“While I still have however many more to go…” she muttered. “Seven, I think.”
Rodney nodded. “You could ask the sergeant for some assistance.”
She winced.
“See? You don’t even want to talk to Colby because it came from Simon.”
“I know, dammit, and yet it’s information, and something we need to follow up on.”
“What information?” came the question from the doorway.
She looked up to see the sergeant there. She frowned at him, and he frowned right back. “Just about the church windows.”
“So did you take a look?”
“I hit twelve yesterday, and there’s seven more.”
He nodded. “And? What do you want now?”
“We have two more cases found in Saskatchewan.”
He looked at her and asked, “Really? Why across Canada?”
“I don’t know, but there’s more,” she stated. After taking a deep breath, she explained about the kid’s travels while incarcerated.
He stared at her. “So the killings happened in the same towns where the kid was?”
She nodded.
“You’ll bring him in for questioning?”
“I’ve already spoken to him this morning. He’s gone to work.”
“And what’ll stop him from taking a run out of the country?”
“A, he doesn’t have the money.B, I don’t think he will because he’s hoping to get his case cleared now because, don’t forget, all the time, no matter where he was, he was in jail. It’s not like he could just sign himself in and out and run around without supervision.”
At that, the sergeant frowned and leaned against the doorjamb and crossed his arms. “Am I hearing abut?”
“Yeah, and it’s a big one. He also had day passes, and he had some free time.”
“So you’re thinking he just walked out of jail, did his thing, and walked back in? If these cases match up, it was a brutal crime and would have taken some time to torture his victims, not to mention planning.”
“I know, and he was doing some special training therapy research BS in Alberta in order for them to understand why his juvenile mind would have killed someone like his sister.”
“Oh, great. So what did they decide?”
“That he needed some, you know, special time with his family or something, so they went for a visit. Well, that was part of it anyway. At the same time, his mom was in a bad accident or was injured somehow. I need to confirm with her just what happened. Anyway Rick was allowed to go to the hospital to see her.”
“So special dispensation for good behavior or something?”
“He described it more like he pitched a fit, and they eventually gave in,” she explained, “but, at the very least, we have to see at what point in time those visits happened as compared to the murders.”
“But keeping in mind that these women were all tortured beforehand.”
She nodded. “And what I don’t know is how long of a torture this would be.”
The sergeant looked skeptical. “Could he have done something like this? Found a woman, kidnapped her, tortured her, then left her for days, only to not come back, and that’s when she was found? I mean, is that part of this?”