“Around ten. He worked us for hours. It was dark by the time we left.”
No wonder the kid looked bleary-eyed and bruised.
“He wants the state championship this year.” Sneering toward the garage, Mike muttered, “It’s my ticket outta this hellhole.”
“The coach will confirm that?”
“Sure. We never left the field. We got five-minute piss breaks and ten for lunch. That was it.”
The school was a good distance from her house. So if the coach and other players backed up his story, it eliminated Mike as the one who’d killed the dog. She wasn’t stupid enough to take his word for it, but the alibi was easily checked, so she had to assume he was telling the truth. A weight lifted off her shoulders that she hadn’t said anything to his dad about the real reason for her visit. “Okay.”
“Are we done?” He looked up and down the street, as if worried some of his thug buddies would see him cooperating with the cops.
“No.” Letting him know she was aware he’d tried to buy beer at Dick’s that March night when Lisa had disappeared, she asked, “Do you remember that night?”
He put his hands up, palms out. “Hey, he didn’t sell me any. And I wasn’t the only one trying it, not by a long shot.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything, and I’m not busting your chops about trying to buy beer. I just want to know if you saw anything. Did you hang around outside, or come back after you got thrown out? See anyone suspicious in the parking lot who might have been paying particular attention to Lisa?”
Mike, finally realizing she truly was here for another reason, crossed his arms. “Mitch hauled my ass home and dumped me in the driveway at around midnight.”
Mitch had been at the tavern? The bar owner had said he’d had the teen thrown out; he just hadn’t mentioned who had done the throwing.
Why hadn’t her trusted deputy mentioned it? Maybe at first, when everybody had thought Lisa had skipped town, he hadn’t thought it relevant. But now, knowing she was murdered, he should absolutely have said something.
“What did you do afterward?” she asked, not wanting Mike to realize how stunned she was by the tidbit he’d inadvertently provided.
“Nothin’. Stayed home. Isn’t that what all nice, wholesome teenagers are supposed to do?”
He wouldn’t know a wholesome teenager if he landed on one.
She wasn’t sure she believed him. Mike’s cocky attitude was back again, now that his father was out of earshot and he’d realized Stacey wasn’t going to rat him out for the crap he’d pulled at the doughnut shop. Frankly, she wondered why he’d been worried. From what she knew about Mr. Flanagan, he’d probably have some kind of that’s-my-boy macho reaction to the news that his kid had been leading a gang of boys in frightening a teenage girl. Mr. Flanagan was the type who’d laugh if his sons beat up other kids, who’d had them out hunting out of season by the age of four, who’d been horrified when Mitch had decided to be a cop. Father of the year.
Mike suddenly smiled. A nasty, knowing smile. “You want to know what was up with Lisa? Man, that girl was drunk as shit, dancing with every guy like she’d give it up right there on one of the pool tables. My dick of a brother tried to get her to leave with us, but she laughed in his face. He sure was pissed.”
She kept her face blank. Mitch hadn’t just been there; he hadn’t merely seen Lisa in passing. He’d interacted with her. And nobody at the tavern had thought to mention that.
Could be they figured she already knew, since Mitch worked for her. Or could be they were scared to mention it, knowing how highly Stacey thought of her chief deputy.
Whatever the reason, she needed to find out exactly what had happened between Mitch and Lisa-both that night, and before it.
Damn. Yet another name to add to her list of people to question. Mitch, her brother, his best buddy. That list was growing more personal by the minute.
And more disturbing.
11
From all reports, Amber Torrington had been a snotty, mean-spirited teen, liked only by her parents, because they had to, and by her boyfriend, because she put out.
Maybe because she was only missing, not officially dead, those who knew her felt free to speak badly about her. Her so-called friends, her boss at the clothing shop, the security guard who’d heard her shouting at her boss from five stores away-they’d all sung a familiar refrain. Spoiled brat, vicious temper. Not generally liked.
Dean tucked each bit of information away as he accompanied the local police conducting interviews Sunday. Each confirmation of what she’d been like convinced him that Amber’s personality was significant to the investigation. The reason niggled at the back of his brain.
“Girl’s address says the family’s rich. Once again, he didn’t make any effort to grab somebody who wouldn’t be missed,” Mulrooney commented as they walked toward the mall security office. Stokes strode on the other side of him, carrying an evidence bag containing the spent.22 shell casings they’d found in the tree line skirting the upscale shopping mecca. She would take them back to D.C. for analysis. None of them had any doubt they’d prove to be from the same rifle as the third case, when the cameras had also been shot out.
“No, he didn’t,” Dean muttered. “Or to even pick up her phone, or move her car.”
“Either he was in a hurry, or he thought he was covered by shooting out the cameras and overhead lights.” Out of shape, Mulrooney huffed a little as the three of them strode through the quiet mall, which was pretty empty on this summer Sunday afternoon. Well, empty except for the media crews busily sniffing for any dirt and broadcasting the slightest unconfirmed detail to the world.
“He couldn’t count on having a lot of time for the guards to check out the department store alarm,” Dean said. The one the unsub had, undoubtedly, caused.
Jackie finished his thought. “Or even that they’d all go. One of them might very well have done his damn job and stayed behind.”
Funny how quickly the three of them had landed on the same page. They had fallen into an immediate rhythm on this, their first major case. Every idea was considered, its merits debated, all with professional respect it had taken years to earn in ViCAP. Blackstone’s CATs were already becoming a team, right down to Lily and Brandon, whose phones had to be growing out of their ears by now with all the phone calls they’d shared.
Mulrooney said, “If one had stayed behind, maybe he’d have noticed the feeds from the other end of the mall going out one by one and come to investigate before the unsub had time to subdue Amber.”
Possible. But the guy had worked fast. And he was an excellent shot.
Made him wonder if Stan Freed owned a rifle. Made him doubly wonder just what kind of weapons Warren Lee kept stockpiled out at his place.
“You notice how he picked a real piece of work this time?” Mulrooney asked.
“Uh-huh.” He’d definitely noticed. And suddenly the detail that had been nagging at the back of his brain clicked in. He stopped suddenly, right in the middle of the mall. “In the other cases, Jackie, you said the interviews on the previous victims all hinted that they were difficult.”
Jackie nodded. “Yeah. They were headstrong. Which I took to mean bitchy.”
Just like Amber. There was the connection. “We’ve been thinking they were different from Lisa only because of their financial and social situations, not their personalities.”
Mulrooney saw, too. “Meaning he must have known what each of them was like.”
Dean nodded. “Yes. But how would he know that about them?”
“Unless he’d been studying them.”
Bingo.
They knew that in another case a friend had come forward about a strange man watching the victim weeks before she’d disappeared. They’d already suspected he had to have picked out his victims in advance based on proximity and circumstance. Now they knew it was more than that.