Page 47 of Girl Long Gone

The smell of fried grease slid across his face the moment Connor stepped into the diner, and his stomach growled. He’d touched base with Evelyn, then decided to meet Mark to go over Lynette Nelson’s case file before heading to Ben’s apartment.

He pushed through the crowd and settled into the vinyl- lined cushions opposite Mark.

A waitress approached their table with a notepad in hand and a pen poised above it. “Do you guys know what you want?” Long blond bangs swept across her young face, and fatigue was clear as day in her honey-brown eyes.

Connor nodded and smiled at the waitress. “Sure. I’ll take a burger, fries, and a cola.”

Mark’s gaze drifted back to the table. “Same.”

The waitress scribbled on her notepad and hurried to a nearby table.

“What do you have?” Connor asked.

“I’m still sifting through a ton of shit with the Teller case. I didn’t find anything that matched the horror of Hayley, but I did find some unsolved cases of murdered women with large slashes or amputations. Quite a few in New York; the numbers are rather high for the city.” Mark locked eyes with Connor. “Specifically, Brooklyn.”

“He stays close to home. I’d bet my life his hideout’s in Brooklyn. Are the cuts consistent with the ones found on Hayley?”

“All made by a saw, but the cuts get neater. Placement of the bodies appear more deliberate as time goes by.”

Connor’s stomach pitched as the image of Hayley’s mutilated body came to the forefront of his mind. “What he did to Hayley might have been deliberate, but nothing about it was neat.”

“True, but if we spin off your initial thought, he might’ve rushed. He got spooked.”

“Do you have any other suspects besides Gabriel?”

Mark took a deep breath, his gaze locked on the clutter of papers as if hoping the answers would magically appear. “No, but I can’t figure out how the bastard has gotten away with this for so long or where he is. He’s smart, but there has to be a slip up somewhere.”

Connor sagged back into the hard seat of the booth. Mark was one of the best homicide detectives in the city. If he couldn’t figure out how to find Gabriel, they could be screwed.

“I’m working on finding a more substantial connection with the equipment used on the bodies and how to track them, and figuring out why Hayley was placed in that damn box. You glance through Lynette Nelson’s file. See if anything pops out.”

Connor studied the screen. “Simon seemed pretty shaken up when I asked him about his cousin. More so than when I told him about Hayley. Have you found any more connections between them?”

“No. I’m requesting his phone records. I want to know what they discussed beyond what was online.”

“He offered to let me read his text messages.” Connor couldn’t get Simon’s sad eyes out of his head. He understood how hard it was to have someone you love disappear without a trace and have it eat you up inside wondering what happened.

“Interesting. Most people guard their phones with their lives.”

“I thought the same thing.” Connor scrolled faster through the case file. “I don’t understand. Gabriel’s name is nowhere in this file.”

“Did you think it would be in there?”

“Turns out Gabriel dated Lynette. Simon claimed no one else knew except him, but he told his parents everything when she went missing. It makes no sense the police wouldn’t interview him.” Frustration ripped through him.

Every turn, every lead, every fucking time a new piece of information was uncovered, it ended up giving him jack shit.

He looked at the picture of Lynette. A smiling girl with dark curly hair falling around her face stared up at him. Surprise stole his breath and knotted his stomach. “Holy shit. This is the girl from the frame in Gabriel’s house. He had a picture from a dance or something, he and a young girl. Another one of her with some French book covering her face. It has to be her.”

Mark studied the picture. “If they dated, he should have been interviewed, and if he still has a framed picture of her in his house, she meant something to him.”

“This guy has weaseled his way out of so much. Could he have weaseled his way out of talking to the cops? Lied about his involvement with the girl?”

“It’s possible,” Mark said. “But a missing girl’s boyfriend would have been one of the top people investigated.”

Connor ground his teeth together. “I’m pretty sure his dad covered his ass about the birdhouses. He could have greased a few palms to leave his kid out of this mess. The guy’s a dick.”

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. I’ll put him on my schedule tomorrow. I want to get a read on him for myself, and maybe having someone new interview him will shake loose some new information.”