Читать книгу The Fifth to Die: A gripping, page-turner of a crime thriller - Джей Ди Баркер, J.D. Barker - Страница 28
ОглавлениеKloz gave his chair a push with his right foot and sent it spinning. “No shit? Sam couldn’t stop being a cop? Not exactly a news flash.”
Nash sat on the edge of the conference table, Sophie and Clair at the opposite end. “He should have told us.”
“It’s not like we could have covered for him,” Clair said. “Sounds like the captain didn’t even give you a chance.”
Nash pointed across the hall. “It’s those ass clowns over there.”
Kloz gave his chair another spin. “This has conspiracy written all over it.”
“What do you mean?” Nash asked.
“Someone higher up is covering their ass. We should be working directly with the feds on this. Instead, they scooped up the investigation and cut us out. In what world does that make sense? I’ll tell you — in a world where someone higher up wants to distance this department from the case.”
“Who? Dalton?”
“Maybe higher. The mayor was friends with Talbot. He took a lot of flak when that all went down. Then you got the press saying Sam let Bishop go . . .”
Clair threw a pen at him. “Sam didn’t let anyone go. He saved that girl.”
Kloz caught the pen and put it in his pocket. “We know that, but it’s a juicier story if he lets him go. The mayor’s bestie is a criminal, the lead detective lets the serial killer walk . . . it makes perfect sense for the feds to come in and lock everyone else out.”
Clair turned to Nash. “Do you think he’s in contact with Bishop?”
“Sam?”
“Yeah.”
Nash shrugged. “Dunno.”
“Would he do that?” Sophie asked. “Talk to that man on his own?”
Nash shrugged again. “He’s been playing things close to the vest since Heather died.”
“Who’s Heather?” Sophie asked.
Clair tilted her head. “You didn’t hear?”
Sophie shook her head.
“Sam’s wife was killed in a convenience store robbery a few weeks before all this went down with Bishop. He probably shouldn’t have been working, but he had been on 4MK since the beginning, so when we thought he died we had to bring him back in. 4MK was his case. They caught the guy who killed her, and then he escaped police custody. Bishop killed Talbot, Porter saved Emory, then he spent a little time in the hospital recuperating. When he got home, he found a box on his bed. Inside there was a note from Bishop and an ear belonging to the man who killed his wife. Bishop got him,” Clair explained.
“What did the note say?”
“Bishop asked Sam to help find his mother,” Nash told her.
“His mother? What does she have to do with this?”
Clair rolled her eyes. “We don’t have time for this right now. I’ll fill you in when we’re back in the car. We need to keep moving, figure out how to proceed without Sam.” She turned back to Nash. “What happened at the Reynoldses’ house?”
Nash loaded up the photos on his phone and slid it across the table to Clair and Sophie.
Kloz leaned in to get a better look. “The same guy who killed Ella Reynolds did this?”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Nash replied.
“But why?”
“That’s the million-dollar question.”
Sophie swiped back through the images. “That doesn’t make sense. If the unsub is targeting the Reynolds family, why would he take Lili Davies? They don’t know each other. There’s no connection.”
“There must be a connection, we just haven’t figured it out yet. What do we know about the father?” Clair asked.
Nash stood and went to the whiteboard. He wrote FLOYD REYNOLDS and underlined it, then wrote WIFE: LEEANN REYNOLDS under it. “He worked for UniMed America Healthcare, has for the past twelve years. Sold blanket insurance and health-care policies. According to his wife, he brings home about two hundred thousand a year before bonuses, and they have no debt aside from an American Express card they pay off every month.”
Klozowski whistled. “That’s some nice scratch. I’m clearly in the wrong line of work.”
“We have UniMed,” Sophie pointed out.
“They’re the number three provider in the state,” Nash told them before writing SIZE II WORK BOOT PRINT FOUND on the board under UNSUB.
“Where?” Sophie asked.
