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“Hello?”
“Fran?”
“Hi, Dad.”
“What’s going on? Your mother says she’s been trying to reach you at the house for two days. It rings but your voice mail never comes on.”
Because the line had been cut. Francesca contemplated telling the truth, but resolved not to. “Something’s wrong with my service. They’re working on it. Why didn’t she just call my cell?”
“She did. More than once.”
There were all those voice mails she’d received yesterday, the ones she hadn’t taken the time to go through. And this morning she’d turned off her cell so she wouldn’t be interrupted. She hadn’t turned it back on until a few minutes ago. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t even aware that you guys were trying to get hold of me. I haven’t had a chance to listen to my messages.”
“Why not? What’s up?”
She smiled at the intrigue in his voice, knew his question revealed a professional interest as much as a personal one. “I’ve been working a new missing-persons case.”
“A woman? A child?”
“A woman.”
“Any luck finding her?”
Plugging one ear, she turned away from the street so she could hear. “The hunt is over. Her body was discovered yesterday.”
There was a brief silence. “I can see why you’ve been busy. How old was she?”
“Only a year older than me.”
“What a shame,” he said with a reverence she appreciated. “Do you know what happened?”
Because her father was the type who’d go stir-crazy if he didn’t have something important to do, and he missed his job with the force, he hadn’t entirely stopped working. He took on various cold cases, pro bono. His wheelchair didn’t get in the way of that. “It looks as if she was beaten with a baseball bat.”
“A crime of anger.”
“Anger against her specifically or anger against women in general?” she asked.
“Could be either, I suppose. Do you have any suspects?”
“Only the man who saw her last.”
“He have an alibi?”
“He hasn’t given the police a formal statement yet. They’ll be moving on that soon. They sent me in with a wire first, hoping to get him to talk more freely. Now they want to put some time between the two conversations, give him an opportunity to think about it….”
“Did he tell you anything interesting?”
“Not really. But we’ve got the conversation on tape, so we’ll see if he changes his story. As far as an alibi goes, his wife will most likely cover for him, which means…it’ll be up to us to place him at the scene of the crime. If we can find where the murder was committed, that is. The body was transported and dumped.”
“Sounds precalculated.”
“There’s a possibility this guy is tied to other murders, maybe seven of them.”
“Holy hell.”
A man honked and shouted at her, but she ignored it. “Exactly.”
“Who’s us?” her father wanted to know.
