Reed ushered her into an interview room and closed the door.
“You’ve got two minutes,” he said. “Spill.”
Veronica’s pulse was racing. Her stomach was in knots. She hated being the bearer of bad news.
She took a deep breath. “I recovered two slugs from Gantz’s apartment building, one from the wall and one from the floor. Based on the witness’s statement, the weapon used had a suppressor.”
“And?”
“One slug yielded zip.” She sliced the air with her hand. “Totally deformed. The other one was usable. I photographed it myself using microphotography, and the rifling marks looked good. Then I sent it to the Delphi lab. And the shooter picked up his brass in the hallway, but we recovered cartridge cases in the stairwell from the shots fired at Delaney Knox. I sent those to Delphi, too.”
His eyebrows arched impatiently.
“We got a hit.” She swallowed. “This gun’s in the system.” She opened the file and read the words. “A Sig P226 nine-millimeter. It was used in a drug shooting back in 2012.”
Hope sparked in Reed’s eyes. “That’s a good lead.”
“No, wait. There’s more.” She glanced down at the report again. “The weapon, along with an Osprey forty-five suppressor, was recovered from the apartment of a previously convicted dealer, Carlos Garza, just last fall. He’s been charged with murder two, plus possession with intent to sell. He’s in lockup now awaiting trial.” She glanced up, and Reed was frowning.
“Awaiting trial.”
“That’s right.”
“So the gun—”
“Should still be in evidence right now, yes.”
But clearly it wasn’t.
Unless there was some mix-up and the gun had been misidentified.
Reed stared down at her. “You’re sure—”
“I’m not sure of anything! I’m just telling you what the report says.” She held it up. “But if this isn’t some mix-up, then we’ve got a serious problem. A weapon from our evidence room somehow managed to end up back on the street. Hall is going to go apeshit, and I have to tell him about this.”
“Forget Hall. Aguilar is going to go apeshit.”
“You’re saying I shouldn’t tell the lieutenant?” She instantly felt guilty for even suggesting it. She was desperate to avoid an unpleasant conversation.
“Don’t tell Hall,” Reed said.
“You want me to go over his head?”
“Yeah, I do.”
She stared at him.
“I don’t trust Hall,” he said bluntly. “He’s been acting strange.”
The knot in her stomach tightened again. Whatever this was, it was going to be bad, and she was right in the middle of it.
“You’re worried,” Reed said.
“Uh, yeah.”
“I’ll do it.” He nodded at the report. “I’ll take it to the chief.”
“No, I’ll do it,” she said. “I submitted it, right? It’s my job.”
• • •
Reed watched his lieutenant’s body language as he took a seat at the end of the table.
“So where are we on suspects? Novak?”
“You mean the Abrams homicide?”
“Let’s start with the law student, Isabella Marshall.”
“We had her ex-husband, Michael Spencer, in for an interview yesterday. So far, his alibi checks out.”
“What about his financials?” Hall asked.
“She didn’t get much in the divorce,” Jordan said, “but there was nothing much to get. The marriage only lasted two years. He told us they didn’t really keep in touch, and the family corroborates that.”
Hall didn’t look happy. “Anyone else?”
“An ex-boyfriend,” Jay said. “Her sister told us he was bothering her six months ago, so we checked him out.”
“And?”
“Guy says he was in Reno on a business trip. We confirmed it with the airline.”
“Okay, what about the Abrams woman? Any suspects?”
Reed consulted his notes. “So far . . . we have Ian Phelps. Again, the alibi seems to hold. He was captured on surveillance video leaving his office building at one fifteen A.M. the night of the murder, so the timing is tight but not impossible. Another person of interest is Dmitry Burkov.”
“Who?” Hall asked.
“A local computer expert who has a rap sheet. He and April have some mutual friends, and he has the skills to hack into a website like Mix. Problem is, I checked him out, and his supervisor tells me he was at work on the night of the murder.”
“We should look at Phelps again,” Jay said. “Did Paul copy you on his email?”
“No. What?”
“Just a sec.” Jay got up and left the room, and Reed checked his phone. No email from Paul.
A second later, Jay was back with the man in tow.
“Tell them about the secret account,” Jay said.
Paul glanced around the room. “I, um . . . you remember the notebook computer recovered from April Abrams’s car? I’ve been going through the browser history, and I found a second email account. On Gmail. She had some exchanges with Ian Phelps.”
“When?” Reed asked.
“Starting last summer until a month ago, I think it was. So about eleven months. Then she started getting delivery notices, so it looks like he closed his account down.”
“Is this guy married?” Hall asked.
“He’s got a fiancée,” Reed told him. “But he denied having any kind of romantic relationship with April, so I’ll need to check this out.”
“I don’t get it,” Jordan said. “What’s Phelps’s connection to Isabella Marshall? And Olivia Hollis?”
“Maybe none if the crimes are unrelated,” Hall said hopefully. He looked at Paul. “What’s on the emails?”
