Ashley walked Jana’s mother back to her car while Jack began his systematic search of Jana’s house. She returned to find the agent removing cushions from the sofa.
“No stone or pillow unturned, huh?” Ashley asked, watching the agent, his tie now loosened, enthralled in his hunt. “I kind of doubt she hid what we’re looking for in her couch.”
Jack stood up and gave Ashley a serious look as she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
“This means our killer is familiar with law enforcement,” Jack surmised, gesturing to the ransacked house. “He did his homework when it came to Agent Ferrell. He knew where she lived, he knew she was on the case and he even thought enough to come here and make sure his tracks were covered. Our man is smart and from the looks of things, your friend may have been right. He may have connections within your agency.”
Ashley walked around the living room, trying to figure out if anything was different since the last time she visited Jana’s home about a month ago.
“The tower,” Ashley said, pointing to an empty desk which sat near the dining room wall. “Jana had a desk top computer right there.”
“We have to assume our killer took it with him after he paid his visit,” Jack said, tossing down the couch cushion he held in disgust. “If she kept her files on it then he knows everything she had on him.”
“Yeah, and at the same time we’re left in the dark,” Ashley agreed as she took a quick tour of Jana’s house, pausing by the bedroom phone long enough to pick up a note pad and place it in her pocket.
“I’m going to get someone over here to try to lift some prints. Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Ashley said as she walked out of the bedroom.
Jack shot Ashley a grim look as he doubtfully shook his head.
“The chances of that are few and far between, darlin',” Jack said. “Our guy is way too smart for that.”
“Where do we go from here?” Ashley said, disappointed that their search did not fare as well as she had hoped. “How do we get on his trail?”
Jack took a seat on Jana’s sofa. He sat thoughtfully for a moment as he rubbed his forehead.
“We track her movements,” Jack announced, breaking his silence. “I say we figure out where she went and what she did during her last week.”
His suggestion made sense. Something must have happened leading up to her trip to Rock River. She had come across something that made her believe she could find the killer there.
“I’ll begin with her phone records,” Jack volunteered, taking out his cellphone to put the process in motion.
Ashley sat silently for a moment. She wondered how else they could retrace Jana’s steps that final week of her life. That’s when it hit her. Despite being an intelligent person and an excellent officer of the law, Jana had always been horrible with directions. Ashley had often joked that Jana was lucky to be able to find her way home from the corner store.
“There’s one place I doubt our killer thought to look,” Ashley revealed as Jack finished his phone call. “Her car, Jana always had an issue with directions. I’ll bet if she went anywhere out of the ordinary she used her GPS. She used it all the time.”
Jack lit up with Ashley’s announcement, giving his partner a big grin.
“Smart girl,” Jack said, his attempt at a compliment coming off as more of an insult, given his sexist wording. “Tell you what, I’ll get her phone records and you get that GPS and we’ll meet back at your headquarters in a couple of hours and compare notes.”
“It’s a deal ... ” Ashley responded with her voice trailing off as she paused to pick up a broken picture she just noticed lying on the floor next to an overturned end table.
“What is it?” Jack asked as he stood up from the couch, seeing a change in Ashley’s face.
Without a word, Ashley turned the picture to face her partner. It was a picture of Jana and Ashley together at the graduation from the academy.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said, showing a polite side for the first time. “I guess sometimes it’s personal for all of us, isn’t it?”
Ashley didn’t answer as she stared at the picture, remembering the good times. But he was right. This was very personal.
FEAR OF FLYING
Ashley slammed the office door behind her. The frustration of the day was finally catching up to her. Jana’s vehicle, she had learned, was still in Rock River being held in the police impound lot waiting to be picked up. It had been towed from the football field after the crime scene investigation was complete on Saturday. While Ashley now had possession of the keys, she was four hours away from Rock River and daylight was running out on Tuesday and the clock was ticking. Friday, and perhaps another murder, was just around the corner.
