Page 111 of I’ll Be Watching You

“He’s right,” Cal said.

“That sucks,” I said.

“Because people suck,” Nate repeated and winked at me.

“Is there any connection between Zachary Ames and Mildred or any of these other people before they started working at the VA?” Jack asked.

“Nothing we could find,” Tess said. “That’s not to say there isn’t, but it’s not obvious.”

“This is good,” Nico said.

“But is it good enough to prove Dad didn’t kill Devin Klein?” Tess asked.

No one had an answer for that.

I said, “To prove Dad is innocent, we need a viable suspect. Is Peter Stockman the killer? Or Mildred? Or maybe Willa Blankenship? She moved halfway around the world.”

“Willa had returned to Syracuse weeks before Klein was killed,” Tess reminded us.

“Who pulled the trigger?” I asked. “Who sent Dad the photos of us? Did one person make the decision to kill Devin and the others just helped cover it up, or were they all in it together? Who knew what, and when did they know it? I’ll tell you this—nowhere in the police reports were any of those people interviewed. So no alibi, no anything.”

“They weren’t?” Cal asked. “That doesn’t make sense. You’d think that at a minimum the police would interview people who directly worked with Dr. Klein, to confirm that he and your dad had animosity, or bolster the confession with evidence that they had a beef with each other.”

“They had the killer in custody,” I said bluntly. “Easy to close the case.”

“Still,” Cal muttered. “Seems like sloppy police work.”

I glanced at Jack. Likely, we were thinking, because Mom urged them to accept what Dad said at face value.

“You have hundreds of people who work at the medical center, and hundreds more who work in the hospital wing, and nearly a hundred who work in the research wing,” I said. “Devin was killed in his office in the medical center. Dad was the only other person in that wing at the time because it was well after hours. But there are a multitude of ways you can go from one wing to the other without having to sign in with the guard. And after hours, employees can swipe in at the employee entrance. If Stockman came in through the research wing, are they going to have evidence of that years later?”

“Doubtful,” Gabriel said.

“Where do we go from here?” Tess asked. “I still have plenty of reports to analyze.”

“I’m going to Honor House Cave Creek tomorrow morning to talk to Jim Novak,” Nate said. “I know what information we need from him, if he can remember, if anyone wants to join me.”

He looked at Luisa and I almost did a double take. Was there something going on? No way.

Luisa shrugged, not looking at him. “You don’t need me.”

Maybe, I thought. Nate and Luisa . . . interesting.

“I wish we could fly to Australia and talk to Willa Blankenship,” I said.

“Maybe we should,” Jack said.

“Why would she talk?” Tess said. “She got away with it, she lives in another country, she will have to be charged with a crime in order for the US to extradite her, and that could take months, maybe years.”

“Maybe she didn’t know until after the fact,” Luisa said. “Maybe the house and job in Australia was to keep her from letting her guilt convince her to speak out.”

“So why talk now?” Tess said. “She cut off ties with her daughters, so there’s no reason for her to return.”

“It’s something to think about,” Jack said.

“The FBI has legal attachés all over the world,” Cal said. “They’ll have an office in Sydney and could interview her. They probably can’t arrest her, but they could ask the local authorities to detain her pending extradition proceedings. That’s definitely not my area of expertise, and if she’s a legal resident of Australia there will be other issues they have to deal with. But Australia could always revoke her visa and kick her out.”

“Oh, we should be that lucky,” I said.