Justice for Francesca (Six Paths to Justice #1)

12. Nothing and No One

12

NOTHING AND NO ONE

Francesca

“ H ow’s it going, Francesca ?”

She refused to look up from her computer screen. Acknowledging the name no one called her except for Tripoli would be admitting there was something more going on. While she was woman enough to admit she craved that, she couldn’t have it, so it was better to leave it alone. All night, she tossed and turned with their late evening hours together at the front of her brain, and all it gave her was pangs in her heart and a sick feeling in her stomach.

She exited the search running on her laptop, then exited the program, silently cursing the interruption. She’d have to start over again later.

Without moving her head other than scanning the documents in front of her and comparing them to the new file on her screen, she could tell that Cruz leaned in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest. Her ears heard the smirk as big as Texas across his face.

“I’ve scheduled the last of the employee interviews for you. You’re in for a long day. Better call Mickie and tell her you won’t be home for dinner.”

“It’s girls’ night. She won’t be home anyway.”

She continued to sift through the paperwork in front of her, hoping against hope that she would seem focused enough that Cruz would quickly get bored and move along. No such luck.

“Calder will be along shortly. He went to get the final reports that showed up while we were at lunch.”

Francesca made a humming sound of acknowledgment.

“Everything go okay talking to Ortiz?” Cruz asked.

“Yep.”

“So you’re still on the case?”

“Yep.”

“Could you be a little happier about that?”

“Nothing to be happy or unhappy about.”

Cruz let her continue to pretend to work through the papers in front of her. She knew she wasn’t fooling him. He was far too good at what he did to fall for her act, but right now, it was all she had to cling to, or she’d scream in frustration.

He sat down across from her and started flipping through the papers in the stack in front of him. If anyone walked past the room and looked in the windows, it would look, for all intents and purposes, like they were reviewing information. Francesca knew, though, that he was only giving the papers in front of him a cursory look.

Without looking up at her, he tried a less frightening approach to get her attention again. “Had an interesting guest at lunch today.”

Francesca grabbed a five-inch-ring binder from the edge of her reach and dropped it in front of her, creating a satisfying thud. Immediately, she began paging through the binder and comparing the information in it to her notebook.

“Calder and I went to that parrot place. Not sure how we’ve never been there before.”

She didn’t look up from her files as she answered. “Maybe because there are live birds flying around that could contaminate your food at any moment.”

“No… although it was kind of loud at one point. Not sure if that was the ladies headed to bingo after their martini lunch prep or the birds though. It was kind of hard to tell.”

“Sounds heavenly. Glad I missed it.”

“Well, the food was really good, the birds were kind of fun, and the company was illuminating .”

She let the comment slide and reached for the laptop, opened it, and began clacking away at a report form. She knew Cruz had planned to go talk to Tripoli after lunch, so she surmised they’d run into him. Or invited him along. What a clusterfuck that would be if Cruz inserted his nose into that mess.

“Not even a little curious?” he taunted.

“Nope.”

“You suck all the joy out of things, don’t you?”

“We have two gruesome murders of women who didn’t deserve what happened to them. I see very little to be joyful about.”

Calder breezed into the room and threw himself into the chair next to Cruz. “Even if it involves a tall, blond, and dreamy man being worried you didn’t show up to work in his office today? I felt like he was going to growl at us at one point for not producing you like a rabbit out of a hat.”

Cruz joined in the fun. “I was more concerned he was going to pass me a note with her name on it that read ‘Do you like me?’ with a box to check ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’”

Francesca schooled her face into what she hoped was an expressionless mask. However, that did not prevent her heart rate from doubling at the confirmation that they had lunch with Tripoli. Or that he’d shown a possessive side. She might not be able to pursue anything, but she wasn’t immune enough to not enjoy being wanted.

