“Fucking hell,” he roared.
She took two steps and collapsed in the nearby chair.
“He is a suspect,” he snapped.
She shook her head. “No, he wasn’t. You guys were trying to make itlooklike he was a suspect, but he had no connection, outside of being a rescued child from thirty-one years ago,” she said boldly. “I get that everybody wanted him to look good for it, but he didn’t.”
“He wasn’t cleared,” Colby snapped.
She stiffened. “He was,” she said. “I listened to everything yesterday. Rodney did a full workup, trying to match him to everything, and couldn’t find anything. And, for the record, I didn’t plan it,” she said. He just glared at her. She shrugged and straightened. “Can I leave now?”
“You know I should pull you off the case,” he snapped.
“You don’t need to do that, Sergeant,” she said wearily.
“Where are you heading?”
“Out to the home of the same pedophile I saw leaving Nico’s place, where we found the child,” she said. “He was on the camera as the last person who approached Nico in his vehicle.”
“And it’s definitely not Simon?” His gaze probed hers.
“Definitely not,” she said, with emphasis. Inside she was trembling. The last thing she wanted to do was get sidelined for having done something improper. In her own mind, she knew Simon had nothing to do with it, but that didn’t mean everybody else was as sure.
He gave a brief nod and added, “This isn’t over.”
She gulped. “Thank you, Sergeant,” she whispered and quickly disappeared. She met Rodney at the elevator. He looked at her and said, “Problem?”
“No,” she said, calmer than she felt. “Nothing more than usual.” As they approached the apartment she’d been to earlier—but both owner and truck were gone that first time—she walked over and knocked on the front door. There was no answer. Rodney went around to the parking lot to check for a vehicle.
She knocked again and then picked up the phone and called Owen.
As soon as he answered, he said, “We have a warrant.”
“Good. I’m going in,” she said. She brought out her tools, popped the knob, and opened the door ever-so-slightly. Rodney came up beside her, one of them on either side the door. As he went high, and she went low, they pushed the door open and entered, calling out, “Police coming in. We have a warrant!”
Only silence greeted them.
She frowned as she stepped inside and looked around, doing a quick sweep around the small apartment first. Bedroom off to the left, living room straight ahead, kitchen on the right. Small bathroom between the living room and the bedroom. And the place was a hovel. It smelled as if no fresh air had been through here in weeks. It was nasty. But what was that odor from? She lifted her nose and sniffed the air again, frowning.
Rodney looked at her and nodded. “Something dead was in here.”
“But what?” she said quietly. They did a general search first and then got into the nitty-gritty details. She focused on the living room. Just something about it really drove her crazy. As she worked her way through it, moving pizza boxes, take-out containers, rolled-up bags of garbage, she realized they could have moved any number of things in here, and the resident never would have noticed.
But the couch, where he sat in front of the TV, was clear, both sides. She removed the cushions, finding a number of things she didn’t want to question too closely, and one was a piece of pink ribbon. She stared at it quietly for a long moment, then picked it up with her gloved hand and placed it in a small evidence bag. “A pink ribbon here,” she said.
“And that means what?”
“Maybe nothing,” she said, “but our little princess had pink ribbons on her clothes.”
He popped his head around the corner, looked at her, frowned, and said, “She was here?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m just telling you.” She kept going. When she came to a small notebook, listing a series of names, she frowned and put it into an evidence bag as well. But not before she took a couple photos of the list. She knew that the Forensic teams would come, but she wanted this moment to see for herself just exactly what was here and what was not.
“I wish we had his phone,” she murmured. She quickly sent Reese a text, asking her to apply for a list of the phone calls from this perv’s phone. If they could get his phone records, that would help too. The kitchen itself was the cleanest part of the house, but clearly that was because he didn’t use it. She opened the fridge to find milk, cookies, a couple half-eaten sandwiches, a random jar of pickled jalapenos, and not a whole lot else.
Obviously this was the fridge of a man who didn’t cook and had no intention of learning. He’d lived this way for a very long time. She was doing the run of his history, even as she searched the place. He was forty-nine years old and a twin. She froze at that and researched who his sibling was. When she got the name, she froze again.
“Oh my God,” she said.