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

  “Okay,” Agent Price replied.

  “You’re at the office?”

  “Yes, I have a tendency to work late and forget what time it is.”

  Kendra realized Agent Price was cut from the same cloth as she was.

  “It looks like there we’ve got inconclusive gastrointestinal results on Margo Kasinski,” Kendra explained, “but the others, the lines are redacted. The results on Ellis, Anderson, Hodges, and Jackson, along with the two Jane Does, don’t have the gastrointestinal results redacted. It isn’t much, but I was wondering if there was any reason, after forty years?”

  “Hang on. Let me pull the originals. What I provided you are the copies that were released during the initial investigation. Can I put you on hold?”

  “Sure.”

  Kendra waited a moment. But the speed at which the agent handled her request made Kendra feel like they had an ally in the FBI. Kendra gave Shoop a thumbs up to indicate Price appeared to be helping them out on this.

  Before long, Agent Price was back on the line. “I’ve got the originals here, now. The stomach contents are the only thing redacted. The initial investigators used it as a possible way to identify a suspect or sift through credible tips. But nothing came of it. I’m going to send you the unredacted portions.”

  “Anything interesting?”

  “No, pretty standard.”

  “I appreciate your help and how fast you were. I was expecting a runaround.”

  “The files are on my desk, thanks to the Hawkins case. And I listened to your podcast on that missing boy. The Ethan Peltz case. You’re a good investigator. I’m happy to help you. Even though the stomach contents aren’t bombshell or anything, I’m afraid. Looks like snacks you could find anywhere.”

  “Thank you again.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  A few minutes later, Kendra opened her email, and the files she’d requested were in her inbox. She sent them to the printer. Soon they were poring over the unredacted files.

  “Hey, this is a better list here, the stomach contents, on uh, four of the victims.”

  Kendra read through the new information. Agent Price had been accurate. The autopsy reports showed snack foods in various stages of digestion.

  “The stages of digestion indicated that they ate something a few hours before they died,” Shoop said. “But there’s nothing new in that.”

  “No, I guess not.” Kendra had tracked down more information, but it wasn’t a smoking gun.

  Kendra may not have been convinced that Ewald was the serial killer the FBI suspected he was, but after reading the files again, she was starting to come around. Ewald likely killed these women. He was a predator in the parking lot.

  Except then there was Cynthia Hawkins.

  Why was she out at night? By the accounts the FBI relayed, she was a wife, a mom. She wasn’t on the margins or a runaway.

  And yet, she was dead in the same way as the other victims. Kendra combed through the file. Eventually, she knew all there was to know about the Hawkins case.

  And she was ready to talk to the family.

  Kendra looked over at Shoop. Thanks to her intrepid associate producer, Kendra was going to be able to get to know Cynthia Hawkins. The woman who’d started her on this path.

  Maybe she’d get a new clue, but certainly, she’d get a better picture of who this woman was. Kendra wanted to erase the bag of bones image that had been burned into her cornea when they’d discovered the body at High Timbers. She wanted to replace it with the real person.

  Chapter 22

  Kendra sat across from Tim Hawkins and his youngest daughter, Mandy. From her reading, Kendra knew Mandy was the youngest of Cynthia Hawkins’s two girls.

  Cynthia Hawkins’ husband, who was cleared at the time of the initial investigation, slouched at the shoulders as they sat on the couch in the front room. He still lived in the same house he’d shared with Cynthia.

  Mandy patted her dad’s shoulder.

  “Thank you for taking the time to do this with me,” Kendra began. “It must be strange, bringing this all back up again.”

  “To be honest, I can’t really believe we’re talking about this, that we finally know what happened,” said Mandy.

  Tim Hawkins looked away, out toward the bay window at the front of the room.

  “Do you remember your mother?” Kendra asked.

  Mandy held a picture of Cynthia with a toddler on her lap. They were sitting by a swing set. The photo was marked 1980.