Something must have registered to Calder that he might have gone too far with his teasing. “Relax, Frankie. We’re just giving you a hard time.” He turned his head to Cruz. “That man does have it bad though. I can tell. He’s acting like all of our friends, and they’re all besotted. Even those frickin’ firefighters.”

She felt the fear ebb slightly. “And the two of you aren’t?”

Calder grinned. “You got me.”

Cruz’s smile was just as big. “Call him, Frankie. He was worried when you didn’t show up today.”

“There’s no need to call him. I’m sure I’ll run into him again during the investigation. We’re not any closer than we were yesterday.”

One of the men sighed. She wasn’t sure which one, but it didn’t really matter in the long run. “I did find out more about his relationship with Mila. Should I share it with you?” Cruz asked.

She refused to take the bait. No, she did not want to know about his ex-girlfriend. Tripoli was always honest, so she believed him when he said they hadn’t slept together, but the thought of him spending time with that woman made her stomach roll just as much as if he had. The green-eyed monster was a bitch. “Unless it explains how she got into that party Saturday night without being on the invite list, it has nothing to do with what I’m working on right now.”

Cruz frowned and leaned forward. “Well, we know she wasn’t on the list.”

“Nope. That’s what I’ve been doing since getting out of the meeting with Ortiz. I have a list of all six hundred guests who were invited. I verified that five hundred and ninety-eight of them checked in. Two did not. However, there were the proper number of ticket scans. Triumph walked me through the scanning process yesterday. The employee checks the ID against the person and then the ticket. Like an airline ticket, the name has to appear exactly the same or you don’t get in. If the guest matches the ID and the ticket, the ticket gets scanned. The guest doesn’t get their wristband until the scanner reads ‘Accepted.’ Their wristband is also then scanned to activate their entry and scanned again when they leave, which helps the employees clear the property before they lock up at the end of the night. I’ve been trying to cross-reference what name she got in under.”

“Were all the wristbands scanned as outgoing?” Cruz asked.

“There was a little more slack with that. About fifteen got missed, which is why the intensive walk-through at the end of the night. I called Triumph, and he said that was pretty normal for a large group night. People leaving en masse, occasionally, people in the middle of a large exiting group get missed. I’ve eliminated four hundred and fifty-three people so far.”

“Why not start with the fifteen missed scans? Seems that would be the most logical place for her to have been a part of.”

“I have the names here to cross-reference, but since no one knows the people by name, we couldn’t do a visual check. Otherwise, I would have had Triumph start there.”

A thought seemed to strike Calder. “Did Mila have an employee card to swipe for entry and exit?”

Consulting her paperwork, it took Francesca a moment to find the ID number assigned to her. “Yes.” She then went back to the binder she’d been looking in, flipped to the employee section, and scanned the swipe reports from the night of the murder. “Wasn’t used Saturday night or Sunday morning.”

Calder flipped open his folder and paged through the photographs from the autopsy. “Do either of you remember the body having a wristband on it?”

“I don’t remember seeing one,” Francesca admitted.

“Me either,” Cruz replied.

After about two dozen photos were turned over, he extracted one and threw it into the center of the table, then paged through to a mirror image and threw that one to the center as well. Immediately, he hit the speed dial on his phone. “Hey, Panama. Do you have the evidence bags from Mila Sequeira handy? I’m looking for a wristband, like one you’d get at a nightclub.” He pulled his mouth from the speaker. “Notice what the body doesn’t have?”

Cruz picked up one photo, raised his eyebrows, and turned it to Francesca’s eyes. Francesca picked up the other, her raised eyebrow matching his, and turned it to face Cruz. The photos Calder had pulled were of the forearms of Mila Sequeira. No wristband on either hand. Both began looking through photos from the crime scene.

“Thanks, Panama.” Calder clicked off the call. “No wristband found. Suggestive. Either she got in somehow without one, or the killer took it with him.”

Cruz asked, “Who was scanning at the door that night?”

