“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
He replied, “On that Saturday morning, I was in bed with my partner, and, yes, you can talk to her.”
“Anybody other than your partner?”
“Well, I was still in bed later that morning because I was pissed off that I had a video conference meeting at nine in the morning with Europe. You can easily check that out too.”
He quickly gave her the details, and she jotted them down. “What about on Tuesday?”
“What happened on Tuesday?” he asked curiously.
“Just answer the question.”
“Okay,” he said, “let me check my schedule here. Ah, I had a team meeting at eight in the morning on Zoom. There wouldhave been at least eight people there who can confirm my presence.”
“And before that?”
“I went for a run over at Stanley Park. It’s a huge place and lots of running trails.”
“Alone?”
“No,” he replied, “actually two guys run with me on a regular basis these days.” He quickly gave her those names. “You can confirm that.”
“Will do.”
She hung up, and, because it needed to be done, she quickly made the phone calls and confirmed his alibi for each murder. When she tossed down her phone, she glared at it.
“Not what you wanted to hear?” Rodney asked.
“Well, that lead just got shot down,” she said. “He offered an alibi for both times, and both alibis checked out.”
He nodded slowly. “It does make sense. I mean, if it was a place where I’d had such a negative confrontation, I’d always be afraid of seeing the same women again. And, if just the sight of them would drive me batty or ruin my running experience, which is a highlight of my day, I wouldn’t want to go there. Maybe if the guys were together…”
She looked over at him in surprise. “Would you really let somebody like that ruin what had been your favorite run?”
“Well, I can’t stand running anyway,” he noted, “but, if it was a favorite place that I really liked, and I felt myself pulling inward to avoid seeing them, then, yeah, I’d find another place to run because that’s not why I want to go anywhere.”
“I get it.” She sank back into her chair, pondering the whole thing. “We really don’t have anything, you know?”
“That’s not what I want to hear,” a man spoke from the doorway, his voice harsh.
She looked up and glared at her sergeant. “Well, I won’t manufacture evidence to make you happy,” she snapped back.
At that, her sergeant glared back at her, putting his hands on his hips.
She raised both hands, palms up. “I don’t know what else to do. We have very little forensic evidence, and, in fact, there’s very little anything. Somebody took a rope and pulled back a branch enough that, when he let it go, it knocked them down at least, and then he followed up with a stick if they weren’t out already. Then he strangled them or rather used a garrote. The second time he went right for the garrote, no need to strangle them with the rope because he already knew it wouldn’t work. He took the garrote with him both times. No forensic evidence around. Used gloves and probably tossed them to boot.”
Colby nodded slowly. “I get it. So what do you want to do?”
“Well, we don’t know if this guy will act a third time. God help us if he does. But my thought would be,” she hesitated and then said, “give him some bait.”
Immediately he shook his head. “Hell no. You know too many places are on that trail for us to accurately pick his next attack point. We can’t have that many people out there. He’ll know something is up.”
Colby was correct there. “I also don’t want to just sit here and wait for him to make a move. I do have a few threads to chase. Other than that, I’m out of ideas.”
“Tie up as many loose ends as you can. Write down all the potential theories you’ve got, and then you move on,” Colby ordered, his voice sharp. “We got two more murders last night, both down on the east end. So these other deaths are accumulating, and your jogging murders may be dormant.”