She stood suddenly and walked over to the couch, sitting beside me and adjusting the laptop so I could view the screen. “This is everything I have so far.”

Her screen filled with multiple sub-folders, all labeled with the victims’ names and different key parts of the case. I spotted at least fifteen names and even the High Tide Pub. Lenore opened a few and started scrolling, but it was hard to track what each document was with her own naming conventions and organization.

“May I?” I asked, motioning to the computer.

She handed it over hesitantly, and I clicked quickly through many of the documents, reading over all of the information she’d compiled.

Ages of the victims, the areas they lived in, their occupations, just about every detail of their life that could have made them a target. She’d started a diagram to link similarities, but there were none that connected all of them.

“Impressive,” I admitted. I knew recruits who wouldn’t have gone as far as she had.

“Thanks,” she breathed.

I found a stray folder with a single article inside. It filled the entire screen with a familiar news article. I’d seen it before: the final article published on the Coastal Killer’s last victim, the Jane Doe who had never been identified. She left the hospital before anyone had a chance to make a positive identification.

The article was short, discussing the curfew police implemented and the missing Jane Doe. I knew how the story ended. No one ever came forward with more information on her.

I didn’t blame whoever they were. Their luck was spent on surviving that attack, the one that ended the Coastal Killer’s rampage. For all we knew, the killing stopped because Jane Doe vanished. Their anonymity and disappearance could be the one thing holding the unsub back from surfacing again.

Their one failure.

It was also the one lead the FBI failed to follow. The woman left the hospital without a trace. It was the closest large hospital in the area, about thirty minutes away. As the article detailed, she’d been stabbed and taken there for critical care. When Jane Doe woke after being unconscious and being stitched up, she vanished before nurses could gather her information. Without prescriptions and proper wound care, I would be shocked to learn they’d survived, or with minimal health issues after all of that.

“You don’t have any more leads on Jane Doe,” I noted.

Beyond the article, there was nothing else in the folder, no information known about the Jane Doe or leads on where she may have gone.

“The police never identified her.” She shrugged. “There wasn’t much to go on.”