“Where were you on Saturday night and Sunday morning?” Kane leaned forward and narrowed his gaze. The move reminded Jenna of an eagle waiting to swoop down and capture its prey. “Tell me the truth because we can check the GPS on your phone.”
“My folks went to see my grandma, and they stayed over.” Holland lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “They like me to stay home and feed the animals, so I watched TV. With all the snow and all, I didn’t want to risk getting stuck somewhere.”
“Were you alone?” Kane flicked a glance at Jenna and then continued his relentless stare at Holland. “If not, we’ll need to corroborate your alibi.”
The smell of fear rose up from the young man and Jenna noticed a sheen of sweat above the man’s top lip. Why was he sweating?
“Dang.” Holland shook his head. “My folks will kill me.”He gave Kane a remorseful stare. “My girlfriend stayed over with me. Do you need to tell them?”
“No.” Kane slid from the desk. “I can be discreet. Give us her name and where we can find her. I suggest you don’t contact her. You’ve already given us permission to look at your phone logs, so we’ll check if you call her.”
“Okay, okay.” Holland gave them the details.
“One more thing.” Kane cleared his throat. “Do you know Laney Prescott? She’s a social worker.”
“Can’t say that I do.” Holland wiped both hands down his face. “Is that all? Can I go now?”
Jenna handed him her card. “Yeah, thanks for your time. If you discover who called you about the burst pipe, call me.”
“You can go.” Kane picked up his phone and stopped the recording.
As Holland left the classroom, Jenna turned to Kane. “What do you think?”
“We’ll check out the girlfriend, but I figure he’s clean.” His gaze followed Holland along the hallway and then he looked back at Jenna. “I checked out his gloves. I figure the killer wears black leather gloves similar to mine. I noticed dark particles under the victim’s nails. His gloves are light brown, well used, and had no recent scratches. He is way too nervous for a serial killer who stalks women—and he showed remorse. He appears genuinely disturbed by finding the body.”
Blowing out a sigh, Jenna stepped into the hallway. “Agreed, but I got two things from speaking to him. The killer has access to a radio and the school. It’s a long shot, but if we can pair one of Laney Prescott’s clients to one of the workers here at the school, we might just catch this guy before he kills again.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Wednesday
The previous day, with so much information to digest, Jenna had sent everyone home at five after six, intending to start fresh in the morning. It had been a long day, with so many incidents happening at once that it had become difficult to keep them all separated. The snowplows usually went through town and to outlying areas between six and six-thirty each evening, so to make sure her deputies and herself and Kane got home without being stuck in the blizzard, they all left to follow the snowplows home. When they’d left the ranch, only a few snowflakes were falling and the road was recently cleared and covered with ice repellent. As they drove into town, the amount of people milling around surprised Jenna. It seemed everyone had taken advantage of the lessening snowfall to get out and grab supplies. Most of the stores in town opened at seven. Being a rural town, most of the ranchers were up and busy at daylight. People bundled up in bright colors and all of them moving round in a cloud of steam amused Jenna. In fact, the crowd of people lining up outside Aunt Betty’s Café appeared to be cloaked infog. She checked her watch. They’d made good time getting into town and arrived at the office a little after seven- thirty.
To her surprise, Maggie stood at the counter, and Rio, Rowley, and Raven sat at their desks hard at work. She gave Maggie a wave as she walked past the front counter to speak to her deputies. “You all look very busy. Do you have anything for me?”
“Yeah, Jesse Holland’s alibi checks out. His girlfriend was with him as he told you.” Rio glanced at Rowley. “We split up the CCTV footage between us and have been viewing it for the last hour or so.” He leaned back in his seat and yawned. “It’s not very interesting. Not many people came and went in the last twelve hours. Those we found we zoomed in and captured an image of them. Apart from Jesse Holland, Ms. Bell, Ms. McBride, and the principal, we haven’t identified anyone yet.”
