The Nobody Girls (Kendra Dillon Cold Case Thriller Book 3) Read online

  The Nobody Girls

  A Kendra Dillon Cold Case Thriller

  Rebecca Rane

  Contents

  Text copyright ©2021

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  A Note From the Author

  About the Author

  Text copyright ©2021

  Rebecca Rane All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law or for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  1978

  “Hop in,” he said.

  She looked relieved. A ride was a ride. But she has just enough brain to be wary. Not as wary as she should be.

  He smiled. The one he knew worked every time. He was decent-looking, not movie-star good-looking, but your best friend’s brother level. He cultivated that. It worked for his specific purposes.

  He deployed a little smile at the corner of his mouth. He cocked his head too. He’d practiced both in the mirror.

  Get in then? Climb in? He’d tested them out dozens of times before landing on the perfect phrase.

  Hop in. It was cute, non-threatening, just like the smile and the head tilt.

  This one was no different than the other ones. It worked on her.

  She actually did a little hop. She must imagine herself an adorable little bunny.

  Give me a break, he thought.

  She was dirty, evil, and he was doing everyone on this planet a favor.

  Oh, it was thrilling for him, no doubt. He’d started small and moved up, and now here he was, a shark among goldfish.

  He enjoyed every single second of it. He was doing the right thing, he enjoyed it, and he was good at it. Love what you do, and you’ll never work a day in your life.

  Well, sort of. He did have to work. He had a job. But this wasn’t his job. This was his crusade, his mission, what he was put on this earth to do. And he’d worked toward mastery.

  He wondered if he glowed. It felt like he did in the most intimate moments. It felt like a light came through his eyes and his fingers.

  Maybe he’d figure out a way to have a mirror around next time. It would have to be a big mirror.

  He’d plan for that later. The little bunny had hopped in. And she was exactly where she was supposed to be too.

  He clicked the door locks.

  “Put your belt on, safety first.”

  She looked at him and did exactly what he instructed. This was going to be very easy. He hoped not too easy. The struggle increased his power. He knew this.

  Her fingernail polish was chipped. He’d noticed that before. He hated fingernail polish anyway, but when it was chipped, it was a giveaway.

  She didn’t care about having things right. Or keeping them nice.

  He started the vehicle. The engine hummed. That was another detail he saw to:’ his vehicle was in proper working order. Everything was. He liked the word meticulous. Meticulous.

  “Here, take one.”

  She smiled and used her thumb and index finger to get a chip out of the bag he’d offered. That would mask her smell, make it more bearable.

  He pulled onto the highway, merged into traffic easily, and looked over at her again.

  She was staring out into the distance. He could see her jaw work, and she chewed. He’d soon crush it under his fingers. Maybe he’d start there? Or not. That was another skill, adjusting a method to produce the desired effects. He was able to adapt.

  Did some part of her know these would be the last earthly sights her brain would record?

  Maybe.

  The next time she opened her eyes, the devil himself would be there to meet her.

  He tried not to smile. Smiling too much could be just as menacing as frowning. He’d practiced that too, making sure he didn’t smile too much.

  He needed her docile until they pulled off the highway to the next exit.

  Behind the corn. It was high now. He had a perfect spot.

  Perfect.

  Hop in.

  Chapter 2

  Kendra stood behind the police tape. The midday sun beat down on her head. Her scalp would burn, where her red hair parted. She wished she had a hat. She made a mental note: Put a hat in the Jeep.

  Noontime traffic on I-75 zipped along behind them; the roar of each individual vehicle created a droning hum.

  Normally the presence of patrol cars would cause some gawkers, but they were far enough off the road that it wasn’t a distraction.

  If you looked, you’d see something was going on here, at the construction site. Whizzing along the highway at 70-miles per hour, you’d never know what was happening, though. It wasn’t construction. No. The building had stopped, thanks to the bones.

  The opposite of construction was happening now. The authorities on the scene lifted and sifted dirt as carefully as they could with the front end loader.

  Kendra ought to be happy to be out of the office. She’d been lamenting that it sucked to only see the same four walls when the weather was this good.

  Summer in Northwest Ohio. It was a long time coming. But when it got here, it could be dazzling.

  Except right now, Kendra wasn’t dazzled. She was focused. Was there anything she could learn about this spot’s history? That was a question that Adeline Shoop, her associate producer, and Gal Friday could dig into. Ugh, Dig. Probably not the best word to use. Kendra had no doubt that Shoop could find anything they needed about the history of this section of I-75 if required.

