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Back The Silenced Women Save as PDF
Chapters (50)
  1. Front Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright
  4. Contents
  5. Part I
  6. Chapter One
  7. Chapter Two
  8. Chapter Three
  9. Chapter Four
  10. Chapter Five
  11. Chapter Six
  12. Chapter Seven
  13. Chapter Eight
  14. Chapter Nine
  15. Chapter Ten
  16. Chapter Eleven
  17. Chapter Twelve
  18. Chapter Thirteen
  19. Part II
  20. Chapter Fourteen
  21. Chapter Fifteen
  22. Chapter Sixteen
  23. Chapter Seventeen
  24. Chapter Eighteen
  25. Chapter Nineteen
  26. Chapter Twenty
  27. Chapter Twenty-One
  28. Chapter Twenty-Two
  29. Chapter Twenty-Three
  30. Chapter Twenty-Four
  31. Chapter Twenty-Five
  32. Chapter Twenty-Six
  33. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  34. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  35. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  36. Part III
  37. Chapter Thirty
  38. Chapter Thirty-One
  39. Chapter Thirty-Two
  40. Chapter Thirty-Three
  41. Chapter Thirty-Four
  42. Chapter Thirty-Five
  43. Chapter Thirty-Six
  44. Chapter Thirty-Seven
  45. Chapter Thirty-Eight
  46. Read on for a sneak peek at the next Violent Crime Investigations Team mystery!
  47. Chapter One
  48. Acknowledgments
  49. About the Author
  50. Back Cover

Eden looked at the names of the six victims on the file folders. If she ruled out Jane Doe and Amanda Smith on the basis of ideal victim type, and MaryEllen Reese on the basis of location, that left Foss, Hart, and Hunter. But such sorting is based on academic profiling theory, which is disputed by some investigators in the field.

Eden pushed away from her desk and followed the hallway to the restroom. At the sink, she ran cold water in her cupped hands and splashed her face. Water dripping, she stared in the mirror. Why am I here? What sort of job is this? I could quit tonight. Write a letter of resignation. Be back home in Connecticut tomorrow. Lieutenant Mahler would be relieved.

She was hired straight into VCI detectives, without time as a uniform officer, on the strength of her work on the unsolved Highway 60 murders—first as a college thesis and then in the FBI. Chief Truro mentioned it during his interview. “You really dug into that one, didn’t you?” he said with a conspiratorial smile. By which he really meant, just how twisted are you?

What would you know about it? Eden thought. But all she said was, “Actually, it started as an assignment.”

“This one’s for you, Eden,” Professor Hiatt had announced at the beginning of her senior year as she held out a large accordion folder stuffed with paper on the Highway 60 case. Later Eden wondered: What sort of case was it for a twenty-one-year-old student? Was Hiatt crazy? Or, with the pashmina wrapped loosely around her neck and the eyes that crinkled whenever she smiled, was she wearing just the sort of disguise that waited at the gates of hell?

The case was notorious: nine women in five states, all killed the same way. Asphyxiation from dirt stuffed in the mouth. Duct tape sealing the lips, limbs bound with strips of cotton sheeting. The only suspect: a truck driver named Albert McKinley Jory. Middle-aged, large acne-scarred face, hair pulled into a ponytail. Arrested and released.

Eden researched in a study cubicle in the dark basement stacks of Williston Hall, the campus library. But the book titles and crime-scene photos attracted the attention of other students walking past her desk. After Christmas she moved to her dormitory room, a single on the second floor of North Rockefeller Hall. She worked at night, when the other rooms on her floor were quiet.