  “I wish I could say yes. I wish I could tell you what her hair smelled like or how she laughed, but I was two.”

  Kendra nodded in understanding then turned to Tim. “I wonder, Mr. Hawkins, what went through your mind when you got the call that Cynthia had been identified after all this time?”

  “She was dead all along,” he said. There was no emotion surrounding the statement.

  “My dad has some issues with dementia,” Mandy explained.

  He looked at her with daggers in his eyes.

  “I understand,” Kendra said quickly.

  “I thought maybe she’d run off,” Tim said.

  “Dad said she went out for a pack of cigarettes,” Mandy added. “He thought that was the best way to explain it, I guess.”

  “Did your mom smoke?” Kendra asked.

  “It’s a figure of speech, girl,” Tim scolded Kendra.

  “Sure, sure.” Kendra decided to try to get more from Mandy. “What did they tell you about the man they think killed your mom?”

  “Oh, well, that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. You know, this predator was out there, The 75 Ripper, and she was in the path. Just bad luck.”

  “Ned Wayne Ewald found his other victims at truck stops or diners along the highway, would there be a reason your mother was at a truck stop?”

  “I really don’t know. It was so long ago, and I mean, who knows?”

  “I understand. How are you doing with all this?”

  “My mom was a fairytale to me, a story that didn’t have an ending. And now it does, not a pretty one, but it’s an ending. We don’t have to wonder.”

  Tim Hawkins made a sound. It was a sound that seemed a lot like disgust. Kendra didn’t know if the disgust was about the fairytale analogy or something else. The husband had been cleared. She remembered that. But he sure wasn’t the picture of a man overcome with relief at the resolution of this horrible tragedy.

  “Whoring and not getting paid for it, hmmph.”

  Kendra tried not to look shocked at what had just come out of the old man’s mouth. But she was.

  “Dad, stop.” Mandy put a hand on his. He snarled at her.

  He was a junkyard dog of a man, Kendra decided. Although he suffered from dementia, so who knew how he perceived any of this?

  Something that had to have consumed his entire life forty years ago was a distant memory now. Or was it happening to him now? There was no way to know.

  Cynthia Hawkins’ husband had moved on, and he had every right to.

  Kendra softened her attitude toward the old man. She had no right to judge his emotional state or reaction.

  “You have an older sister. Is she available? I wonder if I could talk to her. She might remember more, you know, to tell your mom’s story?”

  “I doubt it.”’

  “That one,” Tim Hawkins said.

  There was a definite bad vibe between the father and daughter when Kendra mentioned the older sister. Kendra wondered about the source, but then, it was a family. Her own family right now was a simmering pot of conflict and upheaval.

  It was just that neither of the two of them could offer much insight into the woman that was his wife and her mother.

  “Can you tell me about your mom? Did she have hobbies or a favorite restaurant?” Mandy shook her head and lifted her shoulders. She didn’t know.

  And then Tim shifted in his seat, clearly preparing to speak again. Mandy’s jaw was tense with dread at what he might
say.

  “She liked sewing,” Tim said. “She was good at sewing. She made the girls Halloween costumes. They were clowns, little clowns. She hemmed my dress pants. She made the curtains. Never asked for money for clothes. Made all her own. That was admirable.”

  Kendra looked at the bay window again. The window dressings were faded with age, but upon closer inspection, she could see the careful pleats, the brocade at the hem, and the faded pattern that matched the couch.

  Cynthia Hawkins liked to sew. It was a simple but heartbreaking detail.

  “Did she learn in home economics class or from her mother?” Kendra asked, working to pull more from Tim Hawkins.

  “What? Whose mother? What are you talking about?”

  Kendra looked at the Mandy. She patted her dad’s hand. His eyes seemed to lose focus. The fog of memory would be thick on the best of days, after all this time, much more so if the man was struggling with diminished capacity. Kendra turned to Mandy and realized they’d given her all they could. Neither had much to offer when it came to the life of Cynthia Hawkins. Kendra felt grief for them and for the dead woman.

