“Manual strangulation.”
“Those are our common denominators,” Joanna observed. “Manual strangulation, no sexual assault, and disposal in a body of water.”
“Correct,” Anna Rae said, “and here’s a case from 1977. This one was a fifteen-year-old boy named Michael Young from Shiprock,New Mexico. After hanging out with a group of friends, he left to go home but never arrived. His body was found in the San Juan River two days after his mother reported him missing. Manual strangulation, no sexual assault, and his signature red bandanna was missing. So with both these cases we have something missing. What about your victim?”
“A shoelace was missing from his Keds,” Joanna answered.
“It sounds as though Mr. Roper likes to keep trophies.”
“Yes, it does,” Joanna agreed. “Was anything missing from Amanda Hudson’s body?”
“Not that I know of,” Anna Rae said, “but I’ll have Philip Dark Moon get in touch with her brother and see if he knows of anything that should have been there that wasn’t.”
“Yes, do that,” Joanna agreed, “but what time of year did these cases happen?”
“Inez disappeared in June of 1972. Michael disappeared in mid-August of 1977.”
“Our understanding is that Roper traveled primarily during the summers, supposedly going back and forth between Minnesota and Arizona, which, it turns out, wasn’t true. We have it on good authority that once he quit his teaching job there he never returned,” Joanna supplied. “But mid-August would coincide with his needing to be back in Bisbee in time for the start of school the first of September. It’s sounding more and more like he’s our guy.”
“I wholeheartedly agree,” Anna Rae said, “and the palm print gives us a connection to Amanda Hudson, but I don’t yet see how we’re going to connect him to these other cases.”
Suddenly, a light bulb exploded inside Joanna’s head. If Roper had targeted victims from small communities all over the country, there were probably lots of jurisdictions like hers—ones with limited resources—who had an aging, still unsolved cold case on their books, one that continued to haunt the guys who had investigated it without ever being able to resolve it. If you’re a homicide cop, those are the ones that never go away.
“Wait a minute,” she said excitedly. “What do we do when we have an unidentified suspect on the loose?”
“Send out a BOLO, of course,” Anna Rae replied, but then she quickly understood where Joanna was going. “You’re saying that, instead of telling other jurisdictions to be on the lookout for a suspect, we send out one for possible victims?”
“Exactly,” Joanna said, “victims of unsolved murders with the same commonalities we’ve already established.”
“What a great idea,” Anna Rae said.
“Yes,” Joanna said, “but that’s not something a small-town sheriff from Podunk, Arizona, can pull off.”
“Not to worry,” Anna Rae replied. “Leave that to me. Somebody from the FBI would be able to do that in a blink. I may not have enough influence to make it happen on my own, but my boss sure as hell does. She just happens to be the secretary of the interior. Since your case is primary, I’ll have her tell them that information on any hits is to be forwarded directly to you.”
“Sounds like it pays to have friends in high places,” Joanna observed.
Anna Rae Green laughed. “Sometimes,” she said, “but a lot of the time it can be a pain in the ass.”
Joanna was home and was just sitting down todinner that night when Arturo called. Not wanting the kids to hear anything about the ongoing case, she went into the other room to answer.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Aña just left,” he told her.
“And?”
“I’m not sure how much this helps, but when Señor Santa Claus delivers sack lunches, he does so out of a blue bag. Not a red one or a green one, but a blue one.”
“Interesting,” Joanna said. “According to Detective Howell, the Target in Sierra Vista had recently sold five of those. So if the onewith the lunches turns out to be the same dye lot and item number as the one holding Xavier Delgado, that could be the link we need. The thing is, I still don’t believe we have enough evidence to go for a search warrant.”
“When he’s down here tomorrow,” Arturo said, “I’ll have people keeping an eye on him. If he tries to make a run for it, we’ll grab him.”
“Good,” Joanna said. “Appreciate it.”
Back at the table, Butch gave her a questioning look.
“Just work,” she said. “No biggie.”
