Page 32 of Good Girls Don't Cry

“At first, his arrogance caused me some concern.” Kane started the engine. “Most guys who have just done time are a little more careful around law enforcement. To be honest, we really don’t need much of an excuse to pick them up for questioning, do we?”

Jenna nodded. “That’s true, but he does move around and no one checks his movements. All the murders could have been committed by him within the time frame of him arriving here. Father Derry doesn’t keep his eyes on every man staying at the shelter. Thorne is arrogant, but then if he hasn’t done anything wrong, why would seeing us worry him?”

“True.” Kane left the driveway and headed back along the highway. “Call Rio. I’m taking you home. It will be past five before we get into town. He can lock up tonight. We’ll start fresh in the morning.”

Blowing out a sigh of relief, Jenna made the call. “Can you follow up with Kalo on any of the ex-crims’ association with the copycat murders?”

“Yeah, sure. Carter wants a word.” He passed the phone to Carter.

“I’m hunting down the suspects who have knowledge of explosives or have searched for information online. When I’m done here, I’ll head back to the ranch.” Carter sighed. “I’ve checked out all the bomb fragments I collected at the scene. Wolfe has run a few tests on the residue as well. Everything is easily purchased. Any miner could get their hands on explosives. This bomb was pretty basic.”

Jenna shot a glance at Kane. “Ah, good idea, and did you discover anything useful?”

“Yeah, it was a basic pipe bomb.” His chair squeaked as he stood. “I might be clutching at straws, hunting down if any of them had experience with explosives, but no stone left unturned, right?”

Jenna nodded. “Yeah. When we have nothing, that one small clue might just be enough to crack the case wide open. We’ll see you at home.” She disconnected and turned to Kane. “This morning we had nothing and now slowly things are coming together. I hope we can identify him before he needs to kill again.”

Thirty-Seven

Tuesday

Kane piled scrambled eggs onto plates and followed that with a stack of bacon. Beside him, Carter was spreading liberal amounts of butter on toast. He looked at him and smiled. “We’ll domesticate you yet.”

“I’ve always been domesticated.” Carter flashed him a white grin. “I need to be to feed myself and keep my house clean. One thing I know about women is that they appreciate a man who keeps his house clean and can put a good meal on the table.”

“That wasn’t my first priority.” Jenna looked at Kane and smiled. “But if Kane didn’t cook, we’d be living on a diet of burned toast and frozen microwaved meals.” She shrugged. “I can clean but I don’t have the cooking gene. I’ve tried but nothing apart from choc-chip cookies turns out edible. That recipe my grandma taught me when I was about seven.”

“Oh, I love your cookies.” Carter smiled. “You’ll need to teach me how to bake them one day when we’re not chasing down criminals.”

“I will.” Jenna laughed. “It’s like watching a miracle—but I need to stay close by the oven just in case I forget and burn them.”

Kane ruffled Tauri’s hair and then slid a plate in front of his son. He indicated to a drawing of trees and a cabin stuck on the refrigerator. “That’s a fine picture you drew for me yesterday at kindergarten.”

“It’s Uncle Ty’s cabin in the woods.” Tauri nibbled on a strip of bacon. He looked at Carter. “Why don’t you stay there when you’re in town?”

“It’s just a fishing cabin I use from time to time when I want to get away from people.” Carter moved the coffee pot onto the table and sat down. “Your mom and dad need me close by right now, so I stay in the cottage.”

“I like when you stay in the cottage.” Tauri licked his fingers. “I like it when Aunty Jo comes as well and brings Jaime. She’s funny. I like her.”

“I like her too.” Carter added fixings to his coffee.

“Has anyone contacted you since last night?” Jenna looked up from her plate. “I figure there’s a ban on calling me. It’s so annoying.”

“Yeah, I did get a call from Kalo.” Carter stirred his coffee and placed the spoon gently on the saucer. “None of the suspects who we’re interviewing has any connection to explosives.” He shrugged. “That’s not a definitive answer to say that they have no knowledge of explosives. We have no idea what paths their lives have taken or what experience they’ve gained. Like I mentioned before, some of the simplest yet deadliest explosions are made from readily available materials.”

“So nothing more from Wolfe at all?” Jenna pushed a forkful of eggs into her mouth.

“No.” Carter frowned. “His workload is astronomical. It’s all hands on deck there at the moment. Norrell has her entire team working in the examination rooms to get all the tests completed.”

“It’s the moss I’m more interested in than anything.” Jenna sipped her coffee and sighed. “It might give us a clue to where to find the girls.”

“He did mention that he’d sent the sample to a very experienced person in the field.” Carter bit into a slice of toast, chewed, and swallowed. “I figure it comes down to if the person he sent it to drops everything to examine the sample or it gets put in a line of work. I’m sure that Wolfe would have asked it to be a priority as lives are at stake.”

When everyone was done eating, Kane cleared the table and Jenna got Tauri ready for kindergarten. When she disappeared through the door to Nanny Raya’s apartment, he turned to Carter. “Do you figure that Jo has had time to profile the killer? I have some ideas myself, but we really need her expert view on this guy.”

“We should get her on a video call this morning and see how things are going.” Carter stacked dishes into the dishwasher. “Kalo mentioned he had a few leads on the other suspects to hunt down and was still searching through prison records to discover if any of our suspects have been in contact with the original serial killers. Personally, I figure this would be remote because everyone that you’ve sent to prison is in County and not in the general population. There’s no way they’d allow a crossover. It’s too dangerous.”

Nodding, Kane wiped the table and straightened. “What’s dangerous is Jenna being involved with catching this psychopath. I know she’s struggling to keep going every day. The baby is very close and I figure she should be resting up and she completely refuses to take it easy.”

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