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Cassie pointed to the four remaining files. “I think we should look into these first.”
David pulled those four close and started flipping through the first one. “Sounds good to me.”
“What do you mean that sounds good?” Laura looked from Cassie to David and then back again. “You just decided that at random.”
“Not random. Just our own kind of system.”
Laura looked like she didn’t want to be rude, but Cassie could tell she wouldn’t drop the subject. “How does this system work, exactly? You close your eyes and point?”
“No, my eyes were open.”
“This is just sort of how we operate.” David was trying to sound nonchalant, but he clearly wasn’t reading through the papers in front of him. “Cassie has a trained eye for these things. She gives us a starting point, and we narrow it down from there. Usually works.”
“But she didn’t even look through the files.” Laura walked over to the pile Cassie had dismissed and grabbed the first one. “Look, this guy has two brothers who were both in jail for aggravated assault. They were each released within the last year. That’s someone we should look into.”
David glanced at Cassie but didn’t offer a defense.
Cassie turned away, hoping Laura would take a hint and end the conversation. “We can look into them after we look into those four.”
Laura’s face reddened. “You know that makes no conceivable sense.”
Cassie ignored her and looked over David’s shoulder. She was at war with trying to be inconspicuous in front of her sister and trying to just solve this case already. Still exhausted from yesterday, her encounter with Jason had upset her more than she’d realized. All she wanted to do was go home, curl up with Apollo, and sleep for the next twenty-four hours.
But any chance at not being obvious went out the window when she noticed the next file David flipped through.
“That’s him.”
David glanced up at her, then back down at the photo in his hands. “The guy from yesterday?”
“Definitely.” Cassie leaned in closer. He looked younger in the photograph, but she recognized his sad eyes from when he’d first visited her in her dining room. “We
should look into him first.”
Laura walked over. “What guy from yesterday?”
“One of the bodies we found.”
David had messed up the second the words left his mouth.
Laura crossed her arms and did another excellent impression of their mother. “You mean one of the twenty-year-old dead bodies from yesterday? The completely decayed bodies? The bodies you couldn’t possibly visually identify?”
“Yes?” David looked to Cassie for help, but all she could do was rub her temples.
Laura’s anger turned to hurt. “If there’s something you don’t want to tell me or something I’m not supposed to know, I can leave. I just thought you wanted my help. I can—”
“No, no, we do want your help.” Cassie sighed. “I know it’s weird, but trust me, okay? I have a feeling about this.”
“A feeling?” Her voice sounded even more skeptical than the look on her face. “Really? These are people’s lives. If your feeling tells you to go after the wrong person, who knows what kind of damage you could do. If you decide to ignore a literal pile of potential suspects, the killer could end up getting away. I thought you were joking, but did you really mean you don’t care about solving this case?”
“I care. I—”
“You’re not acting like it.” Anger resurfaced. “What you’re doing is extremely irresponsible.”
“Laura, please—”
“Cassie.” David’s voice was dead serious, and both sisters looked over at him in concern. “This guy has no living relatives.”
Cassie forgot about the fight with her sister. “That’s not right. I saw him. He was there from the beginning.”
