As he’d done on their previous visit, Jack didn’t linger around. He took Caroline past the noise and chatter in the squad room and into Kellan’s office. His brother was there at his desk and working on his laptop. Gunnar peeled off from them and went to his desk.
“Lily’s already here,” Kellan told them, his eyes still on his laptop. “She’s in the interview room with her lawyer.” He finally looked up from his computer and his attention landed on Jack. Then on Caroline. “You two look...”
“Think carefully about how to finish that,” Jack warned him. He wasn’t in the mood for another lecture after he’d already gotten a scolding from Teagan.
“You look slightly more relaxed than you did yesterday,” Kellan finished after a pause. “It won’t last. Lily’s not happy about you getting those warrants, so she came in here ranting.”
A surprise, since Lily hadn’t reached the ranting stage the day before. But then maybe the woman hadn’t thought Jack would actually get the warrant.
“Here’s the file on Skylar.” Kellan turned his laptop in their direction. “There supposedly isn’t a hard copy, only the digital one.”
Lily was going to have to wait, because Jack wanted a look at this before he spoke to her. “Anything about the file jump out at you?” Jack asked Kellan as he pulled up Skylar’s record.
But before Kellan could even respond, Jack saw an immediate problem. The file was too short. Two pages. The first was an intake form with basic stuff like name, age and next of kin. The next was a record of places the woman had been sent for job interviews.
“There are no reports from counselors or such,” Jack concluded.
Kellan made a sound of agreement. “There’s nothing about room assignments, day-to-day chores or any interaction with staff.” He shook his head in disgust. “I’ve asked the computer guys at the Ranger lab to go through the files and see if anything was deleted in the past twenty-four hours. If so, we can look into charging Lily with obstruction of justice.”
Was Lily really that stupid as to try to hide info from them? Maybe. People did dumb things all the time.
Caroline reached around Jack and typed something on the keyboard while her gaze skirted over the screen. “The file was modified nine hours ago.”
That would have been just before the warrant had been served.
“I can’t tell if anything was deleted,” Caroline went on, “but the file was created a little over a year ago, and that fits the timing for when the woman would have arrived at New Beginnings.” She continued to study the screen. “For only two pages, someone certainly spent a lot of time in this file. Over twenty-five hours.”
That was too much for simply logging job interviews and background. Still, it wasn’t proof of a crime. “Lily’s lawyers could maybe say that the file was just left open and that’s why the time doesn’t jive with the amount of info that’d been entered.”
“I want to talk to some of the other women at New Beginnings,” Kellan said. “I’ll find out if they’ve had counseling or anything else since they’ve been staying there. It might help if I also talk to previous residents and find out why Skylar left.”
That was a necessary step, one of those drone-work chores that cops had to do in the hope of finding threads they could tug. It could give them something they could use against Lily, but it would take time.
“Does your warrant cover the computers at New Beginnings?” Caroline asked. “Because if so, I could get you what you need this morning so you wouldn’t have to wait for the crime lab.”
Kellan shook his head. “It only covers the one file.” Then he paused. “But I’ll see what I can do about getting another warrant so we can search through any-and everything in the damn building.”
He took out his phone and stepped to the side to make the call, but he stopped when the front door opened. Kellan’s grunt of irritation caused Jack’s attention to zoom in that direction.
Zeller walked into the building.
“If you deal with him, I can get started on that warrant,” Kellan said, and when Jack nodded, his brother went out into the bullpen to make the call.
“Don’t start giving me grief about why I haven’t returned your calls,” Zeller griped the moment he stepped into Kellan’s office. “I’ve been tied up on an investigation in Austin.”
Jack didn’t know about any such investigation, but it’d be easy enough to check. Which probably meant Zeller was telling the truth. Or the partial truth anyway. He could have been working a case and avoiding Jack at the same time.
“Tell me about your relationship with Nicola,” Jack said.
Since Lily was waiting, it was best not to waste any time getting that out there. Plus, he liked that Zeller was off guard. Judging from the way the man’s eyes widened and then narrowed, he’d been first surprised by the demand and then riled. Good. Because Jack was riled, too, that a fellow marshal could have withheld something like this.
“There was no relationship,” Zeller spat out.
“But you knew her,” Jack countered. “And don’t bother to deny it, because I have a witness.” That last part wasn’t exactly true. He had the speculations of a person of interest—Lily—but sometimes a half-truth got fast results. In this case, it did just that.
Zeller groaned and glanced up at the ceiling as if hoping for some kind of divine guidance. “I spoke to Nicola, that’s all,” he finally admitted. “She’d had a friend who’d gotten involved in the sex trade.”
Jack didn’t feel one ounce of joy over Zeller’s confession, since it was coming way too late. “How’d you find that out?”
