That connection between Zeller and the rental car used in the attack brought together some of the pieces of this puzzle. She hadn’t been wrong about overhearing Eric talk with someone in law enforcement. Or at least someone pretending to be in that line of work. But there would have been no pretense needed if Eric’s conversation had indeed been with Zeller.
Jack turned to her, the questions all over his face, but Caroline didn’t have the answers he wanted.
“No, I don’t remember Eric ever mentioning Zeller’s name,” she volunteered. “But he didn’t say any specific name during that phone call.”
Plus, she’d been injured and drugged. She didn’t want to bring that up now, though, because Jack and his brothers already had enough doubts as to what she’d overheard. She didn’t want to add to those doubts and cause them to soften their attitudes about Zeller or any of their other fellow lawmen.
Jack made a sound to indicate he was thinking about this. “If Zeller did help Eric, if they were somehow connected to the sex-trafficking ring, then maybe Zeller thought you’d overheard something to incriminate him.”
Maybe, and if so, that could be Zeller’s motive to eliminate her. Still, there was something that didn’t fit. “Why wouldn’t Zeller have eliminated me sooner?” Caroline asked. “Or at leasttried to do that? He’s a marshal and could have easily gotten the location of the WITSEC house.”
“Not easily,” Jack insisted. “I’d put the location under several more layers of security, and if someone unauthorized had been poking around the files to find the address, the system should have alerted me.”
“Still...” She shook her head. “Zeller probably could have managed it. So why wait to kill me?”
“As long as you didn’t have your memory, you weren’t a threat.” Jack answered that so fast that it let her know he’d already reached that possible conclusion.
“But the timing doesn’t fit,” Caroline argued. “We were attacked only minutes after you learned I’d regained my memory. How would Zeller have...” She stopped when something occurred to her. “Zeller could have known about the computer searches I’ve done over the past few days. It wouldn’t have been easy for him to do that, but if he’d beenkeeping tabson me, he could have figured it out.”
Both Jack and Eli nodded, causing the realization to settle hard in her stomach. Her searches could have been like loading a gun. Then, Zeller had pulled the trigger.
Well, maybe.
A possible motive was still a long way from proof that he’d committed a crime.
“You’re sure when your father was investigating the sex trafficking that nothing incriminating came up about Zeller?” she asked.
Both Eli and Jack gave her flat looks. Of course, they were sure. They’d likely memorized everything about the case, and it had to eat away at both of them. Here it was their job to bring criminals to justice, and they hadn’t been able to do that for their own father.
“It was more of a gut feeling,” Jack said. “When Nicola’s body turned up and my father had to investigate it, Zeller didn’t want him involved. Part of me gets that. The sex ring was his case, but Zeller didn’t even want to work with my dad. In fact, he tried everything to exclude him.”
Caroline had worked with enough law enforcement officers, so she knew it wasn’t unusual for one of them to feel that way and go all territorial. But in this case, it could be a red flag if Zeller hadn’t wanted Sheriff Buck Slater digging into anything that would incriminate Zeller himself. However, it was just as possible that Jack and his brothers were being hypercritical. A sort of grabbing at straws in the hope that they could bring their father’s killer to justice.
“And then there’s Zeller’s possible connection to the breach of security at your WITSEC house,” Jack went on. “That gave me another bad feeling. Someone texted Kingston that address. Maybe Kingston himself, if he managed to hack into Justice Department files, but it could be someone else.”
“Someone like Zeller,” Caroline finished for him.
Jack nodded. “That’s why I’m having Teagan go through the files to see who accessed that address.”
“Maybe you don’t trust Jack’s partner, either?” Eli asked her after a long pause.
“Eric called a man that night,” she quickly pointed out. But then Caroline had to pause, too. “Of course, that doesn’t prove Teagan is clean, but I’ve got enough trouble without putting her under a microscope.”
“Good point,” Eli grumbled, and then he tipped his head to the computer on Kellan’s desk. “You got access to that?” he asked Jack, checking the time. “If so, the surveillance footage from the car rental company should be ready.”
“Yeah, I’ve got access,” Jack said as if still in deep thought.Troubledthought, Caroline mentally corrected. Even thoughJack didn’t fully trust Zeller, it still had to be hard for him to think of a fellow marshal trying to murder them.
Caroline went to the computer when Jack did and she stood behind him, watching him work his way through the password and into Kellan’s official emails. The file from the car rental company was there. When he clicked on it, Eli came to his side and all three of them focused on the monitor.
“It was an 8:00 a.m. pickup,” Eli said, glancing at the notes on his phone.
Good. That would save them from watching hours of the feed. The timing also fit with something else—Zeller would have had plenty of time to get the car and drive out to Longview Ridge. For that matter, though, Kingston would have, too. Or any other suspect.
She watched as Jack fast-forwarded the images, but then he slowed to a normal speed when the figure came into view. A tall man who walked toward the black four-door sedan. And Caroline groaned at the same moment that Jack and Eli cursed.
The man was wearing a baseball cap, and he had on a bulky dark blue windbreaker with the collar turned up high on his neck. He kept his head down, the camera only getting a good shot of the hat and not the man’s face. Worse, the build didn’t help, either, because it appeared he’d stuffed things in his pants pockets, which could make him look heavier than he actually was.
Jack rewound the feed and went through it frame by frame until he stopped on the image that gave them a partial view of the guy’s chin. Between the high collar and the shadow created by the ball cap, it wasn’t very clear.
