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“It means that you shouldn't be looking at me. Why not go and ask that toxic ex-neighbor of Tracy's if he had anything to do with it. If you ask me, he's the one you should be focusing on. Her ex-husband complained about him often enough."
"It's you we're here for. Now, prove your whereabouts," Connor said sharply, interrupting this diatribe.
With a disrespectful shrug, Nick opened his phone, and Cami watched as Connor checked the validity of his statement.
It seemed like Nick was checking out. To Cami's surprise, this seemingly dangerous suspect was harmless in real life, though a troll of note, and had an alibi for at least one of the murders.
After Connor had thoroughly checked his whereabouts at the time of one of the crimes, he glared at Nick again.
"Listen here, you're going to get yourself in big trouble if you carry on this way. You need to back off of people. We're not arresting you for making these threats, but down the line, someone will take action, criminal or civil, and you'll be in big trouble."
Nick all but rolled his eyes. "I'll carry on as I am, thanks," he said.
"See you in jail at some stage, then," Connor said, standing up with a sigh.
Cami felt frustrated as she followed him out. It seemed unfair that someone so patently obnoxious and unrepentant was not the man they needed. He was low-level nasty, but he wasn't a killer.
But now, Cami was interested to find out what Nick had said about an ex-neighbor.
"I want to look up that neighbor Nick mentioned," she said. "What if Tracy lived next door to a killer who decided to take her out? Maybe he used the others as a smokescreen or had a reason for killing them too?"
Toxic ex-neighbors were one of the topics that they had not yet explored, Cami knew. But if a neighbor could be proven to have connections with the two other victims, then that might just be a solid lead.
Before she could explore this theory further, Connor's phone started ringing. He grimaced, and Cami knew immediately, with a painful clench of her gut, that this call was trouble.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
"Fraser," Connor said as he picked up the call, and Cami's heart plummeted. Fraser, who headed up the FBI Boston offices, must have finished his meetings. Now, he was calling in person to find out why this case wasn't solved yet.
Connor put the phone on speaker, and they both listened as Fraser spoke. Immediately, Cami picked up that he was angry and stressed. His tone was sharp. "Connor, I've just been on the phone with the state governor. He's furious that three women have been murdered in one small area of suburban Boston, and we're still no closer to arresting anyone. He's breathing down my neck, and I'm feeling the pressure. He said this is going to cause political explosions, and he’s right. Can you tell me what's going on?"
"We've been working on it solidly. We've explored all the close leads and connections we can find. We're working on the online connections. They're more tenuous, so it's taking longer to research." Connor sounded as upset as Fraser did that there were no clear answers as yet.
"It’s not going to be acceptable to him," Fraser insisted. Then, as if relenting, he added, "Look, I understand that you may need more time, but I need an update on your progress, and I need it soon. We need someone in custody for this crime. By the end of day today, or else there's huge trouble heading our way politically, and I won’t be able to hold that tsunami back."
"I'll do my best," Connor said, sounding frustrated. He cut the call, and shook his head.
"We need to pinpoint this guy. So far it's feeling like we're stabbing in the dark. He must be connected to them. But how?"
Cami had an idea. This neighborhood site where the victims had all shared information on their travels was less secured than the larger social media sites were. There were more ways into it, and she had hacks she could use to try and penetrate deeper. If that was what it took, then that was where she needed to go.
"I'm going to look into the actual logs on that neighborhood site," Cami said after getting the right programs started up on her laptop. “I’ve managed to get into the back end, and this is one of the records that’s available.”
"How will that help us?" Connor challenged her.
“I’m going deeper than I did last time. I’m going to be able to see not just who’s commented, but who’s been reading all these different chat threads. I’m going to look, in particular, for the threads where these victims said when they would be away, because that seems to be what this killer is using. I’m going to see who has seen those threads, even if they were laying low.”
“You can pick up lurkers?” Connor asked, sounding surprised.
Cami was surprised too. She hadn’t even known that he knew what a lurker was.
“Correct,” she agreed. “On this site, at least, you can see who read the different threads. And if one of them is this toxic neighbor that Nick was talking about, then we’re onto something.”
She had her laptop set up on the car's passenger seat to help her, balanced on the center console and one of her knees, and her phone as back up on the other knee. As long as Connor stayed put and didn't drive anywhere, she thought this setup would work nicely.
And for now, Connor was heading off to say goodbye to the cops who'd come along to help them with Nick, so it gave her some time to start her research. Busily, she worked, switching between her two information sources, using a program that she thought would be able to crack this site's weaker security.
A minute later, Connor was back, climbing in the driver's side.
