"Not that I've seen. But I'm not here 24/7. Could be someone came by when I was off." The manager looked worried now. "Is she in trouble? Tessa's a good tenant. Whatever's going on, I'm sure there's an explanation."
"We just need to talk to her," Maria said. "If she comes back, can you call me immediately? Don't approach her, don't tell her we were here—just call." She handed over a business card.
They left the manager's office and returned to unit 214. Maria knocked one more time for form's sake, then pulled out her phone and called the tech team.
"Phone's still showing this location," she said after a brief conversation. "But it's not moving, hasn't moved since six this morning. She either left it here or..."
"Or she's inside and not answering," Kari finished. "Can we do a welfare check? Exigent circumstances?"
Maria considered it. "Woman flees a murder scene, phone stops moving at her address, she's not responding to attempts at contact. Yeah, I think we can justify entry to ensure she's not injured or in danger."
It took twenty minutes to get authorization and have a patrol unit arrive with door entry tools. By the time they finally got inside unit 214, it was eight-fifteen and Kari could feel every tick of the clock.
The apartment was small but neat—one bedroom, basic furniture, nothing particularly personal or distinctive. A quick search revealed clothes missing from the bedroom closet,toiletries gone from the bathroom, a suitcase that had been pulled from the top shelf and taken.
"She ran," Maria said, standing in the middle of the empty apartment. "Came home, packed a bag, and left." She pointed to the kitchen floor, where a cheap prepaid phone lay face down, its screen a spiderweb of cracks. "Stomped on the burner before she went."
Kari crouched down and picked it up with a gloved hand, turning it over. "Screen's destroyed, but that's not where the data lives."
"You really think we can salvage that?"
"Storage chip's on the motherboard. You'd have to physically shatter the whole thing, not just the glass." Kari pocketed the phone carefully. "She was in a hurry. Did what she'd seen in movies."
Maria sighed heavily. "Well, thank God for movies. Unfortunately, though, it doesn't change the fact that we have no witness, no leads, and less than an hour until the chief charges Hatathli with three murders."
Kari's phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number: Ask about Jasper Reid. Head of security at Sunset Ridge. He knows more than he's saying.
She showed it to Maria. "You know this number?"
"No. Could be a burner, could be someone using an app to mask their real number." Maria read the message again. "Jasper Reid. That name's in the case files—he's the resort's security chief. Former military contractor, managed the protesters during construction."
"Anonymous tip from an unknown number about a person of interest." Kari thought about it. "Could be someone trying to help. Or it could be someone trying to misdirect us."
"Either way, we need to look into it." Maria was already pulling up files on her phone. "Reid gave a statement afterthe first murder, saying he'd been managing security at the petroglyph site, had interactions with protesters, including Hatathli. He's in a position to know about both the victims and the suspects."
"And if he's a former military contractor with security experience, he'd have the skills to commit these murders." Kari felt a spark of possibility. "Access to the victims through his work on the resort, access to Hatathli through managing the protests. He could have collected DNA, planted it at the crime scenes."
"It's a reach," Maria cautioned. "Let's not get ahead of ourselves."
They left Tessa Crane's empty apartment and headed back to Maria's car, both of them running through the implications.
"Clearly you're familiar with Reid," Kari said as Maria drove back toward central Phoenix. "What do you know about him?"
Maria sighed. "He's forty-two, a former Army, then a private military contractor for about ten years. Did security work in Iraq, Afghanistan, couple other places that are probably classified. Left the contracting world five years ago, came stateside, got hired by Sunset Ridge Resort as head of security when they broke ground three years ago."
"Wow," Kari said. "I didn't expect you to be an encyclopedia."
Maria grunted. "He was on my radar before Hatathli came into the picture. Anyway, his job was protecting the construction site, managing threats, handling protesters. By all accounts he was professional about it—no excessive force complaints, no lawsuits, just very effective at keeping the project moving despite opposition."
"Maybe too effective," Kari said. "If the protesters were slowing down construction, costing money, and Reid was responsible for handling them—that's pressure. Pressure to solve the problem by any means necessary."
"But the protesters aren't the ones who got killed," Maria pointed out. "The victims are all people connected to the project—Reid's employers, essentially. Why would he kill the people who hired him to protect them?"
Kari realized Maria was right. "Unless he's not working for them anymore. Or he has a different motive we don't know about."
"That's a stretch. We're looking for reasons to suspect him because we're desperate for alternatives to Hatathli." Maria shook her head skeptically. "Reid has the skills to commit these murders, I'll grant you that. But without a motive that makes sense, we're just chasing our tails."
"Still, it's worth talking to him, if only to clear him. Right?"
