Cut and Run(70)

“I’m not suggesting anything.”

A knock on the door had PJ and Hayden rising as a woman in her late fifties with shoulder-length graying hair appeared. She nodded to Hayden but moved quickly to Slater and handed him an iPad. “I’ve pulled up his file. This is all we have, sir.”

“Thank you, Sharon.” PJ sat back down and scrolled through the papers, not saying a word until Sharon closed the door behind her. “I don’t want you to think that Slater and McIntyre isn’t cooperative. But we are bound by ethics and laws.”

“Understood. Just giving you a heads-up that we’ll be circling back on this matter. What about Garnet? There shouldn’t be any restrictions to talking about former employees.”

“No, of course not.” PJ studied the information Sharon had brought him. “Garnet was hired in 1985 as a private investigator. Back then the firm was small and had only a couple of attorneys other than my father and Russell. This day and age, I wouldn’t work directly with a private investigator, but in those days, my father and Russell would have.”

Hayden had searched PJ Slater on the Internet and learned he’d been born in 1990. He was the only child of Peter and Margaret Slater and according to the records was not adopted. “Do you have a list of cases Garnet investigated for the firm?”

That thousand-watt smile returned. “And we are right back to attorney-client privilege. Our private investigators often handle very delicate information that our clients would not expect us to ever reveal, even after forty years. I can tell you according to this printout that he handled dozens of cases. Why is Garnet so important to you now?”

“His name came up in an investigation, and we plan to interview him later today.” Hayden always judiciously balanced how much to tell as well as withhold during an interview. Sometimes he had to give a little information to prime the pumps. “Have you heard the name Paige Sheldon?”

“I did hear the Sheldon name. Her story was in the news recently. She’s missing, I think. Do you think Mr. Garnet is associated with the Sheldon case?”

“We don’t know for sure yet, but considering this girl is still alive and about to deliver a baby, we want to find her as quickly as we can.”

PJ glanced at his iPad screen. “As our firm has had no dealings with Danny Garnet in almost thirty years, there’s not much I can do for you, Captain. And how do you know these young women didn’t simply move on to greener pastures? They all could be alive and well in another part of the country and just be living under the radar.”

Hayden decided to toss Slater a little more information. “The thing is, Mr. Slater, I’ve got three Jane Does in the morgue right now. Their bodies are nothing but bones, and it’s clear they’ve been dead for at least thirty years.”

PJ’s expression didn’t change. “Do you know for a fact that the three sets of remains belong to Jones, Martin, and Saunders?”

“I won’t know until DNA testing is complete,” he said.

“And Faith must know about this discovery?” PJ asked.

“She does.”

PJ drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “I didn’t realize this was a murder investigation.”

“I don’t like to use murder as part of my opening line. Has a tendency to put people on edge,” Hayden offered.

“I can see why. And you think because the former Slater and McIntyre represented these women, someone here might have had a hand in their deaths?”

“Begs the question, don’t you think?”

“Garnet did work for the firm during that time frame, but he could have been acting on his own.”

“Possibly. And the answer might be as simple as that, but you did say in the firm’s first years McIntyre and your father worked with Garnet. And you told Faith Josie Jones appeared in Russell McIntyre’s datebook multiple times during the time in question.”

“You really don’t think respectable men like my father and Russell would do something as heinous as kidnap three girls and murder them?” Slater asked.

A smile played at the corner of Hayden’s lips as he shook his head. “I learned a long time ago the capacity for evil stretches across all economic and social bounds.”

“My father and Russell did a good bit of pro bono work in the early years as a way of giving back to the community. Maybe by representing these women we unwittingly put them in Garnet’s path. How would we have control over what he did on his own time?”

“Does it say Garnet was a felon in his files?” Hayden asked.

“It says his offenses were nonviolent, nor were they felonies. My father and mother have always believed in second chances.”

Funny he should say second chances, the name of Garnet’s bar. “Ever met a Jack Crow?”

“No,” Slater said.

“What about Sam Delany?”

“We can keep playing do-you-know, but the fact is I wasn’t even born when these women disappeared, and since my father and his partner are dead, there is not much I can do for you.”

“Faith said you checked McIntyre’s datebooks and found Josie. I suggest you do the same for the other girls. I also suggest you read up on their files and find out who represented them.”

“Most of Russell’s records were seized during Mr. McIntyre’s federal investigation. I was lucky to find the datebooks.”