Morrison handed her a report.
Multiple fingerprints recovered from the shrine room.
Most are degraded, but they got several clear prints from the notebook and the wooden box containing the trophies.
They’re running them through AIS now, but it takes time.
What about DNA?
Hair samples from the camping chair.
They’re processing them, but DNA analysis takes longer than prints.
Detective Briggs scanned the report, stopping at one section.
They found fibers on the chair, recent fibers, not degraded like the older evidence.
Morrison nodded.
Dark blue polyester consistent with airport maintenance uniforms.
But that’s not conclusive.
Dozens of people wear those uniforms.
Detective Torres spoke up.
“What about the photographs?
The recent ones of the families.
We’re having them analyzed”.
Morrison said, “The photo paper and printing quality suggest they were printed within the last year, probably from a home printer, not a professional lab”.
Detective Briggs set down the report and turned to the whiteboard that dominated one wall of Morrison’s office.
He had been reconstructing the timeline of the original case, and now photographs of all four victims were pinned to the board alongside maps of the airport and personnel lists.
“Tell me about the night of November 14th, 1992,” she said.
“Walk me through everything that happened”.
Morrison stood and approached the board, his movement stiff with old guilt.
The four flight attendants reported for duty at the crew lounge in terminal C at 9:47 p.
m.
We know this because they all signed in.
Their flight, American Airways 447 to Seattle, was scheduled to depart at 11:30 p.
m.
He pointed to a timeline he had drawn.
At 10:15 p.
m.
, they should have been at gate C47 for pre-flight preparations.
They never arrived.
The gate crew assumed they were running late.
By 10:45 p.
m.
, the flight supervisor tried calling them.
No answer.
At 11:00 p.
m.
, the flight was delayed.
At 11:30 p.
m.
, replacement crew was called in.
The original four were officially listed as no shows.
When did someone go looking for them?
Detective Briggs asked.
Morrison’s expression darkened.
Not until the next morning.
Their supervisor filed a report at 6:00 a.
m.
on November 15th.
Initial investigation treated it as a personnel issue, not a missing person’s case.
It wasn’t until family members started calling that afternoon, worried because none of the four had come home or answered their phones, that we realized something serious had happened.
Precious hours lost, Detective Briggs said.
By the time we started a real investigation, the trail was cold, Morrison confirmed.
We reviewed the crew lounge sign-in sheet.
We interviewed the other staff on duty that night.
We pulled what security footage existed, but we found nothing.
It was like they vanished into thin air.
Detective Torres studied the board.
What about the maintenance tunnel?
Did anyone check it during the original investigation?
Morrison hesitated.
We did a sweep of the public areas and some of the service corridors, but the maintenance tunnels were considered low priority.
They were locked, access controlled.
The assumption was that four women wouldn’t have gone down there voluntarily, and if they’d been taken by force, there would have been signs of struggle in a public area.
“Who was working maintenance that night”?
Detective Briggs asked.
Morrison flipped through one of his files.
According to the duty roster, there were three maintenance workers on shift in terminal C.
One was responding to a plumbing issue in the restrooms.
One was doing routine HVAC checks and one was he stopped his finger on a name.
Gerald Nicholls, Detective Briggs said, reading over his shoulder.
Morrison nodded slowly.
He was assigned to electrical systems inspection in the lower levels.
The room fell silent.
Detective Briggs felt the weight of that information settling over them.
Gerald Nicholls had been working in the area where the bodies were eventually found on the night the four women disappeared.
“Why wasn’t he considered a suspect back then”?
Torres asked.
“He was interviewed,” Morrison said, pulling out a yellowed report.
“I remember it”.
He said he was in the suble working alone most of the night.
No one could confirm his alibi, but no one could disprove it either.
He seemed cooperative, genuinely shocked by the disappearances, and there was no physical evidence linking him to anything.
“Because we didn’t know to look in the right place,” Detective Briggs said bitterly.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Dr.
Caspar.
“Fingerprint match, call me”.
Detective Briggs stepped out of the office and dialed.
Dr.
Caspar answered immediately.
“We got a hit on the fingerprints from the notebook,” she said.
But you’re not going to like this.
Tell me.
