“Maybe not, actually. Like you said, his political future depends on this case. Your list of possible suspects sounds right on.” Graden was silent for a moment. “Where are you right now?” I told him. “And where’s the bug?” I told him. “Just leave it there for now and obviously don’t say anything you wouldn’t want everyone to hear. I’m sending someone over there to check it out. For now, I don’t want whoever planted that thing to know we’re onto them. I’m going to assign a detective.”
“Then you want me to do what? Nothing?”
“As impossible as that is for you. Our planter has to be someone with access to your office, so you can’t even talk about this over there. Not to anyone.”
“Even Eric?”
“Even Eric. For now, the fewer people who know about this, the better. Just let me handle this, okay?” I was silent. Doing nothing really didn’t work for me. “Rachel? I’m not kidding. Any move you make could screw things up.”
I sighed. “Okay, okay, I get it.”
I ended the call and stared out through the bars at the traffic. My world was a study in insanity. Two murderers on the loose and now someone was bugging my office. What was next? Alien invasion?
There was only one thing to do. Go back to work. I had planned to get Eric’s input on the case, but there was so much I couldn’t share, I didn’t feel comfortable talking to him now. I took the back hallway to avoid passing his office and ran to catch an elevator. I’d just stepped inside when my cell phone rang. It was Bailey. “What’s up?”
Bailey huffed. A sign she was righteously pissed. “You won’t friggin’ believe this-”
“Hang on, let me get to a safe place.”
I could’ve told her to hold off till I got to the station, but her tone unnerved me. I didn’t want to wait.
40
When the elevator bounced to a stop at the ground floor, I snaked my way through the crowd, out to the stairway behind the courthouse. “Okay, go.”
“You won’t believe that little punk Evan. He’s been tweeting that we’ve been harassing him-”
“What? Are you kidding me?”
“According to him, he keeps telling us he doesn’t know anything and we just keep pressuring him. And the best part? The press just got wind of it.”
Damn. Just what we needed-bad press. “Stand by for the four o’clock news. You guys doing another presser today?”
“Yeah. And we’re putting out that Shane Dolan is a ‘person of interest.’ That’s a bigger deal, so maybe Evan’s little hissy fit will fly under the radar. Either way, it’s going to be crazy here. Mind if I come over there?”
“No. You stay put. I’m on my way over.”
“Uh, okay.”
I could tell she knew something was up. I hurried over to the station and found Bailey at her desk. “Mind if we use the interview room?”
She looked puzzled, but led me to the nearest room and closed the door. “What’s going on?”
I told her about the bug.
She slammed her hand down on the table. “Are you friggin’ kidding me? What’s next?”
“No. Do not ask that question, okay?” I rubbed my aching neck. “But there’s nothing we can do. Graden’s on it and we’ve got bigger fish to fry. Speaking of which, what’s the deal with Evan? I get that he might be upset, but why on earth would he tweet that crap?”
We walked out of the interview room and headed to Bailey’s desk.
“Who the hell knows?” Bailey said. “My guess? Evan’s world blew up on him when he found out his buddy was a psycho killer. So now, anything’s possible.”
“And he’s using the tweets to tell Logan he’s not talking so-”
“So Logan won’t feel the need to come back and shut him up. That’s my take.”
Which might not be that crazy, now that I thought about it. “From Logan’s point of view, all he knows is we’ve named him as a person of interest. As far as he knows, no one could identify him. He was covered from head to toe. He doesn’t know we spotted his tattoo on the video. So who could’ve pointed the finger at him?”
“The last person he spoke to who’s still alive,” Bailey said. “Which seems to be Evan.”
“I’m not saying I believe Logan would risk coming after him. But I do get why Evan might be worried about it. We’ve got someone sitting on Evan’s place, don’t we?”
“We’ve got extra patrol, but it’ll take some doing to get a car permanently stationed. We’re stretched pretty thin.”
Graden had gotten the chief to discreetly approve extra details for malls, government buildings, and some of the bigger venues around the city. It was a shot in the dark, but we had to do something. Getting an extra body assigned to one house on a full-time basis when there was no specific threat would’ve been hard under the best of circumstances-and these were the worst.
“I got hold of the shrinkers this morning,” Bailey said. “They should be here any minute. And I had Nick print out all of Logan’s emails.” Bailey leaned in, her voice low. “We’re going to tell them about the letter, right?”
I’d given this some thought. “I’d like to, but our conversations with the shrinks aren’t privileged-”
“Jeez, don’t you think they’d be willing to keep this under wraps?”
“They’re probably cool, but we don’t know for sure. If we’re wrong and they sound the alarm, there’ll be riots in the streets.” Bailey gave a tight-lipped nod. “Let’s at least hold off until we can talk to Graden about it again.”
“Okay, but the sooner the better.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “I’m going to run to the snack bar.” When the going gets tough, the tough pound chocolate. “Want anything?”
Bailey opted for a Snickers. I commended her good taste. I went for the Look! bar. I’d just gotten back when Nick sauntered over to Bailey’s desk, wearing his usual cowboy boots and sexy smile. He eyed the candy. “Not that y’all need to get any sweeter, but those are some fine choices.” He handed me a batch of pages. “Didn’t find too many emails from Logan, and they only go back about ten months. That when they met?” I nodded. “Nothing remarkable crime-wise, but there you go.”
“What about Otis’s laptop?” Bailey asked. “Anything?”
“Not so far. Kid was a major gamer, but from what I’ve seen, his guns were all digital. And not all that much correspondence with Logan.”
“So no weird writings?” I asked. Nick shook his head. “What about other pictures?”
“None that we care about. Some old ones of him and some junior high buddies at a paintball party. That’s about as ‘hot’ as it gets.”
“And nothing of interest on Logan’s laptop, I take it?” Bailey asked.
“Nope. I printed out all his emails for the past year, though, just to show you.” He handed Bailey a thick stack of paper. “Got some from Evan, a few from Caleb and a kid named Kenny. But it was all just routine boy stuff. Girls, school, movies, junk like that.”
We thanked Nick. He tipped an imaginary cowboy hat and left. A few minutes later, Drs. Malloy and Shelby showed up. Bailey had managed to snag us a small conference room in a private corner of the building.
“I wanted to ask you a couple of questions about Evan.” I told them about Evan’s encounter with Logan the morning of the shooting, his reaction to the photo of Shane, and his recent tweeting that we’d been harassing him. I gave them Bailey’s theory. “Do you think he’s trying to show Logan he’s not a threat?”
Michael Malloy nodded. “Seems likely. And probably your second suspect as well. Bailey’s right about his world being rocked. If a buddy he trusted can turn out to be a murderer, especially on this scale, then anything’s possible.”
“And remember, Evan was in that gym too,” Jenny said. “He’s lucky to be alive, and he knows it. I agree with your assessment of Logan’s point of view. From his standpoint, Evan might well appear to be his number one threat. Does that mean I think he would go after Evan? No. It’s too big a risk. And it’s not worth it. Evan’s information wouldn’t put Logan away. And much as I understand why Evan might be frightened by the revelation that Logan has teamed up with someone who looks as threatening as Shane, Evan’s certainly no threat to Shane. He seemed to be truthful when he said he didn’t know him?”