  She wished Shoop would have come, but her partner in cold crime podcasting was off for a few days.

  It was a good time for a mini-vacation. They’d just wrapped a season of The Cold Trail and hadn’t yet landed on their next cold case investigation.

  Maybe this was it? Or maybe this was a bad sunburn for no good reason. Not that a dead body was a good reason, but that was the reality of what they were waiting to see.

  It was too early to say if there was a dead body. There was a human femur, that much she knew.

  Yesterday the contractors had found the part of a human leg while doing site prep. All work came to an abrupt halt so law enforcement could get here and supervise.

  They were prepping the site to construct a huge new outlet mall. Big news for bargain shoppers. If they had a Coach bag outlet store, Kendra would add it to her list of shopping haunts.

  Though it was the kind of place her chic mother wou
ldn’t be caught dead in.

  Kendra winced as the phrase crossed her mind. Someone might very well have been caught dead here. It was a defense mechanism, gallows humor. She tried to resist it. She wanted to retain access to what it felt like to be a trauma victim or be close to one. This was key for her work, her interviews, her desire to find the stories. She had to work hard to prevent adopting a hard shell. Because sometimes a hard shell would be helpful. Especially after what she’d seen the last few years producing The Cold Trail. On top of her own dark history.

  Kendra Dillon was the only member of the media present. Yesterday’s discovery hadn’t made the news or been broadcast on police scanners. One member of the construction crew saw something, he called his foreman over, and it made its way up the chain to the Port Lawrence post of the Ohio Highway Patrol. That’s where Kendra’s timing or random chance had come into play.

  About an hour after the OHP post got a call from the job site, Kendra called for no other reason than to do a little beat check. It was a habit from her TV news reporter days. And it kept her in touch with local law enforcement at the ground level.

  Kendra had gotten lucky. She hadn’t expected to find a lead or the next season of The Cold Trail when she called Lieutenant Tyler Omari.

  “Lieutenant Omari, just checking in. Anything happening out your way today?” she’d asked down the line.

  Tyler Omari had waited for a beat to answer. That was when she’d known it was a good idea to pounce. Normally, Officer Omari said, “Nothing doing” when she asked what was happening. That fast. Nothing doing. Without fail.

  This time, he’d hesitated, and so she’d pounced—lightly, but a pounce, nonetheless.

  She’d pushed him to give her a little more, and now she was here.

  He’d let her know where to be when to be, and so she was. And since she was the only one to have called and listened and then pounced, well, the daily news operations of the region were out of luck on this story. If this turned into a story.

  They were investigating possible human remains at the High Timbers Outlet Mall site. If the PR firm that managed the property had a clue what the crews were digging for, she’d probably be pushed farther back. But right now, it was just a construction crew and a cop who trusted her.

  So, she could see a lot. She took a few still pictures. And then some video. If she needed a visual, it wouldn’t be a closeup. Kendra had a reputation for protecting victims, even decades after people had forgotten their names. She would do the same here.

  None of these photos would be published. But Kendra knew sometimes she saw things differently from other people. Maybe something in the earth—now being turned gently by a few junior members of the OHP post—would reveal a clue to her. Or lead her down a path.

  As that thought lingered, an officer put up his hand and yelled, “Stop, stop, stop!” to the half a dozen others at the site.

  “Omari, take a look,” the officer added.

  Tyler Omari stepped closer. Kendra did as well.

  It was small, maybe no longer than Kendra herself. The troopers used a shovel to carefully brush away the crumbling dirt.

  But it was unmistakable, what they’d found. A shredded garbage bag, covered in dust, a tuft of hair, and the bones of what appeared to be a long-dead woman.

  Omari got closer. He used a pen to clear the bag from the body it had concealed.

  Kendra watched as long-buried debris wafted in the hot air around the disintegrating plastic. A dry wind rustled the bag, and a crumpled old snack wrapper floated away. Kendra’s eyes followed it for a second. It was escaping, she thought. Unlike the person—clearly, a woman—had been able to do.

  This woman had been discarded like refuse. She had been dumped here decades ago.

  Kendra wouldn’t be the only member of the media on this site for long.

  Chapter 3

  One thing was certain, construction on High Timbers Outlet Mall was at a standstill.

  “We’re going to have to take our cues from BCI,” Omari told her.

  “Are they on the way?” Kendra asked.

  The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation would do the science of identifying who this was and what happened if they could. The closest office was in Bowling Green, one county south of where they stood on I-75.