The prints belonged to Gerald Nicholls.
Aphus matched them to Prince on file from his airport security clearance background check.
Detective Briggs closed her eyes.
They had him.
Physical evidence placing him at the shrine, proving he had been maintaining that disturbing memorial for years.
There’s something else, Dr.
Caspar continued.
We found prints from someone else, too.
smaller prints, likely female.
We’re still trying to match them, but they appear on several of the more recent photographs.
“He’s not working alone,” Detective Briggs asked, surprised.
“Or he has access to someone else’s space”.
The female prints are overlaid on some of his prints, suggesting she handled the photographs after he did.
Detective Briggs thanked her and returned to Morrison’s office.
We have Nichols prints in the shrine room on the notebook and the photographs.
We can bring him in.
Morrison stood immediately.
I’ll get a warrant.
Wait, Detective Briggs said, thinking fast.
We bring him in for questioning.
He lawyers up immediately.
We need more than his prince in a room.
We need evidence directly linking him to the murders.
We have his fingerprints at a crime scene, Torres pointed out.
At a secondary crime scene, Detective Briggs countered.
The defense will argue the shrine room isn’t where the murders occurred.
They’ll say he discovered the bodies years ago and created the shrine out of some twisted grief or fascination, but that doesn’t make him the killer.
We need to connect him to the actual murders.
Morrison sank back into his chair.
So, what do we do?
Detective Briggs thought about the recent photographs in the shrine, about Ellen Vance and the other family members who were being watched by someone with a history of killing.
We need to force his hand.
Make him think we’re getting close.
See how he reacts.
That’s dangerous, Morrison warned.
If he is the killer and he feels cornered, he might make a mistake.
Detective Briggs finished.
Right now, he thinks he’s safe.
He’s been safe for 26 years.
We need to disrupt that sense of security.
She turned to Torres.
I want surveillance on him around the clock.
I want to know everywhere he goes, everyone he talks to.
And I want someone reviewing every inch of his work history, looking for any gaps, any unexplained absences that might correlate with other unsolved cases.
You think there might be other victims?
Torres asked.
I think a man who can kill four women and hide their bodies for 26 years while maintaining a shrine to them isn’t someone who killed just once.
Detective Briggs said this kind of obsession doesn’t come out of nowhere.
Over the next several hours, they assembled a surveillance team and reviewed Nichols’s work history in detail.
What they found was disturbing.
In 1998, when the tunnel section had been sealed off, Nicholls had taken a two-week vacation, unusual for him.
In 2003, just before his promotion to head of maintenance, there had been another missing person’s case at the airport, a female janitor who had vanished without a trace.
The case was never solved.
“Pull everything on that case,” Detective Briggs ordered.
“I want to know if Nicholls was working the night she disappeared”.
As the afternoon wore on, reports came in from the surveillance team.
Nicholls had worked a normal shift, conducted routine inspections, ate lunch in the employee cafeteria.
Nothing unusual.
But at 300 p.
m.
, he left his office and took a service elevator down to the lower levels.
He’s heading toward the tunnel area.
The surveillance officer radioed.
Detective Briggs grabbed her jacket.
I’m going down there.
Keep him under observation, but don’t approach.
She made her way through the airport to the construction area in Terminal C.
The tunnel entrance had been resealed with temporary barriers after the forensics team finished processing the scene.
She positioned herself in a maintenance corridor with a clear view of the area.
After 10 minutes, she saw him.
Gerald Nichols approached the barriers, looked around to ensure he was alone, and then moved one of the barriers aside.
He slipped through the opening and disappeared into the tunnel.
Detective Briggs waited, her heart pounding.
5 minutes passed, 10.
Then Nicholls emerged, his face pale, his hands shaking.
He carefully repositioned the barrier and walked quickly back toward the elevator.
She didn’t confront him, didn’t reveal her presence.
Instead, she waited until he was gone, then entered the tunnel herself.
The shrine room door was open.
Inside the camping chair had been moved, positioned now to face the empty al cove where the bodies had been discovered, and on the floor, placed carefully in the center of the room, was a fresh bouquet of yellow roses.
Detective Briggs photographed everything, then called Dr.
Caspar.
He came back.
He’s mourning them.
