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“Lawyer.”
“He’s on his way,” Faith assured Klaus.
“She,” he corrected, glaring at her.
Faith took a deep breath. “Sheis on her way.”
“Well, I’ll be happy to answer your question when she arrives.”
“You realize it’s not a good look for you to refuse to cooperate, right?” Michael said. “We’re trying to clear you for multiple murders. When you don’t talk to us, it makes us feel like you’re afraid to talk to us, and the only reason I could think why you might be afraid to talk to us is if you feel guilty for some reason. Do you feel guilty?”
“No, I feel persecuted,” Klaus replied. “And I’m not talking without a lawyer.”
Faith and Michael exchanged a glance. They couldn’t force Klaus to speak without his lawyer, but if Shirley was out there missing, then every moment of wasted time increased the likelihood that she would be dead by the time they found her.
She tried one final time. “Klaus, Shirley Brooks has loved ones who care about her, loved ones who don’t know you or have anything against you at all. They just want Shirley back. If you have any information at all about where she might be, then I would consider it a favor and absolutely not an admission of guilt if you would share that information with us. Do you know anything at all that can help us?”
“Lawyer.”
She sighed. “All right. But if that’s the way you want to go with it, Klaus, know that if we determine itisyou responsible for these murders, I will make it my goal in life to ensure you suffer as much as you possibly can. I know the prison system very well. I know exactly where to put you to ensure that your stay on death row is as miserable as we can make it.”
He didn't reply, and Faith gave up. "Turk, watch him."
“You can’t hold me here!” he protested.
“We can until your lawyer gets here and you answer our questions,” Michael said, standing and following Faith to the door.
Klaus started to stand up, “But I—"
Turk leaped to his feet, baring his teeth and growling at Klaus. Klaus paled and sat back down.
“Wait for your lawyer,” Faith advised him.
Outside of the interrogation room, she allowed more of her frustration to show, sighing and running her hands through her hair.
“Relax, Faith,” Michael said. “We got him. It’s only a matter of time now.”
“Yeah, until Shirley Brooks is dead,” Faith retorted.
Michael didn’t reply, but his face told Faith that he had already given up Shirley for dead. Logic told Faith that he was right, but she refused to accept that. She had already lost one victim. She couldn’t allow herself to lose another.
“I’m going to look through his photos again,” she said, “and see if I can find something we missed. You keep talking to Klaus.”
“So he can repeat the word ‘lawyer’ to me for twenty minutes until the woman herself arrives?”
“Just try to butter him up,” she said. “Maybe he’ll let something slip.”
Michael frowned, but he didn’t have any better ideas, so he left Faith and went back to the interrogation room. Faith returned to the small conference room they had once more commandeered and opened her laptop.
She went through the photos of each crime scene meticulously, but the photos revealed nothing. None of them included the interior, but that could be due to a lack of structural integrity and not because he had bodies inside.
Of course, it could also mean he had bodies inside.
She read the descriptions of each site, and that’s where she found the connection. Each image contained a short file with its location, a building name that may or may not have been Klaus’s own invention, and another name. The name differed for each file, but the crime scene photos all bore the same name. Martin Holland.
There was the connection. Three buildings, all crime scenes, all related somehow to Martin Holland.
She looked up Martin Holland, but too many results popped up. She tried Martin Holland, Iowa, and got an article on the various Dutch Mennonite enclaves in the state.
