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Jo cleared her throat. “This isn’t helping. Have you had any direct contact with Cooper Ossokov?”
“I interviewed him once, yes. There were several of us at the interview.”
“Did he show you any particular interest?” Jo asked.
Bernard pushed out her bottom lip and shook her head. “Not that I remember.”
As best as Jo could tell, she was being candid. “What about Mitch or Frieda Hauptmann, do you have any connection to them?”
Bernard searched the ceiling. “Those names aren’t familiar, but I can check my records.”
“Dantay Brown? David Wheedan? Patricia Flynn?” Jo asked.
Bernard’s brow creased. “The last namedoessound familiar, but I’m not sure why. I’ll check that too.”
“I’d appreciate it.” Jo stood up. “We need to take this back to HQ and confer with my partner. My guess is we’ll want you to do what the killer asks, to get out the information about the blindfold so they’ll think you’re on their side. In the meantime, if you get another message, respond to them immediately and see if you can get any information about them. Who they are, what they want. And contact us immediately. Can you do that?”
“I can.” She stood, posture tight. “But I’m concerned that I’ve somehow been pulled into a murderer’s crosshairs.”
Jo blew a puff of air through her nose. “As long as you’re doing what they want, you’re safe. But I can’t say the same for the rest of us, so I need you to think hard about why this person is interested in you. We need answers, fast, or more lives are going to be lost.”
* * *
Arnett stared down at the screenshot of Bernard’s new text message. “And she claims she has no personal association to any of our suspects?”
“That’s what she claims, but there has to be something. She may not realize how she’s connected, or she may be downright lying. Lopez is diving into her financials and other background as we speak.”
Arnett jotted a note on his pad as he nodded agreement. “And I think you’re right that we can let Bernard report about the presence of the blindfolds. We have enough proprietary information about them being placed after death and about the positioning of the arms to ferret out any false confessions.”
Jo took back her phone and sent a text to Bernard. “Letting her know.”
Arnett tucked into his burrito. “While you were gone I found out Frieda Hauptmann is squeaky clean. Not so much as a parking ticket.”
Jo dropped into her chair. “Damn. But it doesn’t mean she’s not behind this.”
“True. I also checked in with the local PD officers who’ve been canvassing. Several residents around Lake Pocomtuk noticed a vehicle parked by the side of the road near Ashville’s house, but nobody got a license plate and none of the descriptions match each other. I followed up on a few calls that came through the tip line, but nothing panned out. None of my informants have heard anything useful. We have a smattering of descriptions from people at Burkefeld Gardens, also varied and useless.”
“Great.” Jo tapped her pen on her desk.
“I also managed to catch up with Dantay Brown’s girlfriend; she works opening shift at a restaurant on the weekends, and has a solid alibi for both murders. Same with Wheedan’s brothers, who are currently on a fishing trip up off the shores of Nova Scotia, and have been for three days. In both cases, those are the only relatives in the area.”
“Well, that narrows things down to three,” Jo said. “Hauptmann, Ossokov, and Flynn. We know Ossokov intersects with Bernard, so let’s see if the other two do.”
Jo went back over her original searches of Bernard, hoping what little they’d learned over the last few days would make something she hadn’t noticed before pop out, and digging further as she went. Her ex-husband, Thomas Grandin, seemed to have a happy life back in New York; he’d remarried, and his Facebook page was filled with posts about his new baby boy. If there was a grudge between them, it seemed more likely to be Lacey against Thomas than the other way around.
Lacey’s sister, Jacinda, had a sparse social media presence, with few pictures and interactions. At first, Jo suspected this had to do with her cancer diagnosis, but when she scrolled back to before the diagnosis, the posts were just as sparse. She’d almost given up when, two years before the diagnosis, her Facebook feed blossomed, full of spiritual memes and happy pictures with friends. She scoured her Instagram and Twitter feeds for any clue as to why she’d shifted so dramatically, but found none.
Jo switched gears, tackling possible connections from the suspects’ sides. She brainstormed a list for each, jotting down everything she knew about them. Two possible commonalities popped up. In the first, Flynn, Ossokov, and Bernard had all demonstrated issues with the failings of the justice system; that alone could explain why Flynn or Ossokov would reach out to Bernard in particular if they were the murderer. For the second, both Hauptmann and Ossokov had been accused of rape; Jo’s mind flew to the passion in Bernard’s comments about sexual violence when they’d talked at Fernando’s, along with the prevalence of articles she’d written on the topic and awareness posts on her social media. Jo knew the reason for her interest in breast cancer awareness and innocence projects, but where had her dedication to fighting sexual violence come from?
She considered the connections. It made sense in Ossokov’s case, since he’d been wrongfully convicted of rape and murder—except the evidence seemed strong that while he hadn’t murdered Zara Richards, he had raped at least two other women. It made no sense to engage a sexual-violence-awareness champion, unless he thought she wouldn’t find out about the previous convictions? But that was a dangerous chance to take with a journalist.
The same objection went for Hauptmann, who’d moved to another county to avoid having his alleged rape brought back to public attention. Why would he want to reach out to someone with a history of activism against sexual assault?
Or maybe rape had nothing to do with it at all. She sighed, frustrated; she needed to know why sexual violence was a hot-button issue with Bernard to judge whether it mattered.
Her mind returned to Patricia Flynn, and something about the possibility pulled at her. What had Flynn said?That doesn’t excuse taking the easy route.Had she been disillusioned enough by her time in the DA’s office to kill Ashville and Sakurai in order to bring attention to what she considered inadequate justice? That fit with kitting the victims out to look like Lady Justice, and it would explain why she’d reach out to the press to make sure someone outside the unit and the DA’s office knew about what was happening.
Lopez appeared at the desk with a stack of printouts. “Okay, I have a request in for any and all information about the new burner phone. But the first two had no activity other than the text to Bernard, so I’m expecting the same. I also have requests in for location information on each of the burner phones. At least we’ll be able to tell where the user was when they sent the texts.”
