On Christmas Eve 1992, two flight attendants walked into O’Hare International Airport and were never seen again.

No bodies, no witnesses, no explanation.

For 33 years, their families searched for answers in a case that baffled investigators and left a city haunted by questions.

But in December 2025, a construction crew breaking ground on a new terminal made a discovery that would finally reveal the horrifying truth about what happened in those empty airport corridors on the most wonderful night of the year.

This is the story of Elena Voss and Carolyn Hunt and the darkness that waited for them in the place where a million people pass through every day, but no one ever truly sees.

The terminal lights cast long shadows across the polished floors of O’Hare International Airport as the last passengers of Christmas Eve hurried toward their gates.

Outside, snow fell in thick, silent curtains, coating the runways in white and delaying flights across the Midwest.

Inside, the usual chaos of holiday travel had begun to wind down as the evening stretched toward midnight.

Elena Voss adjusted her navy blue uniform jacket and checked her reflection in a darkened shop window.

At 27, she’d been flying for transcontinental Airlines for 5 years, and Christmas Eve shifts were nothing new.

Beside her, Carolyn Hunt, 32 and a veteran attendant of 9 years, pulled her wheeled suitcase behind her with practiced ease.

“I still can’t believe they scheduled us both on standby tonight,” Carolyn said, her breath fogging slightly in the cooler air near the terminal windows.

“My kids are going to kill me if I miss Christmas morning.

” Elena smiled, though it didn’t quite reach your eyes.

“At least you have kids waiting for you.

I’ve got a frozen dinner and a cat who probably won’t notice if I’m gone.

They walked together through concourse C, their footsteps echoing in the increasingly empty corridor.

Most of the shops had closed, their metal gates pulled down and locked.

A janitor pushed a wide mop across the floor in the distance, and somewhere a radio played a tiny version of Silent Night.

I’m going to grab a coffee from that vending area near gate C47, Elena said, pointing ahead.

Want anything? Carolyn checked her watch.

Sure, I’ll come with you.

We’ve got at least another hour before they’ll release us.

They turned down a side corridor, one of the many arteries that branched off from the main concourse.

The fluorescent lights here flickered intermittently, casting the hallway in alternating brightness and shadow.

The temperature seemed to drop as they moved away from the main terminal, and Elena pulled her jacket tighter.

“This place gets creepy when it’s empty,” she murmured.

Carolyn nodded.

“I’ve always hated these back corridors.

They feel like they go on forever.

” They reached the vending area, a small al cove with three machines and a few plastic chairs.

Elena fed coins into the coffee dispenser while Carolyn waited, leaning against the wall.

The machine hummed and gurgled, finally producing a cup of steaming liquid that looked more brown than black.

Merry Christmas to me, Elena said Riley, taking a sip and immediately grimacing.

That’s when they heard it.

A sound from further down the corridor.

Not footsteps exactly, but something dragging, something heavy.

Carolyn straightened.

Did you hear that? Elena sat down her coffee, her expression shifting from casual to alert.

Yeah, probably just maintenance.

But the sound came again, closer now, a scraping rhythmic drag that made Elena’s skin prickle with inexplicable unease.

Hello, Caroline called out, her voice echoing down the empty hallway.

No response, just that dragging sound growing louder.

Elena took a step backward, her instincts screaming that something was wrong.

Maybe we should head back to the main concourse.

Carolyn didn’t argue.

They gathered their things quickly.

But as they turned to leave, the lights in the corridor went out completely, plunging them into absolute darkness.

And in that darkness, they heard footsteps, multiple sets, moving toward them with purpose.

Elena opened her mouth to scream, but a hand clamped over her face, cutting off the sound before it could escape.

The last thing she registered was Caroline’s muffled cry beside her and the smell of something chemical and sweet pressing against her nose and mouth.

Then the darkness consumed everything.

Detective Sarah Brennan stood in the cold December air outside the construction site, watching as crime scene technicians erected flood lights around the excavation pit.

It was December 23rd, 2025, and the discovery had been made just 4 hours earlier when a backhoe operator hit something that wasn’t concrete or earth.

She was 43 now with streaks of gray threading through her dark hair, pulled back in a practical ponytail.

She’d been with Chicago PD for 19 years, the last 12 in homicide.

She’d seen her share of bodies, her share of horror, but this case had already gotten under her skin in a way few others had.

Detective Brennan, a young uniformed officer approached, his breath creating small clouds in the frigid air.

The me is ready for you.

Sarah nodded, pulling on a pair of latex gloves as she approached the edge of the pit.

The excavation site was supposed to become the foundation for O’Hare’s new international terminal, a massive project years in the making.

Instead, it had become a crime scene.

Dr.

Patricia Chen, the medical examiner, looked up as Sarah descended the temporary stairs into the pit.

The older woman’s face was grim, illuminated by the harsh white light of portable work lamps.

“How many?” Sarah asked, though she already knew the answer from the preliminary report.

Two, Dr.

Chen replied.

Both female.

Both were wearing what appear to be airline uniforms, though they’re badly degraded.

They’ve been here a long time, Sarah.

Decades, most likely.

Sarah crouched beside the first set of remains, her trained eye taking in the details.

The skeleton lay in a peculiar position, arms bound behind the back with what looked like zip ties, though they’d become brittle and broken over time.

A few scraps of navy blue fabric clung to the bones and nearby, partially buried in the earth.

Was a corroded name tag.

“Can you read it?” Sarah asked, pointing.

Dr.

Chen carefully lifted the tag with forceps, brushing away decades of accumulated dirt.

Voss,” she said quietly.

“Elena Voss.

