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“Can I help you with that?”
“No,” she told Morrison. “I’ll get a tray. You should go out. I need a minute. I just need a minute.”
She worked on steadying herself as she got a tray. Now she saw Miles turn, saw his bemused, relaxed face tighten.
She filled two more glasses with ice, then carried everything outside.
They continued to stand, the three of them, while the sun struck light against the copper bowl, while the frog smiled his peaceful smile.
She couldn’t say why it meant so much when Miles crossed to her, took the tray. He said, “Sit down.”
Even though it sounded like an order, it steadied her a little more.
When she sat, he poured the lemonade into the glasses so the ice crackled. It sounded like machine-gun fire to her ear.
Howl laid his head on her knee.
“Who was she?” Morgan asked again.
Beck took the lead.
“Her name was Quinn Loper, age twenty-eight, single. She owned her own business in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She fits his profile, top to bottom, though she was substantially more financially well-off than most of his victims. And in this case, he was also able toaccess her grandparents’ accounts. He didn’t harm them physically but skimmed a hundred thousand. He could have taken a great deal more.”
“He took their grandchild,” Miles countered.
Beck nodded at him. “Yes, and maybe that was enough this time.”
“He rented a beach house, a two-month rental, under the name Trevor Caine,” Morrison continued. “While he may not use that identity again, you should keep it in your records. He posed as a writer.”
They laid out the facts and evidence they’d gathered. Then Beck took over again.
“It’s our conclusion he rented a house rather than booking a hotel because it’s an area where beach rentals are common, and he’d attract less notice.”
Beck leaned over, laid a hand over Morgan’s. “Morgan, I know it might seem we’ve made no progress finding him, stopping him, but we were able to track him from New Orleans, and eventually, we found the agency where he rented the car he used to drive to South Carolina. He’d changed his appearance, but two of the staff there ID’d him, so we knew the name he used, the look he used. Using those, we tracked him to Myrtle Beach. We found the hotel where he’d stayed a couple of days.”
Morgan said nothing, just nodded.
“We alerted local law enforcement. We’d begun canvassing the rental agencies when the alert on Quinn Loper came in. We missed him by hours.”
“But she’s dead anyway. I’m sorry, I understand how much time and work you’re putting into this. But she’s dead anyway.”
“Yes, she is.”
The regret came through, enough that Morgan wished she hadn’t spoken the horrible truth.
“We weren’t in time. But he made mistakes. He stole her car, a high-end Mercedes convertible. And he didn’t disable the tracking system.”
“I’m not sure what that means. I’m not in the high-end car club.”
“It’s an embedded system. It means they tracked him—tracked the car.” Miles’s eyes narrowed. “But you don’t have him.”
“No, but we have the individual who bought the car, and who’s previously taken in trade or in sale other vehicles from Rozwell. We have this person in custody.”
“He knows where Rozwell is?”
Morrison took over. “He claims no, and we believe him. He claims he thought Rozwell was a car thief, that he knew nothing about the murders. We tend to believe him on that, especially since facing potential charges of accessory after the fact, multiple counts of murder, he’s cooperating.”
“We know the vehicle he took in trade,” Beck told them, “and the name he used for the registration. We have his description at that time, and which direction he took, when he took it. These are major mistakes, Morgan, a breakdown in his discipline. We have an APB out on the vehicle, on the name he’s using.”
