Chapter 5

Daphne and Fred arrived at the police station before 8 AM.

Having a slice of toast each for breakfast, along with a mug of black coffee each, they set off at 7 AM, arriving at the station just after 10 past.

When they arrived, there was a car in the parking lot. They knew it could not be Fischer's car, they would have recognised it.

When they stepped into the station, an officer was sitting at the desk.

He wore the navy blue police uniform and was busy on the computer when they walked in.

They didn't go unnoticed by him, and he looked up and smiled at them both.

He was of average height and had a decent build for a police officer. He had short thick dark hair and brown eyes that seemed to sparkle as he spoke to Fred and Daphne; 'You must be the big guns the commish was talking about.' He stood up as he spoke, and he extended his hand. Daphne looked at his name badge; OFFICER QUINNY

She shook his hand, then it was Fred's turn, 'I'm Detective Fred Jones, this is Detective Daphne Blake.'

Officer Quinny smiled at them both, 'Officer Quinny, but you can call me Michael.'

'How long have you been a police officer, Michael?' Fred asked.

'Nearly 10 years.' Michael said with pride, 'What about you guys?'

'Not as long as you,' Fred smiled, 'Nearly seven years for both of us.'

'Really? You both look so young.' Michael replied.

'We graduated when we were 22 and then started in Crime Scene Analysis a little while later and then moved up to detective rank a little over 5 years ago.' Daphne explained.

The officer picked a white mug with the SPD – Sandpoint Police Department – logo on the side, and he took a slurp of his drink.

Then he smiled, 'You two have been in this biz together all that time huh?'

Daphne nodded.

'That's nice, you two make a cute couple.'

Daphne cleared her throat and Fred looked away awkwardly, 'We're not a couple.' Daphne said.

'Oh, sorry.' Officer Quinny spoke.

Thankfully, Fischer walked into the station before Fred and Daphne were stuck with finding an answer.

'Good morning Detectives. Officer Quinny.'

'Morning.' The officer spoke, 'Have a good night Commish?'

Fischer nodded, 'I had a reasonable sleep, the baby was up most of the night, but that's Richard's responsibility when I have work.' She laughed, and Officer Quinny laughed along with her.

'You have a baby?' Fred asked.

'My granddaughter. My daughter and her husband are on vacation in Hawaii, it's their anniversary and my husband and I offered to have the baby whilst they were gone.' Fischer explained.

Then she clapped her hands together, 'Ok, Detective Wheeler will be here shortly, but until then I will update you both on this case.'

'We had a look over the file last night and we have a brief idea of what is going on.' Fred explained and the Commissioner nodded, 'That's good, hopefully, it won't take long and we can get into it.'

The Commissioner led Fred and Daphne through the station, up a flight of stairs and into a room which had a sign on the door reading OPERATIONS ROOM

Inside there was a round table in the middle of the room. At the back of the room were three whiteboards. One with photographs of the victims and a briefing of their age, weight, height, time and date of disappearance and the location of the disappearance. Daphne and Fred realised that all the victims were all identical twins.

The next one had photographs and location names of the crime scenes and the date and times the victims were found.

And finally, the last one had photographs of the bodies along with a few points from the autopsy report.

'Take a seat.' Fischer said as she turned to the side where there was a coffee pot, she put it on and it began brewing coffee.

Fred and Daphne took a seat at the table.

'How is the house?' Fischer asked as she sat at the table.

'It's great, very cosy.' Fred smiled.

Fischer smiled, 'Let's get started then.'

The coffee pot made a noise as it brewed, and Fischer reached into her bag and pulled out a file similar to Fred and Daphne's, which they had on the table in front of them.

Fischer cleared her throat, 'This all began back in January last year. A woman who lives down the street, not far from here, Mrs Caroline Tudor reported her son Joshua missing on the morning of January 8th. She said Joshua was taken from their home in the night. He was 19, I thought it was strange that someone would break into a house and take a 19-year-old boy. The Tudor's have a daughter, much younger, Catherine, she's 9.'

'And you thought if someone was going to break in and kidnap someone it would be the child, not the 19-year-old boy?' Fred suggested, and Fischer nodded to this. 'We thought the family might have had something to do with the disappearance, and we explained to them that it was strange to take a man rather than a child. What was stranger was that there seemed to be no sign of a break in. No forced entry, nothing to raise suspicion to a break in, but the front was unlocked.'

'What did they say?' Daphne asked.

'Well, they were cooperative.' Fischer began, 'And they all agreed that it was strange, even more, that nobody was disturbed in the night. They thought they would have heard Joshua fighting off his kidnapper. And after we searched the house we found no evidence that the Tudor's had used anything to subdue their son and the Tudor's had no idea why the door was locked because Caroline was certain she locked it.'

'He could have snuck out and left the door unlocked.' Daphne suggested.

Fischer nodded, folding her hands together, 'It was his twin brother Charlie who pointed that out. He said that he and Joshua used to leave their bedroom windows open ajar so they could sneak in at night when they were late home and the door was locked and they had no key. None of the windows were open, they were all locked and Peter Tudor said he was awake when all of his children went to bed.'

Fischer sighed heavily, her eyes glanced over to the coffee pot which had now been completed brewing and full pot sat waiting to be poured. 'Two days later, on January 9th, in the morning we had a frantic call from the Tudor's. I was dreading her saying that the child had been taken, but it was Charlie who was gone this time. Joshua's twin brother.'