Francesca skimmed the duty roster. “Damaris, the event planner, was at the door initially. She did all of the scans except for around fifteen minutes starting at eight thirty-four when Michael Murphy did all of the scans until eight fifty, then Damaris took back over. Tilly did scans from ten forty-seven until eleven when the last guest group was admitted.”

“Damaris’ scheduled breaks?” Calder guessed.

“Must have been,” Francesca replied. She looked to Cruz. “When you interviewed Michael, he said he hadn’t seen Mila at the club since the opening, didn’t he?”

“Correct.”

“Tilly said the same thing.” She bit her lip. “Think he lied? Maybe let her slip in without a scan? Or even Tilly?”

Cruz leaned back in his seat, a finger rubbing against his bottom lip. “Possible. But why?”

Francesca tilted her head to one side and raised her eyebrow again. “Well, if either were going to kill her, they wouldn’t want to scan her ticket to get in, would they?”

“But why would they want to kill her? There’s nothing in our workup of him that suggests he had an issue with Mila. I mean, other than maybe being nervous about her ownership in the club.”

Francesca frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I tried to share with you information about Evans and Sequeira’s relationship, but you said you didn’t need to know.”

She sighed. “That wasn’t why you were asking me that question, and you know it. What’s the issue with Mila and the club?”

“We knew she was part owner based on our conversation with him. But what we didn’t know was that Mila was unhappy about the percentage provided to Tilly. In fact, she was the lone dissenting vote in granting Tilly an uninvested five percent. She didn’t vote against any other non-invested portion.”

Francesca considered the new information. “So there’s the connection to the Tilly angle. Possibly. Jealousy? Did she think Tilly was interested in Ethan?”

Cruz raised an eyebrow, clearly noting her use of the first name rather than the last name. Hopefully, she schooled her face enough to show her slipup didn’t mean anything. “Interesting. Francesca. Ethan.” He looked to Calder and grinned.

Calder grinned back and started singing, “Francesca and Ethan sitting in a tree. K-I?—”

Panic with a little bit of anger crept out before she could think better of what she said. “Continue that, and when you least expect it, I will dump one of those fancy coffees right on your junk. Hope would not like that at all, but it will be justified.”

His grin didn’t let up. He’d provoked her into admitting they were getting to her.

Returning to the case, Cruz said, “Tilly seems more tied to Triumph, although I didn’t get the impression that there was a formal relationship there. Evans was very clear that Tilly was not on his radar, nor was he on hers, so why Mila was bent on the money is a mystery.”

Francesca stood up and crossed to the whiteboard. “Tilly has five percent?”

“Yes.”

She wrote the percentages on the board in two columns—Tripoli, Cosmos, Triumph, and Mila in one column, Tilly, Michael, Ryleigh, and the rest of the employees in the other. “Sixty-nine percent of the club is tied up in ways she couldn’t argue about. They put money in, and her percentage was a commission.” Francesca stared at the board, tapping the dry-erase marker against her chin. “Tripoli said that they did a vote to raise Tilly’s percentage?”

“Raise hers, Michael’s, and Ryleigh’s.”

“Any idea what their original percentage was?”

Cruz flipped through his notes. “He didn’t specify, but the forensic accountant report says originally, those three were a part of the mass percentage of twenty-one percent. The new arrangement gave each of them their own percentage.” He looked up. “What are you thinking?”

“Well, a sea of employees who share in twenty-one percent of the profits? That’s less than one percent per person.”

“So?” Calder asked. “Either way, Mila’s share stayed the same.”

Francesca turned to face the two men. “Think about it. You have an issue to vote on. You only have ten percent. It’s not going to be enough to go against the big three, ever. If Tripoli, Cosmos, and Triumph are all in agreement, even if she had the other twenty-one percent behind her, she still couldn’t affect the outcome.”

“Right.”

“But now that they’ve pulled eleven percent of that away for those three individuals, the odds are even worse. A vote isn’t probably even necessary on issues.”