“Ms. Bell cooperated and gave me a complete list of everyone who worked or entered the building over the last week or so, along with dates and times.” Raven spun around in his chair to look at Jenna. “I’ve been trying to narrow it down to the times when we know someone stalked Ms. McBride.”
Glad that everyone worked without supervision, Jenna nodded. “That’s really good, Raven, but don’t forget to include anyone who called in sick. It would be to pretend they weren’t going to be at work and then slip in later. They all know where the CCTV cameras are situated and could easily avoid them, so it’s imperative you check the logs to see who actually worked those days.”
“Okay.” Raven rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll call Ms. Bell and ask her for a list of anyone who called in sick over that time.”
Turning to go, Jenna glanced over her deputies. “Keep me up to date. I’m going to get the search warrant for the social services department.” She headed up the stairs to her office.
As she entered the office, Kane glanced up and smiled andthen went back to tapping away on his keyboard. The room smelled of freshly brewed coffee and she could hear the machine sizzling as the rich brown liquid plopped into the pot. She dropped her things on her desk, removed her coat and gloves, and went to sit down. Under her desk she could hear Duke snoring. They had intended to leave the bloodhound at home as he didn’t like the cold weather and he wasn’t getting any younger. They changed their minds when Duke followed them to the front door, his tail wagging with excitement to be going out, and they couldn’t leave him behind. Kane had carried him to the truck and set him on the back seat and then carried him again from the truck and into the office. The dog had turned around three times and flopped down in his basket under her desk. As she bent down to rub Duke’s ears, his tail thumped, and one eye opened to look at her. She tucked the blanket around him and gave his head a scratch. “You are such a good boy, Duke.”
The dog gave a long, contented sigh, and Kane sniggered. She looked at him. “What’s so funny?”
“I’m starting to believe that Duke prefers being here in the office in the quiet so he can sleep all day, rather than being home with the boys. I figure they’re getting too noisy for him.” Kane stood and walked over to the printer as paperwork started shooting out. “I’ve written up the request for a search warrant. I have everything covered. If you take a look at it, make sure I haven’t forgotten anything, we’ll walk it over to the judge before he starts court. Hopefully he'll sign it and we can head straight to the Department of Social Services before we need to be at the autopsy.”
Jenna sat down at her desk and pulled out a legal pad. There were so many things to do that she needed to make a list. When they spoke to the director of the social services, she’d need to discover which of Laney Prescott’s workmates were also her friends, or if any of them knew any of her friends. Sheneeded her whereabouts before the night of her murder, her current cases, and also cases involving any children who went to Black Rock Falls Middle School in the last ten years or so. It would be a huge ask for the department and correlating information would take months unless she could convince Kalo and Beth Katz to get involved, as they had access to the type of software that gave them almost instant results. She glanced out of the window. The snow had finally stopped falling and maybe Styles and Carter would be able to fly into town. They would only need a break in the weather of two hours or so. As Kane correlated the paperwork for the search warrant, she pulled out her phone and called Agent Carter. “Good morning, Ty. It’s stopped snowing here. Is there any chance you’ll be able to fly over the next few hours? We really need your help right now. I will explain everything later, but we have another Christmas serial killer in town.”
“We’re all packed and ready to go.”Carter’s boots echoed on tile as he walked.“I heard from Styles not fifteen minutes ago. They should be on their way shortly. We had planned to drop the birds down on your ranch, but will we have transportation to the office?”
Jenna smiled. “Yeah, my department truck is there and Raya is at home with the boys. She’ll give you the keys. You have the code to get into the cottage. You’ll be sharing with Kalo, I hope you don’t mind. Beth and Styles in the other rooms and Jo and Jaime in one of our spare rooms. Give me a call when you arrive. Tell Kalo and Beth to bring their laptops. I need them to run down a few things for me.”
“Copy that. We can disable your security net from the choppers, so we’ll be able to land without a problem.”Carter chuckled.“It sounds like I can look forward to another fun-filled Christmas in Black Rock Falls.”
