you called; I want to talk to you about the show account.”

Elle pulled up the browser next to the video call box. “Yeah, I see we’ve got a lot of fire in here.”

“Mostly embers, I’d say,” Tina said. “But a couple of them imply they know your location, at least the suburb. I’ve reported them to the local PD, but those guys aren’t really equipped to handle cyber cases like this. I tried to help them out by tracking down a couple of the senders’ IP addresses, but some of them have been routed through VPNs.”

Shivering, Elle took another drink of wine. She opened one of the emails Tina had flagged red.

You’re going to cost innocent people their lives you stupid bitch. I will come for you if anyone I love gets hurt I will end you. That pussy handgun won’t save you you know.

Well, they knew she was carrying. That might be a good guess, or an observed behavior.