The Forgotten Widow

by Layne, Kennedy

  Kenna nodded her agreement, even though the thought of a serial killer stabbing women in their own home wasn’t exactly something one could prepare for in the grand scheme of things. Dean cleared his throat and pulled his hand away, almost as if he believed he’d crossed some imaginary line. He even stepped back to his original position where he was using the opposite counter to lean against.

  The sudden sound of a chainsaw could be heard from outside, causing her to startle slightly. It would only be a matter of time before Dean left for the station. She’d probably never hear from him again, either, which was odd considering they’d spent quite a few hours talking after he’d learned about what had leaked in the press. Mostly, they spoke about her life and her job. She’d figured out early on that he was very good at diverting questions away from himself, but she was now realizing just how good.

  Had he been in the military, gone to college, or both?

  The one question that had never even entered her mind was whether or not he was married. He wasn’t wearing a wedding band, but that didn’t mean a thing given his ability to keep intimate details of his life closed off from his professional life.

  “Sounds like my cue,” Dean said, lifting his coffee cup in salute when she wasn’t quite ready to see him to the door. He drained at least half the contents of his mug before pouring the rest down the kitchen drain. He rinsed his cup before setting it in the sink. There wasn’t one thing she could think of to delay the inevitable. “I’ll use the time the crew takes to dismantle that tree to brush off my car and warm up the interior for the drive into the sheriff’s station. We didn’t get the eight inches the meteorologists were calling for, but it came close. I do appreciate your hospitality, though.”

  “Of course,” Kenna replied with a strained smile. He was giving her no choice but to follow him to the door. She decided to take her coffee with her to say goodbye to her only reliable source of information, not that he’d been very forthcoming. He hadn’t been going to mention the roses that the serial killer had left behind at the scenes. Maybe she’d have better luck following the articles or podcast of that journalist who was no doubt on Dean’s hit list. “I’m just sorry that we lost power.”

  “I’ve slept in much colder and much less comfortable places.”

  Dean reached for his black dress coat that he’d hung up in her closet after they’d come inside last night. She was now ninety-nine percent certain that he’d served in the military after his comment. Once he made sure that the material fit perfectly over his suit jacket, he adjusted his matching scarf. She didn’t take offense over him wanting to leave in such a hurry, knowing that he had a lot on his plate.

  “If the crew takes longer than you thought they would to remove that tree, you’re more than welcome to come back inside to stay warm,” Kenna offered, unable to stop herself from shivering as he let in the cold from outside. She instinctively wrapped an arm around her waist while gripping her mug, wincing when the chainsaw emitted a high-pitched squeal as it tried to cut through the half-frozen branches. She raised her voice so that he would hear her over the noise. “And to enjoy another cup of coffee.”

  Dean nodded his appreciation and stepped outside. Kenna thought for sure that he would be knee-deep in snow. To her surprise, her small porch and entire walkway that led to her driveway was void of snow. He’d either asked the crew to shovel or he’d done so himself while she was sleeping.

  “Kenna?”

  She’d been so focused on her clear walkway that it had taken him saying her name two times to catch her attention. Before she could thank him for his thoughtfulness, he spoke the moment her gaze met his.

  “I’m serious about you taking precautions here,” Dean warned when there was a pause of silence from the rumbling chainsaw. He slipped his hands inside his pockets for warmth. The gusts of wind had lessened since last night, but not by much. “Don’t hesitate to call 911 if you feel something is wrong or out of place. It’s much better to err on the side of caution.”

  Before Kenna could reply, Dean turned on his immaculate dress shoes and walked down the pristine path void of snow or ice. She’d wanted to tell him how much she appreciated his kind gesture, but the noise of the chainsaw had begun once again and would have drowned out anything she tried to say. She quietly closed the door and stared at the deadbolt.

  For once, Kenna didn’t hesitate to throw it so that the bolt went home into its rightful place.

  Chapter Eight

  Dean managed to find a parking spot in front of the station. Most of the lot had already been plowed by city trucks, but the officers had lost part of the large area to a huge mound of snow that had to be thirty feet tall and sixty feet across the bottom. He pulled into a space that must have had one of the deputy’s vehicles parked in it overnight. It was mostly void of snow. The city usually made sure the emergency responders’ lots were cleared first. They seemed pretty good at it, too. It wouldn’t do to have the local LEOs unable to respond to an emergency.

  He turned off the engine to his car, hoping that Chaz had figured out who had been in touch with the journalist who’d basically blown the confidential details of their case to hell and back. Dean definitely wanted a one on one discussion with the individual, the end result being the person’s resignation on top of their realization that they might have just prolonged the unsub’s ability to remain at large.

  By the time he’d locked his company vehicle and had stepped up on the sidewalk, he’d already received numerous text messages. They were no doubt all from Frank, wondering how the investigation had been fucked before it had really even gotten off the ground. Dean would fill him in later after he’d had a chance to speak with Chaz.

