Save Your Breath

by Leigh, Melinda

  “And I’ll move on to social media.” Lance found several social media accounts in Olivia’s name. All were professional. Olivia did not post personal information. She scheduled her posts in advance. They automatically went live three times per week. He scrolled through her posts for the last several months and noted the topics: bail reform, local crimes, her upcoming book publication. A few of the articles she’d shared had long lists of comments. Lance expanded the comments and began making a list of hostile responses. He moved from post to post, looking for repeat commenters, aggressive trolling, and threats.

  The printer hummed. Sharp got up and retrieved a piece of paper. He took it to the whiteboard and used a magnet to place it in the center. It was a picture of Olivia. He stared at it for a few seconds, then picked up a marker and wrote a time line of her disappearance on one side of the board. When he turned to face Lance, his eyes were bloodshot.

  Lance rolled a kink out of his neck.

  “We need to review and organize our evidence on the board.” After setting the marker on the ledge, Sharp went back to the desk. He took off his wire-rimmed reading glasses, tossed them on the blotter, and squeezed the bridge of his nose.

  “I’ll get Morgan.” Lance stood and stretched.

  “OK.” Sharp picked up his glasses, cleaned them with the hem of his shirt, and put them back on.

  Lance headed for the kitchen. Morgan sat at the table, a cup of coffee and a box of powdered donuts at her elbow. Her own laptop and Olivia’s binders were open in front of her. White sugar dotted the table.

  “How many of those have you eaten?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” Morgan lifted the lid of the box to peer inside. “Almost all of them. There’s one left. Do you want it?”

  “No.” Lance’s stomach turned at the thought. “A massive overload of sugar isn’t going to cut it.”

  Morgan lifted one shoulder. “To each his own.”

  “Sharp wants to review.”

  “All right.” She closed her computer.

  Lance whipped up two protein shakes and carried them back to the war room. Morgan followed, finishing her last donut as she walked through the doorway. She stood in front of the board and studied Sharp’s notes for a few seconds.

  Still sitting behind Morgan’s desk, Sharp looked up from his computer screen as Lance set one of the drinks in front of him. “Thanks.”

  Morgan picked up a marker. “What do we know?”

  “I’ve found a few hostile social media trolls, but none felt particularly personal.” Lance perched on the corner of the desk.

  Morgan wrote SOCIAL MEDIA TROLLS? at the bottom of the whiteboard. More promising leads would take up the center of the space.

  Sharp drank his shake. “Olivia had several long calls with her literary agent over the past two weeks. She received messages from her editor but apparently didn’t return his calls.”

  “I’ll call them both in the morning,” Morgan said.

  Sharp set down his glass. “I’m still cross-checking her calls and contacts with her calendar. She calls and texts her mother almost every day. There were multiple marathon conversations with her sister. She had a lengthy call with Erik Olander’s attorney on Tuesday and one with Cliff Franklin’s lawyer the week before that.” Sharp shifted forward and propped on elbow on the desk. “She prefers email for professional correspondence and has multiple accounts, including an anonymous one.”

  “Let’s look at her calendar.” Lance opened it on his computer. The lethargy that nagged at him almost made him wish he’d taken Morgan up on her donut offer. “I’ll send a list of names to my mother so she can start on background checks. We’ll start with the major players in the Franklin and Olander cases and anyone who had an appointment or phone call with her in the last two weeks.”

  “Did you email a copy of her calendar to Stella?” Morgan asked.

  “Yes.” Sharp leaned back in his chair.

  Lance scanned the entries. “There is no costume party on her calendar.”

  “No.” Sharp ran a hand over his short salt-and-pepper hair. “There isn’t.”

  They were quiet for a few seconds. If Olivia was kidnapped the way they’d envisioned, she must have been terrified. Lance was trying not to think about her waking up and seeing a man in a rubber mask in her bedroom. And he was trying even harder not to imagine the same thing happening to Morgan. The mere thought made his heartbeat stutter.

  Sharp seemed to have aged overnight. Usually he looked—and acted—like a man half his age. But today, exhaustion and stress lined his face, and his eyes were clouded with worry.

