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She saw another little pamphlet underneath them and pulled it out. She held her breath for a moment when she saw that it was a pamphlet for VexoCorp. She moved both books and saw several other pamphlets and brochures. There was another for LaRange Labs. She opened it up, and when she saw the small segment labeled Our Team, everything fell into place.
She dared to believe that, despite Cooper’s objections, they’d found their killer.
“Hey, Sullivan?” she said, taking the LaRange brochure over to him, still standing by Cooper, cuffed on the floor.
“What have you got?”
She showed him the brochure, leaving it opened so that he could see what had so distinctly grabbed her attention. He looked at it, did a double-take, and said: “I’ll be damned.”
In the Our Team section, there were pictures of five employees. One of them was Jane Adler. Her picture had been circled, and a large slash mark had been drawn over it.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Somewhere between his lake house and the precinct, Stanley Cooper had apparently sobered up quite a bit. Rachel could still smell the bourbon on him as they escorted him into the back of the station where the interrogation rooms were located, but he was walking perfectly fine. He’d only made a few pleas of his innocence during the drive but had apparently decided shutting up would be his best course of action.
He’d been quiet for over ten minutes when he sat down to the table in the interrogation room and broke his silent streak. “Please,” he said. “Is there any way I can get some water and a cup of coffee?”
One of the officers who’d assisted in getting Cooper into the building gave an obedient nod and went off in search of these two items. He closed the door behind him, leaving just Rachel, Sullivan, and Stanley Cooper in the room.
"You know why we came to see you," Rachel said. "And I assume by now you realize what a mistake it was to lash out the way you did. So I want you to start talking first. Maybe start with the collection of brochures and pamphlets…with why Dr. Jane Adler's face had a slash through it."
Cooper sighed and did his best to hold steady eye contact with her. “I’m not an idiot…I know what that looks like. There’s a slash through her face because I was eliminating her from a list of doctors and researchers I’ve been compiling.”
“Why was she eliminated?” Rachel asked.
“Because after I read up on her newest developments, I found out that she’s been leaning more toward the medicine side of things…how to help patients better respond to stem cell treatments rather than actually handling and administering the stem cells herself.”
“And you were looking for people that were directly administering them?”
“Administering, harvesting, actively seeking them out.”
“And what did you plan to do once you had this list compiled?” Sullivan asked.
"I've been working on a research paper these past few months. I was originally going to write a book on the topic, but it quickly became apparent that there was no market for it. Whenever I had the paper finalized, I was going to send copies of it to everyone on that list."
“How many names are currently on it?”
“About twenty. Maybe a few more.”
Before the questioning could continue, the cop came into the room with a plastic bottle of water and a Styrofoam cup of coffee. He set them down in front of Cooper and left right away. Cooper lifted his hands, the cuffs rattling, and said: "Any chance these can come off?"
“No,” Sullivan said.
Frowning and still clearly rattled, Cooper reached for the water first and worked carefully to bring it to his mouth. As he drank some of it down, Rachel went on with the questioning.
"Right now, you're cuffed and in an interrogation room because you shoved an officer when we approached you to ask questions about a series of murders. One of the women who has been murdered was in a brochure you had, and you had crossed out her face. You understand how this looks, right?”
"Yes." He was no longer holding eye contact, and the response once again came out as a growl.
“So, are you ready to tell us where you’ve been the last few nights?”
“Nowhere. Just at home. I went into town on Wednesday night to buy a bottle of bourbon and grab some groceries, but that’s it.”
“So you’ve just been at home?” Sullivan asked.
“Yes.”
“Any way you can prove that?”
