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“It appears that way,” Josie muttered.
Beau stopped for a commercial break. Noah checked his phone. “The phone pinged on the state gameland about a mile away from Archie Gamble’s property. Mett and Gretchen are already en route with back-up units.”
Someone gave Beau another countdown. He started talking again, this time discussing his own deepest regret, which was not being there when his mother was getting treatment for cancer. As he went on to make a bunch of excuses, Josie turned to Noah. “Let’s go.”
FORTY-SIX
It was late afternoon by the time Josie and the team returned to the stationhouse. Her entire body was stiff and chilled to the bone from being outside for so many hours. The Chief had called in officers who were off to assist with a massive search of the state gameland adjacent to Archie Gamble’s land. The officer assigned to watch Gamble’s home reported that Gamble hadn’t left all day but Josie knew he could have easily slipped out the back, walked through the woods, crossed Wertz Road, and sent the text to Beau. They hadn’t found Claudia’s phone during their search but that didn’t mean he didn’t have it. It could be stashed somewhere. Regardless, they’d found nothing.
The killer had eluded them again.
Now Chief Chitwood stood in front of their collective desks, arms crossed over his thin chest. “You’re telling me this guy was on state gameland near Wertz Road at eight thirty-five this morning just long enough to text Beau Collins one of these asinine questions, and that in spite of the fact that a dozen police officers got there under a half hour later, we’ve got nothing?”
No one answered.
“Quinn!” he barked. “What’s the next step?”
Exhaustion pulled at every inch of her body. She tried to settle her thoughts, bring them back into focus. “Maybe we try another geo-fence.”
Mettner said, “’Cause that’s your new answer to everything?”
“Watch it, Mett,” said Noah.
“Both of you shut up,” the Chief said.
“We look at the location where Claudia’s phone last pinged today and we expand the fence out from there in every direction for the hour after the text was sent,” Josie said.
“That’s broad,” Gretchen said. “Very broad. It could be hundreds and hundreds of numbers to sift through. Besides, this guy has to be shutting his own phone off before he gets to wherever he’s decided to turn Claudia’s phone on and text Beau. If he’s been smart enough to keep Claudia’s phone off except when he needs it, then he probably won’t show up on the geo-fence.”
“But he may not even know about geo-fences,” said Josie. “What if he turns his own phone off while he’s still in the geo-fence? How far is he from the location of the ping when he turns it off? What if he’s already there, in the geo-fence, but we’re not seeing him because he seems too far away from where Claudia’s phone was last pinged? What if he’s right there and we haven’t seen him because we’re not even looking for him?”
Mettner said, “You’re the one who said you think this guy is in the Collinses’ inner circle. The inner circle was there today, at the studio.”
“The killer could have help,” Noah said. “It could be more than one person.”
“True,” Josie said. “What if we’ve been too focused in on the inner circle to look elsewhere?”
Gretchen said, “We have looked elsewhere. Archie Gamble.”
“Quinn, you can only go where the evidence takes you,” said Chief Chitwood.
She booted up her computer, mostly because she didn’t know what else to do. “What if we’ve missed something in the evidence? What if this guy was within the geo-fences when he turned his phone off, but we didn’t notice his number because it doesn’t show up close to where Claudia’s phone last pinged?”
The Chief, Noah, and Mettner looked confused. Gretchen said, “There’s an easy way to figure out if he’s been under our nose the whole time and we’ve just missed him. We could cross-reference the two geo-fences we already have and see if the same number shows up both times.”
The Chief sighed. “Might as well. This guy would have no way of knowing how big the geo-fences were or even that we’d use them. Now, let’s talk about the killer’s next target. You have any idea who it might be?”
Josie pulled up the results of the two geo-fence warrants and began examining the numbers again, starting with the most recent results from the park the day Eve was killed.
Noah said, “No idea. Beau claims he has no idea either. I called him from the field and drilled him on this. He says there is no one left to target.”
“Has to be Margot Huff,” said Gretchen. “She makes the most sense. She’s with him all the time. Some people think they either had or are having an affair, despite her denials. Maybe Beau won’t admit that he’d be devastated if she was murdered, but he would.”
The Chief made a noise of agreement. “Let’s put a unit on her. Now. Have them make contact with her and let her know they’ll be with her until we’ve got this mess straightened out.”
Gretchen picked up her desk phone to make arrangements.
Mettner said, “I guess this killer isn’t going to care whether or not Beau answered his question correctly or not. Which answer do you think was the right one for today?”
