Chapter Eight #3
“You said single, but did she have an ex?” he asked, knowing that sometimes, breakups weren’t pleasant, and that would be a good reason for murder.
It wasn’t odd to have a killing hidden among other killings to muddy the water. So, they had to eliminate that right off the bat.
Leah was honest.
“Yeah, she had an ex. He was on our list to interview, but we didn’t get to do it as of yet. We were hit with back-to-back victims.”
Sometimes, that was the nature of the beast.
Now, he was curious.
“Name?” he asked.
Dannie flipped through his notebook and found it for them, so they’d have it.
“One of the teachers at the school gave us the name. Apparently, it was a bad breakup.”
BINGO.
That was what Ethan and Gene had been hoping to hear. It gave them a suspect list, and the next threat to tug to figure out what had happened.
Dannie shared what he knew.
“His name is Randal Crest,” he offered. “He works at a business in the middle of town. He works at a bank as a financial advisor, I believe.”
Gene was making notes for his partner. Oh, he wanted to jump in and ask questions, but he knew this wasn’t his case to run. Man, was he kicking himself for letting his ass be kidnapped in Puerto Rico.
It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Ethan, but they both had different investigation styles.
Research sucked, but when he was running it, Ethan didn’t take over.
“Thank you,” Ethan said. “When you spoke to the employees at the school, what else was said?” he asked, even though they would be interviewing the same people themselves.
He clued him in.
“It was mostly the principal that we spoke to. The other employees were in classes with the kids at the time. He was incredibly helpful, and that’s where we got the previous information on Ivey. Would you like his name?” Dannie asked.
Well, yeah.
That was the point of this little impromptu meeting. He wasn’t doing it because they were bored and didn’t have better things to do.
To Ethan, it was clear that these two detectives had never played with FBI agents.
Despite it being obvious, he nodded.
“Yes, please.”
Fortunately for them, the detective didn’t hesitate to share information. For the agents, that went a long way with them. Helpful cops were allowed to assist, and unhelpful ones were not.
“Robert Fergus.”
Gene wrote it down.
“Perfect,” Ethan said. “What’s next?” he asked, wanting to move this along so he could get Gene back to the hotel, check in, and get meds in him for the night.
Dannie continued.
“That takes us to the second case we caught. We were notified of another call in for a missing person.”
Gene flipped the page and began a new information sheet on the second victim.
“Her name is Megan Vessey. She was the bartender at a pub in town.”
They waited.
“Details?” Gene asked.
The man continued.
“Apparently, she left work, and when the others went out at two, when the bar closed, her car was still there. They didn’t think anything of it until she didn’t show for work yesterday either.”
Ethan considered it.
“So, a teacher disappears after work, and a bartender disappears on the same day, just hours apart? It sounds like this person is lying in wait, and then makes his move,” Ethan stated.
He knew that meant one thing.
This person was stalking their prey, since they had a twofer in one day. Watching was dangerous.
The other detective agreed.
“That’s what we thought. Again, for Ivey, her things were all at home.
The door was unlocked, and there was no sign of struggle at her home.
The bartender was taken after her shift, across town, and after work.
Is he grabbing them out of convenience or planning it out? ” Leah asked, talking out loud.
Ethan was curious.
“You’re saying HE. Is that just to give this killer a pronoun, or do you believe it’s an actual HE due to something you’ve both discovered?” he inquired.
She didn’t hesitate to share what she was thinking.
“Oh, it’s definitely going to be a man. Three dead women? Plus, you said one was stabbed brutally, likely in anger? That screams dude to me, and I’d bet on it. If I was running this, that’s the angle I’d take,” she offered.
Well, she wasn’t running it, and Ethan knew better than to just tag a gender this early in the case. They were just in the discovery part of this mess. This would be a marathon, not a sprint like the detective seemed to believe.
Ethan played devil’s Advocate, since that was his job to look at all angles and THEN make an educated assessment.
“Only, Detective, women stab too. We aren’t ‘betting’ on this person’s gender until we have more. I like to be very cautious at this point because one misstep, and you have to restart the whole investigation and redo your suspect list.”
She said nothing, but Gene saw her give her partner a look like ‘yeah, typical Fed’. Only, Ethan was absolutely right. If you got the gender wrong, you were absolutely redoing EVERYTHING, and that could take days to redo. By then, forty-eight hours had passed, and you lost the trail.
