A woman named Delilah disappears. We see her in the preface running for her life through the forest at night (which is also how the previous novel started). Her pursuer is catching up, so she picks up a branch, meaning to fight for her life. When we eventually meet the killer, there’s no evidence that she so much as scratched him. Oh, well.
So Delilah was driving to her parents’ house for a baby shower when she disappeared, car and all. In the course of searching for her near the road she would have followed, the police find a different woman who looks a lot like her but has been dead longer. That’s Rory. Having found Rory, the police give up the search for Delilah.
Um, okay.
It eventually occurs to the police that Delilah and Rory were both driving cars, and those cars have to be somewhere. After watching various videos about dive teams, I could have told them those cars could be in the nearest river or lake. There is an astonishing number of cars in lakes and rivers.
Anyway, they decide the cars were probably dumped somewhere and might have been towed off. Providentially both Rory’s and Delilah’s cars were both towed to the same tow yard. Here’s what they find about Rory’s car.
On her passenger seat rested her car registration. But everything else was missing. No purse, no phone, nothing.
…
I looked in the trunk. It was like someone took a vacuum cleaner and vacuumed out the trunk, then shampooed the carpet.
Note specifically that the car registration is there. They don’t particularly need it, of course; the car has a license tag, which is how they identified it as Rory’s in the first place.
Somebody took a lot of trouble cleaning this car up, presumably the killer. Why clean the trunk, by the way? Her car has a separate trunk compartment that they opened, so why would the killer think any evidence of his presence would be in the trunk? Unless he stuffed Rory in the trunk … but if he stuffed Rory in the trunk, why was she near the road where she was presumably snatched?
The experienced investigator, Riley, goes over to look at Delilah’s car.
“Did you find her registration?”
“No,” said Zelina.
“I searched Rory’s car; all through the glove box, there was nothing there, except the registration on the front seat.”
Zelina opened the passenger side door and searched through the glove box. “Same here. Also, no purses, IDs, or her bags. She was coming for a few days; she had to pack some stuff. But it is all gone.”
So everything is gone. That is an important point.
Now, those two cars were abandoned at a cantankerous farmer’s farm during the nighttime on two different nights. My immediate question as I read this was, how did the killer leave? Barring teleportation, he walked or he took a car.
If he walked, he must have some sort of base nearby. I’d be investigating property owners within at least five miles. I’d be trying to find anyone who saw him walking. If he took a car, there has to be a second person involved. Unless he called for an Uber or got a friend to pick him up — twice! — he has to have an accomplice. He cannot have driven a second car out there to make his getaway. I’d be appealing for the Uber driver or friend to speak up.
I guess possibly he towed the victim’s car behind his own, but that should leave marks on the victim’s car, and again, they should be looking for a witness to that scenario as well.
At no point ever in this book do the experienced investigators puzzle over the question of how he left.
While we’re on this subject, where did he clean up these cars? Was he vacuuming and shampooing the cars in the middle of the night on the farm, hoping the farmer doesn’t wake up for a bio-break and notice lights outside? Was he hauling Delilah’s bags with him while he was walking away from the farm?
The only reasonable conclusion is that he has a base someplace where he cleaned up the cars. But then he had to drive the cars to the farm without leaving any biological evidence — fibers or hairs — so did he wear a hazmat suit? Scrub the seating compartment once he got there?
Oh, and while we’re considering logistics, Delilah must have been snatched somehow on the road between the gas station where she was last seen and her parents’ home, so the killer was on that road somehow. How did he get there? If he walked, that greatly narrows down the location of his base: it has to be walking distance from some point on that road. Did anyone see a pedestrian on or near that road that night? But if he drove, then he had two cars to deal with after he snatched Delilah or Rory.
We can be fairly sure he didn’t drive either car into the woods to temporarily hide it, not that these experienced investigators actually took any interest in this question. While they were looking for Delilah, there was a comment that there were no drag marks showing where a body was dragged into the woods. I think even these investigators would probably notice tire tracks going into the woods.
So, did the killer leave his own car sitting by the road while he dealt with her and her car? Did anyone see a car parked by that road that night? I’ll return to this question …
Since Rory and Delilah are very similar in appearance, they figure the killer has a type that he targets, so they look for missing persons who look like them. They find two such women, and those women’s cars were abandoned in the same place and towed to the same tow yard.
I opened the file. Not only did Nicky put together the list, but she also handed over an inventory list of each car. I placed the lists side by side. “Interesting.”
“What?”
“Those two women also had their cars towed from the same yard as Rory and Delilah. I have an inventory list of their cars. Both the women’s purses and phones were missing. Along with their licenses and registrations.”
And now, let’s watched them deduce that the killer is a policeman. Riley is the viewpoint character and she’s talking to Zelina and Captain Williams.
“If you are stopped by a cop and told to pull over. What’s the first thing you do?” I asked.
