“We’re talking about someone who carries a deep-set resentment. So I honestly don’t believe it’s someone who is young, for instance, under the age of twenty. This would negate any of the current children at the school. The reason I mentioned this is because a boy of fourteen is strong enough to strangle a woman.” Jo placed her hamburger on a napkin. “In fact, this person could be any age from approximately twenty-five upward, which would again negate them being a student of Ellie McBride’s past or present.”
“What would make them stand out to us and what are we looking for?” Kane walked to the table and pushed a cup of coffee in front of Jenna and placed another down before taking his seat.
“Resentment could have come from during their childhood or anytime during their life. Maybe something happened recently that triggered them.” Jo shrugged. “We’re talking about a psychopathic brain. The need to kill could have lain dormant for many years before something triggered it. We all know that not every psychopath becomes a killer. This man, I believe, saw a resemblance between Ellie McBride and Laney Prescott that isn’t evident to us. From the evidence that you’ve presented, the notes in particular tell me that he stalks his victims and plans every move prior to his attacks. He knew they would be alone and he likes to frighten them. This would tell us something terrifying happened to him as a child and this is payback.”
Absorbing everything that Jo said, Jenna took a long sip of her coffee. “Yes, so are we looking at a classic abused child?”
“That would be the first avenue to investigate but when young people step out into the world, even if they’ve come from a stable background, they can be bullied. They might be pressured by people at work. They might have married someone who controls them. We could be talking about a married manwho lost his children to the system through no fault of his own and maybe he blames a teacher and the social worker. These are points of reference that I added to the profile so that Kalo and Beth could work their magic and try and cross-reference people who could possibly be suspects.”
“A couple of things happened while you were at the autopsy that you should be aware of.” Rio stood and went to the whiteboard. “The principal called to inform us that the janitor, Caleb Dorsey, is often on the grounds after hours. He isn’t sociable, especially since his divorce, and has become even more remote lately.” He looked at Jenna. “I ran a background check on him. He has a minor criminal record for trespassing and a history of mental health issues. I’m wondering why he is employed at the school and near young children. All these things would put him in the right place at the right time to have murdered Ellie McBride. I looked into him a little more, and he and his wife went to Laney Prescott for marriage guidance.” He sighed. “That was some time ago and another one of her roles as a social worker. She was qualified.”
Impressed, Jenna nodded as Rio added Dorsey’s name and the reasons for being a suspect to the whiteboard. “I guess if he’s a little unbalanced and his wife divorced him, he might wonder what in the past caused all his problems. It seems to me psychopaths need an excuse to murder someone—as in, it wasn’t their fault. They believe they’re either doing someone a favor or the person made them do it.”
“I’m interested in a man by the name of Ethan Rourke.” Kalo met Jenna’s gaze and smiled. “I’ve been centering my search on people who work with or are connected to local government facilities. Rourke is a freelance IT technician. He has the opportunity to work under the radar fixing systems in schools and other government buildings. This gives him access and anonymity. I dug a little deeper and discovered he attended the school, but they expelled him after a disturbing incidentinvolving a teacher. He left the county and finished his time at Louan.”
“Why does this make him a suspect?” Raven rested both hands on the table. “Being expelled doesn’t make a serial killer.”
“Kalo handed this over to me and I made some calls.” Rowley smiled. “I wanted to find out a little about him. I asked the principal if he recalled him and he told me Rourke was quiet, intelligent, and socially awkward. The incident with his teacher involved him attacking her for taking his property. Apparently, Rourke carried a strand of his mother’s hair. His mother passed when he was younger and his father had drunk himself to death. The kid had been sent to his old grandmother’s house. He’d been playing with the hair during class and refused to put it away and when the teacher took it from him, he apparently went ballistic. The school expelled him after he refused to apologize.” He cleared his throat. “The principal mentioned this was about fifteen years ago and times have changed. Now, he would have been suspended and offered counseling.”
“This tells me the teacher involved embarrassed Rourke in front of the entire class.” Jo sighed. “This would be enough for a person to carry resentment if they were inclined to be psychopathic.”
“I found Rourke’s name in the list of children who’d been involved with social services.” Beth looked at Raven. “That makes him two for two. Not proof, by any means, that he’s involved. He’s kept his nose clean since leaving school, but we can’t dismiss him as a possible.”
Jenna waited for Rio to update the whiteboard and looked at the faces around the table. “Anyone else?”
“Yeah, I found a guy by the name of Sean Jones.” Beth gave Styles a side-eye. “Over to Styles.”