Under normal situations she could simply get a member of the agency to bring the GPS to her but given the possibility of a link between the department and the killer, she couldn’t take the chance. She would let the GPS sit safely in the car until she was personally able to retrieve it. The suspected link between the killer and the department was making a complicated situation into a near-impossible situation.
Ashley plopped down in her chair, exhausted from the emotional rollercoaster of the last few days. When are you going to catch a break, Ashley?
That’s when she felt something in her pocket. It was the note pad she picked up from Jana’s nightstand. Ashley pulled the pad from her pocket. She had forgotten about it.
“Of course it’s blank,” Ashley muttered to herself, shuffling through the pages to confirm there was no writing on them before throwing it on her desk.
Ashley swirled her long dark hair around her finger as she sat deep in thought, waiting for her new partner to arrive, hopefully with good news.
“What’s that?” Ashley wondered aloud as she squinted from behind her thick glasses at the notebook she had just thrown on her desk.
There was an impression from something written on a page that had been ripped out. Perhaps it was something useful or more likely, given her luck, it was a shopping list. There was one way to find out. She would use a trick most third graders know.
Ashley pulled a pencil from her jar and began rubbing atop the impression, the lead in the pencil revealing a message that Jana had scrawled on the missing page. It was a list, but not a shopping list.
Rabbit…Indian…Bird…Cougar…Cowboy…Eagle…Devil…Giant.
Ashley continued twisting her hair as she tried to make sense of the cryptic writing. What did the items on the list have to do with one another? She repeated the words under her breath over and over hoping they would hit a chord, however, her tired mind wouldn’t let them sink in.
“Honey, I’m pissed off!” Jack snapped as he walked into Ashley’s office unannounced, slamming the door behind him just as she had done minutes before.
“You too, huh?” Ashley said as she slid a file over Jana’s list to cover it from Jack's eyes.
“We have a bunch of numbers but the only way we’ll know what they’re to is to sit down and call all of them one at a time,” Jack declared, throwing Jana’s phone records down on Ashley’s desk as he took a seat. “Your buddy talked on the phone a lot.”
Ashley took the list, noting a couple of numbers she recognized as official numbers within the department. She also spotted a couple of calls to her number as the two, although busy on their separate caseloads, usually spoke at least once a week on the phone.
“Well, I can account for a few of these numbers, but most of them, I don’t have a clue.” Ashley declared.
“We can get another list detailing who they’re registered to but that’ll be a couple of more hours,” Jack responded. “I’d just say that you take half and I take half and we start calling but the problem is, what if our killer is on that list? We would lose the element of surprise and Lord knows, we need some kind of advantage.”
Tapping his fingers nervously on the arm of his chair, Jack looked questioningly across at Ashley.
“I guess while we�
�re waiting we can go over the GPS,” Jack said, immediately noting Ashley’s response to his suggestion. “We don’t have the GPS do we?”
“It’s still in the car and the car is in Rock River,” Ashley replied, shaking her head in disgust. “That’s a good four hours away.”
“Four hours by car,” Jack immediately shot back. His response drew a slight gasp from Ashley.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ashley asked with a sense of dread. She knew what he was about to suggest.
“I say we jump on a plane and fly over,” Jack said, confirming Ashley’s fear. “If the wind is with us it will take under an hour. We can be there and back by the time we get the updated list and we can attack both of them.”
Jack immediately read the reluctance on the face of his new partner. Ashley’s expression told on her.
“You don’t like flying, do you?” Jack asked. He already knew the answer before he asked the question.
“Well, it’s not that I’m scared. It's more of a space thing,” Ashley sheepishly explained. “I just don’t feel comfortable flying. It makes me feel out of control.”
Her answer brought a laugh from Jack. His reaction caused a blush of anger to cross her face.
“It’s not like I haven’t flown before,” she said in a louder tone. “I’ve flown a lot of times. My older brother is a pilot so I’ve done my time in the air. Okay?”