Cruz walked it through. “Tripoli and Cosmos own forty-nine percent. They’ve made sure not to tip the monopoly out of the gate. They could have easily ensured that they alone could make all decisions, but they purposefully didn’t. When we dug into their financials, ironically, Triumph is actually the wealthiest of them all, yet he has the least controlling interest of the big three.”

“Okay. So an issue comes up for a vote.” Francesca gestured to the percentages. “Consider each percentage as a vote. We’ll keep it simple. The club wants to add a day to its workload. Evans,” she emphasized, “gets twenty-five votes, Cosmos gets twenty-four, Triumph gets twenty, Mila gets ten, and the staff as a body gets twenty-one. If the staff vote yes on the old system, they only need one of the big three on their side to help tip the scale their way. Even if it’s Triumph, they’re at forty-one percent, and Mila, who does not have a work interest in the club, would vote for whatever is going to make her the most money. She could swing the vote in the opposite direction the largest shareowners might vote, which, given their history, is always in favor of what’s best for their employees and not themselves.”

“All three of them do seem to be high-level protectors. Change those percentages, and Mila’s odds of being on a winning team become eleven votes less likely,” Cruz deduced.

“Isn’t this a bit of a stretch?” Calder asked. “I mean, even if she gained Tilly’s five percent, it’s not adequate to give her enough to outvote anyone other than the everyday staff themselves.”

Francesca sighed, throwing the marker in the tray. “No, it isn’t. But it’s suggestive, especially since it’s the one staff member with the highest individual percentage, tiny though it might be.”

“I wonder if anything was coming up for a vote that might have been of concern to her,” Cruz wondered.

“Something with the new club?” Calder offered.

“No, she’d have no say in that. According to Tripoli, each club runs as a separate entity per ownership for the members. Maybe something with Elysium? He suggested that she got bored easily with her projects, and he was hoping to buy her shares from her. What if, with the breakup, he was no longer willing to run the risk of mafia connections? Maybe he was going to try to force her out?”

“Or maybe even sell out the club.”

Cruz narrowed his eyes at her. “You know something we don’t know?”

Francesca turned her back to the men and considered the two columns again. “Nothing specific. Just a conversation I had with him where he mentioned that he wasn’t particularly worried about the mafia getting their hands on the club because if they did, he could just sell the club and buy a new one.”

“Maybe Mila was worried that the staff would swing a vote to sell out? She could have been working the family base and trying to keep a toehold in the club. Maybe she wasn’t as ‘unaffiliated’ as he thought.”

“Possible. Doesn’t feel right either, though, does it?”

“You think he’s saying one thing but feeling something else?” Calder asked.

She turned back to the table. “No. Not really. If there’s one thing I know about the man, he never lies. Just throwing it out there as an option. He did say that the other shareholders are more concerned about it than he is, so I don’t think it would take much to convince the staff to sell out. They’d make money out of the deal, and he’d just take whatever employees with him who wanted to go. He’s a bit of a Daddy Dom in terms of business.”

Calder and Cruz exchanged glances. “Excuse me?” Calder queried.

“He has a caregiver mentality, but at an alpha level. All of my interviews point to him as a father figure to his staff, and I’m guessing Cruz’s interviews this afternoon will say the same thing.”

Cruz picked up a paperclip and unfolded it into a somewhat straight piece of metal. “Calder, what did you find on the women?”

“Preliminary findings. There were signs of anaphylaxis with Mila’s lips and swelling of the tongue and the throat. Cause of death, technically, was an overdose. Toxicology reports a high level of fentanyl, hydrocodone, benzodiazepines, and alcohol in her system. She had a prescription for hydrocodone due to a back injury she suffered while water-skiing three months ago. The doctor assured me that she was weaning off it—hadn’t refilled in over thirty days—and there’s no record of her doctor-shopping. Doesn’t mean she wasn’t getting it illegally somewhere, but there wasn’t enough of it in her system to suggest that, and no prescriptions or stray pills were lying about the apartment. Alcohol, she’d probably had a few drinks. Not enough to be slovenly drunk, but mixed with those three drugs, she would likely have been incapable of fighting off anyone with intent. The highest content in her system was fentanyl, and it would seem logical that the allergy stemmed from that since there was no record of a reaction to the hydrocodone and no history of alcoholism or other drugs. Being allergic to the drug is not impossible but uncommon.”

