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He gave me a hard stare.
I lifted a brow. “Is that a yes or a no?”
“This is my department, Ms. Adams. You have no right to such information.”
“As the sister of the dead girl and the key witness to the kidnapping, I think I have every right to know who’s asked for the case file.”
He stewed for a few moments, then said, “No one has asked to see it.”
“How do you know?”
His jaw set. “Because every request that comes in is approved by me.”
“Then who knows about the ribbon?”
“What the fuck difference does it make?” he snapped.
“Because someone is trying to copy my sister’s kidnapping and murder, and finding out who knows will narrow the suspect list.”
Fury filled his eyes, so I wasn’t expecting his next question. “How’d your mother find out the girl was missing?”
I knew I should tell him she’d heard it from Lisa Murphy, but I wasn’t ready to rat her out yet. “Gossip network.”
“Huh,” he grunted. “How convenient.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He gave me a long, hard stare. I stared back. I’d stared down hardened criminals. An incompetent, small town police chief was nothing.
He blinked first.
“Are you suggesting I had something to do with Ava Peterman’s disappearance?” I asked.
“Did you?” His gaze locked with mine again.
“Do you know how asinine that question is?” I asked in disbelief.
“There hasn’t been a kidnapping in this town since your sister, and you’re back two weeks and look at this.” He swung his arm out, gesturing to nothing. “We’ve got a missing girl.”
If he expected me to fly off the handle, he was going to be disappointed. “Are you suggesting I kidnapped and murdered my sister too?” I asked wryly.
His scowl deepened. He knew I’d had no part of it. He was just being a tool.
“I’m still not one hundred percent convinced it’s a kidnapping,” Chief Larson said, sliding his chair back and resting his interlocked fingers over his gut.
“What?” I asked, sitting up. “How can you say that? What about the ribbon? What about ladder imprints next to the porch?”
Surprise filled his eyes, but he quickly shut it down. Had he even been out to the house? He shrugged. “The father says it’s hers.”
TJ Peterman had just become a hell of a lot more suspicious…only, why would he have put that frame in my car? He would have had absolutely no motive to break into my house last October. I’d barely known him in high school.
“Vanessa said Ava doesn’t have any red ribbons and neither does her sister,” I argued. “Seems to me she’d be in a better position to know.”
He made a face. “The mother was hysterical.”
“Yes,” I said carefully, “she was upset, but she wasn’t so upset that she couldn’t answer questions. I’ve interviewed enough people in my career to know when they are cognizant enough to answer questions. Vanessa Peterman knew what she was saying.”
He shrugged again. “You may believe that, but this is my investigation.”