“Pull out my license and registration,” they both said.
I leaned back in my chair. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. “
“Come into my office, you two.” I followed him to his office and sat down. A second later, Zelina joined us and closed the door behind her.
“What’s wrong?”
“Are you thinking that a cop did this?” he whispered.
“I think that’s possible. Now, don’t get me wrong, I hate to accuse a fellow officer of this, but what other conclusions can we draw?”
He moved around his desk and sat down. “There has to be another reason.”
I turned to face him. “Okay. But think about it. The victim’s license and registrations were gone. That’s the first thing you hand to a cop when you’re stopped; otherwise, why have it out? Look at the bodies, where they were found, and the evidence left behind.”
Yes, do look at the evidence left behind. Indeed, the victims’ licenses and registrations are gone, but so is everything else. The contents of glove compartments. The purses. The cellphones. The bags that Delilah had because she was going to stay for a while. Everything. There is nothing unique about the licenses and registrations being gone and, I might add, Rory’s registration was, weirdly, left behind.
They’re right, of course, because the author says so. The killer is a cop.
But, you know, the frustrating thing is that they actually could reasonably deduce that the killer is a cop. Watch:
Riley: This doesn’t make sense. Look, Delilah gassed up here, right? And the CCTV shows she was safe and alone when she left. There was no reason for her to stop from there until she got to her sister’s house.
Zelina shrugs: The killer stopped her.
Riley: Right, but how? No damage to the car — no damage to any of the four cars, in fact. He didn’t run her off the road, or scatter caltrops to flatten her tires, or anything like that. She had to stop voluntarily. They all did. How did the killer *make* them stop?
Zelina stares at her: You can’t think — maybe he fakes an accident …
Riley: Passersby would call 911 if he faked an accident. Anyway, the killer has a type. He stops women who look like Delilah. How? Why do they stop? Come on, you know the answer.
Zelina: Because he’s a cop. Because he pulls them over.
Riley: Exactly.
So, it’s possible to plausibly deduce that the killer is cop. But now, go back to the question of two cars by the road. He’s stopped a woman. He strangles her and stuffs her in her trunk, or just stuffs her in her trunk, or chases her through the woods if she runs for it. Then he drives her car off somewhere to store it until he can clean and dump it, then he …
Then he what? Hikes back to his patrol car, still sitting by the road? Wouldn’t a patrol car sitting there empty for a long time attract attention? Wouldn’t someone notice and call in to report it, being concerned that something has happened to the police officer who should have been in that car?
For all this to work, he almost has to have an accomplice to move the patrol car or the victim’s car, and to bring a second car when the victim’s car is abandoned. The question of whether he has an accomplice and who it might be once they know who the killer is, is never so much as mentioned.
Okay, now consider this. Look at the “deduction” that the killer is a cop. We have three people: Riley, Zelina, and Captain Williams. As soon as Riley hints that the killer is a cop, Captain Williams takes them in his office and whispers about the possibility. Later, a woman turns up to talk to them:
“Yes. We will take any information you can give us. It would be much appreciated,” I said.
“Right. Well, I don’t know if this is pertinent to your investigation.” She glanced at the captain for a moment. “But I heard that you all believe an officer did this. To those women.”
Zelina, Williams, and I traded glances. “Where did you hear that?”
“Rumor going around town. I was at the coffee shop and heard some people talking about it.”
Zelina, Williams, and Riley ought to be looking at each other. Only those three were present when they “deduced” the killer was a cop, and they kept it very quiet, though they had to tell Keith the coroner, who had his people go over the car for prints. I’m not clear why that’s Keith’s responsibility. But anyway, they kept their cards close to the chest, so who talked? Riley, the viewpoint character, says she didn’t, and Williams was whispering about it. So was it Keith or Zelina?
That’s never addressed, by the way.
And then there’s this scene. They’d been trying to subtly question the killer cop when he up and left:
My fingers drummed against the table while I replayed my time with him in my mind. Before I left, he was fine, but once I came back, it was like something changed. A switch had been flipped, and I just needed to know what flipped it. I stared at the files on the table. He had looked through them. Did something in the files tip him off?
“What happened?” Zelina burst through the doors. “Why did he leave?”
“He gave me his alibis for the times the women went missing, and then he left. Told me to check them and then apologize to him.” Z’s eyebrow raised.
“Are you serious? What did you say?”
I threw my hands up. “I don’t know. I was just running it through my mind. Everything was fine until I got up and left the room. When I came back, it was like he knew what we were trying to do.”
What do you suppose happened? How did he figure it out? Your guess is as good as mine, because that’s never addressed either.
They bring in his former wife, figuring he’s been killing women who look like her, and he conveniently confesses in full before lunging across the table to try to kill her. So that wraps up the murder mystery. Except for the identity of his accomplice, of course.
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