It never bothered her when she was with him, and she hadn’t ever asked him those questions. The fact that she hadn’t made her wonderwhyshe hadn’t thought about it. Was it because she didn’t believe it was even possible or because it wasn’t a possibility she could contemplate? Which was it?
The fact was, none of it made any difference to her. If he said yes, that he could, what would she do differently? And, if he said no, it would just be the same as always. Besides, would she even believe him? That made her wince more than anything because, if she didn’t believe or trust the guy even that much, she shouldn’t be sleeping with him. She slowly rotated her neck, wishing that this, along with everything else, would go away for at least a few minutes.
Rodney joined them in the bullpen. “I think I’ll call the ex-employee the victim had trouble with.”
“Good,” she noted. “We have a few things to follow up on but not too much else.”
“Almost nothing at all,” Rodney stated. “We do need to confirm with the hotel where the boss was.”
She nodded. “I’ll do that.” And she reached for the phone. Only twenty minutes later they had managed to confirm the stories related to the office, including the ex-boyfriend’s account of watching Cherry being friendly with Tom at work. “Great,” Kate muttered, “so absolutely no joy here, and I’ve got copies of documents and even the security camera footage for that time frame, just so we can confirm that Cherry’s boss was at the hotel and at work when he claimed he was.”
“Nothing here,” Rodney added. “Nothing from the other employee. Her name is Julie, and she told me that the two of them were antagonistic toward each other right from the beginning. She was mostly apologetic about it, saying that they were basically just too much alike.”
“Did you believe her?” Kate asked Rodney, turning to look at him.
He nodded. “You know what? I did. And I don’t see much in the way of motive there either.”
She nodded. “Fine then, that means we have literally nothing to go on.”
“Except the kid, the parolee.”
“Right.” She nodded. “The kid.” She grinned at that. “We need to set him up with an interview.”
“That’ll be a little hard, since we don’t have any forwarding address.”
“The parents will know where he is,” she stated.
“Yeah, but if the parents think we had put him away for murder, and it wasn’t him, we won’t get any address out of them.”
“Wasn’t he living at their place?” she asked, frowning.
“At first he was, but he’s not required to check in anymore, so we have no confirmation yet.”
“I know,” she agreed. “Still, that’s a place to start.” She picked up the phone. When a woman’s voice answered, Kate identified herself and asked to speak to the woman’s son.
“He doesn’t live here,” the other woman replied tartly, “and I wouldn’t give you the number anyway.” Then she promptly hung up.
Kate stared down at the phone. “Well, somebody feels pretty strongly about it.”
“That’s what I meant,” Rodney stated. “People get pretty irate over what they consider a wrongful conviction.”
“And yet he also confessed.”
“But he was a kid, so, from their perspective, it would have been coerced because that allowed them to believe their son. And he recanted the confession too.”
“So then why confess in the first place?” she murmured in surprise.
“Well, that’s what we’ll have to find out, along with everything else.”
“Great,” she muttered. “We need to track him down.” She typed in search parameters. “He’s got to be working somewhere.” It took a bit, but she finally found his last known employment. “He worked at a mechanic’s shop. One of thosedrive in and change your oilplaces. Maybe he still works there.”
Rodney looked over at her. “Good.”
She nodded. “Well, it’s the end of the day, and I think it’s about time I got my oil changed.” She gave him a smile and walked out.
“You be careful.”
“I will,” she replied.