She just stared at him.
“The manager at Big Pines. Try to keep up.” He was grinning now, and she knew he was teasing her.
She turned to face the window. “Small-town grapevine. And here I’ve been all impressed with your spying abilities.”
“You should be.” He pulled up to her Explorer and parked. “We’re the best there is.”
She looked at him in the darkness, so confident it bordered on arrogance. And the crazy thing was she believed him—he was that good.
His eyes locked on hers, and the air between them felt charged with electricity. His gaze dropped to her mouth, and her heart skittered. Was he going to kiss her? He eased closer, watching her, making her heart pound.
“I’m sorry about Catie,” she blurted.
He pulled back, as she’d intended.
“You were fairly close, I take it?” When he didn’t answer, she kept pushing. “You knew her routines?”
He just looked at her.
“We’re trying to understand how she ended up at the park that day,” she explained. “Silver Springs Park. A witness might have seen her jogging, but her husband doesn’t think so, and we didn’t recover any clothes, so . . .”
His brow furrowed, and he turned away. “She went there sometimes. She liked the solitude.”
“How do you know?”
“I showed it to her.” His gaze met hers again.
Yet another circumstance linking him to the murder. And still Tara wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure of his relationship to the victim, just that he hadn’t told her everything.
Was it a love triangle? Was he part of Catie’s marital problems? Even if they weren’t having an affair, there could have been undercurrents of jealousy.
She pushed open the door. “Thanks for the help.” As she said it, she realized he still hadn’t explained why he’d been out here.
He put his hand over hers, warm and possessive. “Be careful, Tara.”
She pulled away. “I will.”
SHE TOOK OFF without a backward glance and Liam watched her in the rearview mirror. What the hell was it with her?
He shoved his truck into gear and got moving. She considered him a suspect, and so he ranked right up there with every lowlife scumbag she’d ever put in jail.
He drove through the woods, thinking about her, as he had been for days. He was a good judge of people, and the more he thought about it, the more he believed the way she acted toward him was just that, an act.
Tara Rushing was smart. And despite the incriminating circumstances—because they sure as shit were—he doubted she really believed he was a cold-blooded killer. There was something forced about her frosty attitude.
He’d caught the look in her eyes when they’d first met. And he’d watched her reaction to him tonight. Liam knew when women were attracted to him, and this one was, no question. And yet she held back. He wasn’t sure what her hang-up was—probably something to do with work—but she seemed determined to keep him at arm’s length.
He was determined not to let her.
A SWAT team. Damn. Now it was going to be even harder to get her out of his head.
His phone vibrated in his pocket, and he dug it out. “Yeah.”
“You done yet?” Jeremy asked him.
“Just the northwest. I’m headed for the southeast corner now.”
Silence, probably as Jeremy wondered what the holdup was. Then he said, “Okay, we’re good to go in the control room. Everything’s live.”
“I’ll finish this installation and be there in a few,” Liam told him. “How’s it running?”
“Right as planned.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Liam was right about the press, and by seven A.M., the parking lot of the motel was crowded with media vans. Teams of reporters staked out the Waffle Stop, too, collecting quotes from locals for their morning broadcasts. Tara and M.J. got their coffee to go and navigated through traffic to pick up U.S. 59 down to Silver Springs.
Compared with Cypress County, the administrative offices for Silver Springs were brand spanking new, housed in a two-story building with a facade of Texas limestone. Silver Springs was in transition. What had once been a sleepy logging town was now an affluent bedroom community on the outskirts of Houston. As they pulled into the parking lot, Tara wondered if the people who ran the town were modern like their headquarters or still mired in the past.
“Nice,” M.J. said, as Tara whipped into a space beside the slot reserved for the police chief. It looked like he was already in, and Tara checked her watch to make sure they weren’t late.
“Who’s here again?” Tara asked as they got out.
“Chief Milt Becker and I think one of his officers.”
They entered the building and were immediately approached by a rail-thin police officer in a blue uniform. “Special Agent Rushing?”
He’d been expecting a man, Tara could tell. They shook hands, and Tara introduced him to M.J.
“I been hearing about that raid the other day,” he said. “What’d they call it, Operation Froyo? There ought to be a special place in hell.” He shook his head. “Anyway, your guys down there, they did a good job.”
“I’ll pass it along,” Tara said drily.
“Y’all come on back.” He motioned them down a corridor. “Everyone’s in the conference room.”
“Everyone?” M.J. asked.
“The sheriff wanted to sit in. Him and Chief Becker go way back, so . . .”
He let the thought trail off as he opened a glass door to a room where half a dozen men crowded around a table, including Sheriff Ingram and his deputy, Jason Moore. They went through introductions, and Tara took a seat beside Chief Becker, a heavyset man with a silver buzz cut.
“You ladies want some coffee?” The chief nodded at a carafe on the table beside a half-empty box of fruit kolaches.
“No, thanks.” Tara pulled out a notebook. “I assume everyone’s had a chance to read the ME’s report,” she said, trying to set the tone. Jacobs was still pushing cooperation with the locals, and she was determined to try. “Dr. Greenwood concluded manual strangulation, and the forensic anthropologist at the Delphi Center backs that up. Greenwood’s report also includes the tox results. She’s negative for drugs and alcohol.”
