Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Vance
I put on a pot of coffee, then set up a crime board while I waited for Claire to arrive. I was adding photographs to it when she knocked.
“Come on in,” I called.
She opened the door and stepped inside. “Whoa.”
“Whoa what?” I turned around. When I saw her, my breath caught.
She’d changed into the soft jeans she preferred, a dark-green sweater, and suede boots.
A beaded necklace hung around her neck, flowing down between the valley of her breasts.
The bun was gone, and her beautiful hair fell in a soft cascade.
I loved how varied it was, a mix of different textures.
Ringlets beside soft waves, like even her hair refused to be put into a box.
It was completely unlike the perfect heat-styled hair most women seemed to prefer.
It was messy and wild and totally Claire.
She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known.
And she was staring at me like she’d said something I hadn’t caught.
“Cat got your tongue?” she asked, dropping her bag on the kitchen table.
I shook myself. “Sorry. What were you saying?”
“You’ve got a murder board.” She grinned, shaking her head in amazement. “An actual murder board.”
“Even with tech, it’s still my favorite way to organize evidence,” I said, returning her grin.
“I’ve never seen one. Not in real life, anyway.” She moved toward me, gazing at the board with an intrigued look on her face. She then pointed to the photograph hanging beside Katelyn’s. “You still have Tony as a suspect.”
“I do. I don’t think he did it, but until we rule him out, he stays up there.”
“Sheriff McGrath is also a suspect,” she said, swallowing hard as she looked at his photo.
“Yeah.” I cast a glance her way, pained at the tight lines around her eye. It would take a while for her to get over his betrayal.
“And I guess that’s Katelyn’s mom and uncle over there?” she asked, pointing to the left side of my board.
“Exactly. I like to keep track of everyone I’ve talked to, even if they’re not an active suspect.
” I walked to my briefcase and pulled out some additional things to tack onto the board.
“Snowmobile registrations. Everyone within a one-hundred-mile radius who has one registered. Gotta love public records.”
Claire grinned. “Nice work.” She turned back to the board. “Um. Okay. What about the Evanses? Are they on the registration list?”
“Negative,” I confirmed. “They don’t own one. However…” I tapped a name on the list.
She exhaled. “Sheriff McGrath does.” She smacked her head. “He would also have access to the SAR snowmobiles. They’re housed in a storage unit that belongs to the Sage County Sheriff’s Office. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”
“You weren’t thinking of him as a suspect at that point,” I reminded her. “But that’s good to know. Is there any way for us to find out if someone accessed one of those for a non-SAR event?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Unless the storage facility has security cameras and kept the footage from that far back. But the place is locked with a regular deadbolt. Everyone at the sheriff’s office has keys to it. So does Hank, our base command operator.”
“We can check on footage,” I said, making a note. “But I agree. That’s a long shot at this point.”
“The evidence is stacking up against him, isn’t it?”
“It might be,” I said gently.
She sighed deeply, staring at his picture. “Alright. So he had snowmobile access and Tony didn’t. But there are places around here that rent snowmobiles in the winter. We should get a list of people they rented them to in March and April. Maybe we’ll get lucky and Tony Evans will be on that list.”
I shook my head. “We can ask them if they’ll share, but right now, we don’t have enough for a warrant. Having a theory that the killer used a snowmobile isn’t enough. If we had more, I could push for the DA to draft a subpoena. But we don’t even have enough for that.”
“Alright, so we ask nicely. What else?”
“Katelyn’s phone,” I said, grabbing a marker to make some notes on the board.
“The only calls or texts to or from a Wildwood phone number were the ones to Tony Evans, and those were few and far between after January. But get this. Her roommate said she was texting someone before she left that night. And there were no texts sent or received during that time on her phone.”
“Maybe she deleted them?”
“That’s what I thought, too. But I checked her cell phone carrier’s metadata. There weren’t any.”
“She was probably messaging on a social media app,” Claire pointed out. “That’s the way most of my personal messages are sent these days.”
“I’ve checked the apps on her phone and didn’t see any messages for that time frame.”
“Some of those apps automatically delete them after a period of time—that’s why some people use them to try to find hookups online without leaving evidence behind for their spouse,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Will your data warrant cover that?”
“No. We might get metadata, but not message content.”
“Crap.” Claire looked disappointed.
“Metadata still helps,” I assured her. “But my gut says that’s not where we’re looking anyway.”
She turned to me, her lips twitching. “You have a different idea.”
I did. The thought had hit me earlier, and it made perfect sense. “What if she had a second phone? A burner used only for her new boyfriend.”
Claire’s eyes lit. “That would explain why she left hers behind. It didn’t matter to her. Only the one she used to contact him did.”
“Exactly,” I said, grinning.
“So how do we prove that?”
“Normally, I’d do a geofence for that night, use it to identify all the electronics that had been used at her residence.
But it’s been seven months. That data could be gone.
And a geofence gets tricky in an apartment building full of college students.
A lot of judges are going to see that as an invasion of privacy, since it would tag all of their devices, too,” I mused, thinking it over.
“Besides, that only works if her phone was connected to the internet and used apps that collect voluntary data like Google. If we’re talking about a flip phone with wireless only or a true burner, we’re out of luck. ”
“What about cell tower data?”