  Lance locked his own feelings away. Sharp was already emotionally compromised. Lance needed a clear head. As much as he liked Olivia, he’d serve her better if he could compartmentalize his feelings and be objective.

  “Olivia used initials extensively in her calendar.” Sharp read from a notepad in front of him. “I’ve sorted out some of the abbreviations. Most are boring. TOY stands for the Toyota dealership. She took her Prius in for regularly scheduled maintenance two weeks ago. AHA stands for A-1 Heating and Air. They serviced her heater on Wednesday. She calls her parents M&D.”

  “Let’s focus on the current week.” Lance studied the most recent calendar entries. “She talked to her literary agent on Monday morning, and she met with Lena and Kennett Olander at their farm on Monday evening.”

  “Her mother’s doctor appointment and the meeting at our office are on Friday’s agenda. She has nothing at all scheduled for Saturday or Sunday. Next week, she has lunch with her literary agent on Monday and a dental cleaning on Tuesday.”

  “Plus, the usual Thursday night dinner with her parents,” Morgan said.

  “Yes.” Sharp scratched his chin. “Morgan, what can you tell us about the cases she was researching for her book, other than both Olander and Franklin were convicted of murder?”

  She started a new column labeled FRANKLIN CASE. “Three years ago, Cliff Franklin was convicted of the murder of twenty-six-year-old Brandi Holmes. Do you remember the case, Sharp? I wasn’t paying much attention to the news back then.”

  She’d been mired in grief over her husband’s death.

  “The boys talked about it quite a bit.” Sharp rubbed his temples in a circular motion as if he was trying to stimulate his brain.

  The boys were Sharp’s retired cop buddies. Sharp was the youngest. They met at least once a week at a local bar. Despite being retired, the boys knew almost everything that went on in local law enforcement.

  Sharp lowered his hands. “The sheriff’s department linked Franklin to Brandi and five other missing women. Only Brandi’s body was found. As far as I know, the other women are still officially missing. Brandi’s murder was the only one he was charged with. The boys were all convinced Franklin was a serial killer, but they couldn’t prove it. Everyone was relieved he was convicted and sentenced to life, but they really wanted justice for those other five women and closure for their families.”

  Under Franklin’s name, Morgan wrote 5 MISSING WOMEN and VICTIM—BRANDI HOLMES.

  “There must be a special reason Olivia was interested in the case,” Lance said. “Was she trying to find the five missing women?”

  “It seems that was part of her angle.” Morgan capped her marker. “But there are repeated notations that Olivia wanted to interview Cliff’s brother, Joe. I don’t see any notes indicating that meeting ever took place.”

  Sharp nodded, his face grim. “I found multiple calls to Joseph Franklin lasting approximately thirty seconds.”

  “She was leaving messages for him,” Lance suggested.

  “Maybe he wasn’t answering.” Morgan stood back to scan the whole board. “In his initial interviews, Cliff claimed his brother, Joe, could give him an alibi. He’d been living at Joe’s house at the time of the murder. However, the alibi was weak, and the physical evidence was solid. Cliff had worked on Brandi’s car. Hairs found inside Cliff’s trunk were identified through DNA
as belonging to Brandi.”

  Sharp rubbed his chin. “What was weak about the alibi?”

  Standing in front of her desk, Morgan set down the binder and opened it. “Joe is hard of hearing and removes his hearing aids at night. If Cliff had left the house during the night, Joe would have slept right through it.”

  “Not a good enough alibi to counter DNA evidence.” Sharp got up to pace the floor behind the chair.

  Lance searched his memories. “Bryce prosecuted the Franklin case, right?”

  Morgan flipped a few pages. “Yes. I’ll make an appointment to talk to him. I’m sure he remembers a win on a case this prominent.”

  District Attorney Bryce Walters was an experienced trial lawyer. DAs were elected. For a politician, Bryce was usually a straight shooter, but he would have made good use of this case in his campaign.

  “What about Olivia’s meeting with the Olanders?” Sharp asked. “What did she discuss with them?”