Becker whistled. “That came back in a hurry.”
She assumed he meant the toxicology labs, and he was right. Typically, they could take a few weeks.
“You been to Delphi?” Ingram was frowning at her now.
“Yesterday afternoon,” Tara said. “While I was there, I had a chance to talk to the forensic anthropologist about the Jane Doe case from November.”
He bristled. “What about it?”
“It’s been classified as a homicide.” Tara glanced at the blank faces around the table. “A woman’s body was recovered in Cypress County near the Trinity River, back in the fall.”
“Opening weekend.” Becker nodded. “I remember that.”
“The victim has some broken bones and knife injuries,” Tara said. “The tool-marks expert at the Delphi Center is analyzing the case now to see if there’s a link.”
Ingram looked irritated.
“I’m surprised you didn’t think to mention it,” Tara said pointedly.
“What’s to mention? It’s a dumped-body case, three months old. We don’t even have an ID on her.”
Dumped-body cases were among the toughest to solve. No witnesses, no murder weapon. And whatever biological evidence there was had been exposed to the elements. Tara sympathized with the challenges, but the sheriff didn’t sound challenged so much as lazy.
“Did Delphi get my package, do you know?”
Tara looked across the table. The question was from the Silver Springs fire chief, Alex Sears, whose presence at the meeting hadn’t yet been explained.
“What package is that?” she asked.
“Their lab out there—I sent in the lock and chain off the gate from the fire break,” he
said. “They were supposed to run it for prints.”
Becker waved a hand at him. “Hold on a minute. Let’s catch these gals up.” He looked at Tara. “Alex here found evidence our perpetrator used the fire break north of the park. It’s an access road, but it’s gated off.”
“Tire tracks match the ones y’all found,” the fire chief said, although Tara wasn’t sure how he could know that. “Looks like he used bolt cutters on the lock, then threw it in the bushes.”
Tara took a long look at the fire chief. He was younger than the other men in the room, probably mid-thirties, and he kept himself in much better shape. She liked that he’d not only found a clue but followed up on it.
The lock was a valuable lead but unsettling, too. For the killer to access the park from a nonpublic route suggested a good deal of premeditation. He’d been familiar enough with Catalina’s routine to know when to expect her at the park and then to get there ahead of time to lie in wait.
Or maybe it suggested that Catalina wasn’t specifically targeted. Maybe the killer accessed the park through a back route and waited for a victim of opportunity.
“I’ll check with Delphi on it,” Tara told Sears.
“How about local suspects?” M.J. said, addressing the sheriff and his deputy. “You were compiling a list based on known offenders in the area?”
“Besides drug and alcohol charges, I got three possibles so far,” Jason said. “Ross McThune, Donny Price, and Liam Wolfe.”
“Liam Wolfe has a rap sheet?” M.J. sounded surprised. She and Tara had checked Liam out and come up with zip.
“He owns the land,” Jason said. “Knows the area, the victim. Makes him a suspect in my book.”
Tara couldn’t argue his logic. “What about the other two?” she asked.
“Donny Price served a two-year stretch for aggravated assault. McThune just finished a year for simple assault on a woman in Dallas. We haven’t had a chance to check ’em out yet. I’ll probably interview Price today.”
Tara jotted down the info as Jason eyed her notepad with suspicion.
“You might want to check McThune’s arrest report,” she said.
“Why?”
“I’m surprised he did a year for a misdemeanor, unless it got pleaded down from something bigger. How old is he?”
“Twenty-six.”
She nodded. “So maybe it was a first offense and they cut him a deal. The original police report should tell you more.” Tara wrote down the names and then looked at Ingram. “What about the guy who lives near the crime scene—Alligator Joe?”
Smiles around the table. Jason snorted.
“You ever met him?” Ingram asked.
“No.”
“This that Cajun that lives down in the hollow?” Sears asked.
“Joe Giroux,” Ingram said. “And he’s older than two trees. I don’t see him hustling down here to kidnap a woman, then hauling her home to cut her up.”
Tara made a note of the last name.
“I’m following up with the teenagers today,” Jason said. “Their folks are coming in, and we’ll see if we can’t sort out their stories.”
“What about them?” Tara asked.
“Timing’s off. This couple said they went out there around eight to meet some friends that never showed. But we talked to the friends, and they said they stopped by there and didn’t see them. Somebody’s lying.”
He was right, but Tara figured the lies had more to do with the fact that they’d been out there having sex. She doubted that summoning their parents to the police station would do anything besides further muddy the waters, but she didn’t want to waste time arguing about it.
As the meeting dragged on, Tara started to lose hope for getting any real help from the sheriff’s people. They seemed to have the same sloppy approach to developing local suspects as they’d had to processing the crime scene. And so far, every “lead” they’d come up with would have to be reexamined by Tara or someone from her office. Day three of the investigation, and Ingram had yet to nail anything down.
