‘Of course. Come on, Shane. Let’s find the Davises.’
She found Kyle and his parents in one of the smaller meeting rooms and dropped Shane off with them, then went in search of her grandfather. She spied him standing at one of the windows, a sad, pensive look on his face. She’d seen that look before, always when he thought no one was watching. And most always at this time of year.
For all his bluster, Clarke Fallon carried holes in his soul. But no one would ever know unless they caught him like this. Unaware.
I learned to wear a mask at the feet of a master, she thought. She’d started toward him when the elevator behind her dinged. Startled, she turned, and because the elevator opened directly into the bullpen, she didn’t have to wait to see who it was.
‘Meredith!’ Dani Novak rushed out of the elevator, a small box in one hand and a green garbage bag in the other.
Meredith met her halfway. ‘Dani? What’s wrong?’ Because clearly something was.
‘I need either Adam or Deacon. Now.’
‘I’ll take you.’ Meredith led her to Isenberg’s briefing room. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. This is case related.’ Dani stopped suddenly and stared at Meredith. ‘Your case, actually. What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in a safe house.’
‘Well, things are a little upside down right now,’ Meredith said wryly. ‘I’ll explain later. What do you have?’
Dani sighed. ‘Evidence.’
Meredith pointed to the door. ‘They’re in there. Isenberg, Scarlett, Adam, Deacon, and two detectives from Narcotics. I’m not supposed to be in there, so I’ll just wait for the scoop when you’re done.’
Cincinnati, Ohio,
Sunday 20 December, 4.50 P.M.
Adam stood back and stared at the white board where he’d taped photos of all the victims, near victims – his gut had twisted as he’d taped Meredith’s photo to the board – and the suspects to date, which had to include Linnie Holmes until they knew differently.
Kiesler University’s campus PD had sent them both a still and a copy of the surveillance video showing the huge thug of a man who’d asked for Shane last night. This photo was placed squarely in the suspects column.
‘His face . . . He looks off,’ Adam said thoughtfully as he studied the photo. ‘More than the broken nose. He’s trying to smile in this picture so that Kyle will tell him where to find Shane, but his face doesn’t move.’
‘It’s his cheeks,’ Isenberg said. ‘They don’t move, nor do they match his face. His nose is red from the cold, but his cheeks aren’t.’
‘Prosthetics,’ Nash said. ‘Gonna make it hard to get an ID out of facial recognition software.’ And if anyone would know, it would be Nash Currie. He was what Diesel would have been if he’d joined the police force instead of working at the Ledger.
‘You’ll still try?’ Hanson asked and Nash nodded.
‘Of course. The girl will be difficult too, unless she’s looked that sick for a long time. Although I can’t imagine anyone surviving for long looking that sick.’
‘What about the license plates Candace Voss photographed last night?’ Adam asked, getting the discussion back on track. He taped those three photos on the white board.
‘I ran them,’ Hanson said. ‘They’re registered to Jolee Cusack, Sylvia Hyland, and Theresa Romer. The last two names are deceased, but someone has been paying to keep the registrations active.’
Isenberg huffed. ‘Naturally. But to be expected if they’re using the cars in a crime.’
‘Which car was the one driven by the pink-haired girl that Candace Voss followed back to the university parking lot?’ Adam asked.
‘That car was registered to Jolee Cusack.’ Hanson held up a piece of paper, printed with a Facebook page. ‘Jolee is, according to her Facebook page, very much alive. She’s a grad student. She rents an apartment about a block off campus. According to her Facebook and Instagram posts, she turned in her final paper and is skiing in Vermont. I sent a request to the local PD to check resorts and hotels. Her neighbors here say she keeps to herself. They hardly ever see her. Nobody can remember seeing her in the last three days.’
Adam studied the Facebook picture. ‘No pink hair. So even though she was driving Jolee’s car back from Voss’s party the night Candace followed her, Jolee was probably not the woman that Penny Voss saw or that Candace spoke to.’
‘Could be a pink rinse,’ Scarlett said. ‘Or a wig. She might use it when she’s hooking. Just because she doesn’t have pink hair in these photos doesn’t mean she’s not the woman who Penny saw that night.’
Deacon narrowed his eyes at the printout. ‘Let me see it a sec.’ He put it on the table, side-by-side with the photo from the restaurant’s surveillance video of the woman who’d accompanied the man when he’d picked up the SUV. ‘Look at the eyes.’
It was the only thing they could look at, because the woman’s face was almost completely covered by a scarf. Only her eyes were visible. But the eyes were damn similar.
‘Could be her,’ Adam said.
‘And if it is, it means she was not skiing in Vermont as of yesterday.’ Scarlett bumped Deacon’s shoulder with her own. ‘Good eye, D.’
Deacon shrugged off the compliment. ‘Now we just have to find her.’
‘I’ve put out a BOLO for her vehicle,’ Hanson said. ‘Her apartment was unoccupied and her luggage was gone.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘Her Facebook location says she’s in Vermont. Can’t believe I fell for that.’
‘She doesn’t want to be found,’ Adam said. ‘But now I’m wondering at the connection between this woman and Linnie.’ He tapped the photo provided by Kiesler University. ‘Bruiser took Jolee with him when he went to pick up the SUV. Linnie didn’t know he had picked it up already, because she called to tell us where to find it.’
‘How did Linnie get the SUV to Clyde’s Place?’ Deacon asked. ‘She pulls into the parking lot alone. Andy was afraid whoever had coerced him would hurt Linnie, so it’s unlikely she would have been handed the keys and allowed to drive away.’
‘She got away somehow,’ Scarlett mused. ‘Good on her. Bruiser and Jolee don’t drive up to the restaurant’s lot. They walk. Bruiser cleans up the SUV’s driver’s seat while Jolee walks away. We need to find her on area surveillance footage. I assume they parked whatever vehicle they used to get there somewhere else and that Jolee drove it back. I assume her car isn’t in the campus lot anymore?’
‘No,’ Hanson said. ‘And it wasn’t in front of her apartment either. It could be parked somewhere off campus. I requested some uniforms to canvass the lots to find the car, but we should add more officers to the search. The campus cops can help.’
Scarlett leaned forward, looking around Deacon to see Nash. ‘Have you accessed data from the license plate readers? I mean, they’re all over town.’
Little cameras that did nothing except capture the images of cars that drove by and store them in databases. Which was great for law enforcement, but always left Adam feeling a little strange as a private citizen.
‘We have,’ Nash said. ‘But not in the Beechmont area. That’s where you were going next, right? You want us to see if Jolee drove Bruiser in her own vehicle yesterday.’
Scarlett nodded. ‘And if she did that yesterday and is on the slopes in Vermont today? She had to either drive all night or fly out first thing this morning.’
‘So we check Beechmont, I-71 north, and the area around the airport.’ Nash wrote it down in his notebook. ‘We can do that.’