Or saying goodbye, Dr.
Caspar suggested darkly.
If he knows we’re getting close, he might be preparing to run or preparing to finish what he started.
Detective Briggs said, thinking of those recent photographs of Ellen Vance and the other family members.
She left the tunnel and made her way back to headquarters where Captain Morrison was waiting with new information.
“We found something in his work records,” Morrison said, spreading documents across his desk.
For the past 5 years, Nicholls has been requesting night shifts.
Specifically, he works 10:1 p.
m.
to 6:00 now a.
m.
The same shift he was working the night the flight attendants disappeared.
He’s recreating it, Detective Briggs said.
Reliving it.
Morrison nodded grimly.
And there’s more.
His schedule shows he has tomorrow night off.
It’s the first night he’s had off in 3 months.
Detective Briggs felt a chill run down her spine.
What’s the date tomorrow?
Morrison checked his calendar and his face went white.
November 14th, it’s the anniversary.
26 years to the day since the four flight attendants had vanished.
And Gerald Nichols had the night off.
>> Gerald Nichols sat in his white pickup truck, engine idling, his eyes scanning the parking lot behind building B.
His hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles had gone white.
Everything was falling apart.
26 years of careful planning, of maintaining control, and it was all unraveling because of that construction crew and their sledgehammers.
He had known this day might come eventually.
He had prepared for it, rehearsed it in his mind countless times.
But now that it was here, fear clawed at his chest in a way he hadn’t anticipated.
Through the windshield, he saw Sarah emerge from the building.
Her backpack slung over one shoulder, her dark hair catching the afternoon sunlight.
His breath caught.
She looked so much like Bethany.
The same graceful walk, the same way of tilting her head when she was thinking.
For a moment, he was transported back to November 1992.
Watching Bethany move through the airport terminal, unaware of his presence.
Sarah approached the truck and opened the passenger door.
Gerald forced a smile, trying to appear calm.
Hey, sweetheart.
How were your classes?
She climbed in and set her backpack on the floor.
They were fine.
Dad, where did you go this morning?
You scared me.
Just had some errands to run, he said, putting the truck in gear.
Everything’s okay now.
But Sarah was looking at him strangely, her expression more guarded than usual.
Dad, I need to ask you something.
Gerald’s heart rate spiked.
What is it?
That photograph I found in your truck?
The woman in the flight attendant uniform?
Who was she?
His mind raced.
How much did she know?
Had the police already contacted her?
He glanced in the rearview mirror and spotted what might be an unmarked police car three rows back.
They knew they had found Sarah.
We need to go, he said urgently, pressing the accelerator harder than necessary.
The truck lurched forward.
Dad, you’re scaring me, Sarah said, gripping the door handle.
What’s going on?
Did you talk to anyone today?
he demanded.
Anyone unusual?
Did anyone ask you questions about me?
Sarah’s silence was answer enough.
Gerald cursed and made a sharp turn out of the parking lot, tires squealing.
In his mirror, he saw the unmarked car following, no longer bothering with subtlety.
“Dad, stop the truck,” Sarah said, her voice rising.
“Stop it right now”.
“I can’t,” he said, taking another turn too fast.
“You don’t understand, Sarah.
They’re trying to take you away from me.
They’re going to fill your head with lies.
What lies?
Sarah shouted.
Tell me the truth.
Was that woman?
My mother?
Was she?
Gerald’s vision blurred with tears.
You weren’t supposed to find out this way.
I was going to tell you when you were ready.
Tell me what?
That you kidnapped me?
That you murdered my mother?
The words hung in the air like poison.
Gerald felt something inside him break.
She knew.
His Sarah, his daughter, his reason for living, knew what he had done.
“It wasn’t like that,” he said desperately, running a red light.
Behind them, police sirens wailed to life.
“Your mother was special.
They were all special.
They didn’t understand how I felt about them, but I never wanted to hurt them.
It just happened.
It went wrong”.
“You killed four women,” Sarah said, her voice shaking with horror and rage.
“You killed my mother and kept me prisoner my entire life.
I saved you, Gerald shouted.
I raised you.
I gave you everything.
I loved you.
You’re insane, Sarah breathed.