Luckily, though, nothing more was said by the detective about it, including the snarky comments that could come from her mouth.
So, they’d take that as a win.
Ethan continued.
“I agree with the rest of your assessment,” he stated. “That one woman’s car made it home, and the others didn’t, tells me that this person is stalking and watching them. He or she is also taking them when they are alone, or when it’s convenient.”
Gene knew where this was heading.
They had a watcher.
“Anything else?” Ethan asked.
Dannie was to the point.
“We didn’t get to interview many people, since we were just given this case Thursday afternoon. So, if you want, we can pick up where we left off and handle the pub interviews to split them with you.”
Oh, these two were relentless.
They.
Wanted.
In.
Only, Blackhawk wasn’t relenting either. So, he didn’t give them the answer they wanted.
He needed to consider the two detectives and see if they could be an asset or a liability.
Already, Ethan was working on a game plan, but he needed the full picture before he started playing divide and conquer. Plus, he had a bad taste in his mouth over what happened with the Fed in Puerto Rico. They’d trusted him, too.
Basically, he knew the kind of cop he and Gene were. He had no clue about these two.
Trust wasn’t easily given when you were working a case, and lives depended on making no missteps. The female cop was making Ethan twitchy.
She seemed like she wanted to skip important steps, and that didn’t vibe with them.
EVER.
“We’ll see,” he stated, again.
And again, it was met with the same discontent from the female detective.
Oh, and Gene didn’t miss it.
“Anything else about the bartender?” he asked, wanting to get this done.
Dannie shook his head.
“No, we were still working on the schoolteacher at that point,” he admitted. “You know how it is, juggling victims—or as we thought—potential victims.”
Oh, they knew.
What Ethan knew so far was that tomorrow was going to be a really busy day when it came to interviews.
They were two days behind, and going to have to play catch-up before this was done.
What he also knew was this killer was handling multiple victims at once, and that set off alarms in his gut.
Why?
That meant the killer had a hidey-hole to hold them, since they’d been dumped all together.
Finding a hidey-hole was NEVER easy.
That this person took the teacher after work, he or she only had a few hours between to get to the bartender.
On top of that, it took time to deflesh a body. There was no way he was doing it in an hour, even as badly done as it was. That meant he was keeping them in a location for holding.
“We understand how difficult it is to juggle victims. It’s not like we’re that far behind the killer at this point, luckily. What gave us the advantage was the bodies were found relatively quickly. The Native, who was hunting, was a bit of luck on our behalf.”
That was the truth, and Gene knew it. Now, they had to keep the momentum going.
Somehow.
There was no doubt that Tomorrow was going to be one hell of a marathon. Hopefully, there would be no surprises tonight, because what he needed was some pain meds and at least six hours of sleep.
When Blackhawk saw his partner glance at his watch, he knew they needed to get this done. His arm had to be hurting, and Ethan needed to take care of his partner, too.
“What about the last woman?” Ethan asked. “How were you alerted to her going missing?”
Dannie shared again.
“Her husband got home from work this morning, and he found she’d not been back from her night out with the girls. They were doing a drunken-painting party at The Tipsy Easel. He was at the manufacturing plant working and never knew she didn’t come home.”
Gene made notes.
“When he got home, he called the police, and we were given it since we had two similar calls.”
Ethan was curious.
“By any chance, did you verify his alibi of being at work until that morning?”
The man nodded.
“Yeah, we called the plant, and we spoke to his boss. Phylis Linzey’s husband, Dave, was at work all night. He took his dinner break in the company break room. Not once did he leave.”
Well, that covered that.
“So, we have the first victim being single, and the third married. What about the second?” he asked, just to clarify in their report.
“Single,” Dannie said. “Well, according to her co-workers. Only one of the three was married.”
They both made notes.
Only, now, Gene was going to point out the obvious because it was making him twitchy.
“They are being dropped fast. If he took two on Wednesday night, and then one last night…”
Ethan knew what he was thinking.
The killer was moving quickly, and the only thing that was keeping him from panicking was the fact that it was ‘see no evil, speak no evil, and hear no evil’. There were only three, and they might get lucky.
But he’d just told the female detective they didn’t rule anything out, so he wouldn’t.