Page 37 of Run for Her Life
“I asked him. He doesn’t lie. He has no reason to.” Trevor ruffled Kevin’s hair.
“Do you have a cleaner or a babysitter—?” Aiden began to ask but Trevor shook his head vehemently.
“I was in that room yesterday morning and the lamp was standing and all the drawers were closed.”
“Someone snuck in the night,” Zoe whispered. “Was there anything missing?”
“Nothing valuable. But I didn’t really keep track of things around the house. Annabelle was much better at that.” He dragged his hands down his face. “Why would anyone do this? What are they looking for?”
Zoe’s eyes kept drifting to Kevin. “Trevor, why don’t we get your official statement? Lisa’s right outside. I’ll keep an eye on the kids.”
“Thanks.” Trevor exited the room, followed by Aiden.
When Zoe was alone with Kevin, she leveled with him. He looked like he had tears pressing into the inside of his eyes, his nostrils flaring. “Kevin, I’m so sorry for what happened.” He didn’t reply. “I lost my mother too when I was fourteen years old.”
Finally, he looked at her. He probably didn’t even know how to communicate how he was feeling, how to express it. Boys, especially, were rarely taught how to.
“Did you see anyone in the house? Can you think of anyone who would break in?” she asked. Kids were intuitive. He shook his head. “Everyone liked your mom, huh?”
He looked over his shoulder at his father. A moment of hesitation. “My dad and her were fighting a lot.”
“Do you know why? You heard something?”
“Just a lot of shouting.”
Zoe made a mental note of it. But every couple fought. She watched Trevor give his statement, haggard and unshaven. His whole life had been turned upside down. “Okay, I’ll look into it. Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Find who killed my mother.”
TWENTY-THREE
Hours flew by as Zoe combed through Annabelle’s phone records and emails. There was a renewed energy at the station—the kind that Pineview Falls wasn’t used to, not because nothing bad happened here but because people had grown complacent. Now, with one murder and two disappearances, everything had changed.
“The hunting darts were laced with adrenaline,” she said, reading out the latest report sent by the coroner.
Aiden threw his head back and squirted in eye drops. “Adrenaline? That’s interesting.”
Zoe shuddered at the thought. “She must have been subjected to extreme stress. She was already abducted and was likely chased through the woods.”
“It also accelerated the process leading to a heart attack. The hunting ground will be remote, wooded, deliberately chosen, and offers both symbolic and practical value. It grants the killer dominion over the setting and reinforces the predator-prey dynamic.”
She chewed on the tip of her pen. “Do you think Kevin was onto something? Trevor and Annabelle had been fighting.”
“Highly unlikely. But the break-in is interesting.”
“Ethan is there with CSU to see if there are any prints to lift. I don’t understand why anyone would break in. Are they looking for something?”
When Aiden became distracted by something else on his laptop, Zoe returned to dissecting Annabelle’s life. She had made several calls to Jackie in the last few days of her life. But no other number stood out. According to Aiden, the women knew the killer. It was the only plausible way for both of them to be abducted by him. Perhaps, Jackie’s phone records would reveal someone. But they would take some time to obtain.
“I might have found something from your old case files,” Aiden said suddenly. Zoe was so engrossed in the victims that she hadn’t spent much time thinking about her own connection to the case. “Do you remember Darren Galanis?”
Zoe shrugged. “Not really. Who’s he?”
“A year ago, you worked on a homicide during your stint at Lakemore. A stay-at-home mom was killed by the man she was having an affair with. Ring a bell?”
She blinked. “Oh yeah. I was on like ten homicides in six months. That place is crawling with criminals.”
“He was the perpetrator’s roommate…”
