“Well, that was a big fat zero. He did know her, and he told us that he saw her yesterday around five. The time matches the receipt. We had hoped there would be cameras or something.”
Ethan took a stab at it.
“There wasn’t?” he asked.
The man shook his head.
Well, strike one.
“Nope. The owner is an older man, likes things the old-fashioned way, or so he said,” he offered. “He said she shopped, and he even helped her put her things in her car. They talked about spring, and he told her that he’d get her some pepper plants for her garden.”
Well, that was not giving them anything.
“I asked if he saw anyone following her, and he’s pretty much as blind as an old man normally is.”
And there was strike two.
“He did say that she and her boyfriend came in a lot. We found a picture of her and him in her living room. They don’t appear to live together.”
Ethan confirmed.
“We found on social media that she was in a relationship. I was just about to do a deep dive on the man’s social media to see what I could find.”
Shit.
He’d hoped to find something they didn’t know, but it appeared the Feds had been busy, too.
Still, Dannie kept going.
“We searched the house, and found this,” he said, flipping through his phone to the picture in the bathroom. On it, there was a Polaroid with the dead woman. “Under it, there was a rosary. Check out the next picture.”
Gene did, and he showed his partner.
Ethan didn’t respond, and Gene knew that wasn’t a good thing. Oh, he knew when his partner had an epiphany, and this was anything but that.
So, he shared.
“We don’t know if this plays into it or not,” Gene admitted, regarding the rosary. “I saw on her social media that she’s religious. Again, people own rosaries. There are a lot of Catholics in the world,” he admitted, raising his hand.
Leah raised hers too.
“See? Fifty percent of us here are Catholic,” Gene offered. When the man opened his mouth, he stopped him. “Seventy-five percent,” he said, covering for the fact that Ethan was currently still wearing a rosary.
In frustration, Dannie closed his notebook.
“We didn’t find anything good,” he admitted.
Yeah, they could see that.
Gene continued.
“EJ, send a text to the ME. We need to get a team over to the victim’s home. If she was taken there, and a photo was left, we might get lucky,” he said. “It looks like they have more forensics to handle.”
He took Gene’s phone, since his partner had just gotten a call from the man. Then, he texted him. When he was finished, he placed it down, and Gene continued.
“Anything else to report in?” Gene asked.
The cop sighed.
