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“Right. Unless someone offers you a ride home, someone you know well-ish. Someone you trust.”
“You’d go home with them.”
“Both Justin and Damian were outside The Desperado for a while before getting into this mystery vehicle behind the venue.” Chad tugged open the door, and Romeo followed his cue until they were both inside the car.
They slammed their doors shut at the same time and looked at each other.
“You’ve been waiting outside a while, you’re cold. What’s the first thing you do when you get in the car.”
Romeo glanced around the car before his eyes settled on the air vent in front of him. “Turn on the heating.”
Chad slotted his key in the ignition and turned on the car. The vent began blowing out air. He waited for Romeo to lift his hands and hold his fingers towards the source.
“The victims. There are no marks on their faces, but there’s blotching to their hands and fingers.”
“You think the killer has rigged the car?” Romeo turned to him. “But he’s wearing a gas mask, right? Don’t you think the passenger would be suspicious if he whipped that out and put it on?”
“What if he wasn’t in the car?” Chad suggested. “What if the killer tells his victim to get inside, start the engine, put the heating on, and waits out of sight until they’re unconscious?”
“Wouldn’t they be able to smell it?”
“They’d smell something, but unless they’ve smelled it before they wouldn’t know it was chloroform. They wouldn’t know it was a danger to them. They’d sit there until they were too dizzy to save themselves, and fall unconscious. The killer puts his mask on, gets in the car and drives to dump the body.” Chad glanced at the backseats. “But with Tate. The killer took him. Why change tactic when it had been working so well?”
“To mislead the investigation.”
“He kept saying the light was blinding.”
“What light?”
“Exactly.” Chad gestured to the light above the backseats. “He was lying down in the back, with the killer hovering above him. He wasn’t in the passenger seat by the vent, he was in the back, and the killer was with him, donning the mask.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The contradicting evidence between the first two murders and the third attempt is picking away at me. A willing victim vs taken by force. Sitting in the front, not pinned to the backseat. Killed, and dumped, not let go in the same place he was taken. Tate wasn’t what wasdifferent, it was the killer. What if…”
“What if?”
“The man who pinned Tate to the backseat wasn’t the same one who killed Justin and Damian.”
“What?”
Chad grabbed his seatbelt. “I need to speak to Tate again.”
“You’ve been suspended.”
“I need to drop by, see how he’s doing, pay his mum a visit … and his little brother needs his yo-yo back.”
Romeo raised his eyebrow. “That is a rubbish reason.”
Chad shrugged. “It’ll do.”
He shot Romeo’s door a pointed look.
“You’re not inviting me along?”
“Too risky,” Chad said, reaching over to open it.
“You better be careful, Chad.”