” Sarah felt a chill that had nothing to do with the December cold.

She’d done her homework on the way to the site, pulling up missing person’s cases from the airport over the past 50 years.

Two names had jumped out at her immediately.

Two flight attendants who’d vanished on Christmas Eve 1992.

Elena Voss and Carolyn Hunt.

The second victim? Sarah asked.

Dr.

Dr.

Chen moved to the other set of remains, repeating the process.

This body had been positioned differently, curled into almost a fetal position.

When Dr.

Chen found the name tag, she didn’t need to say anything.

Sarah could read it from where she stood.

Hunt.

They were reported missing 33 years ago.

Sarah said more to herself than to Dr.

Chen.

Walked into the airport for a standby shift and never walked out.

There’s something else you need to see, Dr.

Chen said, her voice dropping.

She pointed to Elena Voss’s skull.

See these marks on the temporal bone and here on the occipital? Sarah leaned closer, her stomach tightening.

Trauma? Significant blunt force trauma.

Dr.

Chen confirmed.

This wasn’t quick, Sarah.

These injuries suggest repeated blows.

She suffered before she died.

Sarah stood, her jaw clenched.

She looked around the pit, trying to understand the geography of it.

Where exactly are we in relation to the old terminal? A construction foreman who’d been standing nearby stepped forward.

This would have been directly beneath concourse C back in 1992, he said.

There used to be a network of old service tunnels and utility corridors down here.

Most of them were sealed off when they renovated in 2003, but some of the older passages are still accessible if you know where to look.

I need a map, Sarah said.

Every tunnel, every access point, everything that existed in December 1992.

The foreman nodded.

I’ll get you whatever we have.

As the team continued to process the scene, Sarah climbed out of the pit and walked a short distance away, pulling out her phone.

She dialed a number she’d found in the old case file, one that had been disconnected and reconnected half a dozen times over the years.

It rang four times before a woman’s voice answered.

Horse with sleep.

Hello.

Is this Rachel Voss? A pause.

Yes.

Who is this? Ms.

Voss.

My name is Detective Sarah Brennan with Chicago PD.

I’m calling about your sister Elena.

The silence on the other end was so complete that Sarah thought the call had dropped.

Then she heard a sharp intake of breath.

“You found her,” Rachel said, and it wasn’t a question.

“Yes, ma’am.

We found her.

” Sarah heard crying, muffled as if Rachel had pressed her hand over her mouth.

When she spoke again, her voice was thick with tears.

“Where?” “At O’Hare.

at a construction site.

Miss Voss, I know this is difficult, but I need to speak with you about Elena’s disappearance.

There are questions I need to ask.

After 33 years, Rachel said bitterly.

After 33 years of begging the police to keep looking, to not give up, now you have questions.

Sarah couldn’t argue with that.

I understand your anger, but I’m asking you to help me now.

Help me find who did this to your sister.

another long silence.

Then, “Come to my house tomorrow morning.

I’ll tell you everything I remember.

” After ending the call, Sarah stood in the falling snow, watching as Dr.

Chen’s team carefully excavated the remains of two women who’d simply wanted to get through a Christmas Eve shift and go home to their families.

Instead, they’d encountered something evil in those empty airport corridors, something that had stolen their lives and hidden them in the darkness for 33 years.

Sarah pulled her coat tighter and headed back to her car.

Tomorrow, she would start digging into the past, looking for answers.

Tonight she would go home and try to sleep, knowing that somewhere out there, the person who done this might still be alive, might still be walking free, might still be hunting.

Rachel Voss’s home was a modest bungalow in Oak Park, its front yard covered in a fresh blanket of snow that sparkled in the morning sun.

Sarah parked on the street and walked up the shoveled pathway, noting the Christmas lights that hung dark and unlit along the roof line.

The door opened before she could knock.

The woman standing there was in her late 50s with the same delicate bone structure Sarah had noted in the photographs of Elena Voss from the case file.

But where Elena’s photos showed a bright, vibrant young woman, Rachel’s face was etched with decades of grief and unanswered questions.

Detective Brennan,” Rachel asked, stepping aside to let her in.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Sarah said, entering the warm interior of the house.

“The living room was neat, but lived in, with family photographs covering nearly every surface.

Sarah’s eyes were drawn to a portrait on the mantle.

A young woman in a flight attendant uniform smiling at the camera with her whole face.

That was taken a month before she disappeared,” Rachel said, following Sarah’s gaze.

She was so proud of that uniform.

Loved her job, loved traveling.

They sat down in the living room, and Sarah pulled out her notebook.

“Can you walk me through what you remember about that Christmas Eve?” Rachel settled into her chair, her hands folded tightly in her lap.

Elena and I had plans to spend Christmas together.

Our parents had passed away a few years before.

a car accident, so it was just the two of us.

She’d promised me she’d be home by midnight at the latest.

They’d put her on standby, which she hated, but the holiday pay was good.

Did she mention anyone who’d been bothering her, any problems at work or in her personal life? No, nothing like that.

Elena was careful, always aware of her surroundings.

She’d taken a self-defense class the year before because some of the other attendants had mentioned creepy passengers, but she never said anything about feeling unsafe at the airport itself.

Sarah made notes.

What about Carolyn Hunt? Did Elena know her well? Rachel nodded.

They were friends, worked together fairly often.

Carolyn was married, had two kids.

I met her a few times at airline events.

Sweet woman, very professional.

her voice caught.

Her children never got to see their mother again.

Tell me about when you realized something was wrong.

Rachel’s eyes grew distant, remembering.

Elena was supposed to call me when they released her from standby.

By 2:00 in the morning, I hadn’t heard anything.