  “Hold on.” Morgan headed for the door. “Let me get the other binder. I haven’t gotten to that case yet.”

  Lance took over recording facts on the board. He started a new column for the Olander case, beginning with the potential bias of the jury foreman.

  Morgan returned with the binder open and in the crook of her arm. “They discussed the general details.” Her finger moved over the page as she skimmed. “Oh. Wait. Here’s a surprise. Olivia was the one who brought the juror issue to Mrs. Olander’s attention.”

  Lance doubled-checked the calendar. “That was Monday.”

  “Yes.” Morgan underlined her note. “The same day that Mrs. Olander made the appointment with me. Mrs. Olander had said the information came from a television interview.”

  “Maybe I can find it on YouTube.” Lance went to his computer, opened YouTube, and typed in the search bar. Even knowing the subject of the interview, it took him several tries to locate the video. “Here it is. It’s part of a series on injustice in the justice system.”

  He pressed “Play” and they watched the six-minute clip. Two women sat in chairs angled toward each other. The host, a sharp-looking man in his forties, wore a gray suit. He summarized the charges against Erik Olander. Four minutes in, they got to the meat of the discussion.

  The host leaned forward. “Tell us about the domestic abuse you suffered.”

  The jury foreman, a middle-aged woman in navy-blue slacks and a pale-blue blouse, shook her head. “A jerk I used to date slapped me once during an argument. He was arrested, and I broke up with him. That was the end of it. It was a onetime assault, not a case of prolonged domestic abuse.”

  The interviewer pressed his lips flat. “When the judge asked you if there was anything in your past that could prevent you from being impartial, you didn’t bring it up.”

  “It happened more than twenty years ago,” the juror said. “It didn’t even occur to me.”

  The interview went on for another minute, but there were no more revelations.

  “It sounds like we need to talk to Mr. Olander.” Lance closed his computer. “Olivia met with both Erik’s parents, right?”

  Morgan checked the binder. “Yes. He was there, but I might not be the right person to approach Mr. Olander. His wife committed suicide minutes after I refused to take her case. I doubt he’ll want to see me.”

  “I’ll do it,” Sharp said. “First thing in the morning.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Lance volunteered.

  “All right.” Sharp shrugged.

  “I’ll contact both Olander’s and Franklin’s attorneys in the morning.” Morgan set the marker on the whiteboard ledge. “I’m going back to the files. I’ve only skimmed the surface of these cases.”

  Sharp said, “If someone involved with one of them took Olivia, she must have rattled him.”

  “I can’t see why anyone would be nervous about a closed case.” Lance crossed his arms. “Unless the wrong person was convicted of the crime.”

  “And the real killer doesn’t want that made public because he likes walking around scot-free.” Sharp shifted forward and pressed the button on the side of his cell phone. “It’s two a.m. She’s been gone for twenty-four hours, and we have no idea where to look for her.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Morgan lifted her head from the table. Early-morning light brightened the office kitchen to a hazy gray. She massaged an ache in her neck, rolling her head to stretch the cramped muscles. Her face itched, and she reached up to peel a sticky note from her cheek. She must have fallen asleep while reviewing files.

  She glanced down at Olivia’s thick Olander binder. Her own laptop was open beside it. Lance had copied Olivia’s digital files and emailed them, so Morgan had all of the information in one place. Olivia’s research was extensive and often repetitive. Each source was verified multiple times, each fact triple-checked.

  Olivia had also requested the official courtroom transcripts for both cases. Except for special cases and juvenile records, trial information was public record and was available online for a fee. Olivia had received Cliff Franklin’s trial transcript electronically. As Erik Olander’s conviction was recent, his trial transcript had been ordered but not yet received. Olivia had accessed and downloaded the digital audio recording of the trial, but Morgan could not listen to all ninety hours of it. She didn’t need a law clerk. She needed seven.

  It would take her the rest of the week to get through all the pages of the Olander file alone, and the Franklin case was just as complicated. Morgan did not have time to review all of Olivia’s documents.