  “Morning,” a deputy greeted with a nod from behind the bulletproof glass window, his voice somewhat muffled. The small waiting room was empty, sans eight chairs lined up against the side wall. The worn tile floor was a mess with a disgusting mixture of water and sand dragged in from the street. Dean didn’t envy the janitorial service having to clean up the crap that would certainly strip the wax off the tiles. The sound of the interior door clicked, letting him know that the deputy had pressed the access button to permit him entrance beyond the public area. “Come on back.”

  Dean pulled and twisted the handle on the reinforced steel grey door, immediately being hit in the face by the smell of burnt coffee and stale sweat. Some local radio station was covering a list of school closures. An endless alphabetical checklist of names were spilling out of a small Bluetooth system in the corner, probably connected to Deputy Chen’s phone.

  The deputy manning the front window had sprained his ankle in an indoor futsal match that the department had scraped together a team for, all in the name of community relations. He would be riding the desk for the next two weeks. Good deeds never went unpunished. Dean wouldn’t let his talents go to waste, though. There was plenty of file-sorting, correlation of detailed notes, and reports to copy for distribution in a high-profiled investigation such as the one they were currently dealing with. It wasn’t unheard of for someone in that role to notice the single clue that could lead investigators to some thread they managed to overlook. A fresh set of eyes was always useful.

  The bullpen of a small station like this was vastly different than a local field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. Dean didn’t mind, though. As a matter of fact, he enjoyed being in the thick of things. He gave a quick glance at the conference room, pleased to see that two of the deputies he’d personally invited to join the investigation were combing through paperwork and clicking away on laptops, courtesy of the FBI. He’d been impressed with their skillsets on previous investigations, but it was hard not to be when they’d both served five years with multiple combat tours in the Marine Corps.

  “Agent Malone, I gave the list of names for all male residents between the ages of twenty and forty, narrowed down by having a widowed mother or being a widower themselves, to Dwight and Evans,” Deputy Chen said from his spot next t
o the bulletproof window. He’d positioned a high-top stool next to the small counter so that he could keep his sprained ankle elevated. “Don’t hesitate to give me another task. I’ve got seven more hours of my shift to go, and the west side of the county doesn’t have power. It’s going to be a long day. This phone will be glued to my ear until four o’clock rolls around, especially with me taking the overflow of calls from the tip line.”

  “See if you can’t gather the names of those men who were born in Winter Heights, fitting the same criteria, but now live within…say…a two-hour radius from town,” Dean said without shortening his stride past a few desks. He’d requested names with the broader range on age, having learned early on in his career that the parameters given out by the profiler weren’t always definitive. The profiler chosen for this investigation was usually damn close, though. “And check to see if Viola Chamber’s brother ever got back into the country. I have some more questions for him, and he’s not called me back.”

  “On it,” Chen called out, sounding grateful to have something other to do than manning the front desk and fielding calls from pissed off residents. The good news was that the snow would most likely melt by the weekend, but the damage was done. The bad news was that it would cause flooding on the back end of this mess, thus inundating the station with more calls regarding blocked roads and flooded basements.

  It struck him that Kenna hadn’t once gotten upset over her circumstance last night. Granted, her power had been restored first thing this morning, but she’d weathered the storm well. She’d been one of the lucky ones this time around. With that said, she didn’t strike him as the type to complain over something she couldn’t change.

  Truthfully, he wasn’t sure why she kept crossing his mind, just as he couldn’t explain what it was about her that had him wanting to pack her bags himself and escort her onto a plane headed to Florida. There were other women at risk, and he would do well not to favor one over the other.

  Chaz was on the phone in his office, so Dean took the opportunity to check his cell phone. Sure enough, Frank had definitely blown up his text messages. Their Supervisory Special Agent in Charge of the field office was threatening to limit the sheriff’s department role in the investigation, thereby taking full command of the investigation if the leak wasn’t contained immediately. That was a bad idea, even for Archer. Dean shot back a text that he had things under control and that there was no need to escalate an already volatile situation by making more mistakes early on. He hoped like hell he hadn’t just straight up lied to his partner, and by extension, his supervisor.

  Dean needed to make an example of this guy.

  “…asking for a quid pro quo. She divulges the name of who told her about the roses being left at the scenes of the crimes, and I’ll give her an exclusive interview immediately after we make an arrest in this case.”

  Dean’s anger flared once again that this issue hadn’t been resolved in the last twelve hours. Blizzard or not, this was a problem that wouldn’t be tolerated in an active investigation under any circumstances. It was clear that Chaz was barely reining in his own frustration, but the journalist who’d so eagerly printed their only confidential detail had no idea the devastating blow she’d given this investigation.

  Unfortunately, Dean had dealt with ambitious journalists before, and he didn’t believe there was a chance in hell she’d reveal her source. That didn’t mean Chaz couldn’t get the information they needed to ensure that those involved with the case kept their mouths shut. He slid his phone back into the pocket of his dress coat before picking up a pen from Chaz’s desk.

  Dean grabbed the first thing he could write on, which happened to be a manila folder. He scribbled a new offer that the journalist might actually take, thus clearing anyone in this office as being the leak. When he was done writing, he tossed the pen on the desk and turned the folder around so that Chaz could read the message.