I called the airline and they said both Elena and Carolyn had signed out around 11:30.

They’d left the employee area and headed toward the parking garage, according to the supervisor.

But their cars were still there, Sarah said, referencing the old case file.

Yes, both cars right where they’d left them.

Keys gone, purses gone, but the cars just sitting there in the garage.

It was like they’d vanished into thin air.

Rachel’s hands tightened.

I went to the police the next morning, Christmas Day.

They told me to wait 24 hours.

said they’d probably just gone to a party or something, that young women do impulsive things.

Sarah heard the bitterness in Rachel’s voice and understood it.

1992 hadn’t been that long ago, but attitudes about missing women had been different.

Even now, it was often an uphill battle.

“But you didn’t give up,” Sarah said.

“How could I?” Rachel’s eyes filled with tears.

“She was my sister, my only family.

I called the police every week for the first year, every month after that.

I hired a private investigator who took my money and found nothing.

I put up flyers, contacted the news stations every Christmas Eve, begged them to run the story.

She stood and walked to a bookshelf, pulling down a thick scrapbook.

Opening it, she showed Sarah page after page of newspaper clippings, missing person posters, and handwritten notes.

This is everything I collected over the years.

Every lead, every tip, every dead end.

She flipped to a page marked with a red tab.

This one always bothered me the most.

Sarah leaned forward.

It was a photocopy of a handwritten note, the original apparently having been sent to Rachel 2 months after Elellena’s disappearance.

They’re sleeping where the planes can’t fly, where the lights don’t reach, where no one hears the screaming.

Jesus,” Sarah murmured.

“Did you give this to the police?” “Of course.

” They said it was probably a prank.

Someone who’d seen the news coverage and wanted attention.

No fingerprints, no DNA.

Mailed from a post office in the loop.

They couldn’t trace it.

Sarah photographed the note with her phone.

“May I take this scrapbook? I promise I’ll return it.

” Rachel hesitated, then nodded.

If it helps you find who killed my sister, you can have it.

As Sarah prepared to leave, Rachel touched her arm.

Detective, I need to know something.

Did she suffer? Sarah considered lying, offering comfort.

But she’d learned long ago that victims families deserve the truth, no matter how painful.

The medical examiner believes death wasn’t immediate.

I’m sorry.

Rachel nodded, tears streaming down her face.

Thank you for being honest and thank you for not giving up on her, even if it took 33 years.

Back in her car, Sarah sat for a moment before starting the engine, reading through the note again on her phone.

They’re sleeping where the planes can’t fly, where the lights don’t reach, where no one hears the screaming.

The person who wrote this had known where Elena and Carolyn were, had known they were dead, had known about the tunnels beneath the airport where their bodies had been hidden.

Sarah pulled out her phone and called her partner, Detective Marcus Webb.

Marcus, I need you to pull everything we have on airport employees from 1992.

Maintenance, security, janitors, everyone who had access to the lower levels.

That’s going to be a lot of people, Marcus said.

I know, but somewhere in that list is our killer.

And after 33 years, I think it’s time they answered for what they did.

As she drove away from Rachel’s house, Sarah couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched.

She glanced in her rear view mirror, but saw only the quiet street and falling snow.

Still, the feeling persisted, a crawling sensation at the base of her skull.

Someone knew she was digging into this case.

Someone who’d kept this secret for 33 years, and they wouldn’t want that secret exposed.

The subb levels of O’Hare International Airport were a labyrinth of concrete corridors and rusted pipes that most travelers never knew existed.

Sarah descended the metal staircase with Marcus Webb beside her and a veteran airport security officer named Tom Kaufman leading the way with a flashlight.

Most of these tunnels haven’t been used in years, Kaufman explained, his voice echoing off the damp walls.

The airports expanded so much that a lot of the old infrastructure just got abandoned in place.

Easier to build new than to tear out the old.

Sarah swept her own flashlight across the narrow passage.

The beam caught graffiti tags from different eras, water stains that spoke of flooding, and doorways sealed with cinder blocks.

The air smelled of mold and stale water, and somewhere in the distance, she could hear the rhythmic drip of a leak.

“In 1992, were these tunnels inactive use?” Marcus asked.

Kaufman nodded.

Some of them, yeah, maintenance crews used them to move around without going through passenger areas.

There were also old break rooms, storage areas, that kind of thing.

But security down here was basically non-existent.

Anyone with an employee badge could access most of it.

They reached a junction where three corridors met.

Kaufman consulted a yellowed map he brought from the archives.

According to this, we’re directly under where concourse C used to be.

The vending area where the attendants were last seen would be about 30 ft above us.

Sarah studied the three passages branching off from the junction.

One had been sealed with a concrete wall.

The other two stretched into darkness.

Where do these lead? The one on the left goes to the old baggage handling system.

The right one connects to what used to be a mechanical room for the HVAX system.

Kaufman pointed his flashlight down the right passage.

That’s where your construction crew found the bodies.

About 100 yards down, there’s a side chamber that was part of the original foundation.

They moved down the right corridor, their footsteps splashing through shallow puddles.

Sarah noted the places where the concrete had cracked, where roots had pushed through from above, where rust had eaten through metal fixtures.

This was a forgotten place, a dead zone in the heart of one of the world’s busiest airports.

The chamber where Elena and Carolyn had been found was marked with evidence tags and police tape.

Even though the bodies had been removed, Sarah could still see the depressions in the earth where they’d lain for 33 years.

“How did he get them down here?” Marcus wondered aloud.

Two women, both likely struggling, both needing to be transported downstairs or service elevators.

That’s what I keep coming back to, Sarah said, crouching near one of the depressions.

