The sheriff's office was a hive of bustling activity, the team that Sheriff Sam had assembled, in conjunction with the team from Maitland, had been running background checks on the victims that had been identified, trying to find any tenuous thread that might tie the victims together and point towards a definite suspect. Of the original twelve bodies, ten had been identified. Two remained John Does. The body of the young boy had also been identified. A number of boards had been pulled into the briefing room and lined a wall, displaying various details, brief glimpses of the victims, their lives condensed into a few measly lines of information and a couple of pictures.

"What have we got?" Sheriff Sam asked Deputy Prescott as he studied the boards, looking for any similarities, no matter how negligible.

Deputy Prescott shook his head, a look of despondency evident on his face. "Not much. The victims are between the ages of fifteen and fifty-three and lived in different towns within a hundred-and-fifty-mile radius of Credence. They were all reported missing within the last year. The missing persons cases indicate that they disappeared without any trace, no evidence, and no suspects. There's nothing to go on there. The victims went to different schools, had different occupations, different hobbies and hung out in different social circles. Some were married, some with kids and some nothing. There are just no similarities. For all practical purposes, they've got nothing in common."

"You mean, other than the fact that they all disappeared mysteriously and then landed up headless and in freezers in my town?" the sheriff responded harshly. "I'd say they have something pretty substantial in common. There has to be something more. They all crossed paths with a sociopath at some point and were close enough to that person to have their heads chopped off and their bodies bled immediately after their death, whether he killed them or not. That is not random."

Sheriff Sam paced the length of the briefing room, running over the names and the few scant details captured on the boards in front of him, as if by memorizing the names and the faces of the victims he could immortalize them, memorializing their lives and dampening the totality of their deaths.

Alan Watson, male, forty-four, banker, married with two children
Gene Daniels, male, thirty-two, chemical engineer, single
Mark Gregor, male, thirty-seven, assistant, engaged
Sarah Haynes, female, twenty-nine, teacher, married
Ryan Montgomery, male, twenty-one, student, in a relationship
Serina Gold, female, forty-eight, designer, married with one child
Matt Simmons, male, fifty-three, attorney, divorced
Amelia Cossack, female, thirty-one, dance instructor, single
Natalie Thymes, female, forty-seven, consultant, engaged
Benjamin Daniels, male, twenty-six, salesman, engaged
John Doe, male, between thirty and thirty-five, unknown
Jane Doe, female, between forty and forty-five, unknown
Kevin Figgins, male, fifteen, scholar, one of two children to single mother

Underneath each name the smiling faces captured in their photographs stared back at Sheriff Sam, hinting at lives full of meaning and experience, lives that had been lived by complex and varied individuals. Not the headless, clinical, and frozen corpses that had met him in those freezers in that grey house. The young boy, Kevin Figgins, the one dumped unceremoniously on the Anderson farm, had barely even begun living. Sheriff Sam wondered if he had his first crush, his first kiss, his first rejection. He wondered if he had decided which university or college he wanted to attend or if he had decided on his career path. Each of the smiling faces demanded justice for a crime that Sheriff Sam could still not fathom. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made.

Washing the bodies could indicate a closeness to the victims, but it could also be a way of ridding the corpses of any trace evidence. Sheriff Sam suspected that in this case it was more to do with evidence than any potential affections. Beheading could indicate a deep-rooted violence or rage, but the bodies were otherwise pristine. This was not done in a fit of rage, but rather a calculated choice. The beheading, the cut, if you could call it that, was surgically precise, not the result of an axe wielding madman. It could suggest the killer, or assumed killer rather, was trying to hide the identities of the victims, but then why leave their hands intact. Bleeding and freezing the bodies could be to hide the time of death, but for what purpose? Sheriff Sam paced the room some more. None of this made any sense. He couldn't even begin to understand the crimes that had been committed, or the type of person that could be responsible for them.

"I think I've got something," Det. West shouted, jumping from her position behind her laptop. She grabbed a marker and started scribbling furiously on the board below some of the names. Sheriff Sam watched every minute movement of her hands, following as the letters appeared, trying to anticipate the words that they would form. When Det. West stepped back, the words 'Van Gelyk Foundation' were written below seven of the names.

"What is the Van Gelyk Foundation?" Sheriff Sam asked, stumbling over the pronunciation. It sounded German or Dutch in origin.

"I don't entirely know. It says on its webpage that it is a non-profit organization dedicated to self-actualization through alternative therapies. It lists its services as including counselling, sleep therapy, meditation, yoga, and a couple of others. It says here," Det. West said returning to her laptop and reading off the screen, "that it is only through healing and reaching for our most enlightened selves that self-actualization can truly be accomplished, and we can lead our fullest lives achieving our ultimate potential."

Sheriff Sam rubbed his face with his hands. "It all sounds a bit new-age, hippy, mumbo-jumbo for me. How does it relate to our victims?"

"I don't know if they were making use of any of the foundations services - I haven't found anything in their financial records to indicate they were making payments to the foundation - but they all liked and followed the foundation on their social media platforms. It's tenuous at best, but it's the only link I can find," she explained as she peered at her laptop screen, her eyes flying over the page as she tapped away on her keyboard. "I don't know if this helps any, but it seems the words are Afrikaans - South African in origin. Van Gelyk translates to of equal. I don't know what that means, or what it has to do with our victims, but I think we need to pay them a visit and see if they can shed some light on what's going on."

Sheriff Sam nodded his agreement. It might not be much, but any link indicated a commonality that needed to be investigated further. The fact that Jeremiah Omondi originated from some unknown African country was not missed either - that seemed far too coincidental. Perhaps it would be the big break that he had been hoping for. "Alright. I agree. Let's set up a meeting with the Van Gelyk Foundation. Have we got anything else on the thread that the ME found? Or the van?"

Sheriff Sam paced the briefing room as his deputy reported their findings. The thread was from an unremarkable, mass-produced fabric. It could have been the lining of a large leather cuff, the type used to secure patients to hospital beds commonly used in psychiatric wards, or the kind used by those who had a kinky inclination towards bondage, or it could have been from an article of clothing, perhaps a skirt or pair of pants that had been pulled off the body when it was stripped to be washed. It would not help in this investigation unless it could be tied back to an item. The search for the grey van left them in a similar situation. There were thirty-nine grey vans within the same one-hundred-and-fifty-mile radius that the victims had been abducted from that matched Old Man Sutton's description. Most of them were registered to businesses and had some type of identifying mark on the rear door. None of them had tinted windows according to any of the available records.

"Alright," Sheriff Sam talked as he paced, "Let's keep digging on the vans. I want to know if any of them can be tied to our victims or this Van Gelyk Foundation - if one of those vans so much as delivered flowers to a neighbor, I want to know about it. Keep digging into our witnesses as well. We already know they're hiding a lot - if anything ties them to these crimes we need to find it. West and I will go pay this Van Gelyk Foundation a visit and see what they have to say for themselves."

As Sheriff Sam motioned for Det. West to grab her things so that they could head out, the door to the briefing room burst open.

"Sheriff Sam! We've got a problem," the flushed face of the clerk that had been manning the front desk appeared in the doorway, clearly rattled. "Timothy Cook just called... He says his wife, Anya, has gone missing."