“Mostly setting up dates and times to meet. Nothing explicitly sexual, but they point to a relationship.” He paused. “I can print them out if you like.”
“Do it,” he said, and Paul scuttled out of the room.
“It doesn’t really add up.” Jordan looked at Reed. “Can we talk to Delaney Knox? Find out if Ian Phelps has anything to do with this dating site?”
“I’ll ask her.”
“The connection to Mix is flimsy,” Hall said. “There are probably thousands of local people on that site. Seems to me it’s more likely a jealous-mistress scenario. Maybe April Abrams threatened to go to Phelps’s fiancée and he wanted to get rid of her.”
“Wait, back up,” Veronica said. “Why are we ignoring the physical evidence?” She opened the file in front of her and tapped her finger on a report. “We have DNA telling us these crimes were committed by the same perpetrator. It’s a serial offender.”
“We don’t know that,” Hall said. “It’s circumstantial. We don’t have proof.”
“I’m sorry, but . . . what more proof do you want, sir?” She pulled out a pair of crime-scene photos and slid them across the table. The pictures showed two young women on the floor with their skulls smashed in. “We have the same MO, the same murder weapon, and DNA linking the crime scenes together. Isn’t it time to get some help from the FBI?”
“She’s right,” Reed said. “Instead of running away from this thing, the chief should view it as an opportunity.”
“An opportunity for what?” Hall demanded. “To announce that there’s a serial killer running around targeting young women through social media? We’ll start a panic. And what do you suggest we do while we look for him, shut down the Internet? That’s not a plan.”
“But we’ve got DNA evidence of something that spans multiple jurisdictions,” Reed said. “We need to bring in outside resources.”
“We have. We’ve got that cyber unit, those people at the Delphi Center.”
“Ye
ah, they gave us a profile,” Jay said. “It says we’re looking for a middle-aged white guy with a history of depression. I could have told you that. As a kid he was probably a bed wetter who liked to torture animals. Where does that get us?”
“The profiler thinks he’s been doing this for a while,” Reed said, “so we really need ViCAP. We might be able to dig up something where there’s a similar MO. Maybe even a case where DNA or prints were recovered.”
“No FBI,” Hall said. “I repeat: no feds. That’s from the chief. So quit bitching about it, and roll up your sleeves and do some old-fashioned detective work. Go through the interviews, the alibis. We’re bound to have missed something. Work our list of suspects.” Hall stood up, effectively ending the meeting. “This Phelps guy lied to us, which means he’s hiding something, so find out what it is. As of now, he’s our prime suspect.”
CHAPTER 24
“You don’t really think this is some guy bumping off his mistress, do you?”
Reed looked at Jay in the passenger seat. “No. Why?”
“Then why are we wasting our time with him?”
Reed didn’t have a good answer. Laney had insisted from the beginning that Ian Phelps wasn’t their man. And he was inclined to agree with her.
“He lied to me,” Reed said. “So it’s worth a conversation.”
Was it a personal hang-up? Maybe. He’d had a thing about people lying to him ever since he’d caught Erika screwing around on him. He could probably get past it if he was willing to sit in a therapist’s office for a few hundred bucks an hour and rehash all his emotional bullshit, but Reed would rather hold a gun to his head.
“Well, Laney knows him, right? I saw them talking at the funeral,” Jay said. “If he stonewalls us, we can get her to feel him out, see if he knows anything useful.”
“I told her to stay out of it.”
“You told her.”
“Yeah, this has gotten dangerous. I told her to leave it alone.”
Jay shook his head. “Man, bad idea. You used to be married, too. You should know better.”
“What?”
“Girl’s a hacker. Finding ways into restricted areas is what she does. Telling her to stay out of it, you just issued her a challenge.”
Reed didn’t say anything.
“So what was that with Veronica before the meeting?” Jay asked.
Reed glanced at him. Jay definitely had a thing for the woman.
“She got the ballistics back on the Gantz shooting. Could be something useful there, but I have to do some more checking.”
Reed didn’t volunteer anything more. He planned to follow up, but he had other problems to tackle at the moment. He turned onto the street for ChatWare Solutions and glanced up and down the sidewalk. It was busy with pedestrians, lots of Austinites out enjoying the sunny Friday afternoon.
There were no free parking meters so he pulled their unmarked police unit into a loading/unloading space behind a minuscule Smart car. They climbed out, and Jay shook his head.
“I couldn’t get my big toe in one of those things.” He looked at Reed as they walked down the sidewalk. “You think Phelps is at his office? These sales guys travel.”
Reed focused on the café on the corner. “He’s in town. Looks like he’s having a late lunch.”
They walked to Francesca’s, where the chalkboard menu listed the day’s specials. Reed cut around the sign and approached Ian’s table. He was on the phone again, and his expression darkened when he noticed Reed.
Reed took a chair to Phelps’s right. Jay took the one on the left. The man’s gaze shifted from Reed to Jay and back to Reed again.
“Um, so listen. I’ve got to go. I’ll call you back later.” Phelps put his phone down and squared his shoulders. “Detective Novak.” He glanced at Jay. “And you are . . . ?”
