“I hope not.”
“Hope not? I thought we were looking at the ex-husband being the guilty party in this one,” Owen said.
“You may. I’m not,” Kate stated.
“And why is that?” Owen asked.
“It’s too cliché,” she replied. “He makes an easy scapegoat, and I haven’t even talked to him yet. So, until I can lock down any evidence that says that he’s the killer, I’m not going there.”
“But it looks like he’s good for it?” the sergeant asked her.
“In a way, sure,” she admitted quietly, “in that he is somebody who would know both women’s habits and schedules, had a grievance against his ex-wife, and had threatened her in the past.”
“Yet you don’t like him for it, why again?” Colby repeated.
“Well, like I mentioned, I haven’t talked to him. We don’t know whether or not he has an alibi for that time. We don’t know that he doesn’t have a completely different story about the marriage and the divorce than everybody we’ve talked to—whohas been on the wife’s side, by the way. And the killer took out not just the ex-wife but her best friend.”
“But,” Rodney reminded her, “they were best friends, so the ex-husband could potentially have a grudge against her as well.”
“And that’s true. He may have,” she agreed. “I spoke with Agnew, the other victim’s husband yesterday, after Rodney had done the initial interview.” She looked over at Rodney. “Agnew did confirm the theory that the two women were best friends and that Robin had been cheering on our other victim, Jenna, to leave her husband.”
“So that would give motivation for killing both of them,” the sergeant noted.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“But?”
She shrugged. “Methodology. I mean, why go to such an elaborate method, not to mention one with such a high chance of being seen? Seems like there’s a million other things he could have done. I don’t know, but,” she added, “it just, it feels wrong.”
Colby frowned, as he studied her.
She shrugged. “I know. I know. We don’t have much time. We need to close it as fast as possible. I’m doing my best. I just have to make sure I’m comfortable with everything, and, right now, let’s not forget we don’t have anything other than motive. And that means I need to find out where he was and if we can put him anywhere near the place of the murders. We can’t just assume it’s him. We have to prove it.”
“Well, get after it then,” the sergeant ordered in a sharp voice.
“I will. I will.” She raised both hands. “Lots of people are here. Assign the other murderers to somebody else.”
“I’m happy to take something different,” Owen offered. “Running exhausts me, and that’s just thinking about it.”
The laughter dissolved any tension in the room, and the discussion quickly moved away from Kate. She was grateful and suspected Owen had done it intentionally and for that purpose.Maybe he uses that trick in his marriage and with his kiddos too, which maybe made his familial unit such the touted success—most unusual in their line of work. She gave him a slight tilt of her head in recognition. Maybe this team thing wasn’t so bad.
Sighing, she returned to her murder cases. She couldn’t explain why, but she was still so puzzled and upset about this one.
Although the ex-husband looked good for it, that didn’t actually make him good for it. And, of course, nobody here was trying to railroad anybody, but, when you had something so clear-cut—or what looked to be so clear-cut—she always got suspicious. How hard would it be to make it look like the ex-husband did it, so somebody else got the heat of killing Jenna? Kate also didn’t know if that woman was even the target of the two. It could have been Robin, the other one.
Maybe someone at the dental office hated her. Maybe a patient held a grudge against her, or someone in the office and made her the target. Or maybe Robin had an argument with a teacher at one of her kids’ schools. Kate didn’t know until she managed to get to the end of her questions, and she still wouldn’t know for sure, even after all that. The trouble was, the department always had more cases than they had time and effort to deal with. By the time the next murder arrived on their doorstep, they were deemed through with the previous murder investigation. She shook her head.
She did her best though, and, as long as she got another day’s grace, or two or three if she were lucky, she could focus just on this one case. And she realized it looked like she would be given that leeway today.
As she got up, the sergeant called her into his office. She walked over and stood in his doorway.
He looked up at her. “Any reason for the misgivings?”
“Not yet.” Then she hesitated. “Well, maybe.”
He looked at her, crossed his arms, and frowned. “Speak up.”
“You won’t like it.”