This wasn’t opportunistic.

This was planned.

He knew about this place.

Knew it was isolated.

Knew no one would come down here.

Kaufman shifted uncomfortably.

There were rumors back then.

probably just urban legends, but some of the older employees used to talk about people living in the tunnels, homeless folks who’d found a way in, that kind [clears throat] of thing.

Sarah looked up sharply.

Anyone ever confirm that? Not officially.

Security would do sweeps every few months, but the tunnel system is huge.

If someone knew how to avoid the patrols, they could have stayed hidden indefinitely.

Marcus was examining the walls with his flashlight.

Sarah, come look at this.

She joined him at the far end of the chamber.

He’d found scratches in the concrete, marks that could have been made with a nail or piece of metal.

They were faint, worn smooth by time and moisture, but still visible in the right light.

“Is that writing?” Sarah asked, angling her flashlight to catch the marks better.

Marcus traced one of the scratches with his finger.

“Looks like help.

” And here, this might be a number 12.

Or maybe it’s a letter.

Sarah felt a cold weight settle in her stomach.

She thought about Elena Voss, brought down to this dark chamber, perhaps still alive at first.

Had she made these marks? Had she tried to leave a message, hoping against hope that someone would find it? Take photographs of everything, she told Marcus.

Every mark, every scratch.

get the lab to enhance them if possible.

As Marcus worked, Sarah walked the perimeter of the chamber, trying to understand the mind of someone who would choose this place as a tomb.

It was isolated, yes, but it was also risky.

He would have needed time with his victims, time to subdue them, time to ensure they wouldn’t be found.

Kaufman, who would have had access to employee schedules, who would have known that Elena and Carolyn were on standby that night? Kaufman thought for a moment.

Supervisors, obviously, HR personnel, anyone in crew scheduling, but also the schedules were posted in the employee break rooms back then.

Anyone working at the airport could have seen them.

Sarah’s phone buzzed with a text from Dr.

Chen.

Call me.

Found something on the remains.

She excused herself and climbed back up to ground level, finding a quiet corner of the terminal to make the call.

Dr.

Chen answered on the first ring.

What did you find? Sarah asked.

Trace evidence on both victims clothing.

Fibers that don’t match their uniforms.

They’re synthetic.

Probably from some kind of coverall or work uniform.

And Sarah, there’s something else.

Elena Voss had a broken wrist that had started to heal before she died.

Sarah’s grip tightened on her phone, meaning she was alive for a while after she was taken, at least a week, possibly longer based on the bone remodeling.

And there are other injuries consistent with restraint.

Marks on the bones where liatures would have been.

He kept them alive down there, Sarah.

This wasn’t a quick kill.

After ending the call, Sarah stood looking out at the bustling terminal.

Thousands of people passing through, rushing to catch flights, greeting loved ones, starting holidays.

None of them knowing that beneath their feet, two women had died slowly in the darkness 33 years ago.

She pulled out her notebook and made a list of what they knew.

The killer had access to the airport, had knowledge of the tunnel system, had the means to subdue and transport two women, had kept them alive for days, perhaps weeks.

This wasn’t random violence.

This was someone who hunted, who planned, who savored.

And if he’d done it once, Sarah thought grimly, he might have done it again.

The Chicago Police Department’s archives smelled of old paper and dust.

Sarah sat at a long table covered with file boxes, each one containing reports and records from O’Hare Airport in the early 1990s.

Marcus worked beside her methodically going through employment records while she focused on incident reports.

Here’s something Marcus said, sliding a file across to her.

Security report from November 1992, one month before Elena and Carolyn disappeared.

A female baggage handler reported being followed in the lower levels by someone she couldn’t identify.

She said she heard footsteps behind her, but when she turned around, no one was there.

Sarah read the report.

The woman’s name was Jennifer Stokes, and her statement was detailed and clearly frightened.

She’d been working a late shift, had gone down to one of the old break rooms to retrieve her jacket, and had heard someone following her through the tunnels.

When she’d called out, the footsteps had stopped.

When she’d continued walking, they’d started again.

“Did they investigate?” Sarah asked.

Marcus shook his head.

Security did a sweep of the area, found nothing.

They wrote it off as acoustics in the tunnels, sounds carrying from other areas.

Jennifer transferred to a different shift a week later.

Is she still alive? Can we contact her? Marcus checked the file.

Last known address from 1995, but there’s a note here.

She died in 1998.

Car accident.

Sarah felt a familiar frustration building.

So many dead ends.

so many witnesses who could no longer speak.

She returned to her own stack of files, pulling out the next box.

3 hours later, she found it.

A personnel file for a maintenance worker named Douglas Crane, hired in 1989, worked primarily night shifts, had unrestricted access to all areas of the airport, including the tunnel system.

There was a note in his file about a complaint from a flight attendant in 1991, claiming Crane had made her uncomfortable by staring at her in the employee cafeteria.

The complaint had been noted, but no action taken.

But what caught Sarah’s attention was the date of his termination, January 15th, 1993, just 3 weeks after Elena and Carolyn had disappeared.

“Marcus,” she said quietly, “I think I found him.

” Her partner came around the table to read over her shoulder.

Terminated for unauthorized access to restricted areas and suspicious behavior.

What does that mean? Sarah flipped through the pages.

There’s an incident report attached.

On January 8th, 1993, a security guard found Crane in the subb tunnels during his break.

He wasn’t supposed to be there.

When questioned, he became agitated and claimed he was taking a shortcut.

The security guard noted that Crane appeared to be coming from one of the sealed off sections, the area where the bodies were found.

Marcus said, “We need to find this guy now.