“Detective Wallace.” Jay flashed his badge, and Phelps darted a nervous look around the umbrella tables.
“I’d love to talk to you guys, but—”
“This won’t take long,” Jay said, settling back in his chair and taking a comfortable look around. “Nice place for a coffee break. We need one of these at the station.”
Phelps pushed away the half-finished cappuccino in front of him and sat back in his chair, pretending to be relaxed. “What can I do for you?” His gaze settled on Reed.
“I asked you about your relationship with April. You told me you were friends. We’d like to revisit that topic.”
“There’s nothing between me and April. I told you—”
Reed held up his hand. “We have the emails, Ian, so don’t waste our time. I want to know when it started.”
Phelps clenched his teeth and stared at him.
Jay reached over and grabbed a scone from the plate beside the coffee. “Mind? I love these.”
Phelps glanced at him, then at Reed. “Last summer. It was on again, off again, totally casual.”
Reed lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“So when’s the wedding?” Jay asked around a mouthful of food. “I hear you’re getting married.”
Phelps shot Reed a glare. He looked down as he composed his story, then glanced up. “I broke it off with April weeks ago, way back in June.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. And that has nothing to do with . . . what happened to her.”
Reed looked at Jay.
“Hey, I’ve got another question for you.” Jay finished off the scone and dusted his hands over the table. “What do you know about computers?”
“What?” Phelps looked startled.
“Computers.” Jay paused. “You know, those machines—”
“What does this have to do with anything?” He looked across the table, and Reed gave a shrug. He looked back at Jay. “I work at a software company.”
“And what do you do there?” Jay asked. “You write code, answer phones, what?”
“I sell software. I meet with clients and manage relationships.” He looked at Reed.
“Would it be fair to say you’re more the ‘Chat’ side than the ‘Ware’?” Reed asked.
“Both. What does this have to do with April?”
“We’re just curious.”
He sighed and looked at his watch. “I have a meeting—”
“One last question,” Reed said. “You ever heard of a website called Mix?”
“Mix?”
“It’s a dating site.”
“I know what it is. But I don’t use dating sites. I mean, come on.” He smiled. “Women come to me.”
“Is that what happened with April?” Reed asked. “She came to you? Or was it more like you were dogging her, getting some on the side, and she got sick of hearing about your upcoming wedding?”
“I broke up with her.”
“Really?” Jay asked. “And she did what then, threatened to rat you out to your fiancée? And then you two had a fight? Maybe you had to get a little rough with her, show her who was in charge?”
“April and I had a consensual relationship. I broke it off. Read the emails if you don’t believe me. You think I chased her? Right.” He looked at Reed, and there was a hint of desperation in his eyes now. “I broke things off. I let go. Period. I’m not the guy who did this. I’m not some stalker. Go find someone else to harass.” He tossed his napkin onto the table and stood up. “I’ve got a meeting.”
“Wait.” Reed put his hand on his arm.
He sat down, fuming.
“Why’d you say ‘stalker’?”
Phelps looked confused. “What?”
“You said you’re not the guy. You’re not some stalker.”
“I don’t know.” Phelps looked from Reed to Jay. “She was being stalked by this guy, right?”
“Where’d you get that?” Jay asked.
Reed shook his head. “Nope.”
“Online? I must have read it somewhere.”
“Try again.” Reed watched for a moment. He leaned forward on his elbows. “Did April ever tell you someone was stalking her?”
“Not really.” He glanced at Jay. “Not in so many words.”
“What words?” Reed asked.
“She just mentioned, I don’t know, some creep at her gym. Some guy who’d watch her from his car in the parking lot.”
“His car?” Jay leaned closer. “What kind of car?”
“How the hell would I know?”
“What else did she say about him?”
“That was it. We didn’t talk about it.”
“Sounds like you did,” Reed said.
“That was all she said. It was just that one time she mentioned it.”
“When was this?”
“You want a date? I have no idea.”
“A few weeks ago, months ago, when?” Reed persisted.
“Sometime before we broke up.”
“When?”
He sighed, exasperated. “Probably five, six weeks ago. One of the last times before I broke it off with her.”
“Where were you?” Reed asked.
“At my place.”
“Where was your fiancée?” Jay asked.
“This was during lunch. She met me over there from work. Afterward she was getting dressed, and she mentioned wanting to switch gyms because this guy kept watching her from the parking lot. It had happened the night before, I think.”
Reed looked at Jay. They might be able to pin down the date through the emails. And then they might be able to drum up a surveillance tape from the gym. And then they might get a glimpse of the UNSUB or, better yet, his car.
It was a lot of mights, but it was a lead.
“See, here’s the problem, Ian.” Reed leaned forward on his elbows. “You lied to me about one thing. How do I know you’re not lying about this?”
“I’m not.”
“She say anything else?” Jay asked.
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. I told you. She barely mentioned it.” He stood up and grabbed his phone off the table.
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