Gerald swerved to avoid another car, his driving becoming more erratic as panic overwhelmed rational thought.
More police vehicles joined the chase, boxing him in from multiple directions.
He made a desperate turn onto a side street, but it deadended at a construction site.
He slammed on the brakes, the truck skidding to a stop just feet from a chainlink fence.
Police cars surrounded them immediately, officers emerging with weapons drawn.
Get out of the vehicle.
Hands where we can see them.
Gerald sat frozen, his mind unable to process the end of everything he had built.
Sarah was crying beside him, her hands covering her face.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered to her.
“I’m so sorry, Bethany”.
“I’m not Bethany,” Sarah said through her tears.
My name is Sarah and you took my mother from me.
The driver’s side door was yanked open.
Hands grabbed Gerald, pulled him from the truck, forced him to the ground.
He didn’t resist.
There was no point anymore.
As handcuffs clicked around his wrists, he watched Sarah being helped from the passenger side by a woman he recognized as one of the detectives who had been investigating.
“Don’t hurt her,” he called out.
“Please don’t hurt my daughter”.
Detective Briggs appeared in his field of vision, her expression hard.
She’s not your daughter.
She’s Bethany Cross’s daughter, and you stole 25 years of her life.
They hauled him to his feet and read him his rights, but Gerald barely heard the words.
His eyes stayed on Sarah as another officer wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and led her to a police car.
She looked back at him once, her face a mask of betrayal and grief, and then she was gone.
At Airport Police Headquarters, Gerald Nicholls was processed and placed in an interrogation room.
Detective Briggs and Captain Morrison sat across from him, a recorder running between them.
Gerald had waved his right to an attorney, much to their surprise.
“I want to tell you everything,” he said quietly.
“I’m tired of carrying it alone”.
Detective Briggs exchanged a glance with Morrison, then nodded.
“Start at the beginning.
November 14th, 1992.
Gerald closed his eyes, and when he spoke, his voice was distant, as if recounting someone else’s memories.
I had been watching them for months.
Patricia, Denise, Yolanda, and Bethany.
They were so beautiful, so kind.
They would smile at me when they saw me in the terminals, ask how my day was going.
No one else ever did that.
So, you stalked them, Detective Briggs said flatly.
I was learning about them, Gerald corrected, their schedules, their routines, their lives.
I took photographs because I wanted to remember every moment.
I knew Bethany was pregnant.
I could see the change in her, the way she carried herself.
I thought about the baby she would have, wondered if it would have her eyes.
And on November 14th, Morrison prompted, Gerald’s hands trembled on the table.
I knew their shift schedule.
I knew they would take the service elevator down to the lower level to access the crew entrance.
I waited in the maintenance tunnel.
I just wanted to talk to Bethany to tell her how I felt, but all four of them came down together.
He paused, his breathing becoming labored.
Patricia recognized me.
She smiled and said hello.
I tried to tell them why I was there.
Tried to explain how special they were to me.
But Denise got scared.
She said I shouldn’t be down there, that they were going to report me.
She reached for her radio.
“So you attacked them,” Detective Briggs said.
“I panicked,” Gerald said, his voice breaking.
“There was a pipe on the ground, part of some repair work.
I grabbed it.
I just wanted them to stop, to listen, but Patricia tried to run, and I swung at her”.
Then everything happened so fast.
Yolanda was screaming.
Denise was trying to pull Bethany away.
I couldn’t let them leave.
They would tell.
They would ruin everything.
The horror of what he was describing hung heavy in the room.
Morrison had to look away.
Bethany was last, Gerald continued, tears streaming down his face now.
She was backing away from me, her hands on her stomach, protecting her baby.
She begged me not to hurt her.
She said she forgave me, that she understood I was sick, that I needed help.
She was so kind even at the end.
“But you killed her anyway,” Detective Briggs said, her voice hard.
My hands were around her throat before I realized what I was doing.
Gerald whispered.
She looked into my eyes and I saw something there.
Not fear, pity.
She pied me and then she was gone.
He buried his face in his hands.
I sat with them for hours afterward.
I didn’t know what to do.
I knew I should turn myself in, face what I had done.
But then I thought about Bethy’s baby, that innocent life.
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