Pushing my concern aside and pleased I was right—that this was going to be bullshit—I sat back, propped my ankle on my knee, crossed my arms over my chest, and thought I might actually enjoy this. I was curious what this woman thought she was going to get out of anyone at Sinclair.Confidentiality was at the heart of what we did. We absolutely didn’t spill details to journalists.
Picking up the backpack she’d set at her feet, Sylvie unzipped the top and pulled out a leather-bound notebook and a pen. Clicking out the gel tip, she looked up at me and said, “I’m investigating a case. A cold case, technically, though it’s too new to have been shelved so fast.”
That was a little interesting. I was tempted to lean forward, but I didn’t want Sylvie to know she’d piqued my curiosity.
I decided to play, just a little bit. “For a client? Do you have a personal interest in the victim?”
“Neither. Not really.” She sat back and tapped the side of her pen on her notebook. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”
“Should I?” I asked.
She shrugged and flashed a quick grin that lit her hazel eyes, turning them gold for a second. With that cinnamon hair and those freckles, that rosy mouth—everything about her glowed, even though as I studied her, she definitely looked like she had spent the night in an alley. I guessed that Sylvie Calloway might not be a fashionista, but she didn’t usually walk around smeared with mud, her hair falling out of its messy bun, not a speck of makeup on her face.
“Alice said you’re a podcaster.” I spoke the word like I’d never heard of podcasting before, just to get under her skin, hiding my amusement when it worked.
Her eyes flashed again, this time with a little heat. “Yeah,” she agreed. “A podcaster. You know, I record things. People listen.”
“And you talk about crime?” I said again, letting disbelief color my words as if I couldn’t imagine such a delicate little flower involved in something as messy as crime. As I expected,this got her back up. I fought a small grin as she bristled.
“I investigate unsolved murders of women.” Her tone was cool, almost crisp, and I got the feeling I wasn’t the first person to give her attitude about her job. “I’ve finished four seasons. Well, season four still has one episode to air, but I’ve put it to bed on my end, and I’m investigating season five.”
“So, you’ve been doing this for five years?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Kind of. I started researching my first season about five years ago, but seasons in podcasting aren’t the same as television. It’s basically, I find a case, I record episodes tracking my investigation, and when I think I’ve gotten as far as I can or the story’s done, I wrap it up, and I find another one.”
“Solve anything?” I asked, remembering that Cooper said she had, but wondering how she’d spin it.
“One, I helped, yeah. There’s a guy behind bars for the murder of a teenager, in part because of me.”
“What did you do that the cops couldn’t?” I asked, curious to know if she’d really played a part in closing the case.
That rosebud mouth curved again, and I saw her pride in what she’d done. “I’m guessing, given where you work, that you know as well as I do that there are things the cops can’t do.”
“Yep,” I agreed, knowing exactly what she meant.
“Well, in that case, there were things they thought they knew that they couldn’t prove. And they couldn’t dig anymore because their suspect had been pushing back, and they didn’t have enough to justify their investigation.”
I cocked my head to the side, trying to put the picture together in my head. “The cops threw you at the killer?”
She shrugged. “It was my idea. And to be fair, the lead detective did not feel comfortable putting me in this guy’s path. But I would have put myself there one way or another. He killed a fifteen-year-old girl. Her family deserved answers, she deserved justice, and he was getting way too confident that he was off the hook. Sloppy. Truthfully, I was in the right place at the right time. The police did all the hard work.”
“They usually do,” I agreed, but I couldn’t help being a little impressed. “So that was your last season?”
“No, two seasons ago. The last one was another cold case, another murdered woman. I didn’t get the answers I wanted on that one. But at least her story’s out there. The more people who hear it, the more we have a chance of sparking somebody’s memory, digging something up.” She sat back, tapped the point of her pen against the blank page of her notebook, leaving little blue dots to track her impatience. “Do you always get the answers you’re going for?”
I shook my head. “We usually get the job done, but we don’t always get the answers.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s the hard part of investigations.”
“And now?” I asked. “What are you investigating now?”
At that question, Sylvie straightened, wrote the date at the top of the clean page of her open notepad, then my name, a dash, and Sinclair Security.
“Last night,” she said, “my van was blown up.”
I stared at her, at a loss for words. The wobbly knees and dirty clothes made more sense. But— “Are you here for help finding out who blew up your van? What do the police think?”
“I haven’t talked to the police,” she said, her voice still calm. Too calm, if what she’d said about her van was true.
