Page 56 of Shadow Justice

Reid opened his laptop and pulled up the shared file Jasper had sent. Holly stood beside him, one hand braced on the counter, her shoulder brushing his.

Jasper had organized folders by victim, timestamped clips from Sanctuary’s cameras, a spreadsheet of visits, dates, approximate arrival and departure times, visible interactions, and notes about background figures. There was also a short message at the top.

You sent enough footage to make me question every coffee shop I’ve ever entered. Watch Warren Ackles first.

Reid opened the clip. The footage showed the morning angle from the front camera, slightly distorted at the edges. Ackles stood near the pickup counter with a paper cup in hand. He was older, gray at the temples, wearing a worn canvas jacket. Holly leaned closer, her breathing quiet beside Reid.

“I remember him,” she said. “He came in several times and liked extra napkins.”

In the footage, Allen Davies entered from the front door. Warren turned, and his face changed with recognition. Allen crossed to him, clasped his shoulder, and bent his head close as they spoke. Whatever they said was lost to the camera, but the body language was not. These were not strangers exchanging polite small-town greetings. Allen touched Warren’s arm again before moving to the counter.

Holly’s fingers tightened on the edge of the breakfast bar. “They knew each other.”

“Looks that way.”

Reid clicked to the next marked clip. Sharla Mapes sat near the side wall with a laptop bag at her feet and a folder open on the table. The courthouse card group occupied the corner, Hank Toler in his usual seat. After several minutes, Hank looked over, lifted a hand, and Sharla smiled. She crossed to him, and the two spoke long enough for one of the other men at the table to pull out an empty chair. Sharla didn’t sit, but she stayed, laughing once before she returned to her table.

“Hank knew her,” Holly said.

The next clips were less clear. Nell Truett came in twice, once during a quiet afternoon when Allen’s support group was gathering and once near closing on a Friday. She didn’t interact with Allen in any obvious way, but she glanced toward him as if she knew who he was. Hoyt’s clip from the previous morning showed exactly what Reid remembered: Hoyt at the counter, Holly holding herself polite and rigid, Reid stepping in, and the big man outside the patio gate. Hopper Shaw didn’t speak to anyone in that clip. He watched.

Jasper had marked Hopper in two other files as well. In the Warren footage, Hopper passed the front window minutes after Allen and Warren spoke. In the Sharla footage, he sat outside on the patio, mostly obscured by glare and the edge of an umbrella, but present.

Holly leaned away from the laptop and rubbed both hands over her arms. “He was there.”

“He was.”

“Allen knew Warren, Hank knew Sharla, and Hopper is hovering around the edges. What does it mean?”

“It’s not clear yet,” Reid said.

He could tell she was trying to follow where his mind had gone. He was trying to follow it himself.

Hoyt had been rude to Holly, and after he turned up dead, that rudeness had felt like a trigger. A man had disrespected Sanctuary’s owner, and hours later he’d been murdered with her cup in his mouth. It was a simple story, which made it seductive.

But Nell hadn’t been rude. From everything Holly had said, Nell had been gentle, lonely maybe, the kind of customer who took her cocoa to the window and read library books with sticky tabs. Warren Ackles and Sharla Mapes had not been flagged because they insulted Holly. They hadn’t disrupted the shop. They’d simply been there.

Hoyt’s behavior might have made him stand out, but it didn’t mean it had made him a target.

“What are you thinking?” Holly asked.

He tapped the counter, ideas circling his brain. When working on a case, he always used a trial board to organize timelines, names, evidence, and the ugly spaces between them. He didn’t have one here, only a mental one. “That we may be looking at the wrong starting point.”

“Sanctuary?”

“Sanctuary may be where the killer found them again, not why they were chosen.”

Holly’s face went pale in a way he hated. “Again?”

Reid clicked back to Jasper’s spreadsheet and sorted by visible interactions. Allen. Hank. Hopper. Support group. Card group. Courthouse retirees. The old case Linc had described hovered at the edge of his thoughts, not as accusation, but as structure.

Allen Davies. Evidence excluded. A victim’s family denied the verdict they wanted. Jurors who never heard what they should have heard. Linc’s ruling. Allen leaving prosecution. A wound where the law was concerned.

He opened a browser and started with public docket summaries. “Your shop brings in half the town. Regulars, groups, courthouse people, even victims and jurors. If several victims shared a past connection, Sanctuary could’ve made them visible in the same place.”

“What kind of past connection?”

“A court case, a trial, a witness list. Possibly victim services. Anything that put them near the same people years ago.”