  Kendra looked at the remains, unmoved, as they waited for experts from BCI to direct the next steps. The bag used to haul this woman away was mostly gone. It concealed nothing.

  There was no gore or really anything soft. There was brown hair, though. It was long. Kendra stared.

  “You going to be okay?” Omari asked her.

  “Me? Yes, I’m fine.” But there was a vague nausea in her stomach that wanted to crawl up to her throat. She swallowed.

  Omari handed her a bottle of water. “Hydrate. It’s hot.”

  “Thank you,” Kendra took a sip. He was right. The cool water was an instant tonic. They’d been standing in the hot sun for a while. She only had this morning’s coffee in her stomach. The water helped. She heard Kyle, Shoop, just about everyone who cared about her nagging in her ear. Didjaeet? Midwestern for “Did you eat?” And she always forgot.

  “Any idea on how long this has been here?” Kendra asked.

  “I’d say a couple decades at least,” Omari said.

  An older trooper joined them. He might be older, but Kendra could see that the younger Lieutenant Omari outranked Sergeant Newkirk.

  “Yeah, this is an ‘80s baby, for sure,” Newkirk remarked.

  Kendra winced at the description.

  “That’s going way back to your era,” Omari said, and it felt like a little insult to Newkirk. A little ribbing to put him in place.

  Newkirk hooked his thumbs around his belt as the three of them continued to try to categorize what they were looking at.

  “What’s around her neck?" Omari asked, and Kendra followed his gaze.

  Pink fabric circled the neck of the corpse.

  Kendra looked closer and realized what it was.

  “Those are her tights. Her tights are wrapped around her neck.”

  “Well, I’ll be. Looks like another one. Humph. It’s been a while.”

  Kendra and Omari both looked at Newkirk. He paused a beat, knowing he had their full attention.

  “Probably a hooker or runaway. Rash of them back in the ‘80s. Nobody Girls,” Newkirk said.

  “What?”

  “The Nobody Girls—no one gives a damn where they came from, and nobody notices when they are missing.” Newkirk scratched his ear.

  Omari made an exasperated sound, the kind you make when the older generation says something inappropriate at the family holiday dinner, then said, “I’m going to check on BCI, get an ETA.”

  They both left Kendra alone. She kneeled down to get a closer look.

  The Nobody Girls, that was what he’d said. Had no one in her life cared? Was she a runaway? Or did a boyfriend lash out?

  “Who are you?” Kendra said quietly.

  She didn’t know the answer. But she would.

  Even if no one cared before, when this woman was alive, Kendra gave a damn now.

  She wasn’t nobody.

  The phrase rang in her ears.

  The Nobody Girls.

  Chapter 4

  Kendra sat in her office at WPLE, Port Lawrence Public Radio and Television. Her scalp was burned, no question. She rubbed it.

  It was late. She’d stayed at the scene most of the afternoon. And as suspected, the local media had soon shown up.

  There were live reports and breathless breaking news cut-ins. They’d have to report, explain, and then quickly move on. Kendra knew what it was like, always on to the next story. It was what had frustrated her about her days in television news. She knew she tended to get obsessive and wanted to know everything she could about a subject that grabbed her. This wasn’t great when you were doing three different stories a day, but her propensity to go down rabbit holes perfectly matched this job as a
cold case podcaster.

  Kendra didn’t have to move on from the body she’d seen. This was good since she couldn’t. The idea that no one cared about this woman in life had taken hold of Kendra.

  Kendra was lucky. She’d been a victim of trauma, of violence. But she was lucky people had cared. They cared too much sometimes. Her disappearance as a child and subsequent escape was big news. And it stayed news, thanks to the privilege she’d been born into. Her dad was the influential union boss in Port Lawrence, her mom, a popular politician. There wasn’t a person in town who didn’t know what had happened to Kendra Dillon when she was a little girl walking home from school.

  And she was a happy ending in their minds, a positive outcome they could feel relieved about. They could decide that things weren’t all bad because look what happened to Kendra Dillon? She’s alive!

  But that wasn’t the case for the woman they’d found today. Kendra didn’t have a date or a name. Who was she? Were people looking for her? Were there flyers and pleas to the local news when she didn’t come home? Where was her home?

  Kendra had a million questions and no answers.

  Only that phrase, nobody girls.

  “Hey, looks like you stumbled into the news today.”

  Kendra jumped. Art Cabrera, station manager of WPLE and her boss, had startled her out of her deep thoughts. Art looked ready to leave for the night. He had his briefcase in one hand and car key fob in the other.

  “I did, yeah, all the stations were there,” Kendra replied.