“It is.” The half smile was charming, and if Adler wasn’t a cop, she might have been charmed.
“As it so happens, I’m now on some solid foods.”
“Then you’re in luck.”
He pulled up his chair and handed her a napkin. He glanced in the bag. “Chocolate glazed or plain?”
“Plain. Let’s keep it simple.”
With a napkin he plucked out a plain one and handed it to her. Its aroma made her mouth water. She bit into it. Adler was batting two for two with her so far.
She took another bite before she asked, “So what’re you really here for? Feeding me isn’t a priority. You look like a man with questions.”
He tossed her a sideways glance meant to disarm. “Am I that obvious?”
She chuckled and felt charmed nonetheless. “You use that look with suspects?”
“I do.” He bit into the doughnut with no air of repentance or worry about calories. “I met with a forensic investigator who is analyzing several notes Jennifer received.”
She pulled off a piece. “And?”
“Without getting into too much detail, I can tell you he signed each one with a heart. Does that mean anything to you?”
Kaitlin set her doughnut down as a memory rushed out from the past. If the killer had left a heart, he’d definitely been involved in the search for Gina. She reached for a pad and pen on her nightstand and drew a particular heart she’d seen many times. “When Gina was first missing, the volunteer groups developed a kind of logo. It was Gina’s name with a heart drawn over top of it.”
“Who came up with the logo?”
She handed him the paper. “It was my idea to add it to the flyer, because she loved hearts. She had several necklaces that were heart shaped.”
“It was your idea?”
“Yeah.”
“The heart symbol was well known?”
“Yes. All the volunteer posters and flyers had it, and several news organizations came up with graphics that incorporated it. It would have been hard to miss.”
“A colleague of mine is reading the file, but our focus has been on the abduction and not the search. How many volunteers were on the search teams?”
“Hundreds. There was an organized system, and in that group there were teams of ten. Volunteers stood side by side and walked open fields and brush for hours searching for clues. There were also people who weren’t sanctioned as official searchers, and they ventured out on their own.”
“Have you spoken to any of those volunteers?”
“George Dunkin. He’s on a canine tracking team who volunteered over a hundred hours on the search.”
“You gave me Jennifer’s tape, but I need all of them, Kaitlin.”
“Sure. I’ll send them all.”
“Can you do it now?”
“Hand me my laptop.”
He dusted off his crumbs, tossing the half-eaten doughnut in the trash. He retrieved the laptop from the side table and gently set it on her lap. She opened it, pushed a few buttons, and hit “Send.”
“On their way.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not sure how my interviews will help.”
“Jennifer’s stalking, her murder, Erika’s disappearance, and your stabbing all started when you began your research.” He wasn’t smiling now, and his tone had sharpened just a little.
There was a time she’d have felt backed into a corner by his harsh tone. But she was coming to recognize this was how he sounded when he was working a case. She drew in a breath. She needed and wanted to believe he wasn’t going to throw her under the bus if the case got too hot to handle.
He held her gaze. “Are you sharing everything with me?”
“You know all that I know now, Detective.”
“And you will keep me in the loop if you learn anything new?”
“Yes. Will you do the same?”
“I can’t promise that right now. I wish that I could, but I can’t. The case has to come first.”
She didn’t like hearing that, but she sensed he was being honest.
“How did you choose your interview subjects?” If Adler realized he’d upset her, he didn’t seem to care.
“I went through all the media reports I could find and made a list of everyone mentioned and went from there. I interviewed whoever would talk to me.”
“Any idea who killed Jennifer?”
She ran a trembling hand through her hair. She felt like a raw nerve. “I want to help and to remember. I’ve been through hypnotherapy before, but I could do it again.”
Adler arched a brow. “If it comes to that, we’ll talk about it. What does your gut say about this killer?”
She drew in a breath, dialing down her anger. “I’m trying to set up an appointment with Steven Marcus, the reporter who covered Gina’s disappearance extensively and who knows the case better than anyone. I’m hoping he has more ideas.”
“I haven’t talked to Marcus.”
“Excluding North, he’s your best expert on Gina’s case.”
Adler wrote down the name. “Do you have a number?”
She reached for her phone and rattled it off. “He’s on deadline and won’t be available until Saturday.”
“Maybe you can include me in your meeting.”
“Sure. I’ll let you know when we make contact.”
His phone buzzed, and he looked down. A heavy sigh hissed over clenched teeth. “Erika Crowley has been found.”
“Is she all right?”
“I’ll catch up with you tomorrow.”
She tried to swing her legs over the side of the bed, forgetting for a split second why she was here. A shot of white-hot pain reminded her. “So you’re just going to leave me hanging like this? You aren’t going to tell me what’s going on?”
“For now, no.”
INTERVIEW FILE #19
THE SEARCH AND RESCUE TEAM
Saturday, March 3, 2018; 2:00 p.m.
The three barking bloodhounds move around me with a playful energy, but they sniff my outstretched hands with a keen intensity. Larry, Moe, and Curley range in age from one to six years old, and they belong to search and rescue expert George Dunkin. They are his pride and joy. Dunkin is the brainchild behind K-9 Find, a nonprofit group that has logged thousands of search hours and recovered over a dozen missing people.
“Basically, a dog’s brain can evaluate smells forty times better than a human’s. We walk into a room and smell the beef stew cooking. They smell all the beef, potatoes, carrots, peas, garlic, onions, and whatever other ingredients are in that stew.”
George and his K-9 Lucy spent hundreds of hours in the woods searching for Gina. With Lucy at his side, Dunkin was interviewed four times on the evening news as well as the morning shows.
“Why did you and Lucy spend so many hours on this particular search?”
His brown eyes grow wistful at the mention of Lucy’s name. He sorely misses that dog. “She was the best dog I’ve ever had. The best.” Absently he rubs Moe’s head. “We were at home watching the news when Gina Mason’s face appeared on the screen. There was something about her smile that touched my heart. I couldn’t sit by and do nothing, so Lucy and I got to work.” He’s silent for a moment. “I still have one of Gina’s T-shirts that we used to search for her.”
“You saved her shirt?”
“I couldn’t let it go.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Tuesday, March 20, 2018; 10:00 p.m.
Erika Crowley’s body was found in a cobblestone alley near Eighteenth Street in the Shockoe Bottom district of the city. The anonymous call had come in at nine p.m., and the caller sounded drunk on the 911 tape when he reported he’d gone behind the dumpster to urinate and spotted the body. He’d called from an untraceable cell phone.
The police cruisers were nosed in the alley’s entrance, and their lights flashed bright blue onto a fading cigarette ad painted a half century ago on a brick warehouse.
Adler pulled on latex gloves as Quinn came around the side of her car to meet him. “Anyone spoken to Brad Crowley?”
“No. We’ve kept a tight lid on this,” Quinn said.
They crossed the cobblestone street to the alley’s entrance. Each nodded to the uniformed officer and then ducked under the crime scene tape. The camera lights of a forensic technician flashed behind the dumpster.