Page 30 of Once Hidden
As he led them down a short hallway, Riley noted that the station wasn’t large, but it was well-maintained, with recently painted walls and updated equipment visible through the glass partitions of offices they passed.
The briefing room was utilitarian—a rectangular space with a large table at its center, surrounded by chairs.A digital projector hung from the ceiling, aimed at a pull-down screen on the far wall.Crime scene photographs were already displayed on a corkboard, and several file folders were neatly stacked on the table.
“Coffee?”Peckham offered, gesturing to a pot in the corner.
“Please,” Riley said.She hadn’t realized how much she needed it until that moment.
Ann Marie declined with a polite smile, already moving toward the crime scene photos.Hodge accepted a cup with a word of thanks.
Once they were all settled, Peckham dimmed the lights slightly and activated the projector.A map of the county appeared on the screen, with two locations marked—one in red, one in blue.Peckham had clearly taken the trouble to learn the facts of Amanda Lindeen’s disappearance.He was fully prepared for their visit, and Riley was glad of that.
She sipped her coffee—strong and bitter, just as she preferred it—as she listened.
“Cable Morris disappeared two nights ago,” Peckham began, pointing to the blue marker.“Twenty-seven years old, worked for FleetRush Logistics for about eleven months.Clean record, good employee according to his supervisor.Was on his regular route, making deliveries to some of our more remote residences.”
He called up an image of a young African American man with earnest eyes and a tentative smile.Cable Morris’s deep brown skin contrasted with the crisp white collar of his FleetRush uniform, the company logo embroidered in red and blue on the breast pocket.
“His last confirmed delivery was at 6:15 p.m.to the Halloway farm, here.”Peckham indicated a spot on the map.“After that, he had three more stops scheduled.When he didn’t make those deliveries and didn’t respond to dispatch, his company tracked his vehicle’s GPS to this location.”
He zoomed in on the blue marker, revealing a desolate stretch of road bordered by dense woods on one side and an open field on the other.
“Road’s not heavily traveled,” Peckham continued.“Maybe ten, fifteen cars a day.Mostly locals.His truck was found with the driver’s door open, engine running, packages still inside.Keys in the ignition, cell phone left in the car.”
Ann Marie was taking notes, her pen moving quickly across her notepad.“Any signs of struggle?”
“Nothing obvious inside the vehicle,” Peckham replied.“But we found this about twenty feet in front of the truck.”He clicked to the next slide.
The image showed a child’s bicycle lying in the middle of the road.It was small, painted red with silver handlebars, the kind meant for an eight- or nine-year-old.
“That’s not Morris’s bike,” Ann Marie observed.
“No,” Peckham confirmed.“And no child has been reported missing in the area.We’ve canvassed every house within five miles.Nobody knows whose bike it is.”
“Bait,” Riley said quietly.
“That’s our thinking,” he said.“Morris sees a kid’s bike in the road, stops to check if there’s a child in danger, gets out of his vehicle...”
“And walks right into a trap,” Riley finished.
“Just like Amanda Lindeen,” Ann Marie added.
“Exactly like Lindeen,” Peckham agreed.“I spoke with Chief Rawley yesterday morning about her case.Same time of day, same type of victim—delivery driver on a set, predictable route, same method of luring them out of their vehicle with something that would make them stop to help.And a similar message left behind in the vehicle’s cab.”
He brought up a photo of a white business envelope with “UNDELIVERABLE” written across it in black marker.“I’m sure you’ve already seen the code that was inside.”
“Yes, the FBI has people working on both of those numeric puzzles,” Riley told him.She didn’t mention that they had turned the codes over to a man jailed in Red Onion State Prison who claimed that he could decipher them.
Peckham clicked through several more photographs: Cable’s abandoned truck from different angles, close-ups of the interior showing nothing obviously disturbed, the bicycle as it was found lying on its side.
“Mind if I...?”Riley gestured toward the corkboard where printed versions of the same images were pinned.
“Help yourself,” Peckham said.
Riley stood and moved closer to the photographs.There was something about physical images that sometimes-revealed details lost in digital versions.She studied the truck’s interior—a half-empty water bottle in the cup holder, a clipboard with delivery forms clipped to it, the phone left on the seat.No obvious signs of a struggle inside the vehicle.The driver had likely exited willingly.
She moved her attention to the images of the bicycle.It was positioned at an angle that suggested it had fallen rather than been deliberately placed.A convincing touch.Someone panicking because a child might have been injured would be too focused on looking for the supposed victim to analyze the staging.
“Any tire marks or footprints at the scene?”she asked, not taking her eyes off the photographs.
