Chapter Five
Slater kept watch of the security monitors, fought off the fatigue and rehashed everything he’d uncovered since Joelle’s bombshell.
Buck might have been the one who killed our father .
Since Buck hadn’t been on Slater’s radar before tonight, Slater hadn’t latched onto the theory. But that had changed after he and Lana had spent the last two hours going through any and all background on Buck.
They hadn’t found any direct proof, but the connection was indeed there, and Slater could now see why Austin PD had flagged it as part of their investigation into Buck’s involvement in the deaths of his brother and parents. It was yet another circumstantial piece that when put with the other pieces could point to murder.
“I should have seen this sooner,” he muttered, scrubbing his hand over his face to keep himself alert and awake.
“How?” Lana questioned. “It wasn’t even your father’s case.”
True, but after poring over every one of his dad’s investigations, he should have widened the net to other cases. If so, he might have found the details about Alicia Monroe, a nineteen-year-old woman who’d disappeared from Weston, a small town near Saddle Ridge. There’d been enough blood at the scene of Alicia’s small apartment to declare her dead, but they’d never found her body. Alicia’s mother, Maryanne, had been old high school friends with Slater’s parents and had asked his dad, then sheriff, to look into the matter.
And his father had.
Slater had managed to find notes about it in an old file that his dad had marked personal. In those notes, his dad had listed several scenarios and suspects for Alicia’s death. It’d been a lengthy list since Alicia had apparently been considered a party girl and had a huge circle of friends.
Including Buck.
There’d been nothing concrete about Buck in his dad’s notes or in the investigation that the Weston PD had conducted, but Buck had been a person of interest since he’d had a relationship with Alicia. And a volatile temper even back then. Several people had verified that the breakup with Buck hadn’t been amicable, but there were no specifics about such things as stalking or violence. Buck had been just nineteen at the time, and with the lack of evidence, he’d been questioned and released. That wasn’t the end of the story, though.
Slater stared at the notes now. Observations made by his father that had started nearly twenty years earlier and had continued until right before his death. Even though Alicia’s death was considered a cold case, his dad had continued to dig into it, had continued to ask questions, had still considered it an active if unofficial investigation. That maybe meant he’d continued to ruffle some feathers as well.
Had Buck found out about the investigation and murdered Slater’s dad to silence him once and for all?
Maybe.
There was one note in particular that troubled him. The month before his father’s murder, he’d jotted down a comment that he wanted to reinterview the persons of interest, and he’d listed some of Alicia’s friends, including Buck. If his father had actually talked with any of them, there was no indication of it in the file notes. Or maybe he’d died before he could add them.
The bottom line was his father could have spoken to Buck, spooked him, and that could have prompted Buck to murder him.
“Do you remember when Alicia disappeared?” Lana asked, drawing his attention back to her. Not that it’d strayed far since she was literally sitting shoulder to shoulder with him.
“I do.” He’d been sixteen at the time, and even though it’d happened one town over, it’d caused some panic among the townsfolk who’d speculated there might be a killer on the loose. “You?”
She nodded. “Stephanie knew Alicia, and she talked a lot about the murder.”
Slater turned toward her before he realized that shoulder to shoulder could quickly turn into mouth to mouth. He eased back his chair a little and waited for her to continue.
“After Alicia disappeared,” Lana went on, “Stephanie confessed to me that she’d sneaked out of the house when she’d been grounded and had gone with a friend to a party at Alicia’s. Apparently, Alicia’s parents were out of town so there was no adult supervision.”
That rang an instant bell with Slater. “Yeah, I remember Stephanie calling me and asking me to take her to a party. She didn’t tell me where, only that it was at a friend of a friend’s. I couldn’t go, so I guess she went with someone else.”
“Does that bother you?” Lana came out and asked. “That Stephanie saw other guys when you two were dating?”
“No.” And he didn’t have to think hard about that response. “Stephanie wasn’t exactly the ‘settle down with one guy’ type. And we were teenagers. We had enough on-again, off-again times that I dated other girls during the offs.”
He studied Lana’s face and saw what he always saw simmering there. The heat. The old attraction they’d never acted on because of Stephanie. Lana looked as if she wanted to say something about that, but then she glanced away, visibly regrouping and getting them back on the subject of the investigation.
“From what I can recall, the party happened about a week before Alicia disappeared,” Lana went on. “I remember because it was Stephanie’s sixteenth birthday, and she was grounded. I think that’s why she went. So she’d have a celebration of sorts. But then she got there and said there was a lot of drinking and some drugs, and when some fights broke out, she and her friend left.”
Slater considered that. “Was Alicia involved in the fights?”
“Not that Stephanie said.”
Still, it was something to consider, and Slater made a mental note to try to find out from anyone who’d attended. “Was Buck at the party?” he wanted to know.
He saw the regret in her eyes a split second before she shook her head. “I don’t recall Stephanie mentioning him.”
That would have been a long shot, and Slater was sorry he’d brought this up. It was no doubt a reminder that Stephanie was dead and couldn’t be questioned about the party.
“I’m guessing Stephanie didn’t mention the party to the Weston cops?” Slater asked.
Another shake of her head. “Not a chance. She’d sneaked out of the house when she was grounded and was probably with someone our parents wouldn’t have approved of. She would have been in serious trouble.”
He considered that a moment. “Serious trouble,” he repeated. “Was there anything like physical abuse from your parents?”
It twisted at him that Lana didn’t immediately deny it. Instead, she dragged in a long breath. “My mother slapped Stephanie and me a couple of times when we broke the rules. She didn’t want a whisper of gossip about our behavior, so when the gossip happened, she often flew off the handle.”
