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“All right, well, keep me posted. If there’s anything else I can do that might help, I’m here. Once I have anything to offer, I’ll call you.” His voice was tight and full of emotion. The thought of Katherine out there with a killer obviously shook him to the core.
“Thanks, Detective Fitzgerald,” Trent responded.
“Fitz. It’s just Fitz to anyone who’s a friend of Kat’s. And there’s no need to thank me, not when Kat’s in trouble. I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
Before Trent ended the call, he left his and Amanda’s phone numbers. “We go from zero leads to what feels like a hundred.” Trent was looking straight out the window while he spoke. Overwhelm was written in the downward curve of his mouth, and his furrowed brow.
“I hear you.” Her phone chimed with a message. “And speaking of…” She read it and shared the gist with Trent. “Katherine’s phone records are in, and her financials are expected soon. CCTV has come in from the area near the gas station. Nothing telling. There’s no CCTV near the marina.”
“That just gives us a fighting chance of catching up. Next stop, the owner of the expired plates, Greg Elliott?”
“You read my mind.” She smiled, but he left the expression unreturned and put the car into gear. This tension was her fault. Hopefully she hadn’t messed things up between them beyond repair.
NINETEEN
Despite the leads coming at them, Amanda couldn’t help but notice there was one missing. She still hadn’t heard back from the NYPD police lieutenant, and she put in another call to him while Trent drove to the address on file for Greg Elliott.
The lieutenant answered on the second ring. All business and treated the call as an interruption to his day. Based on initial impression, he and Detective Fitzgerald couldn’t be any more different.
“Detective Steele from Homicide with the Prince William County PD.”
There was a pause in which she imagined him sarcastically thinking, congratulations. “I’m calling about a former sergeant of yours, Katherine Graves,” she told him.
“What about her?” Asked stiffly, on the defensive.
Did he even listen to his voicemail? “She was abducted this morning. During which incident a teenage girl was shot and killed.” Whether or not Warren Catherwood liked things told to him straight, that’s how she served the news.
“Sorry to hear that.”
Four words that could be viewed as throwaway, but Amanda detected a bit of an emotional edge to his voice. Catherwood was just good at blocking his emotions with a tough veneer. She’d wager he hadn’t heard her message, which was preferable to him dismissing it. “My partner and I have been digging into her past to see who might have reason to come after her.”
“Katherine was a highly respected officer of the NYPD. She put away a lot of criminals during her career here, as I’m sure she has while working with you.”
From the present tense, he wasn’t aware that she’d exchanged her badge for an apron. “She’s no longer with the PWCPD, but she’s still living in the area. I assume she reported to you before she left the NYPD.”
“She did.”
“Was she working any cases that may have caught up with her?”
“You suspect a perp followed her to Virginia?”
The lilt in his voice made Prince William County sound like it was some backwater and inferior to the Big Apple. It was apparent the idea of anyone being attracted to a slower pace of life was absurd. Though given the number of murders around here, the county was anything but slower paced. “That’s exactly what I’m getting at.”
Trent stopped for a red light and leaned his ear a bit closer to her to eavesdrop on the conversation. She hadn’t put the call on speaker to avoid it being a distraction.
“As I said, she put away a lot of criminals,” Catherwood said. “I wouldn’t know where to start. Although there was one case she couldn’t seem to let go of, but I’m talking many years ago, before she became a sergeant.”
“I’m listening.”
“I doubt it has any bearing on the present situation, but there was a young girl who was murdered. The leads dried up, and the case went cold. Katherine became obsessive. I told her she had to release it if she was ever going to advance rank.”
ADA Natasha Bauer hadn’t mentioned this case. She must not have sensed a threat there to Katherine’s well-being. Or was it in the context of their discussion? For this investigation, Katherine hadn’t sent anyone to prison. “How long ago was this?”
“Ten years.”
In this scenario, ten years was a long time, especially when Katherine didn’t pose a threat to anyone. She had been told to let the case go.
The light turned green, and they were on the move again. Trent took the next right, parked shortly thereafter, and pointed toward a white-sided house. It must be the home of Greg Elliott.