“Consistent user of fentanyl?”

“I need another day or two for those numbers to come back, but to be honest, I doubt it. People don’t start with fentanyl and then supplement with hydrocodone. If she had a dependence on hydrocodone already and had been using long-term, maybe.” Calder continued through the highlights of his report. “There was trauma to the body from multiple lacerations and stab wounds. You both, obviously, didn’t need me to tell you that. One massive puncture wound delivered to the heart, and due to the lack of blood, relatively speaking, done postmortem.”

Francesca spoke up. “Infliction of those types of wounds suggests deep-seated anger. The killer wanted her to suffer. Possibly she hurt him, and he wanted to hurt her in return. Any leads on a boyfriend who might be holding a grudge?”

“Boyfriend prior to your Tripoli?—”

“He’s not ‘my Tripoli,’” Francesca growled.

“—was one Angel Flores. Very brief, and it ended when he went back on the rodeo circuit. Then she dated Evans. Then…”

Cruz flashed another look at Calder, who shrugged his shoulders and went back to putting his report on Mila back together neatly in the folder in front of him.

“Then…?” Francesca prompted.

“Then from March twenty-sixth, or thereabouts, she was seeing Michael Murphy.”

Francesca felt herself deflate. “That’s why Ortiz wanted you to interview him again. Because he just jumped to the top of the suspect list.”

“Yes. According to Michael, it was serious, but they separated last month during a fight. They were allegedly trying to work things out, but there’s no verification of any of that information because they didn’t tell anyone they were seeing each other in the first place. He says they didn’t make it public because (a) they weren’t sure how Evans would take it, and (b) they didn’t want your family getting wind of it and trying to use it against Michael to try and pull him back into the nest. In fact, those were the reasons they fought in the first place. She didn’t think Evans would give a damn, and she wanted to out the relationship so that she could hang out at Elysium again. He didn’t want the relationship to be public because of your family. He didn’t tell us about the relationship in our initial interview, and we only discovered it because, in our search of Mila’s house, we found some of his belongings in her bedroom closet, so the chief wanted a formal interview here. He claims he didn’t say anything because we didn’t ask.”

“But he lied when he said he hadn’t seen her since the grand opening,” Francesca said.

“No. The question I technically asked him was, had he seen her at the club that night . Looking back, he paused slightly before answering and replied he hadn’t seen her at the club since the grand opening, which, technically, could have been true.”

“He had to have known that was a loophole answer,” she accused.

Cruz nodded. “I’m sure he did. However, it could very well be one hundred percent true.”

Turning to Calder, she asked, “I’m guessing it’s too early for any results on Jessa?”

Calder shook his head. “Panama is running the tests. He was a little more creative in his suspension techniques this time. One difference this time, other than the severed head, is she has a multitude of welts. I’d bet my next paycheck her toxicology report will be similar to Mila’s, but I’ll know more in the morning.”

“All right.” Francesca took a deep breath, then exhaled. She began to pace the length of the conference table as she talked. “Let’s look at motives for the murder of Mila Sequeira and see if anything ties to Jessa. I know Tripoli is the only individual with a verified alibi for Mila. Do we have alibis verified for anyone for Jessa?”

Cruz and Calder glanced at each other, then back to Francesca. She pretended not to see it. “Nope. Everyone appears to have been at home in their beds,” Cruz replied.

“What about sexual assault?” she asked.

