Hand on his hip, he glared at her. “They’re a wool blend. You finished?”
“One more. Okay.” She drew a keycard out of her pocket and opened the door. “Pella says there’s a keycard in your mailbox. I’ll show you your office. It’s got a whiteboard and a big conference table—everything a man who wears fancy suits on his day off needs to feel organized.”
“Great.” Darius followed her inside.
Chapter10
Darius tooka drink of lukewarm coffee, his gaze focused on the whiteboard as he mulled over the evidence, starting at the beginning with the undisputed facts.
Sasha Dillon was an attractive, five-time world-champion climber. She got hate mail and hateful comments online from various sources, most of them male. Last April, she had outed Bren Riggs for posting pornographic images with her face on social media. As a result, Riggs had lost his sponsorships and was still angry about it. Some members of the public—most of them Riggs’ fanboys—had been angry, too.
This past Wednesday, at approximately one-thirty in the afternoon, two individuals, at least one of them male, had stolen an SUV in Boulder and driven up the canyon to Scarlet Springs. The perpetrators had passed Sasha on the highway at about two-twenty, one flipping her off and yelling obscenities. Then they had pulled into a vehicle turnout and waited for her to pass them.
Sasha, hoping to avoid another confrontation, had crossed the highway. But the perpetrators had been undeterred. They’d accelerated across the centerline, made straight for her, and hit her bike with the SUV, sending her over the embankment and causing her serious injury. A male had angrily shouted, “Die, bitch!” Then they’d driven away and abandoned the SUV at Boulder Falls.
Darius was confident that this hadn’t been a random hit-and-run. Sasha had been targeted deliberately. The perpetrators’ actions were too personal and vicious to be random or spontaneous. The bastards had passed her and thenwaitedfor her in the vehicle turnout before striking.
Darius had thought long and hard about this detail. Maybe they’d done it to avoid being seen by the ranger who’d been a short distance behind them, as Deputy Marcs had suggested. Or perhaps they’d passed her to confirm that the blonde on the bicycle was, indeed, Sasha before they hit her. Either way, it meant they’d known they were going to run her down before they’d done it.
All of that was crystal clear.
But when it came to suspects…
Riggs had clear motive and no alibi. By his account, he’d been home alone when the SUV was stolen and Sasha was hit. If he’d stolen the car after Watts had left to buy drugs, he could have made it up the canyon to Scarlet in time to hit Sasha and ditch the vehicle at Boulder Falls—assuming he’d had a wingman and a way to make it back to Boulder before Watts returned.
That raised some questions. Could someone thumb a ride back to Boulder that quickly? Could the perpetrators have hired a car to meet them at Boulder Falls? Did Scarlet Springs have a taxi or bus service? Who would have been Riggs’ wingman if Watts was in Denver? And why would Riggs come back to climb at the Falls if he’d just committed a crime nearby?
Darius wrotetransportationon the board as a reminder to check all of those possibilities. As for Riggs…
He could have done it, but Darius wasn’t convinced that he had. The way he’d reacted when they’d discussed the trail cam footage convinced Darius that he hadn’t looked into the camera to establish an alibi.
I didn’t think they checked them. You told them to check, didn’t you?
Riggs might be many things, but clever wasn’t one of them.
Then there was the shock in Riggs’ eyes when Darius had suggested that Watts was ratting him out. He’d had an adrenaline reaction, and there’d been an edge of desperation in his voice.
You can’t put me in prison for something I didn’t do!
Had he been afraid because he was guilty? Or had it been the idea of going to prison for a crime he hadn’t committed that had made his pupils dilate?
Darius understood that fear only too well.
Watts hadn’t been as easy to read as Riggs. Marcs said he’d pretended to be cooperative at first but had dropped that façade the moment she’d asked him for proof that he’d been in Denver buying cocaine that afternoon. After that, he’d grown hostile, insulting Marcs and the police in general, refusing to answer most of her questions.
“If you’ve got something, arrest me. If not, fuck off.”
Darius had taken a turn with Watts, first asking him what he thought of Riggs, trying to get him to relax again. Watts had told him what a great climber Riggs was and how fun it was to hang with him. He’d clammed up again when Darius had asked him about where he’d been and what he’d done on the day Sasha was attacked. Of the two, Watts was definitely the smarter.
So, where did this leave the investigation?
They had two people of interest with motive and opportunity—and no objective evidence to link them to the crime. Darius had an avatar from a suspicious comment he wanted to connect to an ISP address and a name. He also had a long list of haters to identify and investigate. It was a painstaking process, and there were no shortcuts.
He wasn’t going to solve the case by standing here and staring at the board. So, he put a cap on the dry erase marker he’d been holding and set it aside. It was late afternoon. He had time to hit the gym before grabbing something for dinner. He might even rope up and try a few of the routes.
He grabbed his notebook, turned off the lights, then locked the door, and left the building.
It waslate afternoon when Megs and Mitch came by. Because Sasha was starting to get restless, they offered to drive her to the climbing gym, where she could at least hang out, watch people climb, and maybe even take an easy stroll on a treadmill. She wasn’t used to this much inaction.
