“Keep going,” she said.
I huffed, skimming our notes. “How about every female student on campus who ever partied with Jesse Vargas? My god, Rue, I can’t narrow it down. We’ve interviewed over a dozen women whoallhad problems with Jesse and his gang. They had a petition at one time to get rid of him, which the school dismissed. If he crossed lines, any one of them could have done this. Or a group of them. We still don’t know that Navid wasn’t party to Jesse’s attacks on these women. Hell, maybe he helped cover for him.”
Rue simply wrotefemale studentand added a plus symbol to indicate we could be looking at more than one.
“Anyone else?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I could make a case for Laurent St. Pierre, the administrator we talked to, or Buckley Calloway, Kordestani’s TA.”
“Buckley thought the sun shone out of the doctor’s ass. You really think he would kill him?”
“Why not? That’s suspicious as fuck, don’t you think? Not one person has spoken nicely about Navid,exceptthe TA. He was also very good at redirecting my attention to Fatemeh, and he had a negative opinion about Jesse and his gang.”
“And St. Pierre?”
I shrugged. “Call it a hunch. He didn’t want Jesse at the school. He was forced to follow protocol. He has two daughters who were at the university when Jesse was in attendance. One of them split the second her older sister graduated. Why? He wasn’t telling us something. I can see an irate father going ballistic if his daughter was assaulted or threatened by a gang like Jesse’s. Navid, fighting to keep Jesse around… I don’t know. Think about it.”
“Jesse’s expulsion was last year.”
“And according to the female population, up until his murder, Jesse was still at it. He was still sneaking into parties and playing his old games. The threat was real. Maybe St. Pierre had enough and wanted to stop him before he did real damage.”
“Okay.” Rue added Buckley Calloway and Laurent St. Pierre to the list before chucking the marker on the table. “This is ridiculous. Fatemeh might be our strongest suspect, but she has a solid alibi for Ford’s murder, so technically, that should eliminate her.”
“It’s not that solid.”
“It’s pretty damn good. Where’s St. Pierre now? I want to ask about his alibis. You make a good case.”
I sat taller, stunned at the compliment. “Really? I’m not sure where he is.” I shuffled through papers until I found his personal information. “He lives in the city.”
“Good. I’ll call him.”
Rue made a phone call while I stared at the chart papers pinned to the wall. It had been five days since Ford’s death. Nine since Jesse’s. Sixteen since Navid’s. Were we waiting for another body to drop, or was our unsub’s quest for revenge complete? I feared we would never catch the perp at this rate unless they struck again and gave us something solid to work with.
Rue chatted to Laurent St. Pierre for over ten minutes. When she got off the phone, she collapsed in a chair across from me with a tired sigh. “He has an alibi for Ford’s murder. He was out drinking with a colleague to cap off the upcoming school break. Navid and Jesse are a no. His wife works shift work and wasn’t home until after seven both mornings. He claims he was asleep but can’t prove it. His daughters don’t live at home.”
“Do you have the name of the colleague?”
“Yeah. I’ll call and confirm.” But Rue didn’t reach for her phone.
We stared at the spread of papers on the table, neither of us speaking.
I wanted to mention Yates and the rape he’d failed to report three years ago, but Rue had harped at me enough about focusing on current events, so I kept my mouth shut.
The door to the conference room opened abruptly, and Staff Sergeant Golding poked her head in. My spine stiffened. Rue had been the one keeping her up to date on the case, while I’d worked at keeping my i’s dotted and t’s crossed.
I had no idea if Rue had spoken to her about my unfiltered comments as of late, but if so, she showed no immediate signs of ire.
Golding glanced between us before snapping, “Get out of here. Unless another body drops, I don’t want to see either of you until the twenty-seventh.”
Shocked, I looked at Rue. Golding had been pushing us to solve this case since Ford’s body had shown up the other day. What about the ceaseless media? The fear of a serial killer in the city?
As though reading my thoughts, Golding added, “You know as well as I do that if a homicide isn’t self-solving in the first five minutes, you could be at it for years. You’ve made no arrests, and Hayashi has informed me that your evidence is thin and the suspect list thinner. The university is locking its doors until the twenty-seventh. I got a call an hour ago. Your killer seems focused on students and faculty, so at this rate, you’re not going to get anywhere anyhow.”
It was true that all the interviews we needed to conduct were with people who had gone home for the holiday and weren’t available.
I stayed silent and let Rue acknowledge the gift we’d been given.
“Thank you, ma’am.” The sergeant gave a brusque nod and closed the door. Rue offered me a rare smile. “Merry Christmas to us.”