  “Roger, hold up a second,” Chaz said into the receiver, nodding his understanding of what needed to be done. “Listen, I know the likelihood of Quinn giving up her source is basically when hell freezes over, but offer her this incentive—reassure me that her informant isn’t someone or someone connected to this station, and I’ll give her an exclusive interview at a place and time of her choosing. Only one though, and she better make the most of it.”

  Dean understood Chaz’s need to hang onto a thread of control in this situation. It wouldn’t do to have a journalist calling the shots in a serial killer investigation. That was a surefire way to have bodies piling up in a long string of murders.

  “I expect to hear from you or Quinn Simmons within the hour,” Chaz warned, all but slamming the phone down in its cradle. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his bloodshot eyes before addressing Dean. “Before you say a word, none of my men leaked a goddamn thing, Malone. I grilled every single one of them, even Jordan. He wouldn’t risk his job.”

  Lance Jordan was the deputy who had let it slip to the reporters who had been camped outside of Meghan Vance’s residence that she was the niece of Governor Compton. Jordan claimed not to have known that detail was something that should be kept private, and Chaz had gone to bat for the young deputy the first time around. The man was still employed at the station, but Dean had seen to it that he had nothing to do with the case. Some thought Dean was being a hard ass, but there wasn’t room for mistakes with a case like this.

  “I’m here to tell you that Quinn Simmons or whatever her name is didn’t pull that information out of a hat,” Dean countered, finally taking the time to shrug out of his dress coat. “If it wasn’t one of your men, then it was someone from the county crime scene detail. We’ll need to interview everyone from the forensic techs to those employees at the coroner’s office. Basically, anyone who had access to the crime scenes beyond your officers.”

  Chaz pushed back his chair and reached for his empty coffee mug, though he didn’t stand. Instead, he stared into the depths of his empty cup as if it had all the answers. He looked like shit.

  “I’ll be honest, Chaz. Those up the food chain aren’t happy.” Dean wasn’t going to sugarcoat the situation. “Frank’s been blowing up my phone, warning me that Archer wants to make this a federal gig. I don’t think that’s the smart play here, and I’ll do what I can to stall the inevitable. You and your men know this town like the backs of your hands. Your help here is invaluable. We need your knowledge on the ground, but we have to contain these leaks. Those roses were the one identifying detail we had in our pockets thus far to weed out the looney tunes just looking for attention.”

  Dean had made it a policy when working on cases like these to utilize local law enforcement as much as possible. He hadn’t been blowing smoke up Chaz’s ass when he said those working the beat were instrumental in capturing the unsub. Investigations like these always went smoother when the case was run like a well-oiled machine. They didn’t need a pissing match to ignite this case.

  “Did you get anywhere with those widows you visited yesterday?” Chaz finally stood and made his way around the desk and past Dean. The man was at least six four with a rather broad frame, his image all but shouting confidence in his job. The public worshiped the image of such a safety net, and he’d won by a landslide. Opinions were like the wind, though—easily changed with the fickle whims of the general public. “I came up with nothing. Zilch. No one has seen anyone unusual, all of them said nothing out of the ordinary has happened to them in the last five months, and the social media angle was a complete bust.”

  Chaz held up his cup as if the missing contents were the key to getting through the rest of the morning, so Dean grabbed his dress coat from the guest chair and followed him out into the bullpen. He wished like hell he could give Chaz some good news about his interviews from yesterday, but they hadn’t gotten past square one.

  Chen could be heard on the phone giving out the number to one of the many tree service companies that would see a boost in their profits this season. Joanne Butl
er, one of the civilians who handled some of the administrative load, had finally made it into the station and was already at her desk with an electric heater turned on at her feet and her glasses perched on the end of her nose. On any given shift, four to five patrol officers were routinely canvassing Winter Heights. Two full-time civilians were employed, along with one part-time civilian whose hours depended on the time of year.

  Two of those individuals were currently cooped up in the larger office next to Joanne. Will Fenro and Angie Norman had been manning the tip line all night. The third employee, Chloe Reynolds, would relieve one of them in the alternating shifts they’d created to always have two people manning the phones. The overflow went to the other lines around the station, which Deputy Chen seemed to have just answered after disconnecting the other line.

  “I’m not ruling out the social media angle or the internet in general quite yet,” Dean said, following Chaz into the small kitchen. He thought back to his conversation with Kenna. She’d mentioned having a new client, but had she gotten him through word of mouth or by a website? “Half of those using social media have no idea what groups they belong to, and the majority of them don’t turn off their location services. Every damned photograph is tagged with a location nowadays, and don’t forget whatever the hell that check-in thing is on social media. The internet is the perfect hunting ground where any unsub has the potential to remain undetected if he utilized it the right way.”

  “Let’s face it. The entire town of Winter Heights is this sick bastard’s hunting ground.” Chaz practically slammed the glass carafe back into place. “Three murders in five months. He’s due, and you know it. It’s only a matter of time before he strikes again.”

  Dean slung his dress coat over his left arm before he grabbed one of the standard navy-blue porcelain mugs from the cupboard above the coffeemaker. He poured himself a cup, and then gestured toward the conference room.