“Sure. Let me pull up the files.”
She heard a file drawer opening then papers rustling.
“Okay, the first one—sixteen-year-old Nina Gillis. According to her parents, at one time she had a drinking problem, but she’d recently been clean.”
“Did she have a child?” Ellie asked.
A hesitation. “No, but she was almost six months pregnant at the time she jumped. Her folks claimed she’d been depressed for months and believe that was the reason she took her own life.”
And her baby’s. Ellie drummed her fingers on her desk. “What about the baby’s father?”
“Parents didn’t know his name, said she never told them. Insisted he wasn’t in the picture.”
Hmm. Same with Minnie. A drug problem, depression and father to her baby unknown.
“Did you find evidence suggesting she might have been pushed instead of jumping?” Ellie asked.
“Not really. No witnesses. She left a suicide note.”
So had Minnie. But Ellie knew suicide wasn’t the cause of death.
“What about the other girl?”
“Seventeen-year-old Jordan Orwell. Her father is deceased, but according to her mother, Jordan wanted to get married and have a family and had dreams of college. But something changed when she was sixteen. She started drinking and ended up pregnant. She gave the baby up for adoption when the child was born.”
Ellie’s breath caught. Another girl with an addiction problem. Another child. “Was the father in the picture?”
“Not that I know of. The mother claimed Jordan refused to reveal his name.”
Ellie drummed her fingers again. “This may sound like an odd question, but were feathers on the ground near the girls’ bodies?”
Papers shuffled again. “As a matter of fact, there were crow feathers. But birds and crows are prevalent in the area. Birdwatchers go to the ridge all the time, and we’ve had a few hunters shooting the crows, too.”
“I thought crows were protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act,” Ellie said.
“They are,” Deputy Rouse replied. “Although states vary. If the crows are deemed dangerous or cause property damage, some states allow it. The town and mountains are more isolated and off the grid, so there’s not much control.”
“Will you send me a copy of your files along with photographs of the scenes and the suicide notes?”
“What do you want with them?” he asked. “If you think we did something wrong, we didn’t. We went by the book, lady.”
Ellie stiffened at his defensive tone. “It’s Detective, Deputy Rouse. Just send them over.”
She didn’t wait for a response. Sometimes small-town law enforcement were overly sensitive. Sometimes they missed or overlooked things. Sometimes they just didn’t want anyone in their business or they simply wanted to tie up a case too quickly.
She glanced at Iris’s photo and swallowed hard. To hell with his pride.
All that mattered was finding Iris and the person who killed her mother.
FORTY
Mystic
Derrick exited the conference room with Tilly by his side, grateful to have connected with her both professionally and personally on the last case. She was gorgeous, smart, inquisitive and a true crime buff who worked for theAtlanta Journal-Constitutionpaper focusing on small-town mysteries, which made her an asset with the cases they tackled on the AT.
The sight of those feathers and that dead crow on Ellie’s bed haunted him. His stomach balled into a fist. She’d been targeted before working other cases, but this unsub was truly disturbed. Ellie might be involved with McClain now, but Derrick still cared about her. He scratched his head. Maybe too much.
He glanced at Tilly and smiled. She was weaving her way into his heart, too.