Daphne and Fred both studied Fischer intently, and they could see the confusion on her face as she recalled the incident on the morning of the 9th January.

'The Tudor's were terrified that someone would come back for their daughter and they wanted to take her to Peter Tudor's parent's house near Boise. But I wanted to question the family first. The child, Catherine, said she heard nothing during the night, but she remembered that her mother had given her some medicine to help her sleep as she had a cold. Then I questioned the Tudors, separately, starting with Caroline. She had proof from her daughter's doctor that the medicine was for a cold that she couldn't get rid of, but I pressed her as I thought she could have given Catherine the medicine to make sure she'd stay asleep through the night. But neither she nor Peter had an explanation as to why their son's had gone missing two days from each other. I allowed them to take their daughter to her grandparents' house, but they must return to Sandpoint, and they did which surprised me.'

Fischer stood up and went to the coffee pot, 'Coffee?' She asked, and they both accepted the offer. Fischer offered them milk or sugar with their drinks, Fred took one sugar and a tiny splash milk, and Daphne had neither.

Fischer brought them their drinks before pouring her own, then she sat back at the table.

'Most of the town set out to find the boys. We're not a big town, so you can imagine we don't have a big school. Our elementary school and high school share the same building, but different blocks and the pre-school is next door. A lot of the kids used to see Charlie and Joshua taking Catherine to the elementary block before running to their class, even when they graduated Charlie still took her to school.'

'Where did the boys work?' Fred asked he and Daphne had both been taking notes during the briefing, which seemed to impress the commissioner.

'Joshua worked with Harry Thompson, he's our town's mechanic, and Charlie worked at the elementary school as a teaching assistant. They were having no trouble in their jobs.' Fischer took a sip of her coffee, 'Every day, people were out searching for the boys, then on January 14th, a search group were out looking and a man named Robert Greenwood who was part of the group, decided he would search the river again, and he saw something so he called the rest of the search team over.'

Daphne jotted down the name of the man Robert Greenwood then she stopped, she knew where this was going. She had read it in the file.

'They found Charlie Tudor's body on the bank, and his brother's body sticking out of the river.'

Fred ran his hand through his hair and he sat back in the chair, taking everything in.

'They were both strangled. And whoever had done it, it was clear that they were either trying to dump the bodies in the river but got caught, or they wanted someone to find them. As you can imagine, the Tudor's were devastated and they appealed for a killer to come clean and turn themselves in. There were no fingerprints on their of the bodies or their clothing, and there were multiple shoe prints at the scene but they led nowhere. As much as we tried, we couldn't find anything linking to a killer.'

Fischer took a sip of her coffee, before she continued, 'We thought we would have a suspect, but we just didn't have any leads. Then on March 11th, Henry Richards reported their twin sons Adrian and Sean missing. They had been on a walk with the dog, but the dog had returned home a few hours after the boys had left. They never would have been irresponsible and let the dog out of their sights. I thought this was too weird for the dog to have come home without the boys, but then I thought if he had been scared by an attacker and ran home. The town went out looking for them and the next day their bodies were found.'

Daphne continued making notes as Fischer spoke, 'Then on June 21st Christopher and Lee Thomas went missing, their bodies were found July 1st. On August 29th Ryan and Toby Wyatt went missing and on September 1st their bodies were found. The most recent disappearances were of Alfie and Liam Harleson who disappeared on December 21st, a little over a week ago and we have not found them.'

'Ok, where did they go missing from?' Fred asked.

'Hannah, the boys' mother, said they went out to the post office and never came back. We check the camera footage at the police station and the boys arrived at the post office and left too.'

Daphne finished taking her notes, as did Fred. He thought about the current weather conditions; snow everywhere. How could they find them when it's like this? At least last year they had no snow so it made it easier to find them, but no, this time there is snow.

Daphne was thinking the same thing. With her pen in her hand, she tapped it on her notepad and studied the names of the most recent missing boys.

'Did all the boys die of the same cause?' She asked.

'Yes, they were all strangled.' Fischer replied, 'We looked for DNA on the victims but found nothing, it seemed that our killer wears gloves.'

That was going to be Daphne's next question.

Fred turned back to his notepad, he turned the page over and picked up his pen. Daphne watched as he wrote the names of all the victim's families and the others who had been interviewed, 'I want to speak to these people.' He said, 'I want to speak to them for myself and go from there.'

Daphne admired him for his determination, but she also knew there was something about that from him that made her realise he might be on to something.

'We have no reason to believe the families are involved.' Fischer explained.

'No, but they might say something that they don't think is important, but is.' Fred replied.

'Can we go back to the scenes?' Daphne asked.

Fischer nodded, 'We can do that today, or we can speak to the families?'

'I want to go to the scenes as soon as possible.' Daphne replied.

Fischer nodded again.

Fred knew Daphne was thinking of something, but at the moment he was sure that she didn't know what she was thinking she might find. But whether they found something or not, they knew it wouldn't be a wasted trip, that time in crime scene analysis taught them that much.

'Ok, so we go to the scenes and then we speak to the families tomorrow if you-'

The door burst open and Detective Wheeler had arrived, 'Commissioner I'm sorry to burst in like this, but something has happened!'

Fischer stood from her chair, she knew what Detective Wheeler was about to tell her, 'They've found the boys?' She asked, and he nodded.