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“Also true. But it’s his parents’ house. If we can prove he went back there, so what? It wasn’t a crime scene, so far as we knew. It wasn’t restricted. He was perfectly entitled to go there.”
“You’re assuming he’ll admit it if we ask him. Maybe he’ll lie.”
They were quiet for a moment.
“We need a body, don’t we?” Sarah Jane asked quietly. “It’s going to be impossible to prove he killed her if we don’t find her.”
Matthew sighed. “Maybe not impossible, but very difficult.”
They’d reached the door of the squad room. They paused as the same time, both feeling, perhaps, like the conversation wasn’t done.
“Did you always want to be a cop?” Matthew asked.
Her eyes met his briefly and slid away. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason in particular. Except that you’re doing good work, and I wondered.” He couldn’t tell if the pink in her cheeks was a reaction to the compliment or to the cold. For a second he thought she wasn’t going to answer him.
“My brother was the one who wanted to be a cop. He talked about it right through high school.” Sarah Jane reached out and pushed the door open. He followed her inside. Kim was there, and Dave, and a handful of others. They were busy at work, on the phone, or talking among themselves. There was a hum of quiet conversation.
“He loved the job,” Sarah Jane said. “He was killed in a car accident eighteen months ago.”
“I’m very sorry,” Matthew said.
She nodded.
“So that’s when you applied?”
She gave a half shrug, half nod, and it was clear she didn’t want to continue the conversation. Matthew wasn’t going to push her. She changed the subject.
“What I don’t understand is how the dog could smell something that the forensics guys couldn’t pick up. I mean, if there was something there for the dog to smell, shouldn’t there be traces of blood or tissue left for the forensics guys to find?”
“I’m not going to pretend to understand that either, but I’m assured that that’s how it works sometimes.”
Matthew’s cell phone rang, a call from a number he didn’t recognize. He nodded goodbye to Sarah Jane and answered the call on the way back to his desk.
“Detective Wright? This is Ronnie Garcia. You left a message for me.”
“Mr. Garcia. Yes. I left a number of urgent messages for you. Yesterday, and again this morning.”
“I was traveling, Detective.” There was no apology in Garcia’s voice. “How can I help you?”
“I understand your firm handles security for Rory Jordan and his companies. I’m calling to confirm—”
“If this is about the cameras at Mr. Jordan’s Stowe home, as Mr. Jordan already told you, those cameras have not yet been commissioned. We’ll have someone out there to do it this week. It’s unfortunate, of course, that it wasn’t done sooner, but we can’t travel back in time.”
Garcia’s tone was loud and brash and very confident.
“You checked that yourself, Mr. Garcia?”
“I did.”
“And if we were to issue a warrant to your company, for all data regarding the cameras at the Stowe house? And, while we’re at it, all cameras at the Jordans’ home in Waitsfield?”
“You can do that if you like, Detective. I don’t think it would do you much good. The company I work for is based out of Panama, which is also where our servers are located. We don’t keep any data in the United States. I guess you could serve your warrant in Panama? I don’t know how international law works, so maybe that’s possible.” This was said in the tone of someone who knew down to the finest detail exactly how the relevant international law worked. “What I do know is that the data-retention laws in Panama are different from our laws here. The company I work for deletes all client data on a very regular basis, as a matter of policy. But, like I said, in the case of the Stowe house, there would be no data at all, as the cameras hadn’t been commissioned yet.”
Matthew ended the call. He was pissed. Garcia was a fixer, and Rory Jordan was playing games. He was getting ahead of them, cutting off avenues of investigation. This was not the first time Matthew had gone up against a suspect with money. The last time it had been a rapist with a trust fund. Matthew had won that round, mostly because the guy had been dumb as a rock. Simon Jordan was not stupid, and neither was his father. Matthew was feeling more and more like he had a mountain to climb. They couldn’t afford to waste time. They needed to get into the Jordans’ home in Waitsfield and seize every computer, tablet, and phone before data could be deleted or destroyed. Surely a documented K-9 alert would be enough to convince a judge that they had probable cause to search the house? Matthew picked up his phone. He was about to place a call to a friendly prosecutor to ask for advice on how best to frame the application when something caught his eye. Sarah Jane had stood up at her desk, her phone pressed to her ear. She turned to look in his direction, her face showing her distress. Matthew stood up. She came toward him, finishing her call on the way.
“That was Andy Fraser,” she said. “He’s at the school. Grace Fraser has gone missing.”
