Page 99 of The Lost Bones
“I wasn’t flirting!” She hid her face behind a piece of paper while he chuckled. But her eyes darted outside the conference room and her breath hitched.
Tag was being brought in by the police, his hands behind his back.
“Nick! It’s Tag. From King of the Road.”
They shot from their seats.
“Is he embroiled in some other case?” Nick wondered.
Tara Hopkins, a short, stout detective with the Special Investigations Unit, directed two uniforms to escort Tag to be processed. As he reached the top of the stairs, he turned around and winked at Mackenzie.
“What’s going on?” Nick asked Tara. “He’s a person of interest in our serial killings.”
“That boy was behind the shutdown that took our servers and backup systems out.” She was engrossed in a file. “He said he was just messing with us. Either way, we got enough to charge him.”
When Tara left, Mackenzie shook her head. “I thought it was a random glitch from the storm, but it was intentional.”
Nick’s forehead bunched. “They must have found some evidence of a hack and followed it up.”
“The hack that deleted a crucial video?”
“He did boast about doing a lot of jobs.” He scratched his head. “I think we should take that gun found at Jennings’ house to the crime lab ourselves and wait for it to be tested. The last thing we need is for that to go missing.”
Soon the bright lights of Seattle came into view. Weaving through the traffic, they reached the crime lab and headed straight for the lab. They found Anthony peering into a microscope and then shouting at a tech who didn’t look a day older than twenty. Mackenzie tapped on the glass, drawing his attention.
“He’s always in a good mood, isn’t he?” Nick said, amused.
Anthony’s lab coat swished in the air as he strode toward them with purpose. “Do you have it?”
Mackenzie handed him the evidence bag containing the gun. “Thanks for squeezing this in. The sooner we prove this is definitely Jennings’ and was used to kill Debbie, the sooner we can charge him with murder.”
“It will only take me a few minutes. We got a firearms serial number restoration kit. When a serial number is stamped on a gun, it compresses the underlying metal grains. They react differently to chemical etching and can be restored even after someone files them off. Once I’m done, I’ll send it over to ballistics. Just wait here.”
They stood in the hallway as Anthony took the bag into the lab.
Mackenzie chewed the pad of her thumb and then realized what she was doing and stopped. “Are you worried?”
“Yeah.” Nick leaned against the wall, crossing his ankles. “Jennings and Hamilton will have alerted one of their associates, who is probably covering up evidence or moving the girls as we speak.”
She nodded. She caught her own reflection in the window. There’d been a change in her. Some of that hardness had softened. Less like a statue carved out of marble and more like one molded out of clay—pliable and supple.
When Anthony came out, he gave them the serial number. Nick immediately called Jenna, asking her to check it. He stayed on the line, waiting.
Mackenzie spoke a silent prayer that they’d get confirmation about Jennings.
“What?Say that again?” Nick said in disbelief. “Are you sure? Okay. Yeah. Thanks.” When he disconnected, he looked dazed.
“What is it?” Her insides were held captive by a tight wrench of unease. Something was wrong.
“The gun is registered to Dr. Andrew Turner.”
FIFTY
A state of panic and shock had taken hold in Sully’s office. His cross-stitch kit lay abandoned on his desk. The silence was heavy and oppressive. Mackenzie had never seen him look so disappointed. It was like he was re-evaluating everything. Nick’s fingers twirled an unlit cigarette, his eyes twitchy.
Rivera returned to the room, her phone in her hand and distress on her face. “Dr. Turner is not answering his phone. I called his sister and she said she hasn’t heard from him since this morning.”
“Where’s Robbie?” Mackenzie asked.
