Dead in Her Tracks (Rogue Winter #2)(22)

“Because Vanessa’s murderer might be dead. Bob’s is not.”





CHAPTER TEN





Later that day Zane tapped a pencil on his desk and stared out the window.

Nothing was happening. He didn’t have a suspect for Bob Fletcher’s death, and he didn’t have proof that Bob had killed Vanessa Phillips.

What have I missed?

The multiple long hairs in the back of Bob’s vehicle disturbed him. There was no good reason for hair to be there unless he had hauled the bodies.

Where did he take the other women?

Zane had more questions than answers. His mind kept returning to the cash at Bob’s house. Why would someone break in and not steal the money? Had they run out of time? Or had they been looking for something specific and left as soon as it was found?

He’d searched the house expecting to find oxy. Hank had said he was an abuser, but he and Stevie hadn’t found a single pill of the drug left in the house, and there had been that bottle of Suboxone. Was the lack of oxy a sign he’d cleaned up his act or an indication that someone had emptied his stash?

Zane didn’t know.

At five o’clock Stevie stuck her head in his office. “I’m out of here. I’m going to stop by Charlene Stand’s home first. She called because—”

“She locked herself out of the house again,” Zane finished. “I thought you made her a spare key to stash under a rock or something.”

“I did. She says she used it last week and forgot to put it back.”

“I think she’s the only resident that locks all her doors and windows every time she steps outside.” Zane shook his head. He’d been trying to get Solitude residents to lock up occasionally, but Charlene took it to extremes. She worried someone would steal her collection of porcelain figurines. Zane had been in her home and her prized collection creeped him out. Hundreds of pastel figures of children with huge sad eyes. He’d felt he was in a horror movie where mobs of depressed children stared at him right before they rushed in and killed him.

“Are you going to pick the lock again?” Zane asked.

“Nope.” Stevie held up a key. “Did you think I’d give her all the spare keys?”

He laughed and gave her a quick kiss goodbye. “I’ll be home by seven.”

“I’ll be waiting with Magic. And dinner.”

Zane slumped back into his chair. Knowing Stevie had left made the office feel empty. He could hear Sheila clanking cups as she straightened up the coffee area before she left too.

He opened the autopsy report on Bob Fletcher for the tenth time. There had to be something in it to indicate who’d killed the man. The killer had had a very short window of time to get into the office . . . thirty seconds, according to Kenny. But he would have had plenty of time alone with Bob once Kenny had come back and locked the office door. Zane wondered if their suspect had left the police department unlocked on purpose when he left. A way to show he’d breezed in and out without a sweat. The killer could have sat and talked to Bob for quite a while, knowing the rest of them would be focused on the gruesome discovery of Vanessa Phillips’s body at the motel.

Was that why Vanessa had been left for them to find? As a decoy to empty out the police station? So he could silence Bob? But none of the other missing women had been found. Leaving Vanessa to be discovered had been a big risk . . . a huge risk. Someone must have been very confident the police would believe Bob had killed her. Or else someone was very, very cocky.

Often the smartest criminals believe they’re untouchable, especially when they’ve successfully gotten away with making women vanish, and that’s when they make their first egotistical mistake.

Killing Bob had been this criminal’s second.

Getting into Bob’s cell wouldn’t have been a problem for the killer. A backup set of keys sat in Sheila’s top desk drawer with the other department keys. Trial and error would have taken under a minute.

Everything indicated that Bob had known his killer. He’d given Bob a drug to counteract his withdrawal symptoms—and Bob had accepted it. There were virtually no signs of a struggle in the cell, indicating Bob hadn’t minded that someone had walked behind him at one point.

Zane closed his eyes, imagining the scene. The killer would have stood behind Bob as he sat on the chair in the cell, grabbed his head, clamped it to his own abdomen, and then struck with the knife. One long gash, Hank had said. Someone with no fear or hesitation.

Who’d do that?

Someone with some arm strength. Someone who had a degree of Bob’s trust. Someone with motive. And someone extremely confident he wouldn’t be caught.

Most motives came down to money, sex, or power.

Which would be the winner in Bob’s case?

Jake had Bob’s trust. He’d let Jake run his bar each time he went out of town. He’d supplied the man with oxy for two years . . . out of the goodness of his heart? Could Jake have been fooling everyone with his mourning for his boss? Or maybe the two of them had had an argument. Maybe Bob had cut off Jake’s oxy supply and it’d pushed him over the edge. Jake was physically suffering from his withdrawals. Men had killed for a lot less than the simple need for a fix.



Stevie pulled out of Charlene’s driveway and wondered how long Zane would stay at the office. Clearly the missing women were weighing heavily on his mind. She understood. Ever since they’d taken a step back and realized that Vanessa Phillips might be a small piece of a very large puzzle, Zane had been determined to solve it; she was too.