  Morgan’s eyes burned, and she’d only read a portion of the material. Since she didn’t have a law clerk, she would utilize the next best thing—her grandfather, a retired NYPD detective.

  She stood and stretched her arms toward the ceiling.

  “You’re awake.” Lance walked through the doorway. One side of his short hair was mussed, suggesting he’d also dozed off. He leaned over and kissed her. “Good morning.”

  “Morning.” She kissed him back.

  Morgan headed for her office—and her coffee maker. “Coffee?”

  Sharp wasn’t at her desk, but he’d been busy writing notes on the whiteboard during the night. Morgan needed caffeine before she could review his additions.

  “Yes, please.” Lance followed her into the room. He ran a hand over his head, setting his hair back into place. “How do you feel?”

  “Better. The nap helped.” Morgan checked the time. Seven o’clock. She turned on the machine. “Where’s Sharp?”

  “He went back to his office.” Lance wrapped his arms around her.

  Morgan indulged herself and leaned into him for a moment. As always, the solid contact with him grounded her. “I don’t suppose he fell asleep at any point.”

  “No.” Releasing her, Lance shook his head grimly. “I’m worried about him.”

  “Me too.” Morgan started the machine brewing.

  She handed him the first cup of coffee and brewed a second. She lowered her voice. “I don’t think we should leave him alone right now.”

  “I agree.” Lance drank.

  “But will he?” Morgan waited, impatiently, for her morning caffeine.

  “All we can do is try. Why don’t you go home and have breakfast with the kids? You can shower and change. I saw the girls last night. I can shower here and go to the Olander farm with Sharp.”

  “Good idea. I’ll call my sister and let her know what’s going on.” Morgan missed her children. She hadn’t handled a big case for months and had become accustomed to seeing them in the morning and evening every day. The thought of hugs, a hot shower, and fresh clothes perked her up. “But isn’t it early to knock on Mr. Olander’s door?”

  “He’s a farmer. He should be up. Plus, I doubt I can get Sharp to wait any longer.” Lance turned to leave her office. “Kiss the kids for me,” he said over his shoulder on the way out.

  “Will do. Be safe,” she called after him.

  A few
minutes later, she heard the front door close as Lance and Sharp left. She set her coffee on her desk and gathered information on Cliff Franklin for her grandfather to review. While she sorted files, she called Stella and gave her a quick recap of their investigation so far.

  “I have less news,” Stella said. “There were no matches to the fingerprints from Olivia’s house. As for the blood sample, the rapid stain ID kit shows the blood on Olivia’s doorjamb is human. The lab will enter the DNA sample into CODIS, but it’ll take weeks to get a hit, if we get one at all. Considering the torn fingernail was pink, I suspect the blood is Olivia’s, but I want to cover all the bases.”

  CODIS, the Combined DNA Index System, was FBI software that compared DNA samples to DNA criminal justice databases. Matches could be offender hits and generate an actual suspect, or forensic hits, where the sample would match DNA found at another crime scene.

  “Thanks.” Morgan said goodbye and ended the call. While she had the phone in hand, she called both Olivia’s editor and agent. Neither answered, so she left them voice messages. Both numbers were identified as cellular, but that didn’t guarantee that either the agent or editor would answer calls on the weekend.

  After her bag was packed and she had enough caffeine in her system to safely get behind the wheel, she put on her coat. With her tote slung over her shoulder, she left her office.

  She opened the front door and was startled to see a man standing on the stoop. The man looked down at her with piercing blue eyes. His face was gaunt and haggard, his clothing wrinkled. She wrinkled her nose at the smell of body odor. He hadn’t showered recently. Was he homeless? She glanced over his shoulder and saw a battered green pickup across the street.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I’m Kennett Olander.”

  Morgan didn’t know what to say. She’d dealt with victims’ families in her prosecutor years, but this was an entirely unique situation.

  “My wife came to see you yesterday.” He stepped closer, wobbling on shaky legs. The bags under his eyes were deep and dark. His eyes were bloodshot, and his pallor suggested long-term sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition, and killer stress.