  “I really appreciate you taking the time to share with me and answer my questions.”

  “Your producer was nice. Those others who called weren’t so nice.”

  Score another one for Shoop, thought Kendra.

  “I’m glad. We understand what it’s like, a little anyway, to deal with these situations, after all these years,” Kendra told Mandy. “We’re devoting an episode to your mom, but I don’t have an airdate yet.”

  Kendra said her goodbyes. The house was weighted in sadness, it almost looked sunken in, compared to the other homes on the block. Kendra was relieved to get away from it. But did she leave with more on Cynthia Hawkins?

  She had a few more photos. That was something. It would be easier to tell this story than it was for the other victims in some ways. At least she had a kernel of the woman’s life.

  But she also knew that she didn’t have a complete picture of Cynthia any more than she did for Linda Kay or Sincere.

  The names and faces haunted her and propelled her forward to continue to try.

  Chapter 23

  Kendra and Shoop continued to pluck away at the information that they had. They had several more victims to try to track.

  Kendra looked up at the smart board. Of eight known victims, they had only been able to track down friends or family of three, which was only because the Hawkins case was more recent. And she didn’t fit the profile of the rest of the victims.

  That was something to consider, to mull over, but for now, for whatever reason, all they knew was that Cynthia Hawkins had left her home and entered the snare of Ned Wayne Ewald.

  She was murdered in much the same way as Linda Kay Ellis, Sincere Anderson, and five other women.

  Kendra and Shoop spend the next day sifting through the Hawkins interviews. And by the end of the day, they had an episode, but it felt thin. Kendra had hoped for more from a woman who hadn’t lived on the fringes but was a wife and mother.

  “It’s just the daughter was so young, she doesn’t remember her mother, and the father, well, he’s not capable of it,” Kendra said. She couldn’t call this episode complete. It just felt like she should try harder, push a little more for Cynthia.

  “The part about her sewing? That gutted me when I listened,” Shoop admitted.

  And it was true, in that portion, a fog had lifted over Tim Hawkins, and he’d revealed one true thing about his wife. A beautiful thing, her passion for sewing. But he’s also said something about whoring, so all of it could be a jumble from who knows where in his brain.

  “It’s just, ugh, I wish we had more. I wish we had more on all of them.”

  Five. There were five out of eight victims that were only grainy photos and autopsy reports.

  Kendra slid her hand through her hair. Tendrils were a nice name for the dark red whisps escaping her ponytail. She yanked out the rubber band sagging down the nape of her neck and raked the hair back in. She gathered her hair, wound the rubber band twice around the fistful of hair, and felt that was the only thing she’d actually accomplished today. After a day of pushing hard, she’d managed to resecure her hair. That was it.

  Five names. With nothing to turn them into anything but names, they were sidebars to Ewald’s headlines and news clippings. They deserved more.

  “Look, there’s no way we’re likely to get anything on Jane Doe One or Two. There are no names to go with them. They’re on the list because they fit the pattern,” said Shoop.

  Kendra looked at Jane Doe One and Jane Doe Two. One was the fourth body discovered in 1980, the other was the second to last discovered.

  Like the other six, they fit every detail; the method they were killed, the abuse they suffered, the way they were disposed of, like so much garbage.

  But they didn’t have names. One was found in Kentucky, the other near Chattanooga, Tennessee. Nothing about either of them could be singled out to follow up on. No tattoo, no article of clothing or shoes, no jewelry. They were simply young women remembered because of their association to a killer whose infamy had only just begun.

  Kendra leaned back in her office chair and stared, trying to magically pierce through the decades. She looked at the board again.

  “That means we have three that need more from us. Three more Nobody Girls that we have at least a sliver of hope on,” Kendra said.

