Paranoid(99)

“I’ll be right there,” was the metallic response, and true to her word, she appeared in the doorway. As ever, she was dressed in a pantsuit, this one black, with a pink blouse and a scarf in hues of gray.

Cade posed the same question to her and her face pulled into a wrinkled knot of concentration. “I don’t think so, but my desk doesn’t face that direction, and even if it did, there aren’t any windows on that side of the building, at least not downstairs. You have to be on the upper floor to really see much because of the fence.” She shrugged. “Sorry.”

“No worries.”

“Anything else?” she asked Chuck. “If not, I’m going to take off. The kids and grandkids are coming over tonight. Pinochle, you know.” She brightened at the mention of her family.

“God, that’s right. It’s Tuesday, isn’t it? Sure. Go, go. That’s fine. I’m about out of here, too. I’ll lock up. Thanks, Doris.”

“Good night,” she said to her boss, then gave a nod to Cade and bustled out of the office.

“She’s retiring next year,” Chuck said thoughtfully. “She’ll be hard to replace.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“Guess so.” He finished his drink. “What about Rachel?” he asked. “Lila said she’s looking and I think she worked for an attorney in Astoria.”

“Years ago.”

“She’s good with computers.”

Cade wasn’t going to douse Rachel’s chances but it seemed more than a little incestuous to have his ex-wife working for his father.

“I’d see the grandkids more.”

“Maybe.”

“Worth a shot.”

“Give her a call,” Cade said, but didn’t expect Rachel would jump at the chance to work for her ex-father-in-law and Lila’s husband.

“Got anything else on your mind?” Chuck asked. “If not, I’d better get going, too. It’s family night at our house as well, but with Lila’s mood, it won’t be all that fun, let me tell you. And then there’s Lucas.” He pushed himself to his feet. “If it were up to me, I’d see that he went off to a four-year university, just like you and your brothers did, but Lila won’t hear of it and I don’t suppose the kid could get in on his grades.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I really thought Vale was a good influence on him. Too bad about that.”

“Yeah. Probably for the best. Let me know if you think of anything that you might have seen that’s out of the ordinary.”

“Will do,” his father promised, and as Cade walked to the door, he saw his father pour himself another drink and then reach for his putter again. In no hurry to go home.

*

Kayleigh was frustrated. Seated at her desk in the office, scrolling through the reports on her computer screen, only vaguely aware of the noise and activity of the station around her, she reread the interviews of everyone who knew, lived by, or was related to Violet Sperry. Nothing. She also studied the preliminary autopsy report, and found nothing new, nothing to work with.

The investigation was heading for a standstill.

She could feel it in her bones.

The neighbors had seen nothing. The victim, according to everyone, had no enemies. Her husband, Leonard, had an airtight alibi and no greedy children were around to be on the suspect list. Violet’s handgun was still missing, no one in the area had cameras that might have viewed a suspicious vehicle being driven or parked in the area, and so far there was no physical evidence collected at the crime scene—no blood that didn’t match the victim, no latent fingerprints, no discarded cigarette butt or gloves left in the bushes—and no evidence of any affair. No texts or phone calls to an unknown number.

All they had so far was the damned painter’s tape.

And, oh, another dead body, too, whose eyes had been taped over until the kids had come and tried to save her. Xander Vale’s prints were all over the wad of blue tape left at the scene, but he’d tried to rescue Annessa Cooper rather than kill her.

The two crimes had to be connected, the killer the same, but while Violet Sperry’s body had been left in a pool of her own blood from the fall that had broken her neck and cracked her skull, ribs, pelvis, both of her ulnae and radii, as well as her right fibula, Annessa Cooper had been carried and dragged from the spot where the attack had taken place near the doors of the school to the bell tower of the old chapel and hung from the long-forgotten ropes.

Why?

Why one and not the other?

Violet’s death had been fairly quick after a struggle. It could be the killer had planned to take her somewhere else, to display her as he had Annessa, to not murder her quickly, but let her suffer until she was found, but the fight had turned violent and deadly.

Annessa had been at the school to meet her lover, it seemed, according to the texts in her phone. The conversation had been with Nate Moretti, a classmate who had known both women, though he seemed to have no connection to Violet Sperry other than having gone to school with her way back when.

She bit her lip and thought, hearing some commotion in the hallway and a deputy swear about having to go and deal with traffic as someone had hit an elk. “Highway thirty, about six miles out of town, the animal died at the scene, the driver is okay, rescue on its way, traffic backing up. Shit.” It sounded like Claire Donahue had taken the call. “I hate this part of the job,” she was saying as her footsteps pounded a quick beat down the hallway. “Azure, are you coming with me? For the love of Mother Mary, I don’t know why that damned herd doesn’t stay down in Gearhart where it belongs!”