The manager thought a moment, then nodded slowly. “Yes, I guess so, though I hadn’t thought about him in that way. I’m a guy though and quite prepared to push back if he’s an asshole here, but—for a younger, more vulnerable female—I suspect he could be very scary.”
“Did he have any criminal history or anything that gave you reservations when you hired him?”
“He has been working here for a long time, maybe ten years. We’ve never had any trouble with him, except for his temper.”
“Any rumors about previous relationships?”
He nodded slowly. “He has been through a few over the years. It seems like they get to a certain stage, and then something happens, and he gets upset and ugly about it, and they break up soon afterward.”
“Well, apparently something of that nature was happening. He beat up Chelice, and she took off, but now we can’t find her.”
“Are you thinking he did something?”
“I have no idea, but we need to speak to him.” On a hunch, she asked, “Do you happen to know a Rick Lord?”
He frowned, his fingers strumming on the countertop. “I don’t think so,” he replied. “Why?”
“Just wondering, and what about—” She pulled up the photos of the other two women. “Do you happen to know either of these women?”
He looked at them, shrugged, and shook his head. “Honestly, no, they don’t look familiar at all.”
She nodded her thanks, then turned and headed back out. She walked toward Rodney’s car, armed with the address and phone number of her next target. Rodney joined her momentarily. She looked over at him, with an eyebrow raised. “Where did you disappear to?”
“I went to talk to his coworkers.”
“And?” she asked, as she got in.
“Basically he’s an arrogant asshole. Not well liked, but he shows up and does the job, so nobody is willing to get rid of him.”
“Just an attitude problem?”
“Especially where women are concerned. If a woman comes in, he makes all kinds of sexist comments the whole time they are there, but just under his breath, so they can’t quite hear. As soon as they leave, he’s got nothing but lewd and crude remarks to say about them.”
“Nice,” Kate noted, shaking her head. “If that were me, I certainly would not be happy to know that people were talking about me after I left.”
“Exactly,” Rodney agreed. “It’s a sad case all the way around.”
“I’ve got his address, so let’s go talk to him.”
“Presuming he’s home.”
“Well, he’s supposed to be sick,” Kate stated, “but who knows where he is. If he is our killer, then he could possibly be with his victim.”
“Which is our girl Chelice.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “but it seems like that would be a little too obvious.”
“And that’s what we were wondering at the beginning though, right? In order to make this stick on Rick Lord, it has to look like it’s somebody else. But it can’t look too much like it’s somebody else because it needs to look like the other cases too. This guy is continuing to use ammo that he used on previous cases. The fact that it is recognizable means that it needs to be the same killer. Otherwise it’s none of these. He’s just doing what he can to throw us off course. And doing a good job of it, at the moment.”
“Not really,” she said in a dry tone. “He’s just an asshole, who’s wasting my time and pissing me off.”
He laughed. “I get that. But the bottom line is, we still can’t get our job done because this guy is throwing smoke and mirrors.”
“That’s a good phrase for it,” she muttered.
“And the question is, how long has he been doing this? Did you ever do a run for other victims like this?”
“I did,” she replied, “but I didn’t get specific enough. I knew it at the time, but I got distracted and didn’t get a chance to run it yet.”