Kane watched her weave her way through the tables back to the counter. “The other thing I find difficult to believe is why someone would hit themselves so hard on the head that they split the skin open. When did they do it? I doubt someone would pick them up in a cab with blood all over them like that.” He took a spoonful of chili, moaned with pleasure as the full flavor rushed over his taste buds, and then swallowed. “I just can’t figure out a motive for why she would do such a thing.”
“I’ve been trying to consider our next steps in this case and keep coming up empty.” Jenna blew on a spoonful of chili. “We can send everything we have to Kalo but it’s going to be difficult to search for suspects as we’re not real sure if a crime has been committed. I’m sitting on the fence with this one.” She ate the spoonful and sighed. “We’ll offer her protection in the form of the foundation and I figure we wait and see what happens. I don’t consider her to be in any great danger at the moment. If someone does have her purse, knows where she lives, and plans to kill her, it’s not going to do him much good, if she is notstaying there, is it? We’ll have her escorted back and forth to work and soon it will be winter vacation and she doesn’t need to leave the foundation at all. If Kalo comes up with anything we can use, we’ll take it from there, but right now, I figure we should consider the case that Rio and Rowley are working on. What do you say?”
Slowly Kane buttered a slice of bread considering what Jenna had said. He shrugged. “I don’t think we have any other choice. If we can determine that the handwriting doesn’t belong to her, I guess we will have to believe her story, but I agree the only option we have is to wait and see if this guy makes another move. With the other case, if they do suspect that Bryce Withers is trafficking drugs, we should be bringing in the FBI. We don’t have the resources to take down that many men. Icouldgo in and shoot them all, but we have no proof that they’re actually distributing drugs. If they are and we storm Withers’ property even with a search warrant, those men are carrying AK-47s and someone is going to get hurt.”
“Okay, if Rio gets the search warrant, I’ll call in the FBI to assist.” Jenna glanced out of the window. “Not that I believe they’ll be able to fly here in this weather.”
Kane nodded. “There also may be a delay with the deliveries. They come along like clockwork according to Rio, so it won’t be too difficult to set up a raid on another day. I don’t figure drug lords take vacations over the holidays. It will be business as usual.”
“Good, that’s the business out of the way.” Jenna grabbed a slice of bread and placed it on her side plate. “Now let’s eat before this gets cold.”
THIRTEEN
On the drive back to the office Jenna’s phone chimed. “Sheriff Alton.”
“I’m sorry to trouble you, Sheriff. This is Mavis Kettering from the Black Rock Falls Social Security Administration. I work with a young woman by the name of Laney Prescott. Laney didn’t come in to work today. She had a very important meeting and wouldn’t miss it unless something was wrong. She didn’t call in sick and I’ve been on the phone all morning and my calls go to voicemail. I’m a little concerned as, you know, being social workers we have our enemies. I’m unable to leave the office right now and as she lives alone in a little cottage on the outskirts of town, I would appreciate it if you could do a welfare check on her.”
Jenna glanced at Kane and he gave her a nod and pulled to the side of the road. “I am just heading back to the office now, so yes, I will be able to do a detour and check on Laney. Give me her details, including her phone number.”
Unfolding her notebook, Jenna quickly took down the details and asked the caller to repeat them. “I’ll call you back on this number once I have spoken to her. The blizzard is doingstrange things with the wireless signal at the moment, so maybe your calls aren’t getting through. I’m on my way now.” She disconnected and added the details to the GPS.
Powdery flakes swirled around them as they made their way slowly out of town and along Stanton. The snowplow had been through earlier and great mounds of dirty snow piled up along each side of the road. The pine trees’ branches bent under the weight of the snow, some touching the ground. The expanse of white seemed endless apart from the stark black of the pine trees’ trunks and the scattering of pine cones. The temperature had dropped rapidly and every so often a loud crack broke the silence as frozen branches shattered and fell to the ground. It was difficult to distinguish between a gunshot and a large branch exploding in the freezing temperatures. It was fortunate the town council had initiated the new program to use the red ice retardant on the highways. In the past, they often encountered many patches of black ice, causing accidents all over.
The GPS gave clear and easy-to-follow instructions, and soon heading along a snow-covered road through the forest, Jenna couldn’t imagine how Laney Prescott would have been able to get into town without calling out a snowplow to clear her road. The size of the road did show an indication of recent snowplow activity, so perhaps the council cleared the road in the early morning and after five each night, which would work well for anyone trying to get to and from work. Although she hadn’t noticed any other houses in the local vicinity as they drove along. They reached a small log cabin set back from the road. It resembled a gingerbread house covered in frosting. Long icicles hung down from the gutters. On one side was a garage and Jenna assumed the owner’s vehicle would be inside. The snowplow attachment on the front of the Beast had cut a clear path right to her front door.
Shivering, Jenna buttoned up her coat and slipped outside. She sunk into snow up to her ankles. Wearing knee-length bootsto keep her feet dry had been a good decision. She stepped in Kane’s footprints on the way to the front steps and stood to one side as he hammered on the door. No sound came from within and she looked at Kane. “Hear anything?”