Slater wasn’t surprised that this was the first time he was hearing of this. He’d always suspected that Lana’s parents weren’t the sort to air any dirty laundry and would make sure their daughters did the same.
And he wondered if that played into what had happened to Stephanie.
It was hard for him to believe one of them had murdered their own daughter, but it was something he had to consider. After all, Stephanie would have no doubt broken plenty of their rules by having the baby.
Lana tapped something on his father’s notes. It was the date Alicia’s disappearance had been categorized as a murder. “We moved to San Antonio shortly after this,” she said.
He’d known that, but he hadn’t connected the move to anything involving Alicia. And maybe it wasn’t. It was yet another thread, though, that needed to be checked.
“Do you recall your parents ever talking about Alicia?” he asked.
She paused and then went with another headshake. “They rarely discussed anyone who wasn’t in their social circles. You were the exception,” she added. “You must know they didn’t approve of you dating Stephanie.”
“Yeah, I knew, and I think that was part of the appeal for your sister. Being with me was breaking the rules.”
Lana didn’t argue with that. But she did yawn, a reminder that it was already past midnight. She quickly tried to cover the yawn and look back at the notes, but he knew it was time to call it a night.
“Let’s try to get some sleep,” he suggested, glancing at the monitors and then at the sofa. “I can sleep in here and keep an eye on the security cameras. I’m guessing they’ll make some kind of sound if someone comes near the place?”
Lana nodded and held up her phone. “It’ll beep, and the system will alert me, too, on the app.” She motioned toward the adjoining bath. “There are toiletries and even some clothes in there. Not sure any of them will fit you, but my boss tries to keep a wide range of sizes stocked in case he has to move someone here with just the clothes on their back.”
Slater had showered and changed into clean clothes right before Lana had left the baby on his doorstep so he figured he’d be okay, especially since they’d be heading back to Saddle Ridge as soon as her interview was finished.
Lana’s phone dinged with a text, and she frowned when she glanced at the screen.
“One of your parents?” Slater asked.
She shook her head. “It’s Taylor Galway, someone who used to be friends with Stephanie, but I know they had some kind of falling-out. Taylor wants to know if it’s true, if Stephanie is really dead. I suspect now that word of her death is out, I’ll be getting more calls and texts,” she added in a mutter.
“That might not be a bad thing,” Slater said. “Did Stephanie have contact with these friends while she was hiding out?”
Lana’s first instinct was to say no, that Stephanie had been too scared for that, but she simply didn’t know. “Maybe.”
That would have been his guess, too, and if Stephanie had spoken to anyone, she might have doled out some info that could help with the investigation. Lana clearly picked up on that, too, because she fired off a response to Taylor.
It’s true , Lana texted as Slater looked over her shoulder. She waited a few moments but got no response back from the woman. “I really don’t think Stephanie had contact with Taylor, though, because the couple of times the woman’s name recently came up, Stephanie didn’t have anything kind to say about her. Just the opposite.”
“Do you know why?” he asked. It wasn’t an idle question. Sometimes, bad blood led to bad stuff happening.
“I’m not sure. I recall Stephanie calling her a backstabber, and she added some choice words of profanity to that.” She paused a moment. “It’s possible their falling-out was over Marsh.”
“Marsh?” Slater certainly hadn’t expected that.
Lana nodded. “Our parents were pressuring Stephanie to marry Marsh, but I know that Marsh was once involved with Taylor, so maybe Taylor wasn’t over him. Or maybe she just didn’t want Stephanie hooking up with her ex.”
Ironic since it appeared that Stephanie hadn’t wanted Marsh. At least she hadn’t wanted to marry him, anyway. It was possible, though, she would have changed her mind about that had she lived.
Even though Lana yawned for the third time, she went to the window and looked out. Despite this being a residential neighborhood, the city lights were right there, only a few blocks away, and there were even more lights beyond that. In the distance, there were the sounds of traffic and even the howl of a police siren. He wasn’t sure how people slept with that kind of noise going on, but he’d have to give it a try. He needed at least a little sleep to stand a chance of having a clear head.
“A fish out of water,” he muttered. That’s what he felt like right now.
The corner of Lana’s mouth lifted. “I felt that way after we moved from Saddle Ridge. Stephanie was in her element in the city, but I never was.”
That was a reminder of the things he and Lana had in common, and if there hadn’t been a two-year age difference between them, Slater figured he would have dated Lana in high school, not Stephanie.
Maybe sensing that the moment was turning too personal, Lana turned from the window. “I’ll be in the room right across from here.”
She started in that direction, only to stop when Slater’s phone rang. “Is it Joelle?” she immediately asked, and he knew the concern in her voice was because she was afraid something had happened to the baby.
He shook his head. “It’s Duncan.”
Lana didn’t relax one bit, so Slater quickly answered the call and put it on speaker. “Lana’s in the room with me,” he informed Duncan just in case he needed to soften any bad news he might have. “Is the baby all right?”
“He’s fine,” Duncan assured him. “And there’s been no sign of any kind of trouble here. What about there?”
“Nothing,” he said, and then waited for Duncan to get into why he’d called. Thankfully, he didn’t have to wait long.
“Two things. I just got back two reports. The first is for Stephanie’s cell phone records. The person who called her in the hospital used a blocked number. No way to trace it.”
That surprised exactly no one. Of course a killer planning a murder wouldn’t have left something that could be linked back to him. But it did make Slater wonder why the person had called Stephanie. Or maybe the call wasn’t from the killer at all but from someone else.
“The other report I got back was from the Rapid DNA test,” Duncan added a moment later. Slater heard him drag in a long breath. “Cameron’s father isn’t Patrick. It’s Buck.”