Paranoid(104)

“Hey, what’s up?” she asked, breathing hard, the pounding beat of Guns N’ Roses suddenly silenced.

“Thought I’d pull you in.”

“On what?”

“Nate Moretti’s missing. He’s—”

“Annessa Cooper, your victim’s lover, yeah, I know.”

“He’s missing. At least we think so.” Then he explained about Nate Moretti calling in sick and not being at home, not answering his phone.

“You think he’s running?”

“Possibly.”

“Or ended up a victim, too. In the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“Again, possibly. I’m on my way to the station. To interview the father. He was also connected to the Luke Hollander homicide.”

She made a deprecating noise. “You still trying to link the two? Connecting nonexistent dots?”

“More like filling in very existent blanks.”

“Okay, I’ll see you there.” She clicked off and stopped pedaling, and caught a disparaging glance from a toned forty-year-old guy on a nearby bike. Oh, get over your bad self, she thought, as she swiped her face with the towel draped around her neck.

So cell phones were off limits in the gym, so what? Ignoring the pinched-faced woman in her perfectly matched workout wear, Kayleigh half jogged to the showers, where she stripped, stepped under the hot spray, turned the temperature to cold, then turned off the water. Seconds later she’d toweled off. She was dressed and out of the gym in less than five minutes from the time Cade’s call had come in. No makeup, wet hair starting to curl despite being swept back in a quick ponytail.

Good enough.

On her way to Edgewater, she thought about Nate Moretti being MIA.

She’d seen the texts, knew he’d been planning to meet Annessa at the school.

Had he bailed?

Had something come up?

Or had he made the tryst and been scared off?

Or become another victim himself?

“Time will tell,” she said aloud as she drove along the highway skirting the river. As she approached Edgewater, she saw the old cannery, a blackened building rising out of the mist that had settled over the Columbia, the decrepit old building where, Cade seemed to think, all the horror had started twenty years before.

“Really?” she said aloud and turned her attention to the road again, where the semi she was following slowed as it entered the city limits. She peeled off at the next corner and wound her way through the business district and pulled into the small lot next to the police station.

Inside she found Cade in an interview room with a man and a woman, both of whom looked tense and unhappy, but dressed as if they belonged to some country club set. He was slim and tanned with a full head of hair just starting to turn gray, she as trim as he, her red hair cut short and spiky, a few freckles visible, her eyes wide with worry, her lips trembling slightly.

“Detective O’Meara,” he said, “this is Dr. and Mrs. Moretti, parents of Nathan Moretti. Detective O’Meara is with the sheriff’s office and she’s the detective in charge of the Violet Sperry homicide. There’s a chance the murders of Annessa Cooper and Violet Sperry are connected, so I asked her to sit in on the interview. Okay with you?”

“Yes, yes, whatever. Just tell me you’ve found Nathan,” Mrs. Moretti said. She sat in a chair next to her husband’s, holding his hand, looking frightened out of her mind.

“Not yet. But we know that he intended to meet Annessa Cooper; text messages were sent between them and we just confirmed that your son’s car was parked in The Right Spot’s lot that night.”

“Oh, dear God.” Mrs. Moretti’s voice was high and tight.

“But it was gone later.”

She blinked and Cade started asking questions: Did either of them know that their son was involved with Annessa Cooper?

They did not.

Did they have any idea where he may have gone?

Again, the answer was no. “We started calling all of his friends and, well, his work again, anyone we could think of, but no one had seen him since yesterday,” Dr. Moretti said. “The last person to have seen him that we know of was Will Hart, his employee.”

“I—I just don’t understand,” Nate’s mother squeaked, and while she tried to hold herself together they told them what they knew about their son, that he’d never followed in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor, though Lord knew he was smart enough; that he’d never settled down with one girl; that he had a “bit” of a wild streak; and that they had no idea where he might be.

Eventually the two were interviewed separately and Kayleigh sat in on both conversations, but she learned nothing more of importance while she spoke with Nate’s obviously distraught mother and worried father. Kayleigh came away from the interviews feeling as if she’d learned nothing more about Nate Moretti’s disappearance or the murders of Violet Sperry and Annessa Cooper.

*

“There was one last thing I wanted to talk to you about,” Cade said as he and Richard Moretti were alone in the interview room. The doctor’s wife, done with her private interview, had asked to use the restroom, Voss had left to show her the way, and Kayleigh had taken a call and already left.

Leaving Cade alone with the doctor.

“What’s that?” Moretti asked, standing near the door, jangling the keys in his pocket.