“Isn’t he the logical choice as a suspect?” Tora asked, sharing charcuterie with her partner. “You know, since someone is digging up bodies under his nose?”
Elizabeth nodded.
“He would be, except he only does a patrol of the cemetery at nine, and at dawn. That leaves a lot of hours in between for this person to do their dirty deeds. It’s a big freaking place,” she admitted.
That it was.
Elizabeth continued.
“On top of that, and trust and believe, I don’t rationalize much when it comes to suspects, but this is different. Ethan, and I, think he’s developmentally delayed. Possibly fetal alcohol syndrome when he was born. He’s got some issues, definitely. I don’t want to call him slow, but he is a little off. That doesn’t fit for us. From what we’ve seen, the person behind all of this is methodical. They likely started with the‘grave robberies’. It wasn’t as much to get the gold, and watch, but to see how everyone reacted. How the cops did. How the groundskeeper did. How the church did. He was watching and learning.”
Well, that sucked.
“We didn’t want to arrest him, so we sent him home to mommy so we could have access to the cemetery if we had to dig people up. No one wants him going nuts on them. That wasn’t fun, and I don’t want to shoot an innocent person.”
Yeah, seriously.
Elizabeth continued.
“What we do suspect,” she began, lowering her voice so people around them wouldn’t hear, “is that the person behind this is either killing the people and then waiting to dig them up to use for his gross fun, or watching the cemetery and getting his‘victims’that way. We won’t know until we get ID, and see if they match the eyeballs to the names on the list.”
Well, that was gross.
Definitely.
“And if the names match the eyeballs post ID?” Mac asked, curiously.
And here was where it got ugly.
“We have to get warrants to dig up a whole lot of bodies. Once we do that, the cat is out of the bag for the media, and for this killer. I’m betting he never expected that to happen, so he’s going to escalate to try and stop us. We’ll be in danger. Already, I’m worried that someone will get hurt. So, watch your backs.”
Tora glanced over at her partner.
“Can I crash at your place? Or want to come to mine?” she asked. “We can research there.”
He nodded.
“You have a dog. Let’s do your place. When you bring him over to my place, he gets fur everywhere.”
She laughed.
“Point taken.”
Elizabeth was curious, and she recalled what Chris had told her about the two detectives.
“Okay, I gotta ask. This is because if I do hire you, I need to know in advance. Are you guys a couple or…?”
They both laughed.
“US?”Mac asked, amused. “No. We’re a couple of nuts, but not that kind of couple.”
Tora also shook her head.
“We’re best friends. We work really well together. That’s all. Is that an issue?” she asked.
Elizabeth shook her head.
“No, you just give off that‘we’ve been a couple a long time’vibe. Honestly, I don’t give a shit either way. Hell. Most ofmy team is paired off with someone they’re dating or married to. I don’t have issues with it, unless personal gets involved in work.”
