At least he was no longer arguing with her or trying to stop her from going down the path she wanted to follow.
Laura idled a moment, trying to think where she could even start. She figured she could look for people with the same surname first, using the local law enforcement records to see if anyone in the area had ever been arrested or questioned for something. She would then be able to narrow it down by age. Anyone who was the same age and had the same surname could provide a source of inspiration.
And within moments of even beginning to try, she quickly saw the flaw in her plan. How could you search for a surname if you didn’t know which ones to go for? She couldn’t just scroll alphabetically through the whole list of all of the people who’d been put into the system in Milwaukee. That would take weeks—maybe even longer. It wouldn’t get her anywhere.
She experimentally ran a search for people born later than a date that would make them thirty years old, remembering the men in her vision had seemed fairly young. But as the results loaded onto her screen, she suppressed a groan. It was still dozens upon dozens of pages long, each page holding scores of results. Still too wide a net.
Laura chewed on one of her fingernails, a habit she’d gotten out of when she was a teenager. Apparently, it was coming back. She had to think. How could she find out who was a twin? Just limiting it to people with criminal records would probably only give her a fraction of the population anyway. How likely was it that every single twin out there was in the police system? Ruby and Jade Patrickson hadn’t been, before they were logged as murder victims.
Laura hit the internet, trying the simplest solution she could think of: a search for Milwaukee twins.
And almost immediately, she stumbled upon a hit.
There was a charity catering to twins in the local area, helping their families to deal with the unexpectedly doubled load of two babies instead of one. It was a resource center and a social club, too, the kind of place parents came for help with infants and stayed to let their teens connect with people who were like them. And then hung around to help when they became adults.
The kind of organization that would have a lot of records, and a lot of names, related to twins in the city.
Laura held her breath as she clicked around on the charity’s official site, looking for a way that she could access the records quickly and without having to get a warrant. She found a news page with updates about fundraising events the charity had recently done, and—
And her heart almost stopped.
She clicked on the news article that had caught her eye, desperate for the page to load the larger image quicker. She needed to see it in higher resolution. She needed to be sure…
And, yes. There he was.
The man from her vision.
He was standing behind a stall, grinning at the camera with his arm around an older woman. A few others were gathered around, either twins or individuals all ranging in age, all of them posing for the camera. The caption told of a successful bake sale, the proceeds of which were going to a local hospital to include the equipment and specialist units required for premature babies—which twins often were.
Laura stared at him, almost disbelieving the fact that she had found him by chance. She scrolled down the article, searching, until she found a quote from a young man who was listed as being twenty-four years old. A male twin who’d helped at the sale. It had to be him. Kevin Wurz.
Kevin Wurz. Born twenty-four years ago, or perhaps between twenty-three and twenty-five if the article was outdated or incorrect. Laura switched back to the system and searched the records: surname Wurz, date of birth within the ranges she had identified.
And one result came back.
Not Kevin Wurz, but Kenneth. Twenty-four years old. He’d had a misdemeanor charge about six months ago, for vandalism of a local business. The name, the age. It fit. It had to be one of the twins she was looking for. It had to be.
And there, right there in the notes attached to his arrest record, was a statement from a Kevin Wurz, same birthdate. Different address. But she’d found them—both of them.
She had their home addresses.
She could save them.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Laura glanced sideways at Nate. He was concentrating, but a frown of frustration had developed in the middle of his forehead, which meant he was probably getting toward the end of his li
st.
Laura changed her mind about speaking to him right away, getting a sense that it wouldn’t lead her anywhere. They still had a little time. If she had more evidence, something more concrete to go on, she could persuade him to help. But firing it at him out of the blue wouldn’t do a thing.
Instead, she started combing the database again, this time looking for murder victims. Victims who were twins. That, at least, should be in the searchable data. If she had precedent, she could demonstrate that it was going to happen again. That the danger was imminent. And then he’d have to listen—and they could protect the Wurz twins at their home addresses before it was too late.
Unbelievable as it was, there was only one set of twins listed as victims in the past thirty years. Sure, there were the odd single twin here and there, but the other one always survived. And the one case Laura did find had been a hit and run, the victims just children in a buggy. Nothing at all similar to this MO.
Which meant that her job of persuading him to listen just got that much harder.
Detective Frome appeared at the end of the bullpen, coming through double doors that led out to the street. Spotting them, he headed over quickly, ducking his head slightly as he walked. Not good, Laura thought. He looked faintly guilty. Like he was about to give them bad news.