” A search of current records showed no driver’s license, no tax returns, no social security activity for Douglas Crane after 1994.

He’d either left the country, changed his identity, or died without official record.

But Sarah had learned long ago that people rarely vanish completely.

They left traces, breadcrumbs that could be followed if you knew where to look.

She called an old contact at the Social Security Administration, a woman named Patricia, who owed her a favor.

I need everything you can find on a Douglas crane.

SN, she read off the number from the file.

Patricia called back an hour later.

Your guy collected disability payments from 1994 to 2003.

Sent to an address in Indiana.

Payments stopped when he was admitted to Riverside Psychiatric Hospital in Fort Wayne.

He’s still there, Sarah.

Listed as a long-term resident.

Sarah felt her pulse quicken.

What’s his diagnosis? I can’t access medical records, but the payment notes reference severe mental illness requiring institutionalization.

He’s been there for 22 years.

After ending the call, Sarah looked at Marcus.

Road trip? I’ll drive, he said.

They made the three-hour journey to Fort Wayne in silence, each lost in their own thoughts.

Sarah kept picturing Elellanena and Carolyn, kept imagining their final hours in those dark tunnels.

Kept wondering what Douglas Crane could tell them about that Christmas Eve in 1992.

Riverside Psychiatric Hospital was a sprawling complex surrounded by bare trees and winter dead grass.

The receptionist checked their credentials and made a call to the medical director, Dr.

Raymond Pierce, who met them in the lobby 20 minutes later.

“Douglas Crane,” Dr.

Pierce said, his expression troubled.

“May I ask why Chicago PD is interested in one of our patients?” “He’s a potential witness in a homicide investigation,” Sarah said carefully.

We need to speak with him about his time working at O’Hare airport.

Dr.

Pierce’s frown deepened.

Douglas has been catatonic for the past 15 years.

He doesn’t speak, doesn’t respond to external stimuli.

Whatever you’re hoping to learn from him, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed.

We’d still like to see him, Marcus said.

Dr.

Pierce led them through security doors and down a long corridor to the secure ward.

The patients here were the most severe cases.

those who required constant supervision and care.

He stopped outside a room with a small window in the door.

He spends most of his time staring at the wall.

Dr.

Pierce said, “Sometimes he draws, though the images are disturbing.

We allow it as a form of therapy.

” Sarah looked through the window.

The man inside was thin, almost skeletal, with gray hair and vacant eyes.

He sat in a wheelchair near the window, his hands folded in his lap, staring at nothing.

“Can we go in?” Sarah asked.

Dr.

Pierce unlocked the door.

“I’ll need to stay with you, and please don’t expect any response.

Douglas left us a long time ago.

They entered the room slowly.

” Douglas Crane didn’t react to their presence, didn’t even blink when Sarah said his name.

She pulled up a chair and sat across from him, studying his face.

There was nothing there.

No awareness, no recognition.

[clears throat] Mr.

Crane, my name is Detective Brennan.

I’m investigating the disappearance of two women from O’Hare airport in 1992.

Elena Voss and Carolyn Hunt.

Do you remember them? Nothing.

Not even a flicker.

Marcus was examining the drawings pinned to the walls.

They were done in pencil, crude but detailed.

Most showed underground spaces, tunnels and chambers.

And in several of them there were figures.

Women’s figures drawn with disturbing precision.

Dr.

Pierce, when did he start drawing these? Marcus asked.

About a year ago.

It was the first voluntary activity he’d shown interest in since his catatonia set in.

Sarah approached the drawings, her skin crawling.

One in particular caught her attention.

It showed a chamber that looked remarkably like the one where Elellena and Carolyn had been found.

And in the chamber, two figures lay on the ground while a third figure stood over them.

But there was a fourth figure in the drawing, standing in the doorway of the chamber, watching.

“There were two of them,” Sarah whispered.

“The killer wasn’t working alone.

” She turned back to Douglas Crane, who continued to stare at nothing, his mind locked in some private hell he could never escape.

She wondered what he’d seen in those tunnels, what he’d done, or what he’d witnessed.

And she wondered about the fourth figure in the drawing, the watcher, the one who’d stood in the doorway while two women died in the darkness, the one who might still be out there.

Sarah stood in the incident room at Chicago PD headquarters, surrounded by photographs, maps, and timelines pinned to whiteboards.

It was December 27th, and she’d barely slept since returning from Fort Wayne 2 days ago.

The image of that fourth figure in Douglas Crane’s drawing haunted her waking thoughts and invaded her dreams.

Marcus entered carrying two cups of coffee and a Manila folder.

I’ve been going through missing person’s reports from the Chicago area between 1989 and 1994, he said, setting the folder on the table, looking for any other cases that might fit the pattern.

Sarah took the coffee gratefully.

Find anything? Three women, all airport employees or frequent travelers, all disappeared without a trace.

He opened the folder, spreading out photographs and reports.

Melissa Torres, baggage handler, disappeared March 1990.

Katherine Ryan, airline ticket agent, disappeared August 1991.

And Nina Padilla, travel writer who flew through O’Hare regularly, disappeared June 1993.

Sarah studied the photographs.

Three women, all in their 20s or early 30s, all attractive, all seemingly having vanished into thin air.

Were any of these investigated as connected? No, different jurisdictions, different circumstances.

Melissa was written off as a runaway because she’d had an argument with her boyfriend.

Catherine’s case got more attention, but the investigation went cold.

Nah’s disappearance was handled by the FBI initially because she’d been traveling internationally, but they never found evidence of foul play.

Sarah picked up Melissa Torres’s file.

According to the report, she’d been last seen leaving work at O’Hare on a Tuesday night in March 1990.