Calder flipped to the appropriate portion of his report. “Rape kit produced no DNA and was inconclusive for rape. She’d had recent sexual intercourse, but it’s difficult to tell if it was just rough sex or if it was an actual rape. Given the amount of drugs in her system, she could have been less capable of defending herself, and her attacker wouldn’t have had to be as violent.”

“No DNA. He used a condom?”

“Possible. I didn’t find anything to suggest yes or no. No fibers, no hairs, no skin cells. Just the lubricant Francesca noticed.”

“So he used a condom,” Cruz put forward.

“Or used an object,” Francesca offered.

“Or didn’t finish,” Calder reminded them.

“That too.” Cruz massaged his forehead. “The lubricant would likely have been necessary if an object was used, correct?”

“Most likely. If she were an unwilling participant in what was going on, her body wouldn’t naturally lubricate for her attacker. Keep in mind, lubricant is regularly used by couples who have active sex lives as an additive to their activities. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s trouble with performance. If her attacker used the lubricant and was especially careful, no DNA could be due to extreme or recent hygiene choices. Or the lubricant could have been necessary for him to even perform if rape were part of his torture.”

“So we can’t rule out anything yet,” Francesca said.

“Correct.”

Francesca went to the whiteboard and began to make lists. “Motive one—crime of passion. Someone lost their head after a sex game went wrong. Possible suspects for the crime of passion motive. Tripoli, Michael, or an outside guest we haven’t identified yet. Based on what we know—unlikely overall.”

Cruz rubbed his forehead in frustration. “I’m making an executive decision to cut Tripoli out of any further discussions as a suspect. We know he didn’t murder Mila, which pretty much guarantees he didn’t murder Jessa. Just because you’ve got some conflict of duty and personal connection to Tripoli doesn’t mean you have to go after him extra hard.”

“I do not have a conflict of duty and personal connection to Tripoli, mainly because there is no personal connection!” Francesca insisted.

A snort of derision came from Calder. “At the risk of inserting my foot up to my hip in my mouth, you’re nothing but a conflict of duty and personal connection to that man right now.”

“Frankie,” Cruz began, “it’s okay for you to have feelings for people. You’ve laid out so many land mines it’s impossible to know which ones we’re going to set off. Your trouble with calling people by their names because it breeds familiarity. Your refusal to have meals with people because it no longer keeps you separate. Your complete lack of social life with people who want you in their lives because, fuck woman, we like you. Your persistence at keeping yourself undercover so that you’re always someone else, rather than one of the Dirty McCabes, despite how you’re not even close. Just stop. The two of us are way too boneheaded and are going to keep battering at you until you give in.”

Inside, she felt like everything was shaking. Like that initial moment when an earthquake began, and there was no hint if it was going to just be a tremor or bring on damage. This, however, felt like damage was coming.

“I…”

“Don’t sweat it, Frankie. We get it. But if you don’t start relaxing a bit, you’re going to either burn out or explode. Both options are bad for an agent. They’re even worse for someone we consider a friend.”

With a smile of encouragement, he slapped the table. “Back to work. People with motive. Tripoli is out and, therefore, is open season for a certain agent with more than a passing interest, even if it teeters on a line she doesn’t feel comfortable crossing.”

“You make me sound like a cougar hunting for a meal.”

Calder grinned. “You’re younger than him. Can’t be a cougar.”

She crumpled up a piece of paper from her legal pad and threw it at him.

Cruz continued, “Michael. He reads as honest in his interview that he was still in love with her, but he wouldn’t be the first man to kill someone he loved. As a precautionary measure, Angel Flores is on our interview list, but it looks like he was out of the state with his new girlfriend. Last, an outside threat we can’t discount until we clear all the wristbands. Techs are still working on the video, going through person by person and identifying against the scans to see where she got in and when.”

“But that only works if she came in the front door,” Calder pointed out. “No wristband, remember? She could have been let in another entrance.”

