Page 7 of 4th Silence
“One of JJ’s deputies is a Hartman. Mary is his mother. Her brother-in-law, Ron Hartman, runs Hartman Oil and Gas.”
Yes!
I hustle to Charlie’s office and find her behind her desk, pounding away on her laptop. “What’s the deputy’s first name?”
Still typing, she peers up at me. “Alex. JJ likes him. Hard worker. He’s helped out on a few of the cold cases.”
“Mom has a transcript of the nine-one-one call Mary made that night.”
Finally, Charlie stops typing, a sly smile easing across her face. “She FOIA’d it. God bless her. If I weren’t so mad, I’d applaud.”
“She’s got interviews, press clippings, the whole works. Do you think Alex Hartman might talk to us?”
“Well, with a family member being the victim, one would hope.”
“Can you grease the wheels with JJ?”
“That would require talking to him. The Schocks aren’t high on his list right now.”
Ouch.
I scrunch my nose. “Sorry.”
“It’s certainly not your fault.”
I lean against the doorframe. “What if I call him?”
“JJ?”
“He can scream at me all he wants. I don’t have to live with him, so to speak.”
Charlie narrows her eyes, clearly considering this strategy. “He won’t yell at you. He adores you.”
I copy my sister’s sly smile from a minute ago. “Exactly.”
She slides her desk phone in my direction. “Have at it. Let’s see just how mad The Emperor really is.”
3
Charlie
* * *
Cold case clearance rates have been dropping for four decades. Unsolved murders are at an all-time high.
JJ doesn’t answer his direct line. After multiple rings, it directs me to his voicemail.
Meg leaves a brief message. “Hi, JJ. It’s your favorite forensic artist. Call me back when you have a chance?”
He won’t.
From outside comes the scraping of the snow shovel Matt is wielding in his crusade against the storm. The sound makes my teeth itch. He’s been at it for half an hour. Or maybe I’m just out of patience with everything.
Haley is drowning in calls. She’s fielded a dozen quacks who claim they know the killer, a man demanding a million dollars or he’ll start picking off the Hartmans, and two psychics who swear Tiffany’s ghost named names. All they want in return is a little national spotlight. Each insists that she has revealed the identity and whereabouts of the killer—all Mom needs to do is get them an interview with a major news outlet, and they’ll tell all.
The cherry on top is the woman who believes she is Tiffany. Reincarnated, I guess, since she’s only nineteen. She’s asked to join our mother’s crusade. She plans to chain herself to the Hartmans’ gate until the Feds give her justice. For her own murder? Yep, it boggles the mind.
After forwarding all the messages containing threats or potential leads—no matter how small—to the local PD and CCing my former coworkers at the FBI, where I worked long hours for very little pay, profiling, but loved every minute of it, I contact my favorite hacker, Teeg. I put in a request for him to take down that damn social media video and temporarily block my mother from her account. It only costs me tickets to the next Comic Con. A small price to pay.