“Then what’s the problem, sweetheart,” Jack asked as he leaned forward in his chair. “It sounds like flying runs in your blood. Let’s get over to the airport and get going.”
Ashley didn’t move. She remained sitting stubbornly at her desk even as Jack stood up like he was about to lead the troops into battle.
“Oh come on. It’ll be fine,” Jack urged, trying to entice Ashley toward the door. “Flying is statistically safer than driving, sweetie.”
Ashley shot Jack a steely glare. Her reluctance was still apparent in her face as she folded her arms.
“Okay, you say your big brother is a pilot, right?” Jack began, determined to motivate Ashley. “Is he from around here? Maybe we could get him to fly us over.”
“Actually, he flies interstate deliveries and operates out of the airport here in Austin,” Ashley revealed. “As far as him flying us, well, the last time I got in his plane I swore it’d be my last.
Jack couldn’t resist hearing about her sibling issue as he returned to his seat and leaned on her desk with his elbows. Ashley rolled her eyes, knowing she would have to tell him about her issue.
“Okay, well, my brother has a mean streak,” Ashley began as she furrowed her eyebrows. “He talked me into getting in his plane a few years ago. He gave me the same bunch of crap you just gave me, saying I needed to get over my fear of flying. I still don’t know why I got in with him.”
Jack grinned as he listened to Ashley’s story. He had a mean streak of his own.
“So anyway, I finally got where I could breathe and my heart had stopped pounding. That's when he decided he was going to do some showing out,” Ashley said with a scowl taking over her face. “He started doing flips and spins and then took it into a dive. I told him I was going to …”
Ashley trailed off, dropping her head as she silently recalled the rest.
“You lost your lunch,” Jack laughed. “It’s nothing to worry about. Give your brother a call and see if he’s over there. I’m sure he’d love to make it up to you.”
Ashley remained sitting stubbornly at her desk, refusing to make eye contact with her partner.
“Come on darling. This isn’t a pleasure trip,” Jack stated. “We got three days until Friday and I think you know what’s going to happen then if we don’t get to the bottom of this. It’s not about you, doll. There’s someone out there whose life depends on us.”
Jack’s statement brought an angry glare from Ashley who finally looked him in the eye.
“You’re such a jerk,” Ashley declared as she grabbed her phone and made the call to her brother. She knew it was her duty to do everything in her power to make sure another victim didn't fall prey to the killer.
Following a short conversation, Ashley stood up, snatching the keys to Jana’s car off her desk.
“Let’s go, he’s already at his hanger,” Ashley said with a tone of irritation in her voice as she headed out the door.
Jack smiled, entertained by the quirky nuances of his new sidekick.
“Off we go … into the wild blue yonder,” Jack sung as he followed Ashley out the door.
“Jerk,” Ashley repeated, refusing to look back at him as she led the way to the car.
The sun had taken on its late afternoon hue by the time they reached the airport. The pair immediately headed for the Texas Interstate Transport hanger.
“Hey Buddy, guess who?” Ashley said in a happy tone to her brother.
The tall, dark-haired pilot was leaning inside the cockpit of a small twin-engine aircraft when the couple entered the hanger.
Leaning out from inside the cockpit, Buddy gave his sister a look of surprise. Jack immediately noticed the resemblance between the siblings given their matching Roman noses.
“I’d say it’s my sister Ashley but I know better than that because she swore she’d never get within a country mile of an airplane again,” Buddy said with a mischievous grin which disappeared when he saw Jack by her side.
“This is Agent Jack Looper of the FBI,” Ashley said, making a quick introduction. “Jack, this is my only brother in the whole wide world, Buddy Reynolds.”
“FBI, you say,” Buddy said, shooting his sister a glance while reaching out his hand to Jack, giving him a slight chuckle. “I hope I’m not in any trouble. My sister is a cop, you know.”
