And it would be through DNA as the most likely way. “What did you find?”
“I have a positive ID on one man. Spencer Miles. But it’s not that. Look.”
She shoved a printout beneath his nose. Dom looked at it. He didn’t recognize what it was—except that it was a DNA report. “Explain.”
“The DNA found on the pipe Heather used. The one that…matches this guy. It also matches the blood we found the night we were ambushed in Garrity. The night Zoey shot that man out there. The DNA we hadn’t identified.”
Dom knew exactly what she meant. “This guy who attacked Heather and Powell was one of the ones out there that night.”
“I think he was. But his DNA was also found in Zoey’s house the day she was taken by Eastman. So…why didn’t it make a match before now? It should have.”
Interesting.
Madison, Charlotte, Bailey Addy had been forensic techs called out along with a few others, including Charlie Field’s new wife, Rory. Dom and a few other guys from Major Crimes—including Charlie and Murdoch Lake—had been out there, as well. This was before Scott had abducted Shelby, and right before the choir hall shooting. Zoey had struck one of the suspects, but the guy had gotten away.
DNA had been collected. Collected. But never identified. Until today.
“Give me everything you can as soon as possible.” Hell. Jarrod had been right.
Every damned thing in this county was somehow connected.
But who the hell was running all of it?
16
The one thingRiely was never supposed to do was listen to the people who came to her grandfather’s house after she was in bed at night. But she’d been doing that for three years now.
It was usually the same people, too. Those guys Melvin and Joe, mostly. Sometimes there were three women who would stop by. But they were smarter than the guys. They almost always acted like they were keeping secrets, and never really said anything really bad.
What was really gross was when they all flirted with each other. Like, they were far too old for that.
Tonight Melvin and Joe were there again. They mostly ignored Riely when she saw them in the house and stuff. The house was really big—she had plenty of room to stay away from them, if she wanted. But they didn’t realize she’d put a camera in her grandfather’s office a year ago. She had the app on her phone. Her grandfather wasn’t very smart about technology or anything like that. He didn’t know much about cameras that worked online or anything. She’d hidden it in the air vent one weekend when he was in Wyoming visiting his dad’s cousin’s family and everything.
He’d left her with Bo. Bo was her bodyguard. He’d been with her for three months now. Mostly he just drove her places and made sure she had food at dinner and stuff. And didn’t let her do anything fun or anything like that.
Ever since…what had happened before. Her fingers wrapped around the necklace like it did every time she remembered. It hurt to even remember.
It washerfault he was dead. Her grandfather had made that clear without ever saying it out loud.
Riely stayed where she was in the back sitting room of her suite. Her grandfather never came in that part of her suite. He said she was a young woman and deserved her privacy. She had a couch and chairs and a television in there. He wouldn’t let her have a computer in her room. But he gave her an allowance. He didn’t know about herotherphone at all. She just made sure to pay the bill every month so she could keep minutes. He hadn’t found that phone yet. And Bo didn’t know about it either.
That was where she had all of her photos from…before.
Before she’d figured out that her grandfather was probably a murderer.
She knew he was. And he had probably killed her mom and grandma, too. Riely was just trying to find a way to prove it.
She listened to what was going on in her grandfather’s office now.
There was rumbling, though. It sometimes made it hard to hear. She’d have to wait until the air turned off.
They were talking about cleaning up messes again. Making problems go away. And something about people being stupid and doing stupid things too close to where they lived and everything.
Joe was, anyway. He was kind of the stupid one. He kept going on about some woman should have died, then everything would have been fine. Now they were going to find things outor something and that they should just kill them all and stop worrying about it. He was really upset tonight. She couldn’t tell what had happened though. No one was saying exactlywhythey wanted to kill everybody.
Melvin was the weird one. He kept saying stuff from the Bible all the time. He really creeped her out. He had apologized to her once, but she’d never figured out what he had been talking about. He’d just looked sad, and said she reminded him of his daughter or something.
Riely kind of thought she was probably dead, the way her grandfather had talked later. When she’d asked why Melvin seemed so sad all the time. Her grandfather had said Melvin had lost someone he’d really loved recently.