“We’re also checking all door openings and closings against scans for employees. She could have walked in with someone without a scan, so we also need to check those videos. That’s part of why it’s taking so long,” Cruz said.

“Analysts are cross-referencing employee swipes against video footage of entries and exits, and I’ve been matching up non-referenceable video card swipes,” Francesca confirmed.

She turned back to the whiteboard and started a new column. Hopefully the action would keep the shaking of her hands from being noticeable. She was still unnerved by Cruz and Calder’s assessment of her reticence to get close to people. They were way too accurate.

“Motive two—removing Mila and her mafia connections. Basically, any of the staff.”

“Selling the club sounds like a lot of work simply to avoid ten percent of a voting share,” Calder argued.

“Yes, but that ten percent would be mafia money.”

Calder shrugged. “While I get it that mafia interference, no matter how small, is undesirable to a lot of people, the stigma isn’t nearly as horrifying as it used to be. Sometimes corporations are no better than mafia money.”

Cruz grunted his agreement. “No club employee owns enough shares in the business to make murder a lucrative option. They could just quit if they had a huge exception to it, especially Cosmos who is also in the clear due to being in Chicago, and Triumph. Both own similar interests in the other clubs. And Mila herself wasn’t mafia other than by blood.”

“Motive three.” Francesca made another column. “Jealousy. Suspects would be Michael, Tilly, or an unknown outsider.”

“Michael is possible but unlikely since he was actively trying to get back together with her,” Cruz volunteered.

Francesca sighed. “Tilly’s too tied to Triumph. All it takes is one look at the two of them to see she’s dependent upon him, and he’s a total caretaker. No signs of interest in anyone else.”

“Which leaves Mr. Unknown, and again, we’re waiting on video to hopefully identify who she was with.”

Calder shifted in his seat. “I know I’m the coroner and not an FBI agent, but couldn’t you just look at the video feed for the trapeze room after closing and through to Tilly and Triumph’s arrival? Why haven’t you done that?”

“First thing we tried,” Francesca admitted. “There is no video. Well, that’s a lie. There is. But it’s blank. The picture shows an empty room from the time Michael did his walk-through until the body suddenly appears right before Tilly’s arrival. It’s like magic. Not there, then there. The footage is seamless.”

“So now you have the possible suspect of Triumph. He’s the only one involved that we know of who has those kinds of skills, but what would be the motive?” Cruz asked.

“The only thing I can think of is Tilly’s near-stock denial, but that doesn’t make sense as she didn’t actually lose it. It’s flimsy anyway.”

“So we’re left with nothing and no one,” Cruz said.

The three looked at each other.

“That is correct,” Francesca confirmed.

“So what now?” Calder asked. “We’ve got two bodies. It’ll be at least twenty-four to forty-eight hours before we get toxicology on Jessa. I’m going to hope this fuckstick made a mistake, but my hopes will likely be dashed. Where do we go from here?”

Francesca rubbed her temples. The headache that had been forming before they even walked into the room was now in full bloom. Clasping her hands in front of her, she looked at Calder. “We need the new forensics before we can do much of anything. I can start with using the time of death to help us determine possible suspects as to who was unaccounted for during both murders, and I’ll see if I can find any links between the two women other than Elysium. Maybe I can help the computer geniuses and scan some of the video footage for Mila’s arrival, letting them work on the bigger issue which is figuring out where the ‘missing’ footage is regarding Mila’s body appearing in the trapeze room. I can easily do the first. The second is beyond my capabilities.”

“I have additional staff interviews this afternoon,” Cruz said. “At some point, I’ll need to talk to her family. They’ve been notified, obviously, and of course, they want to come immediately and claim the body. We’ll be fighting with them over that as I’m sure they’ll try to apply pressure to the higher-ups to release her.”

“I hate to say it,” Cruz admitted, “but we really need a mistake. The longer this goes, the more likely that is, but that means more people are at risk.”