“No, Jim Woolf is connected to all the victims,” Chase corrected. “He’s taken every one of their pictures for his damn paper. He gets all these leads handed to him on a silver platter. The perp has to know we’re watching Woolf. Why does he continue to feed him leads if he knows Woolf’s going to be followed by us?” Chase lifted his brows. “Unless he wants us to watch Woolf.”
“He sent Jim to his own sister’s grave,” Ed said. “Pretty powerful message.”
“This guy went to a lot of trouble to get Lisa Woolf,” Daniel said thoughtfully. “She was a student at the university up in Athens. He had to either drive up there or lure her here. I’ve requested her phone records and I called the Athens field office. They’re going to search her apartment and interview her friends. Maybe somebody saw him following her last night.”
Chase pointed to the Review. “I want to know how Woolf got this picture. His tail said Woolf was in the newspaper office from nine till two last night. How did Woolf get to Atlanta to snap this photo of Romney? He must have sent someone else.”
“He wouldn’t have trusted just anybody,” Daniel said. “I’m betting good old Marianne had something to do with it. That’s Jim’s wife. Of course, Jim neglected to mention that when he was unburdening his soul.”
Ed was still frowning at the paper. “Wait. APD didn’t make a positive ID until about five this morning, after they’d gotten the body cleaned up at the morgue. Woolf had to have this story by press time. Even on a diddly paper like the Review, that’s gotta be around midnight. I mean, the papers are hittin’ Dutton doorsteps by six.”
Daniel remembered the paperboy’s delivery the morning before as he and Alex still lay on her sofa, panting and trembling, and felt his cheeks heat. “Right at five-thirty,” he agreed. “So Jim Woolf somehow knew who Romney was before the cops did. That’s more than a tip. That could be conspiracy.”
“You’re right,” Chase said. “Let’s pick him up. Maybe the threat of real jail will loosen his tongue a little more. Daniel, you’ll talk to this Marianne woman?”
“As soon as we’re done. Have we heard from Koenig and Hatton?”
Chase nodded. “Koenig called in about an hour and a half ago. He said they’d looked all night but couldn’t find Crighton. They were going to hit the shelters during breakfast, then call it a night and go home and sleep and try again tonight.”
“Damn.” Daniel squared his jaw. “I was really hoping to arrest that slimy SOB.”
“I watched the tape we made of Alex and McCrady again last night,” Ed said, “and I was thinking. Alex remembered Crighton saying that Alicia ‘asked for it with her short shorts.’ Sounds like he might have known about the rape.”
“You’re right,” Daniel said. “He said Wade didn’t kill Alicia, but of course he would. If Wade raped Alicia, that was probably what he confessed to Reverend Beardsley before he died, and maybe what he wrote in the letters to Bailey and Crighton.”
“I checked up on Crighton,” Luke said. “After Alicia died and Crighton killed Alex’s mother, Crighton went downhill fast. He had a good job before, but he’s been MIA for almost thirteen years. No income taxes, no record of credit cards. Nothing.”
“Instead he’s been living on the streets playing the flute for quarters,” Daniel said with contempt. “And beating up poor old nuns.”
“Oh.” Ed shook his head hard. “Flute. I was looking at the inventory of stuff we found at Bailey’s house and it included one empty flute case. It looked really old, like it hadn’t been used in years. Huge dust buildup in the case crevices and hinges, but the inside was clean, like it had just been opened. Did Bailey play the flute, too?”
Daniel frowned. “I would’ve thought Alex would have mentioned that right away. I’ll ask her.”
“Did you tell her about the hair?” Chase asked.
“Yeah, I did. On the way to the scene this morning I asked her what happened to all of Alicia’s stuff. She said her aunt Kim had it shipped to Ohio and the boxes have been in storage ever since. But she also said that she and Bailey and Alicia shared clothes and makeup and hairbrushes, and Bailey and Alicia were sharing a bedroom at the time because Alicia was mad at Alex about something. That hair could still have come from Bailey’s house recently.”
“I don’t think so,” Ed said. “If it had been tangled in a brush all this time, it would be kinked, but it’s straight-and free of dust. It’s been kept sealed up.”
“A souvenir of the rape,” Chase said slowly. “Damn.”
“And, uh, there is one other thing.” Ed put a plastic bag on the table.
Daniel held it up to the light. “A ring with a blue stone. Where did you find this?”
“In the bedroom Alex told us used to be hers, right under the window.”
“She stared at her hands when Gary Fulmore talked about the ring Alicia wore,” Daniel said quietly. “Gary said it was on Alicia’s hand when he wrapped her up, but Wanda in the sheriff’s office said they found it in Fulmore’s pocket.”
“If the ring was on her finger when she was discovered, the Dutton sheriff’s office tampered with evidence,” Chase said, just as quietly.
Daniel sighed. “I know. We need to know if that ring was on her finger when she was found or not. I’m going down to Dutton this morning to talk to Garth and his uncle about Sean Romney’s death. I’ll stop by and talk to the Porter boys while I’m there. They found Alicia. I’ll see if I can find out if they remember a ring. Luke, will you process all the names Leigh got from the yearbooks?”
Luke looked at the printouts their clerk had produced the day before with a grimace. “Where do you want me to start?”
“For now, focus on the public school where Simon, Wade, and Rhett graduated and the private school where Garth and I graduated. See if any of them have records or histories of violent behavior. See if any of them have been… I don’t know, involved in anything weird.”
Luke gave him a dubious look. “Weird. Okay.”
“And I’ll finish calling all the potential targets I didn’t talk to yesterday,” Chase said with a sigh. “Maybe we can head him off at the pass before he bags another one.”
Dutton, Thursday, February 1, 8:35 a.m.
He stepped onto his front porch, bone-tired after another night of watching over Kate. He’d actually fallen asleep sometime after 4:00 a.m. When he’d woken, the sun was shining and Kate was pulling out of her driveway to go to work. She’d nearly seen him, and then he would have had to explain. Given the three dead women, he could probably just say he was worried, but Kate was too smart for that. She’d suspect more.
This had to be over soon. One way or the other. His wife met him at the door, her eyes red from weeping, and his heart started to race. “What happened?”
“Your uncle Rob’s here. He’s been waiting for you since six. Sean’s dead.”
“What? Sean’s dead? When? How?”
She looked at him, her lips trembling. “Who did you expect to be dead?”
He hung his head, too exhausted to think. “Kate.”
She let out a quiet breath. “Rob’s in the library.”
His uncle sat by the window, his face gray and haggard. “Where have you been?”
He took the chair next to Rob. “Watching over Kate. What happened?”
“They found him in an alley.” His voice broke. “They couldn’t even identify him at first. There was too much blood on his face. The police said they’d been looking for Sean, that they’d put his picture on the news. My grandson, on the news.”
“Why were they looking for him?”