Chapter 9
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“I vote for the last one,” Elizabeth stated. “I heard his voice. His voice. I heard the panic in it. Even if somebody else had a copy of his voice, I don’t think they would have been able to make it sound that real. I’m just sorry he couldn’t tell me something, anything that would have helped find him. Then, if he got caught making that call, of course he probably got punished in a way I don’t even want to contemplate.”
“Right, but the risk was obviously worth it to him, so the question is, What’s going on and how? But you can certainly believe that we’re all on this.”
“All of you?” she asked. “I don’t think those investigators in that office give one crap about what happens to my brother,” she declared harshly. “I saw how they felt about it.”
“Are you aware that, as far as they’re concerned, this was you murdering your brother?”
“Sure, I told you that.”
“But how did they get that idea about the money? That’s what I don’t understand. There’s no proof and nothing to show you had knowledge of his investments four months ago, right?”
She frowned, but nodded.
Masters continued. “You received absolutely no financial gain here, not without a body, so where are they getting this theory from?”
She stopped and stared, then shook her head. “I have no idea. How am I supposed to know where they got this theory or what locked their brains onto such a stupid idea?” she cried out. “And, if somebody did that on purpose, why?” He waited for the answer to filter in for her. Elizabeth stared at him, then snorted. “Because then they were off the hook.”
He nodded. “Exactly.”
She let out a harsh breath. “Do you think that’s what happened?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’m meeting Jasper later tonight. He’s talking to a few people, some other cohorts who may potentially have some information. Plus we have asked somebody, who has clearance way the hell above us, to do some research that the others in the department won’t like.”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
He winced, then leaned forward and whispered, “Because it’s Mason’s wife.”
“And he was just shot on base?” she asked cautiously.
He nodded. “Yes. And she’s heavily pregnant.”
She winced at that. “God, what she must be going through right now.”
“It’s agonizing, terrifying really, but she’s willing to do absolutely anything she can to help solve this.”
“Of course she is,” Elizabeth declared, “just as I am for my brother. It doesn’t matter what anybody says. We know in our heart of hearts that something’s wrong, and they’re still alive. But something’s up, and I don’t care what it is,” she snapped. “You just need to find Nicholas. I’m damn sure that was my brother’s live voice was on that call, not just a copy.”
He nodded. “And I believe that you believe that. I’m willing to go with it, but you must understand that the phone call itself wasn’t terribly helpful, beyond the fact that it’ll now trigger renewed interest in the investigation.”
“But that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes,” he agreed, smiling at her. “It’s very good, but…”
She sat back and stared at him, wondering how there could be a but in something that was so good.
Masters asked, “Why would somebody do that? Why would somebody trigger interest in an investigation that had basically been let slide into a cold case, one to be solved somewhere down the road?”
She blinked at him. “I don’t know, but presumably because they want… They want something.”
“They want something,” he repeated, with a nod. “But what is it that they want, and why do they think they can get it by utilizing your brother? Honestly I see absolutely no reason to keep your brother alive all this time if he wasn’t worth something. And, if he is worth something, just what is it that he’s worth?”
Elizabeth stared at him, reaching for the glass of water in front of her and taking a long, slow drink, as she tried to assimilate his questions.
He leaned forward and whispered, “I know this isn’t anything you want to be thinking about, and nothing is normal about this in your world, but this was your brother’s world.”
She blinked again at that and then nodded slowly. “Yes, that I will agree with. It was his world, and he loved it,” she said. “So, the next question is whether anything in his world might have triggered this, but I don’t know that,” she admitted. “I would have thought that his teammates should be answering that question.”
“And I would have thought that as well,” Masters agreed. “Do you know his teammates or anything about them? Can you think of any reason why they may not have done a full investigation into this?”
She shook her head. “You mean, like, did he have a problem with any of them?”
“Yes. Did he have a problem? Did he ever say anything about them? Did he have an unkind word to say or to tell you about any problems he had with them? Did he get a negative review or—”
“Wait, wait, wait. I get it. I get the idea.” She sipped on her water, as she thought about everything he’d just asked. To even think that somebody Nicholas had worked alongside of, somebody he had endured the inevitable daily successes and failures with, that somebody he should have been able to trust to have his back, would have had anything to do with this just made her sick.
“Don’t think about anything other than this one focus,” Masters stated. “Is there somebody in his world—work or personal—who might have had a reason for him to disappear like this?”
She shook her head at that. “If there was, it has to be related to the work that he did, which I’m not privy to,” she pointed out. “It has to be on your end. It has to be something that you can find out.”
“And I will. I will,” he stated. “However, it would save us an awful lot of time and effort if we had a single direction to go in.”
“Right,” she noted. “I didn’t even think of that. Once again we have too many options, don’t we?”
“Absolutely. We have them coming out of the woodwork,” he stated, with a smirk, “and not necessarily in a good way.”
She nodded. “Do I get time to think about it?”
“Yeah. You have to the end of dinner to think about it. After that, well, I’ll head back to the office and start tearing apart the investigators’ lives.”
She winced and nodded. “Okay, let me see if I can think of anything, but Nicholas didn’t talk shop with me.”
“The bottom line is, What would be the benefit of keeping your brother, A, alive and, B, away from everything in his world, including work, personal life, and home? ”
“And did you look at that Evidence file of his in relationship to his disappearance?”
“Yes, but this is what I’m thinking about right now, while we eat. Then I’ll go back to the office and meet with Jasper. We’ll start pulling on our additional resources because that phone call,… that phone call, whether it was meant to trigger a new investigation or to trigger a psychosis on your part, it has changed everything.”