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* * *
Even after she turned out the lights, Francesca couldn’t sleep. What she’d learned about Dean Wheeler had her spooked, made her fear she’d wasted the few short days she’d spent on April’s case by focusing on the wrong person. She’d never ruled out Butch’s brother-in-law, but neither had she expected to hear that his one and only girlfriend had gone missing just weeks after he’d threatened to kill her. She almost couldn’t believe it. As odd as Dean was, Butch seemed the more dangerous of the two. Sure, Dean might have known Bianca via the hospital, but no better than Butch had known April. If Francesca had been placing a bet, she definitely would’ve put her money on Butch….
But, armed with a bat or a shovel, anyone could batter a defenseless person to death. So maybe it was Dean who’d dumped all those bodies in Dead Mule Canyon. Maybe his ex-girlfriend was one of them.
Francesca wished she could discuss what her father had learned with Jonah. She’d tried to call him, but her calls kept transferring to voice mail.
Should she contact Finch? He seemed to be her only remaining option….
Chances were he was in bed right now. But if she waited, she’d lie there, going over and over her questions. Had anyone followed up on Sherrilyn Gators’s disappearance? If so, what had they found?
Maybe, as was true of so many investigations, the police had suspicions but no real proof. If Sherrilyn’s body hadn’t turned up, perhaps they couldn’t even establish, for sure, that a murder had taken place. Unless they had enough physical evidence to compensate for that, a lot of D.A.s refused to go to court without a body. What with double-jeopardy laws, Francesca couldn’t blame them. But why hadn’t Finch or Hunsacker mentioned that Dean had been a prime suspect in another case? That could’ve propelled the investigation in a much more promising direction….
Could it be that Sherrilyn’s disappearance had been assigned to a different investigator, or maybe the Prescott P.D., and Finch and Hunsacker hadn’t yet realized that this old case might have some relevance to the bodies in Dead Mule Canyon?
There was a great deal of work to be done on these murders and only so many hours in a day. Whether the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office formed a task force or not, she couldn’t sit back and hope they’d eventually come up with this information on their own. Lives could be at risk. She had to call and share what she knew as soon as possible.
Telling herself she didn’t care how she was received, she slid over to her nightstand, where she’d left her cell phone, and used her electronic address book to call Finch.
He sounded groggy when he answered, which made her nervous about interrupting him—and jealous that he could sleep.
“It’s me,” she said.
“I know.” The flatness of his tone indicated that he wasn’t thrilled to hear her voice, but she hadn’t expected him to be. “I’m wondering why you’re calling,” he went on. “Don’t tell me you’re inside Butch’s salvage yard.”
She ignored his sarcasm. “Did you know Dean threatened to kill a love interest five years ago?”
“You had to wake me up with that little tidbit, Francesca? Something Dean said five years ago couldn’t have waited till morning?”
“I—”
“Is there anything else you’d like to pass along at midnight?” he interrupted. “You know Butch is the killer because it’s been revealed to you by your secret decoder ring?”
Francesca felt her muscles tense. “You’re an asshole, you know that?”
“I have a right to be. You woke me up. And I distinctly remember telling you to butt out of this investigation.”
“Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.”
“I’ll throw your ass in jail if you don’t.”
She stared into the darkness that seemed to press in on all sides. “If I save just one life it’ll be worth it.”
“You might think so now, but—”
“If you’d like to go back to sleep, shut up and listen for a second,” she broke in. “I want to make sure you’re aware that Dean Wheeler threatened to kill a woman who went missing three weeks later. In case you plan on doing any police work at all, her name’s Sherrilyn Gators.”
Silence descended. When Finch spoke again, he sounded slightly humbled. “Not my case. That was Prescott P.D. But she’s on our list. She worked for the post office, didn’t she?”
“That’s right.”
“How do you know Dean knew her?”
“I used my secret decoder ring,” she said, and disconnected. She’d given him the tip. He could dig for the details himself.
* * *
It took Dean much longer to pick the lock on the back door than he’d thought it would. But Francesca still wasn’t asleep when he entered the house. She was in the bathroom. From where he stood in the hall, he could hear the toilet flush. Then the sink taps went on. She kept muttering to herself, too. She wasn’t happy with someone named Finch. She called him a jerk, said that she was sticking with the investigation whether he liked it or not.