“Nope. She’s not here.” Kane peered around the side of the house. “We need to check the garage.”
Jenna led the way to the garage and cupped her hands around her eyes to look inside a window. “There’s a truck in here, so I assume she’s home. I wonder if she’s had a medical episode.” They returned to the front door and knocked again. When no one answered she turned to Kane. “Can you open the door?”
“Not a problem.” Kane removed his gloves and pulled out a set of lock picks. He went to work and in seconds opened the door. He replaced his gloves and pushed the door open. “Laney Prescott, this is the sheriff’s department. We’re coming inside to do a welfare check.” He stood for a moment listening and then slowly drew his weapon. “It’s cold in here and I feel a breeze. I figure one of the doors is open. We need to clear the area.”
Nodding, Jenna moved to the left, keeping her back to the wall, and Kane went right. The small family room was clear, and they slowly walked toward a hallway leading to bedrooms. When she opened the first door her heart raced. A pair of feet with blue toes stuck out from around the side of the bed. She fought back the need to run as far away as possible and swallowed hard. “She’s in here. Clear the rest of the house. I’ll go and check her.”
“Copy.” Kane moved along the hallway.
Unease gripped Jenna as she eased carefully into the room, moving her weapon from side to side and up and down. If something had happened to this woman, the perpetrator could be hiding close by. As she moved around the foot of the unmade bed, she frowned at the writing on the pillow.That’s not good.Two steps farther and the familiar smell of a voidedbladder hit her full in the face. Preparing herself for a homicide, she glanced down at the woman sprawled on her chest on the floor, face turned to one side and arms spread. From the woman’s torn nails and bloody fingers, she’d put up a fight. The side of her face she could make out was blue and her tongue stuck out. A cord had been tied tightly around her neck with a piece of wood through it. Jenna had no doubt the victim was deceased. With care, she stepped around the body and peered into the bathroom. She sighed with relief finding it empty.
A slight noise in the hallway spun her around and she aimed at the door. “Stop where you are. I’m armed.”
“It’s me, Jenna.” Kane filled the doorway, his gaze moved across the room and then to her face. “The back door is wide open and the rest of the house is clear. There are signs of forced entry.” He pulled on examination gloves and bent to check the pulse of the woman. “I’m assuming this is Laney Prescott?”
Horrified, Jenna pointed to the message on the pillowcase. “Can you imagine waking up and seeing that?” She indicated to a lipstick standing up on the nightstand. “Maybe this will tell us who murdered her.” She pulled out her phone and took a photo of the lipstick and the top lying beside it. “Can you scan this for prints?”
“Sure.” Kane moved the scanner over the lipstick and case. He looked at the screen. “There are a few nice clear prints on here.” He dropped the lipstick and case into an evidence bag and wrote on it.
Moving carefully around the body, Jenna looked at Kane over one shoulder. “I don’t see any signs of a struggle, apart from the mat being roughed up a bit. It appears she was out of bed and heading for the bathroom when he grabbed her from behind. I figure he took her by surprise. I wonder if she even noticed the message.”
“There’s a bedside lamp under the bed.” Kane straightened. “I figure when she noticed the message, she grabbed it as a weapon and ran to lock herself in the bathroom.”
Nodding, Jenna bent closer to the victim. “There are scratches on her neck. She fought for her life. I’ll call Wolfe. I hope he’s in town today.”
The medical examiner and Kane’s military handler, Dr. Shane Wolfe, and his daughter Emily ran Black Rock Falls Medical Examiner’s Office but they worked all over the state. His wife, Norrell, was a forensic anthropologist with her own department in the same building. Having connections with the government meant that Wolfe’s equipment was state of the art. He had embraced all the available AI technology to enhance and improve the results of his work. This meant that they got their results faster, which made crime solving easier. After Jenna contacted Wolfe, she followed Kane out into the family room and they meticulously went through the house looking for evidence. They found damp patches between the mudroom and the kitchen. She turned to Kane. “I assume he got in this way.”
“Yeah, she hasn’t got a security alarm, and there are small scratches on the lock of the back door, so I can only assume he picked the lock the same way as I did to get in the house.” Kane took photos of the lock and the damp patches on the floor. “I’ve scanned the door for fingerprints and found a few. Once Wolfe has finished examining the body, I’ll scan the victim’s prints so we can eliminate them from any I find inside the house.”
Looking over the scene, Jenna determined the killer had planned the entry into the house with intent to murder. From the message on the pillow, she guessed the killer had been inside the house previously. She made a mental note to follow up on anyone who had visited the house for any type of maintenance or deliveries over the last few weeks. She would also need a warrant for Laney Prescott’s office to release the details of cases involving men and to discover if she’d had disputes with anyone. She needed next-of-kin details and a list of her friends.She walked back through the house, leaving Kane to search for fingerprints. The second bedroom had been made into an office and a laptop sat on a desk alongside a photograph of a group of three woman and a man. She copied it with her phone and walked back through the house and frowned. Apart from that one photograph, she found no other images. The calendar on the fridge door was practically empty, but Jenna bagged it, hopeful it might hold a clue to who had come by the house. She dropped the evidence bags on the kitchen table and went back to the office.