Her car had been found in the employee parking garage 3 days later.

“No signs of struggle, no witnesses, nothing to indicate what had happened to her.

We need to get ground penetrating radar down in those tunnels,” Sarah said.

“If there are two more bodies down there, we need to find them.

” The call to airport administration took several hours to arrange, but by late afternoon, Sarah and Marcus were back in the subb with a team of technicians operating GPR equipment.

The machines looked like modified lawnmowers, scanning the ground and sending data to laptop screens.

They started in the chamber where Elena and Carolyn had been found, then systematically worked through the adjacent corridors and sealed off sections.

The work was slow, methodical, and the air in the tunnels grew thick with tension as the hours passed.

It was nearly 8:00 in the evening when one of the technicians called out, “Detective, you need to see this.

” Sarah hurried over to where the technician was pointing at his screen.

The radar had detected something in a sealed chamber about 50 yard from where Elena and Carolyn had been buried.

Multiple anomalies approximately the right size and density to be human remains.

“How many?” Sarah asked, her stomach tight.

The technician adjusted his equipment, running another scan.

“At least three, possibly four.

They’re layered like they were buried at different times.

” Sarah felt the weight of it settle over her like a physical thing.

Not just Ellena and Carolyn, not just Melissa, Catherine, and Nah, but potentially more women who’d been taken, brought down to these dark tunnels, and murdered by two men who’d worked together in perfect horrifying synchronicity.

The excavation began the next morning.

Dr.

Chen arrived with her team, and construction workers carefully broke through the sealed wall to access the chamber beyond.

The smell that emerged was overwhelming, a mixture of decay and damp earth that made several people gag.

Sarah waited as the team entered the chamber, watching through the opening as they set up lights and began the careful process of excavation.

It took hours, painstaking work that couldn’t be rushed.

When Dr.

Chen finally emerged, her face was pale.

Four bodies,” she confirmed.

All female, all appearing to be between 20 and 40 years old at time of death.

“They’ve been here for decades.

” Sarah nodded, having expected as much, but still feeling the impact of the confirmation.

“How long will it take to identify them? We’ll start with dental records and DNA cross reference with missing person’s databases.

But Sarah, there’s something you need to know.

” Dr.

Chen pulled off her gloves.

One of the victims shows signs of having been pregnant when she died.

Approximately 5 months along based on the fetal remains.

The coffee Sarah had drunk hours ago threatened to come back up.

She swallowed hard, forcing herself to remain professional.

Jesus Christ.

There’s more.

We found personal items with some of the remains.

A driver’s license partially degraded but readable.

Catherine Ryan.

She was 28 when she disappeared.

Sarah thought of Catherine’s family who’d spent 32 years wondering what had happened to their daughter, their sister.

Now they would have answers, but those answers would bring a fresh wave of grief.

That evening, Sarah sat alone in her apartment.

Douglas Crane’s drawings spread across her coffee table.

She’d requested copies, and now she studied each one with fresh eyes, looking for clues about the identity of the second man.

Most of the drawings showed the tunnels, the chambers, the victims.

But one drawing was different.

It showed two figures standing side by side in what looked like a maintenance office.

One was tall and thin, which matched Douglas Crane’s build.

The other was shorter, stockier, with what appeared to be a distinctive feature drawn on his neck, a mark or birthark of some kind.

Sarah grabbed her laptop and pulled up the employee records from O’Hare, searching for anyone who’d worked closely with Crane.

There were dozens of maintenance workers, but she filtered the list to those who’d been there during the critical period and who’d had access to the tunnel systems.

One name caught her attention.

Vincent Moretti, hired in 1988, worked night maintenance until 1995.

There was a photograph in his file, a grainy ID photo that showed a man in his 30s with dark hair and a visible port wine birthark on the left side of his neck.

Sarah’s hands began to shake as she cross- referenced the name with current records.

Vincent Moretti, age 64, still living in the Chicago area, still alive.

She called Marcus immediately.

I found him.

The second man, his name is Vincent Moretti, and he’s been living in Cicero this whole time.

I’ll call for backup, Marcus said without hesitation.

We’re not going in alone.

But as Sarah gathered her things, preparing to head back to the station, her phone rang.

The number was blocked.

Detective Brennan, she answered, heavy breathing on the other end.

Then a voice, rough and low.

You should stop digging, Detective.

Some secrets are buried for a reason.

Who is this? Sarah demanded, but the line was already dead.

She stood in her apartment, phone still pressed to her ear, and felt the certainty settle into her bones.

Vincent Moretti knew she was coming, and he was watching.

The house in Cicero was a small ranchstyle home on a quiet street, its windows dark despite the early evening hour.

Sarah sat in an unmarked car half a block away, watching through binoculars while Marcus coordinated with the tactical team assembling two streets over.

No movement inside, she said into her radio.

No vehicles in the driveway.

Place looks empty.

We’re in position, came the response from the team leader.

Ready on your signal.

Sarah lowered the binoculars, her mind working through scenarios.

The threatening phone call suggested Moretti knew they were on to him.

But was he running or preparing for a confrontation? And how had he known to call her personal cell phone? “Something’s wrong,” she said to Marcus, who sat in the driver’s seat.

“This feels too easy.

Maybe he’s already gone.

Maybe we spooked him.

” Sarah shook her head.

He’s been hiding in plain sight for 33 years.

Why run now unless he knew we’d identified him? And how would he know that? We only figured it out a few hours ago.

Before Marcus could respond, Sarah’s phone rang again.

Same blocked number, she answered, putting it on speaker.

Moretti, very good, detective.

The voice was calm now, almost amused.