“Oh yeah.” Styles gave her a lopsided smile. “I hunted down Sean Jones. He is a gardener who works for the localcouncil, so he’s frequently around schools, hospitals, and the social services department. He went to the school, but we found nothing bad there. He’s another casualty of parents divorcing. He went through a long fight in court. He apparently wanted to live with his father, but his mother got custody of him. Not twelve months after the custody case, she died after a short illness. During this time, his father remarried and moved to another state. They placed Jones in foster care. He was bounced around and got into trouble. One report mentioned he’d hung a cat by the neck from a tree outside a teacher’s house. He is one to watch. I figure he has an ax to grind with both teachers and social workers.”
Listening with interest, Jenna nodded. “He fits the profile. They often start with animal cruelty. Anyone else?”
“There is one. It’s a hunch really.” Kalo shrugged. “Working beside Jo all the time, I’m starting to look at people from different angles. There is one person who showed up in my radar. He is known as Dr. Lionel Graves, although he is no longer a doctor of any description. He lost his license some years ago and is living on disability. He was once the local psychologist and former school counselor. I accessed some old files regarding him and discovered he treated several troubled students, including one who later died by suicide. He kept detailed notes that haven’t been placed in any type of restricted files. It seems to me he has a fascination with criminal psychology and up until recent changes to the security system, still had access to school records.”
“I discovered a number of complaints against him, from the teachers, the students, and the social workers that he came into contact with.” Beth tapped on her keyboard. “There is also a complaint he lodged at the local hospital where he accused one of the nurses of writing a report about him to try and prevent him from getting disability.”
“Yeah.” Kalo nodded. “He seems crazy enough to kill.”
Jenna stood and stared at the whiteboard. “We’ll need to find these people and go and speak to them.”
“We need an hour.” Carter nibbled on a fry, dropped it back into the container, and brushed salt from his fingers. “Tonight, we plan to take down the fentanyl distributors out at the BW Ranch. Give us guys an hour to sort out what we need to do. I’ll need Styles with me to organize our people to deal with the drugs. It’s too dangerous for us to go near them and we have specialized teams to handle that part of the mission.” He glanced at Kane. “I’m sure you’ll have your deputies back real soon to hunt down suspects.”
It was a reasonable request. She nodded. “Okay, you go and talk in my office. I’ll be able to find these suspects with the help of Beth, Kalo, and Jo.” She raised her gaze to Carter. “You’ll never get a team from Helena here in time to deal with the drugs—not in this weather. Have you made other plans?”
“They’re already here.” Carter grinned around a toothpick. “The moment Kane alerted us to the mission, they hit the road. They’re holed up at the motel waiting for the green light.”
As the chairs scraped and leftover food vanished along with the men, Jenna looked at the others. “We’ve got this.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
A warm glow surrounded Jenna’s heart as she disconnected her call from Raya. She always called around lunchtime to see if the boys were okay and usually got to speak to Jackson before he went down for his nap. FaceTime calls were important and made leaving the boys at home bearable. Their good friend, Atohi Blackhawk, had just arrived to visit. Blackhawk had once been Tauri’s guardian, and it was because of their friendship that Jenna and Kane had been able to adopt Tauri. His assistance in teaching her son about his Native American culture had been invaluable. Between him and Kane, they had taught Tauri his native tongue and made sure that his visits to the reservation were frequent. Jenna enjoyed visiting their extended family but Blackhawk had surprised her by arriving after the blizzard. The backroads were treacherous at this time of the year but her friend had organized an interesting afternoon for Tauri, which would give Raya a break. She sighed and hurried back to the conference room.
“Sean Jones, the gardener who works for the local council, is on vacation at the moment.” Beth glanced up from her laptop. “I checked out his name against different traveling companies,airports, and bus stations and it looks like he spends his vacation time at home. With no commitments, this would give him ample time to commit the murders.” She scrolled down her page. “Interesting. He lives at number seven on Fern, which is adjacent to Pine. All these roads are cleared by the snowplow regularly as they all run onto Stanton.”
Jenna sat at the long desk. “Great, so we can see him this afternoon.”
“I’ve found Ethan Rourke.” Kalo popped his head up from behind his laptop screen. “It’s difficult to locate him as he’s a subcontractor, so I gave him a call to ask him about installing a security system. He said he was flat out at the moment installing a new computer system for the Cattleman’s Hotel. He asked me to ring back in two weeks or he could give me a number of people to call. He seemed an okay guy, very helpful.”
Making quick notes, Jenna nodded. “Two down.”