  “There’s nothing on Susan Hodges, a complete dead end. I do have a little on Margo Kasinski. She was still in high school. I have an old yearbook. She’s in one group photo. But no luck on any of the people with her in that photo. And no luck on any teachers, after forty years. Kasinski coverage did mention a boyfriend, questioned and then, I think, advised to shut up. Obviously, no arrest. Krissy Jackson has no one. I can’t find anyone in her family or records of her schooling. Like, nothing.”

  “Wait, you said Margo Kasinski had a boyfriend?”

  “Yeah, according to the original reports. I have a name on him, thanks to one newspaper article.”

  “Okay, keep on that.”

  “Well, at least with Cynthia Hawkins, you have something, even if it’s not the whole picture.”

  “True. I am just going to sit in my office and hope something reveals itself.”

  “Yep, sometimes that’s all you can do. And Kendra, we’re doing all we can do. And the FBI is sure Ewald is the guy. You don’t have to save the world on this one.”

  Kendra appreciated the reassurance. But still, no actual physical evidence to link him to the victims put an asterisk on this story.

  Maybe they all couldn’t be solved. Ewald wasn’t the only serial killer behind bars for crimes other than serial killing.

  Kendra looked at Hawkins’s file. Because it was the most recent discovery, it was the least helpful in terms of physical evidence. It was also the only body she’d witnessed actually being unearthed. Thanks to Omari’s tip. She closed her eyes and deliberately forced herself to be back in that hot sun. The bones of Cynthia Hawkins peeked out of the tattered garbage bag, food wrappers littering the spot where a woman was buried.

  Kendra called out to Shoop. “Did you find the address of, uh, Barbara Hawkins by chance?”

  “Yeah, called and ask and got a few hang-ups. Are we sure we need it? Three people on one victim and still none on Margo or Susan and Krissy.”

  “I don’t really have any other leads. At least with Cynthia, we have a story to tell.”

  Kendra took the sticky note that Shoop had handed her.

  Kendra made a decision: Barbara Hawkins might be able to say no on the phone, but maybe, in person, Kendra would be able to turn it into a yes.

  “I’m going there,” Kendra stood up. She looked around for her bag.

  “Now?”

  “Yep. We can’t give up on Margo Kasinski, Krissy Jackson, or Susan Hodges. Nor can we give up on Cynthia.”

  “I won’t. Is that my focus while you k
ick down the door?”

  “Yes.”

  Kendra found her Tory Burch Tote bag and began her pre-flight OCD check of its contents. A check that she’d done before she’d come into the office, but that was OCD. She had to do it again.

  “Okay, I’m going to get the older daughter. Or she’ll slam the door in my face. Either way, we’ll have tried all the avenues to put this episode together, and we’ll beg. We’ll straight up beg at the end of the next episode for more on those three women.”

  “It’s worked before, the begging on air,” Shoop said.

  “Yes.”

  Confident that she had what she needed, Kendra headed to the home of Barb Hawkins, now Woodside. She lived in a suburb outside of town. It was about a thirty-minute drive.

  To say she didn’t know what possessed her was a lie. Kendra did know what possessed her to push harder. She was nearly one of those stories, the ones that ended at childhood, cut off abruptly. She fought so hard to keep going when the odds were stacked toward her being murdered in a basement, dumped somewhere, forgotten by everyone, either because the story was short or because the memory was too painful. That was what her mother did; Stephanie admitted it. She avoided talking about the worst time in her life as a mother. When Kendra was kidnapped, it wasn’t denial. It was survival.

  Kendra was going to keep trying to find people she could gently move through the pain of memory. She had to try again before they finished this season.

  Kendra found the house. Barb Hawkins Woodside lived on a quiet street. Kendra drove past automatically sprinkled lawns, and neighbors pulling weeds, and people enjoying their evening walks. It looked lovely to live here.

  Barb Hawkins Woodside resided in a colonial-style two-story. The garage was open, and Kendra saw bikes hanging from the ceiling, tools on a shelf that spanned the back wall, and garbage cans pulled to the front of the garage but not in. Every type of ball from just about any sport you could play also dotted the garage space.