“On the back of the driver’s seat in the Reynoldses’ car. A Lexus LS. Looked like the unsub tried to wipe it away but must have been in a hurry. Sam thinks he put his foot there for leverage when he strangled the father.”
Kloz’s eyes turned toward the ceiling. “Size eleven would put him around seventy-one point five inches, about six feet tall.”
“How do you know that?” Sophie asked.
“The average person is six and a half times taller than their shoe size. Any smaller or larger and their feet are out of proportion with their body, which means they’d have trouble walking, standing, balancing,” Kloz replied.
“Huh.”
“Hang with me, and I’ll school you on all kinds of trivia.”
“No, thank you,” Sophie told him.
Clair said, “I’m not sure I buy the no-debt thing. Maybe they don’t have traditional debt, but what about something not so traditional, like gambling or something he may not have shared with the wife? If you owe the wrong person money, I can see them making an example out of Reynolds’s daughter.”
“They wouldn’t take him out, though,” Kloz said. “Do that, and there’s nobody left to pay.”
“What about the wife? Maybe she owes somebody, and they made examples out of her daughter and her husband,” Sophie said. “Women bet on the ponies too.”
“They have time for that between all the cooking and the cleaning and baby making?” Kloz said, raising his notepad to shield his face from flying pens.
He lowered the notepad a moment later to find Clair just staring at him. “You are such a douche-nozzle.”
Sophie was shaking her head at him. “I don’t like you much.”
Nash studied the board. “That’s actually a good point.”
“Thank you,” Kloz said, smiling triumphantly.
“Not you, asshat. Sophie,” Nash said. “Clair, ask Hosman to dig into their finances in case things are amiss in suburbia.”
“On it.”
“Is somebody watching the mother?” Klozowski asked.
Nash nodded. “We left two uniforms there to keep an eye on her and their little boy. There were also three news vans outside when I left. I don’t think they’ll get much alone time in the near future. Probably a good thing.”
Clair was flipping through the images of Reynolds on Nash’s phone again. “This doesn’t really feel like a collection hit. Those guys tend to work efficiently, a double tap to the head, no mixed signals. They don’t build snowmen or spend hours positioning a body under the ice just right. Whoever this is, they’re trying to send some kind of message.”
“They’re not afraid of getting caught, either,” Sophie said. “They’re spending a lot of time in visible places.”
Clair nodded. “Somebody with nothing to lose has no fear, no remorse, they just act. That makes this guy very dangerous.”
Nash drew a line between Ella Reynolds and Lili Davies. “These two are connected somehow.”
Klozowski’s phone buzzed, and he glanced down at the display. “We’ve got a make and model on the truck from the park footage. It’s a 2011 Toyota Tundra.”
“See if you can get a list of matches within a hundred-mile radius of the city.”
Klozowski was already tapping at his phone. “Yep.”
“Any luck enhancing the image of the driver?”
“Nope,” Klozowski replied. “I tried before I came down here. The camera is old and doesn’t have the resolution.”
Nash went back to the board, crossed out the completed items, and studied the remaining list of assignments. “This is getting long, and now we’re down a man.”
Kloz set down his phone and raised his hand.
“Yes, Kloz?” Nash said, pointing at him.
Klozowski grinned. “See what I did there? Remember when Bishop raised his hand? That’s a ‘callback.’”
“Do you have something to add?”
Kloz nodded. “Yes, sir. I can go out in the field. I need to run to that Starbucks anyway to tackle their video footage.”
Nash glanced up at the evidence board. “What about your other assignments?”
“I’m not running a one-man show upstairs. I’ve got staff. I’ll bring my laptop, and they can feed information to us as they get it,” Kloz said.
Nash nodded. “Done. Ladies, let’s divide and conquer. You take the art gallery. They should be open by now. Kloz and I will hit Starbucks and tackle some of these other items on the list. At this point, we’ve got to assume Lili is still alive. We need a break.”
Clair stood up and stretched. “Should someone check on Sam?”
“Nope,” Nash replied.
