“Think we can get a warrant?”Jessica asked.
“I’m not sure,” Faith said.“It would be easier if we had even the slightest bit of physical evidence to connect him to the crime, but Turk didn’t pick up on anything.”
“It’s got to be him, though, right?”Jessica said.“I could practically hear his knees knocking.”
Faith folded her arms across her chest and stood next to the car.Turk stood next to her, looking up at her face.
“You don’t think it’s him?”Jessica said, a slight disappointment in her tone.
“He looks good,” Faith replied.“And Turk was suspicious.And he lied about his alibi.And refusing to provide a handwriting sample could mean he knows about the notes, which I don’t believe have been released to the media yet.”
“But?”
Faith sighed.“But… he seemed very embarrassed when he said he wasn’t actually planning on killing them.”
Jessica frowned.“Okay?”
“If he actually planned on killing them and actually followed through, I would expect fear.I definitely wouldn’t expect him to be reluctant to admit that he was full of crap when he posted that.I would expect him to be falling all over himself to convince me that hewasfull of crap, or that someone else had posted it.Instead, he seemed more upset about the fact that we called him out on his hypocrisy about his eco-activism.”
“Why does that mean he didn’t kill them?”
“It doesn’t necessarily mean that.It was just an odd reaction from a murderer but a reaction that makes a lot of sense if he didn’t kill them and is afraid that the world is going to find out he’s a fraud.He doesn’t want to go to jail, but he also doesn’t want to be exposed for being fake.That’s why he was trying to justify his expensive tastes and insist that he really did care about the environment.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s not a murderer,” Jessica said.
“I know.Call Hansen and give them this info.We’ll try to get a warrant.I don’t know if it’ll work, but we’ll try it.In the meantime, you and I should look up this conference and figure out what happened there.I’m sure the truth differs a little from Anthony’s story.”
Jessica glared at the house behind them, but she didn’t protest Faith’s decision.She sighed and said, “All right.I’ll give him a call.But let’s not go back to Plano.Let’s grab dinner at the mall and do our research there so we’re close in case the warrant goes through.”
“Fine by me,” Faith said.
The three of them got into their vehicle and drove to the mall.As Faith watched the house recede behind her, she couldn’t shake the feeling that whether Anthony Pierce was a murderer or not, that interview would turn out to be the key piece of the puzzle they were trying to solve.
And if their killer was waiting only for the end of business hours to get his next victim alone, they had only a few hours left to solve it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Faith glanced at the sun, frowning at the sliver of gap between it and the horizon.They were sitting on the patio of a casual dining restaurant nursing a slice of cheesecake each after eating a passable meal from the upscale, Mediterranean-themed restaurant.Turk sat in between them, resting after his own meal.The restaurant hadn’t wanted him inside, but they relented when Faith agreed to sit on the patio in a corner well away from the other diners.
The conference they were investigating was the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan Conference on Animal Control Policy and Best Practices.The conference itself appeared to be as clumsy as its name.The agenda Faith was able to dig up from Fort Worth Animal Control records revealed a convoluted mess of speakers and topics sprawled over four different conference rooms and auditoriums in a resort hotel in Dallas that was probably far too expensive for the purposes of that conference.
Trying to find Sarah Garrett, Matthew Brooks, and Linda Hale at that conference was the definition of tedium.The hotel had to be nearly coerced into sending them security footage, and when they finally received it, the footage was grainy and the conference was far more crowded than Faith had expected.
Still, they soldiered on.The request for a warrant came back denied, and without physical evidence to connect Anthony to the crime, the best they could do was have Garland Police put a pair of officers on stakeout at Anthony’s place hoping he slipped up.
Or hoping that they found something on these security videos.
“This sucks,” Jessica said.“Are we sure our victims even attended?”
“Anthony said they were part of the group that kicked him out,” Faith replied.
“Anthony also gave me the number of a pizza shop for his alibi,” Jessica pointed out.
“Fair enough.But they’re on the list of attendees.”
“They’re on the list of registrants,” Jessica said.“That doesn’t mean they necessarily attended.”
Faith’s frown deepened.Jessica sighed and patted her shoulder.“We’ll keep looking.I’m just nervous because it’s going to be dark soon, and I feel like our killer’s going to strike again.Unless itisAnthony, and now I’m not sure that it is.Is it bad to say that I hope it is?”
