Huck’s phone trilled, and he pulled it from his pocket to press to his ear. “Rivers.” He listened, his gaze lighting. “Good, thanks.” He clicked off.
“What is it?” Laurel asked, shivering violently now.
“The warrant for Haylee Johnson’s apartment just came in. Let’s get some hot tea in you, and we’ll go search her place.”
Laurel needed to get her hands on those diaries. “You may not accompany me, Huck.” She had no notion of who was providing him information about the case, but he couldn’t be involved. She’d have to search Haylee’s apartment with Monty.
Pressing a button on her phone, she lifted the device to her ear.
“Hey, boss,” Nester answered. “Before you ask, the Bearings are set to land in about an hour.”
“Good work, Nester. Huck will have Fish and Wildlife meet them at their plane.” She clicked off.
Huck’s eyebrows rose. “I will?”
She smiled. “Please? Then have an officer stay on them all night. I’ll interview them tomorrow morning. The mayor is not to leave his home until I speak with him.” Tonight, she would read those diaries.
Finally, she could track down Jason Abbott before he killed again.
* * *
Haylee Johnson had lived in a sad, one-bedroom apartment approximately twenty minutes away from the Genesis Valley Community Church in unincorporated land. The building held twenty apartments and had been erected probably in the seventies. The green shag carpet felt sticky against Laurel’s boots, and the smell from dirty dishes stacked in the sink made her stomach roil. The heat had been turned low, most likely because the young woman lacked income. She truly had lost everything when Jason Abbott had been arrested.
Monty turned on all the lights, but the apartment remained rather dark. He opened the drawers in the kitchen and pulled them out, looking inside with his flashlight. “Thanks for meeting me here. I’m surprised Haylee’s aunt let her live like this. Melissa Cutting is a partner in a big law firm. She’s loaded, right?”
Laurel rifled through a stack of unpaid bills on the counter between the small living room and the dingy-looking kitchen. “Based on the jewelry and clothing Melissa prefers, I’d say she has plenty of disposable income. She should have helped her niece more.”
“I don’t know,” Officer Tso called from the bedroom where he rifled through drawers. “Haylee seemed pretty stuck on a serial killer. Melissa Cutting probably didn’t like that about her niece.”
Officer Jordan looked through a stack of magazines on the table.
Laurel didn’t know any of these people well besides Monty, and she barely knew him. Her team was gone. She was the sole FBI agent in the search. It had been a long time since she’d felt this isolated and alone.
Monty moved to the fridge and opened the freezer. “Got them.” He pulled out three frozen-looking plastic bags and gingerly extracted a journal from one.
“Good job.” Laurel peered closer, disappointment clouding through her. She’d have to wait until they defrosted to read. “They’re frozen, so let’s deliver them to the lab.”
Monty slid the journal back into the bag. “Officer Tso?”
“Coming, boss,” Tso said, lumbering over to plunk an aluminum evidence locker on the counter. “This thing’s heavy.” He opened the lid.
Monty gingerly placed the three journals into the locker and then shut it, twisting the lock. “We’ll keep looking for evidence that Abbott has been here, but you take this to the state crime lab now.”
Laurel straightened her back. They’d need at least another hour to go through the rest of Haylee’s apartment before they’d be finished. “Ask the techs to send me scanned copies as soon as possible without damaging the journals.” She calculated how long it would take for them to thaw out. “They should be able to have something for me by tomorrow.”
“They’re behind at the lab,” Monty reminded her.
“I don’t care. We need these now. Abbott’s on the loose, and we have to consider the possibility that he is not the killer of the three drowning victims.” If not, she had no idea how the news of Haylee’s death would affect him. While the media hadn’t learned of the woman’s death yet, too many people knew the truth. It wouldn’t be long before the public was made aware.
She shrugged off the unease she felt at missing her team as well as Huck.
Monty opened the fridge and started scouting through the contents, his movements slow and his face pale. “I don’t like that Haylee physically accosted you in front of the news media and now she’s dead. Rachel’s going to be a problem.”
“Rachel is always a problem.” Laurel moved toward a bookshelf in the living room.
Officer Tso patted the evidence box. “I should get going with this. Do you need me for the rest of the search?”
“No,” Laurel said. They’d found what they needed. She doubted seriously that Jason Abbott had set foot in this apartment.