You’re smarter than the others were.

They never even came close.

Where are you? Somewhere you’ve already been.

Somewhere familiar.

Tell me, detective.

Did you really think I’d just sit in my house waiting for you to come arrest me? Sarah’s pulse quickened.

The tunnels? You’re in the tunnels? Not just any tunnel.

I’m where it all started.

Where Douglas and I learned what we were capable of.

Where we discovered that some people are meant to disappear.

He paused.

And I’m not alone.

Sarah felt ice water flood veins.

Who’s with you? Someone who was asking too many questions.

someone who thought she could write a book about the Christmas Eve disappearances.

She came to interview me this afternoon, so eager, so trusting.

Some people never learn.

Marcus was already on the radio, calling for units to respond to O’Hare.

Sarah kept Moretti talking.

Her name, what’s her name? Emily something.

Young, pretty, reminds me of the others.

She’s unconscious right now, but when she wakes up, well, the cruel pleasure in his voice made Sarah’s skin crawl.

History repeats itself, detective.

It always does.

We’re coming, Moretti.

Every exit will be sealed.

You won’t get out.

I don’t want out.

I want you to find me.

I want you to see what Douglas and I created down here all those years ago.

I want you to understand.

The line went dead.

Sarah and Marcus were already moving.

Marcus driving while Sarah coordinated the response.

Airport security was locking down access to the tunnel system.

Units were being deployed to every entrance and Dr.

Chen’s team was on standby.

They reached O’Hare in 15 minutes, leaving their car at a running stop and sprinting into the terminal.

Tom Kaufman met them at the service entrance to the subb, his face drawn with worry.

We found her car in the parking garage, he said.

Emily Vasquez, freelance journalist.

She’s been researching the 1992 disappearances for a book.

Her laptop was still in the car, but her purse and phone are gone.

Sarah descended into the tunnels with a team of officers behind her, their flashlights cutting through the darkness.

The familiar smell of mold and stale water surrounded them.

But now it carried something else.

Something that raised the hairs on the back of Sarah’s neck.

They moved quickly but carefully through the corridors, clearing each junction, each sealed chamber.

Sarah’s radio crackled with reports from other teams searching different sections of the tunnel system.

Then she heard it, a sound that didn’t belong.

Music, faint and distorted, echoing through the passages.

She recognized the melody, Silent Night.

the same song that had been playing on the airport radio the night Ellena and Carolyn disappeared.

Sarah followed the sound, her weapon drawn, her team close behind.

The music grew louder as they approached the chamber where the first bodies had been found.

Yellow police tape still marked the area, but someone had been there recently.

Fresh footprints in the dust, disturbed earth where something had been moved, and in the center of the chamber, a batterypowered radio playing that cursed Christmas carol on repeat.

But no Moretti, no Emily Vasquez.

It’s a diversion, Marcus said, scanning the shadows with his flashlight.

He’s leading us here while he’s somewhere else.

Sarah’s mind raced, thinking about the layout of the tunnels, about Douglas Crane’s drawings.

Then it hit her.

The fourth figure in the drawing hadn’t been standing in the chamber doorway.

It had been standing in a different doorway, one that looked smaller, more confined.

“The maintenance office,” she said.

“The old one from the 1990s.

Where is it?” Kaufman consulted his map.

“Two levels down, east section, but that area has been sealed off for years.

Show me.

” They descended deeper into the subbs, the air growing colder and more oppressive with each level.

The maintenance office was behind a door that had been chained shut, but the chains were new, recently installed.

Someone had been using this place.

Marcus cut through the chains with bolt cutters, and Sarah pushed the door open slowly.

The room beyond was small, maybe 15 ft by 20, with old metal lockers lining one wall and a desk covered in dust.

But the floor had been cleared recently, and there were camping supplies in one corner, a sleeping bag, bottles of water, boxes of non-p perishable food, and on the desk, arranged carefully, were photographs.

Recent photographs of Sarah leaving her apartment, getting coffee, entering the police station.

Someone had been following her, documenting her movements for days.

He’s been planning this,” she said, her voice tight.

“This whole thing, the phone calls, bringing us here.

He’s been planning it.

” Then she saw the note, handwritten on a piece of paper, weighted down by a rusted wrench.

By the time you read this, it’s already done.

Emily sleeps where the others sleep, where the planes can’t fly, where the lights don’t reach, where no one hears the screaming.

“Merry Christmas, detective.

You’re too late.

” Sarah’s hands clenched into fists.

The note was meant to taunt her, to make her feel helpless, but there was something wrong with it.

The phrasing was familiar, identical to the anonymous note sent to Rachel Voss 33 years ago.

Moretti had sent that note.

He’d taunted Elena’s sister just like he was taunting Sarah now.

But why? What did he gain from it? Unless he wanted to be found.

Unless after all these years of hiding, he wanted recognition for what he’d done.

Sarah pulled out her phone and called the command center.

I need every officer searching for any newly disturbed earth in the tunnel system.

He buried her recently within the last few hours.

The grave will be fresh.

It took another 40 minutes of systematic searching before they found it.

A section of the east tunnels where the earth had been recently turned over, still soft and loose.

Sarah watched as officers carefully excavated the area, praying they weren’t too late.

The first thing they uncovered was a hand, pale and limp.

Then a face.

A young woman’s face, her eyes closed, duct tape across her mouth.

One of the officers checked for a pulse, and Sarah held her breath.

“She’s alive,” the officer said.

“Pulse is weak but steady.

” Paramedics were called immediately.

And as they worked to free Emily Vasquez from her makeshift grave, Sarah felt a mixture of relief and rage.

