He starts to say something, but I hang up. My mind races with the information I’ve just been given. Three similar murders in Alaska, over three thousand miles away. Is there a connection? Could it be the same killer? If so, what took the killer from Ohio to Alaska and then back to Ohio?

I go back to the search engine and pull up everything I can find on the Tanana River Killer. I’m reading a small article from the Tanana Leader when a name stops me cold.

Nate Detrick, a guide for Yukon Hunting Tours, discovered the
body and contacted police . . .

I almost can’t believe my eyes. What are the odds of similar murders that happened thousands of miles apart touching the same man’s life twice? In some small corner of my mind, a memory pings my brain. A statement Glock made earlier.

Detrick used to be some big-shot hunting guide in Alaska.

That’s when I remember this isn’t the only place the sheriff’s name has come up in the course of my research. Curious, I go to the Holmes County Auditor’s Web site. An honest-to-God chill sweeps through me when I see that in September 1994, Nathan Detrick and his wife, Grace, sold their 2,500 square foot home in Millersburg.

I don’t dare acknowledge the connection my mind has just made. This has to be a coincidence. Nathan Detrick is a cop. To suspect him would go beyond ridiculous. He’s above reproach. Above suspicion.

Or is he?

Detrick is one of a handful of people who moved away from Painters Mill during the sixteen-year period. I now know he lived in Alaska where three similar murders occurred. I’ve been a cop long enough to realize this warrants follow-up.

I look down at my hands to find them shaking. I know I’m wrong about this. Coincidences do occur, and I’m an idiot for looking at Detrick. But the sheriff fits the profile far better than Jonas. My cop’s gut tells me to keep digging.

Remembering the list of snowmobile registrations I asked Pickles for yesterday, I quickly rifle through the papers on the table until I find it. It’s a typed list of names of people who own blue or silver snowmobiles registered in Coshocton and Holmes Counties. Midway down, Detrick’s name appears. He owns a blue Yamaha.

“No way,” I whisper. “No way.”

I go back to the computer and start looking at Detrick in earnest. Half an hour into my search, I discover a newspaper story in the Dayton Daily News from June 1986 about a bright young police officer who recently relocated from Fairbanks, Alaska, to join the Dayton Police Department. Donning full dress uniform, flanked by his wife, a handsome young Detrick smiles for the camera. The story is dated two months after the last murder in Alaska.

I begin looking for similar murders in and around Dayton during the time Detrick was there. I hit a dozen Web sites, one leading to the other—newspaper, television and radio Web sites, a few nonrestricted law enforcement sites, even a Crime Stoppers—but I find nothing. Only when I expand my search to the surrounding states do I hit pay dirt. A story in the archive section of The Kentucky Post from March 1989 snags my eye.