I shook my head. “Seven months later, full tower dumps will be long gone. We would only be able to get data if we knew the phone number.”
“So there’s no way to prove it.” Her shoulders sagged again.
“There’s always a way.”
She shot me a skeptical look.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky.” I shrugged. “Once we get the social media returns, we might find another device connected that way.”
“So much waiting around,” she complained.
“Welcome to my world.” I loved every minute of it, but being a detective was slow work for the most part.
“It’s fun,” she admitted. “Most of the time. But I do get antsy. I’m used to more action, less thinking and data.”
“You get used to it.” I pulled another photo from my files and stuck it up on the board.
“ Trey ?” Claire’s jaw dropped. “You think Trey might have killed Katelyn?”
“I think we should consider him as a possibility, especially after the conversation I overheard. Let’s think him through as a suspect.”
“Okay,” Claire said with a heavy exhale. “We know he wanted this case. I assumed it was to give him a leg up with the DCI, but if he killed Katelyn, that’s a whole new level of motivation to be in on things.”
I nodded. “He came to help process the crime scene and made sure his DNA was there.“
“That’s true.” Claire’s eyes narrowed. “If Katelyn was looking for attention when she was here and Sheriff McGrath blew her off, maybe she tried getting it from Trey. He’d love playing that protective hero role in someone’s life just to feed his own ego.
Plus, he’s closer to her age than Sheriff McGrath. ”
“Exactly. Or he could be helping someone else.”
“Sheriff McGrath?”
I shook my head. “He couldn’t have been on the phone with him.
You were in the office with the sheriff during that phone call.
But there’s another possibility for Katelyn’s affair partner—someone else Sergeant Collins would be eager to help.
” I stuck another photo up on the board.
“We know they met, and we know he has a pattern of infidelity.”
Claire smirked when she saw Mayor Evans in my row of suspects. “As much as I want to slap a pair of handcuffs on him, I have a hard time seeing Katelyn pass up Tony for him. Tony is at least attractive. Mayor Evans is not.”
“Agreed. And while I know you’re not a fan of Leslie Evans, I have a feeling she’s smart enough to make sure the money stays with her if they divorce. If Katelyn really was a gold digger, she’d be stupid to go for the mayor.”
“Totally. But Sheriff McGrath doesn’t have money, either,” she pointed out.
“That’s true,” I admitted. “That would go against Katelyn’s supposed MO.”
“Unless she really was just looking for a man who would make her feel protected.” Claire let out that deep sigh again. “Sheriff McGrath would be good at that. Better than Trey. But I still can’t imagine Sheriff McGrath committing murder.”
“Maybe he didn’t,” I said slowly, as a new thought began to form in my mind. I paced the room, thinking it through before I turned back to Claire. “What if Sheriff McGrath didn’t kill her? What if his only mistake was having an affair?”
She looked at me blankly. “Then it would be a moral failing. It might cost him his career, but it isn’t criminal.”
“It is criminal,” I corrected. “If they had an affair and he lied about that during a homicide investigation, that is absolutely criminal. Even if he didn’t kill her, knowledge about why she came back here and who else she may have had contact with could be the key to solving her murder.”
“True. Which makes me think either he killed her or he’s telling the truth. Why hide an affair to save his job if doing so is a crime that he’d lose his job for anyway?”
“Maybe he believed he did such a good job of covering it up that we would never find out.”
Annoyance flashed on Claire’s face. “I can see him underestimating me, but you’re DCI. You think he would be that confident about hiding it from you?”
“Maybe.” But I had another theory.
One that made a hell of a lot more sense.
“What is it?” Claire asked, sensing my shift.
I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner. The woman was angry, cold, and paranoid. She had means and motive. And it would explain every move Sheriff McGrath had made.
I turned to Claire. “What if Serena killed Katelyn?”
Her mouth fell open as the implication hit. “Oh my God.”
She put her hands up to her head and started pacing the floor, her mind working a million miles an hour as she put the pieces of the puzzle together the same way I had.
“It would explain everything,” she finally said. “Sheriff McGrath and Katelyn have an affair. Serena finds out and confronts him. Loses it and kills her. Maybe Sheriff McGrath knows or suspects, or maybe he thinks Katelyn just got tired of him and moved on.”
She stopped pacing and sank down onto the couch. “He’s relaxed and casual when he gets to the crime scene because he doesn’t know it’s her. But then Wendy shows him the bracelet and he knows it’s Katelyn—and that Serena killed her.”
I nodded, picking up her trail. “So he calls in DCI and excuses himself from the case because he knows it’s a conflict of interest to work it. His moral code won’t allow him to cover it up completely.”
“Then he puts me on the case. I’m inexperienced. A liability for you.”
“A distraction,” I said, groaning.
“ And because he knows I’ve let things slide for other people.
He hopes I’ll protect Serena. That’s why he hinted about that during that weird conversation.
She made a mistake, but she’s a good person, and he feels guilty because it’s partly his fault.
He hurt her.” She filled up her cheeks with air.
Blew it out slowly, the way she always did when she was nervous. “It all makes sense.”
“He loves his wife,” I said quietly. “So he can’t tell us about the affair.”
“Not because he’s trying to save his job,” Claire said, the realization dawning.
I nodded. “But because it would give away Serena’s motive.”