When the motiveless killing of a woman in her garage confuses the investigators of Riverwood, Colorado, Detective Sean Kennedy begins to move on from the case. But after another woman is found, followed by a third, he quickly realizes that he’s onto something much bigger than he had ever anticipated. With the body count rising, Sean does everything he can to end the nightmare.
Nearly fifty years later, Detective Jake Caldwell walks onto his first day on the job. Assigned with reviewing cold cases, the young detective becomes inspired by the apprehension of the Golden State Killer and genetic genealogy. As he reads through his city’s files, he stumbles upon the paper trail of a forgotten serial killer of his own. But in order to uncover the truth, Jake learns that he’ll need the blood from the past.
A new detective’s efforts working a nearly 50-year-old cold case outside of Denver produce unexpected results in this debut forensic thriller.
When divorced, 40-something Abigail Thompson takes a bag of garbage into the garage one frigid February night in 1969, she first realizes the overhead light isn’t working. Then she grasps that she is not alone in the dark garage that she will never leave. Under an hour after gunshots rock the neighborhood, young police detective Sean Kennedy and his partner, David Maxwell, view Thompson’s bloody corpse on the garage floor. Nine weeks after the unsolved murder, secret smoker Kathrine Sandoval goes into her garage to light up after her husband leaves for his night school class. Sandoval’s garage light also doesn’t turn on. Striking a match for her cigarette, she first sees a pair of shoes, then spies the flickering silhouette of a man standing in them. Her murder, assigned to Kennedy and Maxwell, also goes unsolved. Fast-forward almost five decades, and newbie police detective Jake Caldwell pores over cold cases. After striking out with a few, he reviews Thompson’s file, then sees a link to not only Sandoval’s killing, but to other area murders and attacks as well. Caldwell realizes a serial killer once prowled his community. If the right evidence exists, current forensic tools could lead to the murderer’s identity. Caldwell hopes that one of the original detectives on the case might be both alive and helpful to him. The writing in Pearce’s novel, inspired by a true story, is clean and clear. Doubling as a police procedural, the thriller works through positive leads and dead ends and will keep readers on edge as connections are made and frustrations mount. A reference librarian introducing Caldwell to a microfilm machine to use in his research adds some levity to the story. Particularly gripping and taut prose makes the several garage scenes memorable.
