Much better than the one she’d created on the fourth floor.
Toby was adding another name to the already crowded third board when he caught sight of her in the doorway.
“It’s as bad as it looks,” Toby said as she crossed the room toward him. She placed the evidence bag on the table, drawing the attention of several officers who glanced up briefly before returning to their transcription work. “And when I left thehigh school this morning, Stretch had found a shoebox full of cassettes in the girls’ locker room.”
“Jesus Christ, just how many people did Iris have dirt on?” Kinsley asked as she scanned the whiteboards, spotting a couple of names she recognized as reputable teachers from that era. Both were deceased now, which meant they wouldn’t be answering any questions. The sheer volume of potential suspects was overwhelming even to her experienced eye, and for a moment, the scope of what Iris Bell had built, the reach of it, the audacity, took her breath away. This wasn’t a teenage hobby or a passing phase. This was a surveillance apparatus that a seasoned investigator would have been proud of. “By the way, nice job setting all this up.”
“Captain Thompson was in a surprisingly good mood,” Toby replied as he capped his marker and set it on the whiteboard tray. He gestured at the room with a sweep of his hand. “Once I gave him a rundown on the high school finds, he authorized the officers, the equipment, and even agreed to overtime.”
Kinsley relaxed somewhat at that. If Thompson was in a good mood, he wasn’t about to summon her to his office for a conversation she didn’t want to have. She walked past Toby to study the first whiteboard, reading the names and the connections that branched out from them like the root systems of something tangled and deep.
“Based on what we have so far, Iris recorded hundreds of conversations throughout the school,” Toby continued, falling into step beside her as she moved from one board to the next. “Teachers discussing grade alterations for students whose parents were donors. Students confessing to cheating on exams. Staff members complaining about their personal lives, their marriages, their finances. She recorded a guidance counselor talking about a student’s confidential file, and a coach discussinga player’s injury in a way that suggests the kid was pressured to play through it.”
Toby shook his head in disgust.
“She took this to an entirely different level.”
“A seventeen-year-old girl running an extensive blackmail operation across two locations, and not a single adult came forward. Not one person thought to report what she was doing.”
“Would you?”
She whipped her gaze in his direction, her pulse spiking before she could control it. But he continued speaking without noticing her reaction, not expecting or waiting for an answer, already moving to his next point. The question had been rhetorical for him, a simple observation about human nature and the power of self-preservation.
For Kinsley, it was something else entirely.
She took a moment to answer it honestly to herself while Toby talked. She was in the same situation as the people whose names filled these whiteboards. Someone out there had knowledge of her crime, someone who sent notes on the nineteenth of every month without demanding anything in return. And she wasn’t stepping forward to announce it from the rooftops, either. She was doing exactly what every person on Iris Bell’s list had done. She was keeping her mouth shut and hoping the problem would resolve itself without destroying her life.
“...and the bottom line is that everyone named on those tapes has something to hide. So, there’s a collective interest in keeping secrets, right?” Toby was saying when she tuned back in. He paused, frowning, as though finally hearing the implication of his own words. “Then again, not everyone gave a teenager ten thousand dollars.”
“Speaking of which, I ran into Les near the elevator.” She nodded toward the evidence bag on the table. “Forensics finally got a hit on the fingerprints found on the duffel bag.”
“Her father?”
“I was leaning toward Paul Fisher, but we’re both wrong. The fingerprints belong to Todd Kusman.”
Toby’s expression shifted from surprise to something closer to grim confirmation, as though a suspicion he hadn’t fully articulated had just been validated.
“Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. Are we making an arrest?”
“No. The fingerprints prove Todd Kusman touched the bag, which strongly suggests he was being blackmailed, but they don’t prove he murdered her.” Kinsley studied the motivations listed on the whiteboards, tracking the lines Toby had drawn between names and events. “However, we do need to bring him in for official questioning. His prints are on the bag. And his wife was being blackmailed by the same girl. That’s enough to justify a formal interview at the station.”
“He’ll lawyer up the second we contact him.”
“Probably,” Kinsley acknowledged. She patted Toby’s shoulder as she moved past him toward the door. “Which is why I’m throwing you in the deep end, Drewett. Reach out to Todd Kusman. Request that he come to the station this afternoon on a voluntary basis. Frame it as a routine follow-up, not an accusation. And come find me when he arrives.”
“What if Kusman says no?” Toby called out as she rounded the conference table. “And where are you going? Don’t you want to?—”
“I’m going to tweak the Bell family’s curiosity,” Kinsley replied, pausing in the doorway. She leaned against the frame and looked back at him. “They’ve had thirty years to perfect their stories, but now we have something that will make them come to us.”
“Without lawyers,” Toby said, catching the thread of her strategy.
“Without lawyers,” Kinsley confirmed with a satisfied smile. She knocked twice on the doorframe, a small, superstitious gesture she’d picked up from Sam Haugen years ago and never managed to shake. “We just need to make the most of this window while it’s still open.”
19
Kinsley Aspen
July
