What the hell? Kale got up and moved to stand next to the chief’s desk so that he could look over Newton’s shoulder as she withdrew a photo from the envelope.
The round metal object looked like a large coin. Parts of what might have been a narrow cloth band lay next to it in the photograph.
“It’s a medal,” Newton suggested. “Like in the Olympics.”
Willard nodded. “The lab was able to raise the inscription. It’s a medal Valerie received for winning a spelling bee in the fourth grade.”
Kale couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’ve confirmed that this medal”—he tapped the photo—“is in fact the one Valerie won back in fourth grade? Not some kind of duplicate?” This just wasn’t possible. This meant ...
“It’s the one. The date and name of the school are inscribed. We checked with the Gerards and verified the location of where it was kept in the home. When we searched the home, the medal was missing.”
Kale put his hand over his mouth, then let it fall uselessly to his side. “That means it was someone here ... someone we know.”
“It would seem so,” Willard agreed. “But we’re not limiting our investigation by that factor. Yet.”
“At this point,” Newton spoke up, “you actually have no evidence to connect Valerie Gerard’s murder with Alicia Appleton’s disappearance. Or to the murders twenty years ago.”
“None.”
“She could have run away from home,” Newton theorized. “Or been abducted for other, equally heinous purposes.”
Willard nodded. “All we can do is react to the tips that come in and whatever we dig up, which, I don’t have to tell you, is not looking good. We have absolutely nothing to go on in Alicia’s case.”
“If her disappearance is related to the murder, the sooner you nail a suspect, the better chance you’ll have of finding her alive. So,” Newton pressed, “the real questions are, who would this medal have been relevant to?” Her attention lingered on the crime-scene photos. “Who would have known where it was kept and subsequently gained access to that location? And who among those might have had motive to dislike both girls?”
Willard chuckled, but Kale recognized its severe lack of enthusiasm and total absence of humor. “You keep it up, Ms. Newton, and I’ll be recruiting you for my staff.”
Newton pushed her lips into a forged smile. “I’m afraid you couldn’t afford me, Chief.”
“And I’m afraid,” the chief suggested, “that you’ve wasted your time and your magazine’s money on this one. I don’t think you’re going to find the kind of story you were looking for here now that the true nature of the crime has been revealed.”
“That’s the thing, Chief.” Newton stood. “The true nature—the truth—is my story.”
16
The chief wanted her out of here.
Not surprising. The only real surprises were that he actually thought he now had the perfect grounds to send her packing.
And the fact that Kale Conner had lied to her.
By omission, but a lie nonetheless.
That shouldn’t have surprised her, but somehow it had.
Evidently even she wasn’t so jaded that she couldn’t hold out hope.
Flaw number two: capable of withholding information.
When she’d snapped her seat belt into place and he’d backed out of the parking slot, she made the statement his shuttered expression silently validated, which he fully anticipated. “You lied to me.”
“I didn’t exactly lie. Some parts I didn’t even know.” He eased the Jeep into the flow of traffic, purposely didn’t meet her eyes. “As a journalist, you should understand how that works. I left out the part I wasn’t authorized to share with you or anyone else.”
“Same thing.”
When he would have argued, she added, “Doesn’t really matter. I already knew about the message the killer left.”
He braked at the four-way stop, aiming a questioning look at her. “That detail wasn’t released to the press.”