Relief that they’d found her in time.

Rage that Moretti had put them through this had terrorized this young woman had forced them to relive the horror of what he’d done 33 years ago.

But where was Moretti? The answer came as they were loading Emily into an ambulance.

An officer found him in one of the deepest sections of the tunnels in a chamber that had been sealed since the 1990s.

He was sitting against the wall, a empty bottle of pills beside him, his eyes open but unseeing.

Dr.

Chen pronounced him dead at the scene.

“Suicide,” she said.

He’d taken enough sedatives to kill himself several times over, but he’d left one final message.

Scratched into the concrete wall beside him with what looked like a piece of rebar.

Douglas was weak.

I was strong.

We were perfect together.

Now I join him where the light doesn’t reach.

Sarah stood in that chamber for a long time after the body was removed, trying to understand the mind of someone who could do what Vincent Moretti had done.

Someone who could hunt and kill for sport, who could bury women alive, who could destroy families and then live quietly among them for decades.

She would never understand.

And maybe that was for the best.

Three months later, Sarah stood in Oak Park Cemetery on a cold March morning, watching as seven caskets were laid to rest in a memorial plot purchased by the families of the victims.

The sky was gray and heavy with the threat of snow, and a small crowd of mourners huddled together against the wind.

Rachel Voss stood at the front, one hand resting on Elena’s casket.

Beside her were the families of Carolyn Hunt, Melissa Torres, Katherine Ryan, Nina Padila, and two other women who’d been identified through DNA analysis.

Jennifer Stokes, the baggage handler who’d reported being followed in 1992 and died in what everyone had believed was a car accident in 1998.

And Patricia Morrison, a flight attendant who’d been reported missing in 1989, 3 years before Elena and Carolyn.

The investigation had revealed that Patricia’s accident had been anything, but Vincent Moretti had forced her car off the road, made it look like she’d lost control on icy pavement, and no one had questioned it.

Jennifer Stokes had been his first victim to be buried in the tunnels, taken in late 1991 after she’d gotten too close to discovering his hunting ground.

Nine women total.

Nine lives stolen over the course of 5 years by two men who’d found each other in the darkness beneath one of the world’s busiest airports.

Emily Vasquez stood near the back of the crowd, her face still bearing the faint marks of her ordeal.

She’d survived her burial by less than an hour.

Moretti having used a crude air tube that would have sustained her for only a short time.

The psychological scars would take much longer to heal than the physical ones.

But she was alive.

That was what mattered.

After the service, Rachel approached Sarah.

The older woman looked smaller somehow, as if finally having answers had allowed her to release something she’d been carrying for 33 years.

“Thank you,” Rachel said simply.

“For not giving up on her.

” Sarah nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

In her jacket pocket was a letter she’d received a week earlier, forwarded from Riverside Psychiatric Hospital.

Douglas Crane had died in his sleep 2 days after their visit.

His catatonia finally claiming him completely, but the hospital staff had found something in his room after his death.

A journal hidden inside his pillowcase.

Pages and pages of detailed confessions written in a shaking hand during brief moments of clarity over the past year.

Descriptions of the abductions, the murders, the burial of the bodies.

And throughout it all, a repeated refrain.

Vincent made me.

Vincent enjoyed it.

I just wanted it to stop.

Dr.

Pierce had included a note with the journal explaining that Douglas had likely been manipulated and controlled by Moretti from the beginning.

A weak man dominated by a stronger, more evil one.

It didn’t excuse what Douglas had done, but it provided context.

The journal had also revealed something else.

Patricia Morrison, the first victim, had been pregnant with Douglas Crane’s child.

They’d been having a brief affair, and when she’d threatened to report him for harassment after trying to end it, Moretti had convinced Douglas that she had to disappear.

That first murder had opened a door that neither man could close.

Sarah watched as the families dispersed, returning to cars and lives forever marked by what had been taken from them.

Emily Vasquez approached her as the cemetery began to empty.

“I wanted you to know,” Emily said quietly.

I’m still writing the book about all of them.

Their stories deserve to be told.

They do, Sarah agreed.

As Sarah walked back to her car, she thought about the tunnels beneath O’Hare, now being systematically sealed with concrete to ensure no one could ever use them again.

The airport had announced a memorial would be built in the new terminal, honoring the victims whose lives had been stolen in the darkness below.

Her phone buzzed with a text from Marcus.

New case just came in.

Body found in Union Station basement.

You want it? Sarah looked back at the cemetery at the fresh graves that had finally given nine women the dignity of a proper burial.

Then she typed her response.

On my way because there would always be another case, another victim, another family searching for answers in the darkness.

But for Elena, Carolyn, Melissa, Catherine, Nina, Jennifer, Patricia, and the two women whose names had been identified as Carmen Rodriguez and Angela Chen, the searching was over.

They could finally rest.

As Sarah drove away from the cemetery, she didn’t notice the figure standing at the edge of the grounds, partially hidden by a tall monument.

a woman in her 40s with short dark hair watching the mourners depart with an expression that was neither grief nor curiosity.

The woman had worked as a janitor at O’Hare from 1988 to 1994.

Had seen Douglas and Vincent in the tunnels more times than she could count.

Had heard things she’d convinced herself she’d imagined.

Had kept silent out of fear and self-preservation.

She’d read about the arrests, the bodies, the confessions, and she’d felt relief wash over her when both men were dead.

Unable to ever reveal that there had been others who’d known, others who’d seen, others who’d done nothing, the woman turned and walked away, disappearing into the gray March morning like a ghost, carrying her secrets to whatever grave awaited her.

Because some darkness never truly dies.

It just finds new shadows to hide