Killing Hour - Lisa Gardner [2]
No broken bones this time. No shattered limbs. The ME ruled that nineteen-year-old Kasey Cooper had died from multiple organ failure, most likely brought on by severe heatstroke. In other words, when she’d been abandoned out in the middle of that field, she’d still been alive.
An empty gallon jug of water was discovered three miles from her mummified corpse. Her purse was another five miles away. Interestingly enough, they never did find her vehicle or her car keys.
People grew more nervous now. Particularly when someone in the ME’s office let it leak that Josie Anders also had died from a drug overdose—a fatal injection of the prescription drug Ativan. Seemed sinister somehow. Two sets of girls in two different years. Each last seen in a bar. In both cases the first girl was found dead along a major road. And in both cases, the second girl seemed to suffer a fate that was far, far worse . . .
The Rabun County Sheriff’s Office called in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. The press got excited again. More banner headlines in the front pages of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. GBI SEEKS POSSIBLE SERIAL KILLER. Rumors flew, articles multiplied and the man clipped each one diligently.
He had a cold feeling growing in his chest now. And he started to tremble each time the phone rang.
The GBI, however, was not nearly so sensational about the case. Investigation ongoing, a spokesperson for the state police declared. And that’s all the GBI would say. Until the summer of 2000 and the very first heat wave.
It started in May. Two pretty, young Augusta State University students headed to Savannah one weekend and never returned home. Last known sighting—a bar. Vehicle—MIA.
This time, the national media descended. Frightened voters hit the streets. The man pawed furiously through stacks of newspapers while the GBI issued meaningless statements such as “We have no reason to suspect a connection at this time.”
The man knew better. People knew better. And so did the letters to the editor. He found it Tuesday, May 30. Exact same words as before: “Clock ticking . . . planet dying . . . animals weeping . . . rivers screaming. Can’t you hear it? Heat kills . . .”
Celia Smithers’s body was found along U.S. 25 in Waynesboro, just fifteen miles from the cotton-field crime scene where Kasey Cooper had been found six months before. Smithers was fully clothed and clutching her purse. No sign of trauma, no sign of sexual assault. Just one dark bruise on her left thigh, and a smaller, red injection site on her upper left arm. Cause of death—an overdose of the prescription tranquilizer Ativan.
The public went nuts; the police immediately went into high gear. Still missing, Smithers’s best friend, Tamara McDaniels. The police, however, didn’t search the Burke County cotton fields. Instead, they sent volunteers straight to the muddy banks of the Savannah River. Finally, the man thought, they were starting to understand the game.
He should’ve picked up the phone then. Dialed the hastily established hotline. He could’ve been an anonymous tipster. Or maybe the crazy whacko that thinks he knows everything.
He didn’t, though. He just didn’t know what to say.
“We have reason to believe Ms. McDaniels is still alive,” reported GBI Special Agent Michael “Mac” McCormack on the evening news. “We believe our suspect kidnaps the women in pairs, killing the first woman immediately, but abandoning the second in a remote location. In this case, we have reason to believe he has selected a portion of the Savannah River. We are now assembling over five hundred volunteers to search the river. It is our goal to bring Tamara home safe.”
Then Special Agent McCormack made a startling revelation. He had also been reading the letters to the editor. He now made an appeal to speak to