“That’s what she tells me,” Jack countered without missing a beat. “The things they’ll let women do these days.”
The fact that Jack could be so consistently chauvinistic was not lost on Ashley as she was quietly keeping track of his jabs and barbs, intent on returning the favor if she ever got to say the words "I told you so." She had figured the sexist attitude would wear off once they got to know each other. She was having no such luck.
“We're here on business,” Ashley began. “I know I said I’d never fly with you again and I really meant it, but it seems we need to get over to Rock River.”
Cleaning off his hands with a rag, Buddy sighed and shrugged his shoulders.
“As much as I love hearing you eat your own words, I’m going to have to decline your generous offer of eating crow,” Buddy responded. “I have a booking in less than an hour.”
Ashley bit her lip, half out of frustration and half out of relief that she might be able to get out of the cross-state flight.
“I can check around and see if we can get someone to take you,” Buddy offered. “I mean, any other time I’d be ready and willing but you caught me at a bad time.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Jack interjected. “I can take care of the arrangements.”
“You can?” Ashley asked in a worried voice. “It’s getting late in the afternoon, you know.”
Jack smirked at Ashley’s response, knowing she still dreaded taking to the air.
“Actually, when I said we could fly I was meaning to say that I could fly us to Rock River,” Jack clarified. “I just thought, with your issue with flying and everything, you might be more comfortable with your brother flying us. Now, seeing he’s busy, I’ll be glad to do the job.”
Ashley swallowed hard. The gravity of Jack’s offer took her by surprise.
“You mean you have someone who will fly us in an FBI plane. Right?” Ashley bristled, her breath already quickening. “A professional FBI pilot or maybe the Air Force or something like that?”
“No. I mean I have my own plane. If you’ll look right out there, it’s still sitting tied up on the tarmac,” Jack said proudly. “Me and your brother have something in common; we’re both pilots. I told you I’d been hopping around the state.”
“I don’t know about …” Ashley began.
“It’s settled then,” Jack interrupted. “I’ll go file a flight plan. I won’t be but a minute.”
Jack jogged over to the tower before Ashley could protest, leaving her in the hanger with her brother.
“Working with the FBI now, are we, sis?” Buddy asked as he watched Jack walking across the tarmac. “What are you working on that takes you way out to Rock River? That’s in the middle of nowhere.”
Looking around to make sure no one was listening, Ashley recalled Major Cowell’s words – you can always trust family.
“Well, you have to promise to keep it to yourself,” Ashley began. Her brother crossed his heart, making a silent pledge.
“It’s Jana,” Ashley revealed, leaving her brother with a look of surprise on his face. He had heard about Jana's murder on the evening news and realized the fallen ranger and his sister were old friends.
“You’re kidding,” Buddy said with a serious look. “I didn’t think they allowed that. I mean, you were friends. It seems kind of like a conflict of interest or something like that.”
Ashley shrugged her shoulders. Even though she was happy to be given the opportunity to help catch her friend’s killer, she realized it wasn’t exactly normal procedure to allow an officer with a personal connection to participate in such a capacity. The potential that there was an inside connection likely made this a special instance. Had Jana not revealed her suspicions of the insider in her conversation with Major Cowell before she was killed, Ashley was sure she wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near the investigation.
“Well, I’m on it,” Ashley confirmed. “And, they’ve put me with Agent Looper. We’re supposed to be cooperating.”
“What was she doing there anyway?” Buddy asked.
He had met his sister’s attractive friend maybe three times in his life. He and Ashley flew in vastly different circles, their lives very separate despite the fact that they still lived in the same city. Their jobs tended to keep them both busy, leaving little time to get together despite them being the only real family either had left in the world. It was safe to say they had drifted apart since Ashley began working with the rangers, although they were never what most people would consider a close family.
Friday Night Frights (Jack and Ashley Detective series Book 1) Page 6
