Page 105 of Mistletoe and Malice
Riley’s skin tingled as she stared back at the man on her screen. She slammed the laptop closed.
And everything clicked into place, like a key finally turning in a stubborn lock.
“You mean that Jacob guy?”Cait had said at lunch only four months before her death.“He was harmless. I never saw or heard from him after that day …”
Warren Everett wasn’t after her simply to dissuade her from defending Shane. He was after her in case she remembered.
After her to keep her silent.
Chapter Forty-Three
Colton scrubbed his fists into his eyes.
Police detectives’ handwriting was as bad as doctors’. He’d already downed three cups of coffee and four ibuprofen in the hours he’d spent poring over printed copies of the notes from the Mulaney case investigators. Their only break had been to grab lunch on their way to the assisted living facility where the car had been stolen.
He and John had moved from the precinct and commandeered a conference room at Petersen headquarters. Much easier to spread out and go through the original case file without the curious stares of John’s co-workers. The badge created a tight-knit band of brothers and sisters. John didn’t want to burn bridges, but even he’d seen over the past two days that conclusions may have been formed much too quickly.
Watching all the body cam footage from the crime scene had been brutal. So much blood. Caitlyn’s butchered body. All the fight gone as she lay crumpled at her killer’s feet.
Lifeless eyes … staring but unseeing.
Scenes like that angered cops. No matter how neutral they tried to be, they were human. And finding her blood-covered boyfriend hovering over her added fuel to the volatile emotions of the moment. Add in the flowers and the card, her father’s ultimatum, the conveniently stolen cell phone.
For them, it all fit. Case closed.
Planting his elbows on the table, Colton rubbed his temples with his fingers.
John looked up from the trial transcript in his hand. “Hangin’ in there?”
“Barely. Y’all really need to work on your penmanship.”
“That’s a fact. I can hardly read my own notes sometimes. That’s why it took me so long to find the ones about the burned car.” He pursed his lips and shook his head. “The fact a victim had to remind me about my own lead makes me nuts.”
Colton chuckled. “Riley’s nothing if not gracious. She told you not to worry about it. So, don’t worry about it.” He gestured over the avalanche of paperwork, files, notebooks, and photos strewn across the table. “This is a lot of stuff to keep track of. The fact you forgot one thing isn’t a big deal.”
“I should’ve remembered,” John muttered.
“Regardless, I wish the HR manager at the assisted living facility could’ve told us more about Everett.”
“Other than how great he was with the residents and how much they missed him.”
“Right? Most bosses would be angry about an employee who simply quit coming to work, and she was just hoping he was okay.”
“But we also got information that adds more bricks to the case we’re building against him.”
Colton stood and stretched his arms over his head before leaning against the whiteboard on the wall where they’d scrawled their notes outlining the case. “We know he workedthere at the time the car was boosted, and he knew the owner. It was common knowledge the elderly man rarely left the facility, and his car sat there mostly unused. Would’ve been easy for Everett to lift the car keys while the guy was out of his room.”
John dropped his pen on the table and sat back with his hands clasped behind his head. “And he stopped coming into work a month ago. The same time as Riley’s attempted kidnapping.”
“And the car was incinerated. He must’ve seen a clip on the news that it had been identified as stolen. Was aware y’all had traced the VIN.”
With a heavy sigh, John lowered his arms. “Too bad the address they had for him didn’t pan out. We have all thesethingspointing right to him, but he’s a ghost. Where is this guy?”
“Good question.”
Colton took his seat again and picked up the next batch of notes. The investigator who interviewed the florist the day following the killing. The detective had jotted down the florist’s name, the name of the shop, the time the order came in the day before, the card number it was charged to, name on the order, and time the customer walked into the shop to pick up the arrangement.
“Five-fifty-two,” he mumbled, reading through the chicken scratch on the page. “Card had already been written out. Slight of face but bulkier in build, tall, probably six-foot two or thereabouts, blue suit, sunglasses, dark hair.”