“How about the husband?” Jason asked. “You guys bring him in yet?”
“We’ll be interviewing him again this afternoon,” M.J. said.
The Silver Springs PD had been more than happy to let the FBI handle the delicate matter of interviewing the powerful Houston attorney. David Reyes had a reputation for being litigious.
Ingram looked at Tara. “I thought the husband had an alibi.”
“He does. He was in a mediation followed by a business dinner the evening his wife disappeared. But we’re still looking at him.”
David Reyes might not have killed Catalina, but he could have had her killed, and the pending divorce was a red flag. They needed more information, including financials, to really get a picture.
“Okay, back to the forensics.” Tara scanned her notes. “I plan to be in touch with the Delphi Center, so I’ll ask about that lock and chain.” She looked at Sears. “You sent it for fingerprints?”
“And DNA, if they can get any.”
“I’ll check. We’re still waiting on DNA results from a shard of glass they recovered from the body.” She glanced at Ingram. “And I’m going to need a list of the items sent in from the crime scene, the cigarette butts in particular.”
Ingram shook his head. “We didn’t send them.”
“Why not?”
“No reason to.”
Tara looked at him.
“Waste of money, at this point,” he said. “Till we have a suspect in hand, we’d just be running blind tests on a bunch of beer cans at a couple hundred bucks a pop.”
Tara tried to swallow her frustration. “You’re worried about the budget?”
He folded his arms over his chest.
“My office can help with that,” she said. “Go ahead and send the evidence.”
He obviously didn’t like taking orders from a woman, but she didn’t care. They had work to do, and she wanted to wrap this meeting.
“That’s it, then.” She closed her notebook. “The one other thing we should talk about is the press. Sheriff, I’ve been asked to let you know our media relations coordinator will be happy to handle any questions and interview requests. We ask that you direct reporters to us, so we get a consistent message out to the public.”
Ingram looked like he’d bitten into a lemon. He was up for reelection next year, no doubt running on a tough-on-crime platform. She doubted he’d be able to resist the spotlight.
“If you do talk to any reporters,” Tara said, “be careful not to discuss details of the investigation. When we get a suspect in for interrogation, it’s going to be critical that we haven’t tipped our hand.”
“All due respect, this ain’t my first rodeo.” He stood and grabbed his Stetson off the table behind him. “Milt, Alex. I’ll be in touch.”
Five minutes later, Tara and M.J. were back in the Explorer.
M.J. looked at her. “What’d you think?”
“We came out with more to-dos.”
“That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. And the lead from the fire chief about the gate is good,” Tara said. “But we’re definitely on the sheriff’s shit list.”
“I think we were on it from the minute we got here. What do you think about the suspect list they’re working?”
Tara didn’t think much of it, but she shrugged. “We’ll see where it leads.”
Liam was on that list, and she had to admit—to herself, at least—that the idea bothered her.
Tara was treading on thin ice with him. She thought about the warm rush she’d felt during their first encounter. She’d felt it again last night, too. But she couldn’t be influenced by that. She had the self-discipline to do her job, professionally and thoroughly, without letting a little thing like sexual attraction distract her.
M.J. scrolled through her phone. “I missed a call while we were in there. Mike Brannon.” She dialed him back. “Hey, it’s Martinez. What’d yo
u get?”
Tara eavesdropped as she pulled out of the parking lot.
“Are you sure?”
She shot Tara a look. By the tone of her voice, Tara knew something was wrong.
“Can you e-mail the file?” M.J. asked. “Okay, thanks.” She hung up.
“What?”
“I thought you said Liam Wolfe hadn’t talked to Catalina Reyes since before Thanksgiving.”
“That’s what he told me.”
“Well, it sounds like he lied.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Tara had stopped by the office to pick up an unmarked Taurus, hoping to maintain a low profile. The car reeked of lemon air freshener, but it had a built-in GPS, so it was a step up from the Blue Beast. Now she hung back, keeping the Silverado in view.
Her phone chimed from the console, and she put it on speaker.
“Where are you?” M.J. asked.
“Still shadowing him.”
“To the airport or—”
“Austin.”
Silence.
Liam eased into the right-hand lane, but Tara stayed where she was.
“You tailed him all the way to Austin?” M.J. sounded shocked.
“Tell me what you found out.”
“I finally reached Jeremy Owen, with Wolfe Security. He says Liam’s out of town on business until tomorrow night.”
Overnight created complications, but Tara had expected as much when she realized Liam was headed out of town. She eased into the right-hand lane as he exited the freeway.
“I need his cell number,” Tara said.
“We don’t have it.”
“What about Catalina’s phone records?”
She took the exit ramp. Following Liam, she hung a right into a residential neighborhood with large old houses and even larger new construction.
“The number’s a landline,” M.J. informed her. “Registered to WSI—Wolfe Security, Incorporated. What business would he have in Austin?”
“I don’t know.”
Tara slowed, letting him get ahead of her as he made a left turn, going deeper into the neighborhood. Now was the tricky part. If she lost him now, her entire day was down the tubes. But she couldn’t risk getting too close.
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