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Matt stared at his half-empty coffee. Kara couldn’t quit. She was a cop, through and through, and it wasn’t safe for her to return to Los Angeles. Would she just...leave?
If she did, it would be his fault.
25
Ryder looked up when the desk sergeant knocked and entered with an attractive young woman. “Jessica Mott is here to see you.”
“Thank you,” Ryder said. Kara wasn’t here yet. Jessica was early, and he really didn’t want to do this interview alone. He quickly sent Kara a text message.
The sergeant closed the door, and Ryder stood to shake her hand. “I’m Ryder Kim,” he said. “FBI analyst. We spoke on the phone. Thank you so much for coming up here.”
“I wish I could have come yesterday, but the ferries were shut down until early afternoon.”
Jessica was soft-spoken and dressed simply in slacks and a pale green blouse that matched her eyes.
Ryder motioned for her to sit at the end of the table, then sat in the chair ninety degrees from her so they could comfortably look at paperwork together. “We’re still in the middle of our investigation, but we haven’t been able to rule out the possibility Neil Devereaux may have been a target for the initial attack. However, what I say here I need you to keep in strict confidence.”
She agreed. “Anything I can do to help. I mean that.”
He looked at his phone. Kara said five minutes.
“What do you want to know?” she asked.
“I’m waiting for my colleague, Detective Quinn. She’s running a little late.” That sounded idiotic. “But why don’t you start with how you met Agent Devereaux? I’ve read all his notes, but know I’m missing parts of his files. It’s unclear whether you contacted him or he contacted you.”
“I reached out to Agent Devereaux four years ago. He told me then that he was retiring at the end of the year and I was heartbroken, because I never believed Jason’s death was an accident. I was hoping he could investigate. My parents would never listen to me, didn’t want to talk about what happened. Neither did Brian’s parents. I was fourteen when they died—who would believe me when I said I thought my brother was killed? It was awful. I missed my brother, and my parents were crushed. I went to college a few years later—University of Washington, just like Jason. That’s when I started asking questions. Doing research. Teachers remembered him and Brian—they were inseparable. Best friends from the first day of kindergarten. Funny and happy guys. I mean, he was my brother and he annoyed me—we were seven years apart in age. But he also took me to movies and taught me how to fish—my dad isn’t an outdoorsy type—and on my fourteenth birthday, Jason took me in a hot air balloon, though it totally freaked me out. That was the last thing we did alone together before he died...and, well, I now do it on his birthday every year, as a way to, I don’t know, remember him. Anyway, my mom sent me to a psychologist in high school who said that I had to accept the truth if I was to get beyond Jason’s death. I faked it. Because the more I thought, the more I knew that he was murdered, even though I didn’t know who did it or why.”
Kara walked in the conference room and sat down. Ryder started to introduce her, but Kara said, “Just ignore me. Keep going.”
“Unknown to me,” Jessica said, “Neil was suspicious about the deaths and tried to reopen the case, but his superiors said no. And then he was transferred out of state, to DC. I learned all that after we got in touch.”
“Exactly when was this?” Ryder asked. “You said before he retired?”
“Yes. The spring before he retired, which was at the end of that year. He’d already planned on moving here, had been looking for houses. Anyway, before I connected with Neil, I became fascinated with cold cases. Mostly missing persons. I read books, watched television, it became somewhat of an obsession—that’s what my mom said. Then I was reading the news about a teacher who disappeared while sailing in Puget Sound. His boat was found, some blood, and investigators surmised that he had been drinking—they found empty beer bottles—and when he was adjusting the sails, he messed up and the mast hit him in the back of the head, and he went overboard and drowned. There was some blood found on the mast. It just seemed so much like what happened to Jason, especially when the man’s wife said he wasn’t drinking, that he had been sober for five years. She was distraught. That’s when I reached out to Neil—I gave him all my research into Jason’s murder, which wasn’t a lot, I’ll admit, because there wasn’t a lot there. We talked about the teacher in Puget Sound. Neil was interested and said he’d look into it. He asked the investigators if they had checked the bottles on the teacher’s sailboat for fingerprints—because he was still with the FBI, I guess they went ahead and did it. There were no prints at all. They didn’t find that suspicious because of salt air and water and whatnot, but Neil did. He started looking into that case. When he retired, I came up here to have dinner with him. Neil said he’d found another suspicious death that he was looking into.
“Then last year he got a bit weird. I came up here at the end of last summer to introduce Neil to my boyfriend—we’re now engaged.” She held up her ring finger, which sported a small but classy diamond. “And he told me not to come again. He said he had a strong suspicion that there was a killer living here, and he needed to further investigate, but didn’t want to put me on the killer’s radar.” She shivered. “You know—I’m getting married in October, and Neil was going to be there. He returned his RSVP right after I mailed them last month. I’m going to miss him.”
Kara said, “Everyone who knows him says the same thing. He was well-liked. Did he tell you who he suspected?”
She shook her head. “When I pushed—and I did, hard—he said that Jason was killed because of revenge, both him and Brian, and that three other deaths fit the same pattern.”
Ryder pulled out his own notes. “Do you know what three cases?”
“The guy on the boat was Eric Travers, a teacher in Everett—that’s north of Seattle. He was in his late thirties, I think. But there should be several articles about him. Four years ago, in September. I sent him links to everything I found. Then there was a woman who went missing when hiking up Round Mountain with friends. They camped for the night, and when they woke up, she was gone. They never found her body. Neil was obsessed with her.”
“You remember her name? When this was?”
“It was maybe a year before the teacher drowned. Neither of their bodies have been found. Her name... Missy, I think. I don’t remember exactly. But I know he had an article about her disappearance, we talked about it.”
“And the third case?” Kara prompted.
“A high school student, his name also escapes me, I’m sorry. It was in Bellingham at the end of last year—right before Neil told me not to come up here. He said he knew who the killer was but couldn’t prove it and needed more time.”
“When was the last time you talked to him?” Kara asked.
“We talked on the phone a couple times, but he never talked about the case—avoided it on purpose, was my sense. The last time I saw him was in January. He was in Seattle for a football game—he was a huge Seahawks fan—and we met for breakfast the Monday after the game. He was frustrated. He said he didn’t believe in a perfect murder, but this was close to it.”
Kara leaned forward. “And he never gave you a hint as to who he was talking about?”
